A $3,000 Bodysuit to Shock Your Way to a Better Body

Summary

Bloomberg Businessweek Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: A $3,000 Bodysuit to Shock Your Way to a Better Body
Air Date: September 29, 2025
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec
Guests: Chris Rouser (Editor, Bloomberg Pursuits), Brendan Kennedy (CEO, Montemayr/Catalyst)

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Overview

This episode dives into the booming world of high-tech wellness with a focus on Catalyst's Gen 4 EMS (Electric Muscle Stimulation) bodysuit—a $3,000 device that promises to supercharge workouts by electrically stimulating muscles. Guests Chris Rouser, who reported on and personally tested the suit, and CEO Brendan Kennedy discuss the science, business model, and cultural impact of this fitness innovation, while also exploring the broader wellness industry’s search for legitimate shortcuts and sustainable trends.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Wellness Hacking Craze (01:44–03:25)

• The Overwhelming Wellness Landscape: Chris Rouser shares his experience as a self-described “wellness person” and describes the explosion of wellness options and advice, leading to a feeling of overwhelm.

  • “At the beginning of the year, I just was thinking about how overwhelming wellness has gotten...there's endless podcasts...You can spend, like, $7,000 a month...Just feels very overwhelming. And I thought, okay, what's the response to that? I want to cheat. I want a cheat code. I want an easy way out.” – Chris Rouser (02:09)

• Searching for Shortcuts: The “Pursuits” team at Bloomberg Businessweek embarked on exploring 'hacks' and easier ways into health.

2. What is the Catalyst EMS Suit? (03:25–06:22)

• Purpose and Technology:
  • The suit leverages EMS technology, formerly used mainly by physical therapists, to contract and work muscles via electrical impulses—simulating a full workout.
  • It now comes as a wearable suit that enables users to supercharge their exercise routines in minimal time.
• User Testimony: Chris Rouser, recovering from injuries, saw real results—improved posture, weight loss, and muscle gain.
  • “It actually works...It really got me back going. Yeah, you really see result...helped my posture, I lost weight, gained muscle.” – Chris Rouser (04:09–04:31)
• Brendan Kennedy’s Perspective:
  • After initial skepticism, Kennedy became a user, then investor, and now CEO.
  • “For me, it compresses time. I can get a two hour workout...in 20 minutes. ...It hits the little muscles in your back that you might miss in the gym or skip a leg day...It’s efficient, it’s fast, and it compresses time for me.” – Brendan Kennedy (04:50–05:58)

3. Business Model and Customer Profile (06:22–09:41)

• Price and Platform: The suit retails for $3,000, comes with an app and on-demand trainers.
  • “This is the first time I have abs at 53. It's never happened before. And it's all because of [the] suit.” – Brendan Kennedy (06:25)
• Target Users: Consumers can buy the suit for at-home use, and studios across the US employ the suit for client workouts.
  • “There are thousands of consumers that own the suit, and they work out at their homes or at the office or in their hotel rooms while they're traveling...There are also maybe two to 300 studios in the US that use a suit. Many of them use the Catalyst suit.” – Brendan Kennedy (09:41)

4. US vs. Europe, Regulation, and Competitive Edge (10:15–11:12)

• Cultural and Regulatory Context:
  • EMS studios have proliferated in Europe, where the devices are less regulated.
  • In the US, Catalyst boasts FDA clearance, providing a significant competitive advantage.
  • “Oddly, an EMS suit is regulated like a toaster in Europe...Here it's regulated by the FDA, and so this suit is FDA cleared. So we went through the FDA process in order to sell it to consumers. That's one moat [competitive advantage]. I think the second moat is the content.” – Brendan Kennedy (10:27)
• Proprietary Content: Hundreds of workouts available via the app, which controls the electrical stimulation.

5. Trend or Fad? The Future of EMS and Wellness (11:17–12:25)

• Skepticism and Longevity:
  • Both hosts and Kennedy discuss concerns about “fad” status.
  • “You don't want this to end up in the same pile as the thigh master.” – Carol Massar (11:27)
• Health Utility: Kennedy argues for strengthening as a lasting value, especially for populations (e.g., users of GLP-1 drugs) at risk for muscle loss.
  • “Strength will always be important. It fixes your posture. Bone density for a lot of people is really important. People on GLP1 drugs lose strength. And so this suit helps people of different demographics and ages very quickly.” – Brendan Kennedy (11:34)

6. Practical Use Cases (12:06–12:22)

• Versatile Workouts: Users can do standard or “freestyle” workouts—wearing the suit while folding laundry, walking on a treadmill, or even during chores.
  • “There are people that do freestyle workouts...while folding laundry or doing the dishes or walking on a treadmill.” – Brendan Kennedy (12:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I want to cheat. I want a cheat code. I want an easy way out.”
  – Chris Rouser (02:17)

• “I can get a two hour workout...in 20 minutes. It hits the little muscles in your back that you might miss in the gym or skip a leg day...It’s efficient, it’s fast, and it compresses time for me.”
  – Brendan Kennedy (04:50–05:58)

• “This is the first time I have abs at 53. It's never happened before. And it's all because of [the] suit.”
  – Brendan Kennedy (06:25)

• “Oddly, an EMS suit is regulated like a toaster in Europe...Here [in the US], it's regulated by the FDA, and so this suit is FDA cleared.”
  – Brendan Kennedy (10:27)

• “You don't want this to end up in the same pile as the thigh master.”
  – Carol Massar (11:27)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 01:44 | Introduction—wellness overwhelm and wellness “hacks” | | 03:25 | Introduction of the Catalyst EMS suit | | 04:09 | Does the tech actually work? Chris Rouser testifies | | 04:50 | CEO Brendan Kennedy describes EMS’s impact | | 06:22 | Price, app, and user experience details | | 07:04 | Brendan Kennedy’s background and vision | | 09:41 | Studios vs. at-home business model | | 10:27 | US regulatory advantage and content moat | | 11:17 | Is this a fad or the future? | | 12:06 | “Freestyle” workouts and practical use cases |

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Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is both skeptical and enthusiastic. Carol Massar grounds the discussion in practical consumer questions (“Does it really work? Is this a fad?”), while Chris Rouser adds firsthand experience and humor. Brendan Kennedy combines entrepreneurial optimism with market insight, predicting EMS will soon be mainstream in the US.

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Final Thought

For global business leaders, early adopters, or the wellness-curious, this episode sheds light on a rapidly evolving fitness sector—where high-end tech collides with age-old aspirations for health, efficiency, and a shortcut to results.

Transcript

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[Chris Rouser]

There'S.

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[Carol Massar]

You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

[Chris Rouser]

Well, it's the jolt that tickles your muscles. And suited up in the Catalyst Gen 4, you might look a bit like one of the Avengers. It's pretty cool. It is all part of looking and feeling your best as Bloomberg Pursuits Editor Chris Rouser writes about the new issue of Bloomberg businessweek with pursuits devoted to the pursuit of wellness. Here with more is Chris Rouser along with Brendan Kennedy, the CEO of Montemayr. It's the owner of Catalyst and they both are here in our studio. Welcome, welcome. A great Friday story. First of all, I got to start with you, Chris. How did this come on your radar? I mean, I know you are always kind of the king when it comes to things that you can try to feel better, to look better.

Yeah, I'm a. I'm a fitness person. I'm a wellness person. I'll try anything once. If you asked me to do a form of exercise with you, you, I will do it. So I've done everything. Solid core physique 57 Zumba, you name it, I've done it. Hot yoga, hotter yoga, and something in a chair yoga. Yes, yes There was briefly a Pilates studio in Manhattan called Shay's 23, because you did all the exercises in a chair, and it was on 23rd Street. All right, so at the beginning of the year, I just was thinking about how overwhelming wellness has gotten. There's endless podcasts, the manosphere podcasts are just, like, telling you so many different things every week to do. There's businesses where you can spend, like, $7,000 a month, where you go and you get, you know, go get tested for all this stuff every month, and you get AI to tell you what to eat and what to exercise. Just feels very overwhelming. And I thought, okay, what's the response to that? What is my response to that? I want to cheat. I want to cheat code. I want an easy way out. I want to hack. And so we got the whole pursuits team together to think to, like, go out and do research and figure out what are, like, the hot wellness hacks right now. That makes it easier for you, because.

[Brendan Kennedy]

At the end of the day, what.

[Chris Rouser]

You really need to do is exercise. You need to sleep, you need to talk to people, and you need to eat well. That's basically all you need to do. So, like, what are the things that can sort of hack your way into doing those more easily? And so as I was doing my research, I discovered the Catalyst suit, which is an EMS suit. It's a stim suit like you. Like physical therapists use. After you get an injury, they kind of zap your muscles with electricity, and it encourages your muscles to work harder. More of it tenses up, and then it heals. It heals stronger. And so that technology is now a suit that you can wear and you can do workouts, and it, like, supercharges your workouts. Okay.

[Carol Massar]

I know the guy who owns the company is sitting right here, but I'm still going to put you on the spot, Chris, because I see technology like this, and I'm like, yeah, does it actually work?

[Chris Rouser]

I have to tell you, it actually works. You're not just saying muscles through my blazer, but you're serious? But it really, totally works. I did it for six months after having a pair of injuries. I had foot surgery. You guys remember I fractured my elbow?

Do.

I was, like, out of the gym for months. I felt kind of bummed about it, and it really got me back going. Yeah, you really see results that help my posture. I lost weight, gained muscle.

All right, so, Brendan, come on in. You are the owner of Catalyst. Talk to us about this device, kind of how it came to be and tell us a bit about the business.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Yeah. So I joined EMS about four years ago and I was a little skeptical at first too. My wife had used it about seven years ago.

[Carol Massar]

EMS is electric Electro. Electrical muscle stimulation.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Exactly. And just like a doctor or physical therapist will put stim on you to heal a muscle, it's the same, same type of technology and doctors have been using it for six years. If you go to Europe, there are EMS studios where there's thousands of them, where people will go in and work out. I went in skeptically and tried it about four years ago during COVID and it's amazing. For me, it compresses time. I can get a two hour workout. Workout that would normally take me two hours in the gym. I can do it in 20 minutes. And it's a whole body workout. It hits the little muscles in your back that, that you might miss in the gym or skip a leg day is your whole body, 26 pads at once. And it stimulates your muscle. Just like your brain sends a signal to your muscle to contract, the suit sends the same muscles, the same signals and it hits 90% of your muscles. And so it's amazing. And it works. It's efficient, it's fast, it's safe, and it compresses time for me.

[Chris Rouser]

So you were a client.

[Brendan Kennedy]

I was a client.

[Chris Rouser]

You became an investor and now you're the owner.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Yes. It's something I'm really passionate about. I use it three days a week. So 20 minutes each time. Three, basically an hour a week. That little prep, a little cleanup. But compared to changing and driving to a gym and working out for two hours, I can do it in 20 minutes. I can do it at home. I travel with it. It's spectacular.

[Chris Rouser]

All right, so what does it cost?

[Brendan Kennedy]

So the, the suit retails for $3,000. There's an app and there's trainers on the app. So you pick. I want to, I want to focus on strength. I want to focus on cardio. Yeah, maybe I'm going to focus on my lower legs or my, my abs. I'm. I'm 50 years old. I've worked out in gyms for 40 years. This is the first. I've done Ironman. I've done marathons, I've done every kind of fitness activity you can do. I'm very active. This is the first time I have abs at 53. It's never happened before. And it's all because of suit. I can turn up the abs and hit those muscles. $3,000. You follow a trainer on the App and that person leads you through a 20 minute workout.

[Carol Massar]

People might know you from your days in cannabis, medical cannabis specifically. You were one of the co founders of Tilray. You led the company, it's publicly traded now. You're no longer involved in cannabis. What was the process that got you to buying Catalyst? And talk a little bit about the challenges the companies had before you came on board and what you're trying to do now to get it away from those challenges.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Absolutely. So I think cannabis, you know, I started in Cannabis back in 2011, so 14 years ago. And back then people thought it was crazy, right? Like, what is, what is he doing? He went to Yale, he has an mba. Why is he going into cannabis? And he's throwing away his whole career. But I could see the future. I could see what was going to happen. I knew that country after country was going to legalize and US states were going to legalize. And so I saw the opportunity, I saw what was going to happen. I see the same thing in ems. If you go to Europe, there's these studios everywhere with people working out in suits. And I think five years from now, everyone in the US will be familiar with ems. They'll either have a suit or they'll go to a gym and work out in that suit because it's the future of fitness.

[Chris Rouser]

Well, Chris, I mean, you do cover so much about wellness and fitness. We talk about it with you all the time. I mean, how do you slot this in? What are you hearing kind of from maybe the industry about maybe. Is this kind of a next wave?

Yeah, I mean, this is definitely. We've done stories about EMS suits before. Plastic surgeons in New York City offer it. There's some startups that offer sort of similar things where you go to a studio. For me, this really fit into my normal system of going to Barry's Boot Camp. You know, I'm a big Barry's person and doing my normal weight lifts. And then I added this in two or three times a week, 20 minutes. And that's where I really supercharged everything else that I did. And especially on a day when, you know, like Brendan said, if you're too busy or you're traveling or whatever, you can just kind of toss it in. And although I have not taken it on a plane before, so I brought it with me. So this is what it looks like.

Is it heavy?

It's not. Not really.

[Carol Massar]

So for those listening on radio, Chris is holding up the vest portion, but there's also that. That sort of. There's another portion so it goes all the way down?

[Brendan Kennedy]

Yes.

[Chris Rouser]

That's for your legs and around your legs.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Vest and legs.

[Carol Massar]

Okay.

[Chris Rouser]

There are armbands that go with it, and you have to get it wet for the stim pads to, like, really work.

[Carol Massar]

But you can't do that with the heart rate monitor, too. It's kind of the same thing.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Ex.

[Carol Massar]

Exactly.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Very similar.

[Chris Rouser]

So what do you see as your market? Is it a case of selling directly to consumers? Is it about setting up places like the Peloton model to some extent, where you could go and actually get on a peloton and be at a. At a physical location? I mean, Peloton kind of went back.

[Commercial Narrator]

And forth, like, what's the model in.

[Chris Rouser]

Terms of growing this business?

[Brendan Kennedy]

So. So right now, there are thousands of consumers that own the suit, and they work out at their homes or at the office or in their hotel rooms while they're traveling, and they work out with the app. There are also maybe two to 300 studios in the US that use a suit. Many of them use the Catalyst suit. And so you can go to an EMS studio if you're mostly in a big city and try it. And so they use the Catalyst suit. And so it's both supplying to studios, and we're seeing more and more of those open, and then also to consumers.

[Carol Massar]

What's the moat that you have here? Because if this is big in Europe, you're doing it here in the US People might catch on. They might see that it's working. Copycats could come in. What. What separates you? How do you protect the brand?

[Brendan Kennedy]

I think there's two moats. I think the first moat is, oddly, an EMS suit is regulated like a toaster in Europe. And so. So manufacturers can just make them and sell them.

[Chris Rouser]

Yeah.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Here it's regulated by the fda, and so this suit is FDA cleared. So we went through the FDA process in order to sell it to consumers. That's. That's one moat. I think the second moat is the content. There's. There's hundreds of workouts online that you can engage in. The. The app actually is what sends the impulse. Impulses to the.

[Chris Rouser]

That's what zaps you. And so the app zaps you.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Yes. And so the app does it.

[Chris Rouser]

Wait, can I use this family to get them to do other things? Just saying, no, forgive me. Go ahead.

[Brendan Kennedy]

No, I think it's the content and the FDA clearance are really the two moats.

[Chris Rouser]

What about competition or just the wellness world at large? Like, it feels like, you know, we go through these fads and Waves and trends.

[Brendan Kennedy]

Yeah.

[Carol Massar]

You don't want this to end up in the same pile as the thigh master.

[Brendan Kennedy]

I think that.

[Chris Rouser]

Hey.

That everybody should have a thigh master. No, I'm just kidding.

[Brendan Kennedy]

No.

[Chris Rouser]

But how do you make sure, Like.

[Brendan Kennedy]

I think strength is important no matter what you do. Right. And so I, I use my suit three days a week, 20 minutes. I run so I have cardio. You can work out on a treadmill wearing the suit. People do that. But I think strength will always be there. Strength will always be important. It fixes your posture. Bone density for a lot of people is really important. People on GLP1 drugs lose strength. And so this suit helps people of different demographics and ages very quickly.

[Carol Massar]

You can work out while you're wearing the suit and also wear the suit independently while you're not working out. Or you're always working out while you wear.

[Brendan Kennedy]

There are people that do freestyle workouts. Which suit is. Is charging, impulsing and they're folding laundry or doing the dishes or walking on a treadmill.

[Chris Rouser]

I think you and I need these. You're still doing it quickly.

Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm in.

I got to tell you, I go to a doctor and they say it's all about strength and getting your muscles and building muscle strength. So it totally makes sense. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Brendan Kennedy, Chief Executive officer of Monte Mare, the owner of Catalyst, joining us here in studio along with our own Chris Rouser. He's of Bloomberg Pursuits. You can check out and read more about Chris's experience. It was a really fun read. It's in the new issue of Bloomberg Business Week in the Pursuit section.

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