The Team That Scaled Pilates Past 1,179 Studios Left and Started This

Dan Lorenz | September 29, 2026

The Zorzee Report | Issue #19 | Boutique Pilates, Part 4 of 4

Note: figures are from the Pilates Addiction Franchisor, LLC 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, cited by Item.

The series ends with the youngest brand and the most experienced team. Club Pilates showed you its full range of sales. JETSET went further and showed you the profit. Pilates Addiction does not show you a performance number at all, and for a system this new, that is the ordinary choice, not a red one.

Its Item 19 reads, in full effect, "We do not make any financial performance representations" (Item 19). No average, no median, no range. Under the Federal Trade Commission's Franchise Rule that is legal, and a franchisor barely a year into operating its own system has little a cohort-based number would even be built on yet. So the filing gives you nothing to underwrite. What it gives you instead is a team.

And it is a serious one. Pilates Addiction's chief executive was President of Xponential; its parent's chief executive was Xponential's CEO and built it into the largest boutique-fitness platform in the country, Club Pilates and all, before launching this. The people who scaled the brand this series opened with are the people running this one.

This issue is how to weigh a young brand whose strongest asset is the team behind it, a team whose record runs both ways, scaling the category and carrying the lawsuits that came with it, and whose numbers you will have to go and find yourself.

A missing Item 19 is information, not an accusation. The franchisor is telling you it will not stand behind a performance figure in writing yet, so every number you use is one you build yourself. That is what you would expect this early. Pilates Addiction acquired the Pilates Addiction and WundaBar studio systems in February 2025 and is barely a year into franchising them (Item 1). The FDD shows eleven studios open at the end of 2025 (Item 20); the company reports seventeen open today and more than three hundred territories sold in its first twelve months, with a stated goal of opening at least four new studios a month through 2027. The system is selling fast and is early in turning those sales into open doors. It estimates eleven to thirteen months from signing to opening a studio (Item 1).

Read the absence honestly. For a system this young, the likely story is the simple one: there is not yet a cohort long enough to publish, not that numbers are being hidden. Either way the filing gives you one real lever: if you buy an existing studio, the franchisor may provide that studio's actual records (Item 19). Use it. With a small roster of operators, there is no excuse not to call every one of them. The homework here is the whole assignment, and it is doable.

Pilates Addiction is the least expensive of the three reformer brands to open, $320,532 to $752,335, of which $214,385 to $281,885 goes to the franchisor and its affiliates (Item 7). The initial franchise fee is $65,000, dropping to $45,000 on your fourth studio (Item 5). On entry cost alone, it is the easiest door in the series to walk through.

The ongoing terms are where a slow or delayed studio pays. The royalty is 8% of sales and the brand fund another 2%, with local advertising set at the greater of $1,200 a month or 2% of sales (Item 6). Below $720,000 in annual sales the $1,200 local-advertising floor governs and the effective rate climbs, exactly the stretch a new studio is in. There is also an opening-deadline fee: $2,500 for every month, or part of a month, that you miss your opening deadline (Item 6). That fee is unusual, and it is pointed at the one risk a young, fast-selling brand carries most, studios that sell and then stall before they open. You are paying the least to start and carrying a penalty tied to how fast you finish.

The catch underneath all of it: with no Item 19, you cannot know what "slow" looks like for this brand. You are agreeing to fee floors without the revenue distribution that would tell you how often a studio falls beneath them.

This is the section that matters most here, because the team is the track record the filing gives you, and it is a strong one.

Pilates Addiction is a Sequel Brands company, and Sequel is, in effect, the operating team that built Xponential. Chief executive Sarah Luna was President of Xponential from January 2021 to December 2024, running brand entities including CycleBar, Pure Barre, StretchLab, and Yoga Six (Item 2). Sequel's chief executive, Anthony Geisler, was Xponential's CEO from 2020 to 2024 and built it into the largest boutique-fitness platform in the country, Club Pilates and all, before launching Sequel (Item 2). The chief financial officer ran CycleBar (Item 2). This is, plainly, the most experienced boutique-Pilates operating team you could sign with. They scaled the 1,179-studio chain this series opened with, and they know how to pick sites, negotiate leases, and build a system, which is worth real money to a new franchisee.

The filing is also candid about the litigation that comes with that history, and you should read Item 3 in full. Pilates Addiction discloses no actions involving the company, its parent, or its affiliates (Item 3). It does disclose that some of the individuals running it, Luna and Geisler among them, are named as defendants, alongside other former Xponential officers, in the Xponential matters this series covered in Part 2 (Item 3). Pilates Addiction states plainly that it is not affiliated with Xponential (Item 3).

Hold both facts at once, because both are real. This is a proven team that knows how to build the category, and it is a team that carries active litigation over how its members disclosed at their last company. Being named as a defendant is not a finding of wrongdoing; those matters are allegations, several already settled without any admission of liability, none adjudicated as fraud, and Pilates Addiction is a separate company with a clean record of its own. None of that says Club Pilates was not a success, or that this brand cannot be. It says you sign with your eyes open. If you want to close the loop, ask them directly: what they learned at Xponential, and why there is no Item 19 yet. How they answer tells you more than any single line in the filing.

Read the filing as a bull and Pilates Addiction is the cheapest way into reformer Pilates, run by the most credentialed team in the category, on a concept with real studio heritage and fast early momentum, motivated to prove a new platform. Read it as a bear and it is a young brand that publishes no performance numbers yet, with a small roster of operators to validate, and fee floors and an opening penalty that bite a studio that stalls. Both are true. Which one governs is yours to decide, with the actual records in hand.

The operator this rewards is a specific one. Someone who can get the actual records of an existing studio, work the roster to the last name, and judge a team rather than a spreadsheet, because the spreadsheet is not in this document yet. If you need the filing to make the case for you, wait for the cohort. If you can do the diligence the filing leaves to you, the low entry cost and the operating pedigree are real and rare. What you cannot do is take the pedigree on faith and skip the verification, because verifying what a franchisor will not put in writing is the one habit this entire series was written to build.

Three brands, one category, three answers to a single question: what will you show me before I risk $200,000?

Club Pilates showed the most, and its parent settled with the FTC and several states over how it disclosed in the past. JETSET showed its profit, from an early but real cohort. Pilates Addiction showed no numbers yet, and asked you to weigh the most proven team in the category against the open questions its past still carries. The reformer boom is real, and every one of these can work for the right operator in the right market. The category does not sort the winners from the losers. What a franchisor is willing to put in writing, and what you are willing to verify yourself, does.

That is the whole discipline. Be the investor who reads what is there and finds what is missing, not the consumer who buys the boom.

Pro subscribers get the inversion. This week's deep-dive flips all three filings: where the category leader's scale actually protects you and where it does not, whether a disclosed profit on ten studios is a signal or a sample, and how to underwrite a brand that gives you no numbers at all. Lock In My Founding Rate: $9 a month, locked for life. The founding rate closes October 1.

If you are looking at any Pilates brand, that is what I do. I have read every 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 Pilates Addiction? The complete dossier, all five signals and the terms straight from the 2026 FDD, is on Zorzee: zorzee.com/dossiers/pilates-addiction/free. Read the other two in the series too: Club Pilates and JETSET Pilates.

Compare the three side by side at zorzee.com/compare, or head to head: Club Pilates vs Pilates Addiction and JETSET vs Pilates Addiction.

Browse 650+ franchise dossiers at zorzee.com.

Grab the free Five Signals Franchise Audit Guide: 30 signals across 5 buckets that tell you whether any franchise document holds up. Fee Structure, Unit Economics, Litigation History, Operator Validation, Term and Exit Terms. Same framework Zorzee applies to every brand.

Already own a franchise, or deep into the validation process and the numbers aren't matching what you were told? Books Brothers does a free 15-minute Cash Flow Audit. See how it works at booksbrothers.co.

THE ZORZEE REPORT
No commissions. No franchisor revenue. Independent analysis only.
Subscribe at zorzee.com | Forward to someone evaluating a franchise

This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this issue constitutes financial, legal, or investment advice. I am not a licensed financial advisor, CPA, or attorney. FDD data cited is sourced from the publicly available Pilates Addiction Franchisor, LLC 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document. The Item 3 matters described involve individuals named as defendants in litigation involving a former employer; those matters are allegations, several resolved by settlement without admission of liability, none adjudicated as fraud, and Pilates Addiction states it is not affiliated with that company. Read Item 2 and Item 3 in full and verify independently. Past performance does not predict future results. Individual results vary. All data should be independently verified. Consult qualified legal, financial, and franchise professionals before making any investment decision.

Editorial independence and disclosures: zorzee.com/disclosures