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Good morning! It's Tuesday, December 5th. Today’s post examines Plunge’s exponential growth to $80M in sales within just three years from selling affordable cold therapy tubs!

THE FEATURE

From Selling Cold Plunges out of a Garage to $80M in Sales

Ice baths have become the latest health hack, with celebrities ranging from Joe Rogan to Harry Styles evangelizing to millions of followers about their benefits. 

Plunge founders Michael Garrett and Ryan Duey identified that trend in 2020, and this year, they are expected to generate between $80-90M in sales!

So, What’s the Business?

Both founders used to sell float spas— sensory deprivation tanks used for enhanced mediation at home. Duey owned Capital Floats in Sacramento, and Garrett had Reboot Float Spa in San Francisco. 

Despite competing in the same space, the two hit it off over their oddly similar and eccentric pasts, both having backpacked across Thailand, taken ayahuasca in South America, and gotten into the float spa business. 

The pandemic forced Garrett to close his retail locations for months. With time on his hands, he developed a cold plunge prototype. Back in 2020, cold plunges looked pretty rugged, and mid-tier plunges sold for $10K+. Garrett gambled that his design could give him a high profit margin while charging half the price. 

After emailing his float spa customer base, Garrett sold his first two cold plunges fast. So, he contacted Duey to partner up and help him on the sales side. They started with a limited sale of 20 cold plunges stored in Garrett’s garage and sold them all through their website and emailing previous float spa customers.

The first iteration of Plunge’s product was rough; Garrett picked up acrylic bathtubs from online marketplaces and retrofitted them with water chillers and aquarium pumps. Today, Plunge has a sleek design that looks virtually indistinguishable from a regular bathtub and sells for just $4,990 (while competitors still charge $10k-$20K). 

In the first year, the duo reached $1M in sales, and within just three years, they’ve hit $80M! 

How They Win: Creating an Influencer Marketing Chain

Influencer marketing is usually extremely expensive, with celebrities expecting large payouts or a profit split to sponsor products. But Garrett and Duey found a cheaper, more organic way to pull it off.

Plunge’s influencer marketing tactic started when Garrett saw Onnit CEO Aubrey Marcus doing an Instagram livestream from his makeshift cold plunge (an ice chest freezer). Garrett commented, “We’d love to upgrade your plunge! :) Let us know if we can send one to you!”

Aubrey agreed, and Garrett and Duey set up a cold plunge in his house. In return, all they asked was for him to post it on Instagram and gift another free cold plunge to one of his influencer friends. This created a chain reaction.

With each free cold plunge giveaway, Plunge worked its way up the influencer ladder until they were delivering plunges to the likes of Tony Hawk and viral health scientist Andrew Huberman.

At the time, Plunge had just four employees in a 3,000-square-foot space. However, their plunges appeared in the feeds of top health and fitness industry influencers, making consumers believe Plunge was the largest and most reputable business in the cold therapy space.

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