Cold Plunge Market Hits $380M as Category Creates New Sauna Buyers

The cold plunge market barely existed five years ago. Today, it's estimated at roughly $380 million globally (per SkyQuest's 2025 valuation), with growth rates that continue to outpace most wellness categories. But the more interesting story may be what cold plunge culture is doing for the sauna industry.

The Gateway Effect

Talk to any sauna dealer and you'll hear the same thing: a significant share of their new customers came to sauna through cold plunge. The contrast therapy protocol, alternating between extreme heat and extreme cold, has become the use case that bridges the two categories. People buy a cold plunge tub, get serious about the practice, and discover they want the heat side too.

This pattern is reshaping how sauna brands think about their addressable market. Rather than viewing cold plunge companies as competitors for wellness spending, some sauna manufacturers are partnering with cold plunge brands for cross-promotional campaigns and bundled offerings.

Cold plunge didn't steal customers from sauna. It created an entirely new group of thermal wellness enthusiasts who eventually want both.

Brand Strategy

Several sauna manufacturers have responded by developing their own cold plunge products or partnering with existing brands. Dundalk Leisurecraft now offers the Arctic Plunge and Glacier Plunge alongside its barrel saunas. The logic is straightforward: if your sauna customer is going to buy a cold plunge anyway, better for that sale to happen under your roof.

Plunge, the bootstrapped direct-to-consumer brand founded in 2020, crossed $100 million in revenue in 2024 according to Entrepreneur. That kind of category-creating growth naturally pulls adjacent categories (like sauna) along with it.

Market Context: Global cold plunge tub market estimated at ~$380M in 2025 (SkyQuest). Plunge (brand) surpassed $100M in 2024 revenue (Entrepreneur). Multiple sauna manufacturers now offer their own cold plunge products. Contrast therapy is driving cross-category purchasing.

Retail and Distribution Impact

The adjacency is reshaping retail strategy. Dealers and showrooms that carry both sauna and cold plunge products report higher average transaction values. The categories sell better together than apart.

What Harvia Is Doing About It

The largest publicly traded sauna company is explicitly eyeing cold wellness as a category to consolidate. On the Harvia Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Matias Järnefelt named it directly in the M&A wish list.

"We are looking at other significant-sized markets in categories such as cold wellness, digital wellness." — Matias Järnefelt, CEO, Harvia Plc, Q4 2025 earnings call, 12 February 2026

That positions Harvia as a potential strategic acquirer for cold plunge players, which is a different competitive dynamic than Dundalk building its own Arctic and Glacier Plunge products in-house. A Harvia-backed cold plunge brand with Harvia's European distribution reach and MyHarvia digital platform would immediately become the scaled contrast-therapy player in the market.

The cold plunge phenomenon is far from peaking, and its continued growth will likely remain one of the strongest tailwinds for the sauna industry over the next several years. The category is also pulling sauna into new venues, including public land: Idaho's state park system put a sauna and cold plunge concession out to bid at Ponderosa State Park in April 2026, one of the clearest U.S. signals yet that parks departments now see contrast therapy as a recreation amenity worth procuring.