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The Sauna Industry's Record of Note
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KLAFS, a Kohler subsidiary, begins taking US orders for the S1 retractable sauna at $44,900 to $51,900. Beside Sun Home’s $10,599 Nova launch the same week, the S1 marks the top of a market that is stratifying fast.
In Finland, a country with 3.3 million saunas for 5.5 million people, nobody debates whether to sauna in summer. The Kuopio study behind the famous longevity numbers (63% lower sudden cardiac death, 40% lower all-cause mortality) tracked men who used traditional saunas year-round for 20 years. Heat acclimation science explains why a three-month summer break costs more than it looks: the adaptations that take weeks to build start unwinding the moment you stop.
US lumber futures hit an eight-month high above $630 per thousand board feet as Canadian softwood tariffs approach 45%. US sawmill capacity fell 6% year over year. Many steel and aluminum products remain exposed to Section 232 rates as high as 50%. And freight markets are tightening again. For the US sauna industry, these pressures are compressing margins across the entire supply chain.
Mondex is preparing a deliberate US push with Finnish-made heaters, Darekon's industrial backing, and a brand story built around authenticity. The hard part is that authenticity is also the cost structure.
Independent durability testing by Saunologia’s Lassi Liikkanen shows ceramic sauna stones lasting up to four times longer than natural alternatives. His data directly contradicts the ceramic-stone bans printed in heater manuals from Harvia and IKI.
WorldSprings added five themed saunas and three plunge pools to its Glenwood Springs hot-springs property, then started the same expansion at its Dallas location. A holding company is quietly converting legacy soaking destinations into contrast-therapy venues.
A logistics entrepreneur who sold a company to UPS is putting $1 million into a membership sauna and cold plunge club in Boulder, targeting the city’s endurance-athlete community with American-made equipment and ADA-accessible design throughout.
HUUM has released App 4.0, a completely new version of its sauna control application built from the ground up. The Estonian heater manufacturer told SaunaNews it rebuilt the entire server infrastructure, delivering 3x faster communication between the app and the UKU control panel. Multi-sauna management, smarter booking, and a full dark theme round out what HUUM calls its biggest update yet.
A real estate developer, a former Standard Hotels culture director, and the co-founder of Tender Greens are building Miami’s first modern social bathhouse in the heart of Wynwood. The 7,500-square-foot venue opens this summer with a full thermal circuit, no phones, and no alcohol.
Harvia signed a cooperation agreement with three Central Finland institutions on the opening day of the World Sauna Forum, creating a three-tier research and talent pipeline focused on energy efficiency, smart manufacturing, new materials, and digital customer experience.
The Lithuanian Bath Academy, the nonprofit that has spent two decades training professional bath masters in the Baltic pirtis tradition, is running a four-day off-grid camp near Vilnius this August. Participants build a temporary stone heater, bind their own whisks, and learn plant-based bathing care in the forest. Seven spots remain.
Portal Thermaculture opened its fourth US club in Bozeman, Montana, on March 17, 2026. The company has gone from Boulder pop-ups to brick-and-mortar clubs in Denver, Minneapolis, and now Bozeman in roughly 14 months, with no disclosed outside investors and a two-building layout designed to keep buildout costs far below the $3 million to $5 million custom-bathhouse norm.
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