HOTWORX, the infrared sauna fitness franchise, announced this week that it’s entering Alaska for the first time, with a multi-unit deal that’ll bring four studios to the state. First up is Wasilla, where the doors are expected to open sometime in Q3 2026.
If you haven’t heard of HOTWORX, here’s the quick version. It’s a 24-hour fitness concept built around infrared heat combined with either 30-minute isometric routines or 15-minute HIIT sessions, all guided by a virtual instructor inside a patented sauna pod. Since launching in 2017, it’s ballooned to more than 800 studios and 400,000+ members, making it one of the faster-growing fitness franchises out there right now.
But the more interesting part of this story isn’t the brand. It’s the people bringing it north.
The franchise owners, Tracey Pidge and Ciara Boyce, aren’t rookies. They already run two HOTWORX locations in Washington (University Place and Lacey), both of which have grown past 600 members each. So corporate isn’t handing the keys to Alaska to just anyone. These two have already proven they can build a member base from scratch.
Here’s the twist though. Pidge and Boyce used to live in Alaska. Both spent decades there before eventually relocating to Washington, and by their own account, bringing HOTWORX back to the state feels less like a business expansion and more like coming home. Boyce, who’s also a U.S. Army veteran and certified personal trainer, has talked about how her time in the military shaped the discipline she now runs her studios with. She’s also leaned on the fact that she and Pidge still have deep family and community ties across Alaska, the kind of thing that makes a cold franchise pitch feel a lot more personal.
Pidge has made a pretty simple case for why the timing makes sense too. Alaska winters are long and dark, and an indoor space built around heat, movement and community hits differently there than it might somewhere sunny. It’s honestly a decent argument. Infrared heat therapy has an easier sell in a place where six months of the year mean limited daylight and brutal cold.
This isn’t a cheap franchise to get into. Based on HOTWORX’s disclosure documents, a single studio typically runs somewhere between $187,000 and $418,000 to open, though multi-unit deals like this one usually come with some fee breaks on the additional locations.
Zoom out a bit and this fits a trend that’s been playing out across franchising all year. Brands in the health and wellness space are some of the fastest-growing in the industry right now, and a lot of that growth is coming from expansion into markets that bigger chains have historically skipped over. Alaska, with its smaller population and logistical quirks, is exactly the kind of state that often gets left off the map, until someone with actual ties to the place decides it’s worth the bet.
For now, all eyes are on Wasilla. If that first studio takes off the way Pidge and Boyce expect, the other three Alaska locations should follow over the next couple of years. And if it doesn’t, well, that’ll say a lot about whether the infrared-sauna trend actually holds up somewhere this far from the lower 48.