Club Pilates Has the Best Numbers in Boutique Pilates. Here's How to Read Them.

The Zorzee Report | Issue #17 | Boutique Pilates, Part 2 of 4

Note: figures are from the Club Pilates Franchise SPV, LLC 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, cited by Item. This is the national chain the Market Map ran anonymously last week.

Last week's Market Map showed you one chain's own filing running a studio to $2,301,954 and another, same brand, same year, to $146,258. This is that chain. It's Club Pilates, the biggest reformer brand in the country, past 1,179 US studios and still opening (Item 20).

Here's what earns it the front of the series. Club Pilates discloses more than anyone else in the category. Its Item 19 gives you the average, the median, the high, the low, and the studio count, then splits the whole system into quartiles so you can see the shape of it. Average studio: $987,810 in sales last year. Median: $978,332. Just under half the 1,005 reporting studios cleared the average (Item 19). And the brand prints its own worst studio, the $146,258 one, in the same table as its best.

That's a franchisor putting the downside in writing. Most of the category would sooner show you the supply closet.

So the numbers make the case, and it's a real one: on the filing, this is the category's proven scale play. The rest of the document is what a serious buyer reads next, the fees, the sales quota that can end your deal, the ten-year term you can't walk out of, and the one line in Item 3 worth a phone call. None of it is a reason to walk. All of it is a reason to sign with your eyes open.

Start with the strength, because it's the reason we're here. A $987,810 average sitting within about $9,500 of the $978,332 median tells you the number isn't propped up by a handful of monster studios (Item 19). The top quartile averages $1,309,242, the bottom quartile $685,540 (Item 19). A weak Club Pilates studio, on average, still rings up two-thirds of a million dollars. In a category where plenty of brands' bottom studios barely clear the cost to open one, that floor is the whole argument for scale.

Two things to read right, though. First, the word "sales." Item 19 is gross revenue, not profit. Club Pilates takes an 8% royalty and a 2% Brand Development Fund (Item 6), about 10% to the brand, which is dead average for boutique fitness and not a flag. It's just the reminder that $987,810 is the top line, not the take-home: at the median, that 10% is roughly $97,800 off the top before the rent, the payroll, or a single reformer is paid for.

Second, how to read the bottom. The $146,258 low is one outlier, not the downside case, and treating it as typical is the same mistake as treating the $2,301,954 high as typical. The honest floor is the bottom quartile, and it still averages $685,540 (Item 19), a soft studio, not a dying one. The filing proves a weak location can exist. It won't tell you whether your corner is one. That's the Item 20 phone call, and it's the one most buyers skip.

A single Club Pilates studio costs $413,289 to $1,029,811 to open, and of that, $197,901 to $241,189 goes to the franchisor and its affiliates (Item 7). The franchise fee itself is $65,000. In 2025 the brand waived that fee for two owners and cut it to $45,000 for two more (Item 5), a sign it will negotiate on price to keep a proven operator opening studios.

The local advertising rule is worth slowing down on. Every month, you spend the greater of $1,500 or 2% of last month's sales on local marketing (Item 6). When business is good, the 2% is the bigger number, so that's what you pay, and it falls on its own in a slow month. When business is weak, the flat $1,500 is the bigger number, so you pay it no matter how little you sold. At the system's worst studio, that $1,500 a month works out to more than 12% of sales. The fixed floor costs you the most exactly when you can least afford it.

Then the clause most buyers skim. Club Pilates sets a Minimum Monthly Gross Sales Quota: a trailing-twelve-month average of $25,000 a month by your first anniversary, and $40,000 a month by your second year and every year after (Item 12). Miss it and the franchisor can put you on a corrective program. Miss it across a rolling 36-month window and they can end the agreement.

The quota looks like a threat. It's really a filter, and a fair one. A $40,000 monthly average is $480,000 a year, comfortably under the $685,540 bottom quartile, so it doesn't threaten a real operator. It threatens an absentee one. The catch is what you don't get in return: an exclusive territory. Your Designated Territory covers at least 15,000 people, and the franchisor keeps the right to run other brands, and other channels, around you (Item 12). The quota protects the system's density. It does not protect you from the system.

The commitment is longer than most buyers picture. The Franchise Agreement runs ten years from the day you sign, and it does not hand you a way out; termination is the franchisor's tool, not yours, except where state law says otherwise (Item 17). You get one renewal, another ten years, but you renew onto the franchisor's then-current agreement, which the filing says "may contain terms and conditions that differ materially" from the one you signed, plus a $10,000 successor fee (Item 17). The deal you sign is not necessarily the deal you re-up into.

Leaving early also runs through the franchisor. A transfer needs its written consent and a $10,000 transfer fee, and your buyer signs the then-current agreement, not yours; it's $750 if you're only moving your studio into your own holding entity, $1,500 to an immediate family member (Item 17). And when the relationship ends, at the company's option you sell it your equipment, your inventory, and your fixtures, and you assign it your lease (Item 17). That's a standard franchise exit. It's also the kind of clause you want to have read before you sign, not after.

The part that connects to Item 3 sits at the front end: time to open. Club Pilates discloses that the typical stretch from signing to soft opening is about thirteen months (Item 11). Thirteen months of rent, buildout, and a $65,000 fee already spent, before you sell a single membership. Miss the checkpoints, no approved lease within six months, no soft opening within thirteen, and the franchisor can terminate the agreement and keep the $65,000 (Item 11). That opening timeline is exactly what New York's regulators said the brand's disclosures got wrong. It's in this filing in black and white. Your job is to confirm the real-world version of it with the operators in Item 20.

The people running Club Pilates are new. Michael Nuzzo became chief executive in August 2025, in from Eyemart Express and, before that, Petco (Item 2). Tianna Strateman took Brand President in September 2024 (Item 2). A fresh professional team at a big, growing brand while the public parent shops itself usually means a turnaround is underway. When you call operators, ask the post-transition ones what changed about support and fees, not what changed about the workout.

That parent is Xponential Fitness, and it's the reason Club Pilates carries a long Item 3. Franchise law makes a brand disclose actions involving its parent and affiliates, and Xponential settled a cluster of them from 2024 to 2026 with the FTC and several states, roughly $21 million all told, every one without admitting wrongdoing (Item 3).

Read who was actually named. The biggest, the FTC's $17 million settlement, named four sibling brands, AKT, CycleBar, Pure Barre, and Yoga Six, not Club Pilates (Item 3). The private franchisee suits are other brands too. Club Pilates itself is a named party in two of the state settlements, New York and California, both resolved without admission, and neither one puts a dollar figure on Club Pilates alone (Item 3).

The New York settlement is the one that earns your attention, because it names a single checkable thing: the timeline to open a studio (Item 3). You already have the franchisor's own number for that, about thirteen months. Get the operators' number too. Call the Item 20 list, ask how long it really took them from signing to first class, and what the wait cost. That's diligence, not a red flag.

Club Pilates is the category's proven scale play, and the filing earns the label. The deepest disclosure in boutique Pilates, the tightest distribution, a bottom quartile that still clears $685,540, 153 new studios opened in 2025 against three established closures, and private equity buying up its operators by the group (Item 19, Item 20). The scale is real, and it's in the numbers, not the pitch.

It's still not a default yes. You're signing a ten-year agreement you can't unilaterally exit, with no protected territory, a 10% fee load, a quota with teeth, and a parent that spent two years cleaning up how its brands disclose. None of that disqualifies the brand. All of it is underwritable, if you actually underwrite it.

The operator this rewards is specific: enough capital to carry the fee load and a real local-advertising budget, the discipline to model the median and not the average, and the temperament to verify a filing instead of trusting it. Do that work and Club Pilates may be the best-documented decision in boutique fitness. Skip it, and the best numbers in the category won't save you from the one studio those numbers never described.

Part 3 moves to a much younger reformer brand, fewer than fifty studios open, that costs more to build and asks for roughly double the liquid capital. It does one thing Club Pilates doesn't: its Item 19 discloses what an owner actually keeps, not just what the studio rings up. The number is rare. So is the size of the group it comes from.

A brand that prints its profit is making a promise most of the category avoids. Part 3 reads the promise, and the fine print under it.

If you are looking at Club Pilates, or just want to understand the category before you take a Discovery Day, that is what I do. I have read every Pilates FDD in this series. I can tell you in 15 minutes whether the numbers support the pitch. My consulting costs you nothing. Book the Free Zorzee Clarity Call.

Want the full read on Club Pilates? The complete dossier, all five signals and the numbers straight from the 2026 FDD, is on Zorzee: zorzee.com/dossiers/club-pilates/free. See how it stacks up across the category at zorzee.com/compare.

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FDD data cited is from the publicly available Club Pilates Franchise SPV, LLC 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document. The litigation and regulatory matters in Item 3 were resolved by settlement or consent order without any admission of liability, and none was adjudicated as fraud; read Item 3 in full and verify independently.