The global fitness equipment market hit $38.38 billion in 2026 and is on track to reach $50.27 billion by 2031, according to Mordor Intelligence. That kind of growth sounds great on an earnings call. But for the companies actually building and shipping treadmills, strength machines, and connected bikes, it creates a problem that doesn't show up in the revenue numbers: who's going to install and service all of it?
Take a company like Technogym. They crossed 1 billion EUR in revenue in 2025, a 13% jump from the year before. Their commercial business alone grew 14.9% in 2024. They're shipping equipment to hotel chains, corporate wellness centers, university rec facilities, and high-end gyms across North America. Every single one of those machines eventually needs installation, calibration, preventive maintenance, or repair. And Technogym is just one manufacturer in a crowded field.
The connected gym equipment segment is accelerating this pressure. That market grew from $1.64 billion in 2024 to $1.85 billion in 2025, and Grand View Research projects it will reach over $14 billion by 2033. Connected machines have touchscreens, software that needs updates, sensors that drift out of calibration, and network configurations that vary by facility. A technician who could swap a belt on a traditional treadmill in 30 minutes now needs to troubleshoot firmware, reset WiFi modules, and verify data sync with the manufacturer's cloud platform. The service complexity has doubled while the equipment volume has tripled.
Here's where the math gets uncomfortable for manufacturers trying to handle service internally. The fitness equipment maintenance services market is approaching $4.8 billion globally, according to Data Insights Reports. In the US alone, the exercise equipment repair service market was valued at roughly $1.2 billion in 2024. Certified technicians in the US charge $120 to $180 per hour with a two-hour minimum, per NTAIFitness. Average parts cost per job runs about $130, with labor averaging $85 per visit in North America. Those numbers add up fast when you're supporting thousands of units spread across 50 states.
Building an internal service team to cover that footprint is brutally expensive. You need technicians in every major metro, plus coverage for suburban and rural locations where gyms and wellness facilities are expanding. Each technician needs a vehicle, tools, parts inventory, insurance, and ongoing training on your latest product line. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the median wage for installation and repair occupations at $58,230 per year, but the fully loaded cost with benefits, vehicles, and overhead runs $120,000 to $175,000 per technician. To cover the continental US with reasonable response times, you'd need 40 to 60 technicians minimum. That's $5 million to $10 million annually before you've serviced a single machine.
And you still won't have full coverage. There will always be gaps. A technician based in Denver can't respond same-day to a call in Boise. A tech in Atlanta can't cover both Nashville and Jacksonville in the same week. The geographic math never works out cleanly, which means you're either overstaffing some regions and burning money, or understaffing others and disappointing customers.
This is exactly why manufacturers are turning to national field service partners. A partner like SSE already has technicians positioned across the country. They've already solved the logistics of dispatching the right person with the right skills and the right parts to the right location. The manufacturer doesn't need to build that infrastructure from zero. They just need a partner who can learn their equipment and follow their standards.
The training piece matters more than most people realize. Gym equipment isn't generic. A Technogym Skillmill operates differently from a Life Fitness Integrity treadmill, which operates differently from a Matrix Rower. A good service partner invests time in learning each manufacturer's specific procedures, diagnostic tools, and escalation paths. They don't just send a warm body with a multimeter. They send someone who knows the product.
There's also the data side. When a manufacturer handles service internally, information tends to stay siloed in individual technician reports or regional spreadsheets. A centralized service partner aggregates data across the entire install base. They can tell you that a specific treadmill model has a belt tensioner failure rate 3x higher in humid climates. They can flag that a particular gym chain consistently delays preventive maintenance, leading to more emergency calls. That kind of visibility helps manufacturers improve their products and advise their customers more effectively.
For manufacturers in the connected fitness space, the partner model is even more compelling. Connected equipment requires technicians who understand networking, software diagnostics, and cloud platform integration on top of mechanical repair skills. Finding people with that combination of skills is hard enough. Finding them in every market where you have equipment installed is nearly impossible if you're hiring directly. A national partner can cross-train their existing network and deploy hybrid-skilled technicians faster than any single manufacturer can recruit them.
The bottom line is straightforward. The fitness equipment market is growing too fast for most manufacturers to keep up with service demand using internal teams. The geographic spread is too wide, the skill requirements are too specialized, and the cost of maintaining a nationwide workforce is too high. Manufacturers who partner with experienced field service companies can scale their support operations at the same pace as their sales, without the capital investment and hiring headaches that come with doing it alone.
Sources: Mordor Intelligence (Fitness Equipment Market, 2026), Grand View Research (Connected Gym Equipment Market, 2024), Data Insights Reports (Fitness Equipment Maintenance Services Market, 2026), NTAIFitness (Gym Equipment Maintenance Cost Guide, 2026), Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2024), Technogym FY 2025 Results Press Release.