Ice Barrel CEO Wyatt Ewing on the All-New Chiller, Innovating in Cold Therapy
The newly released Ice Barrel Chiller allows users to maintain the water temperature in their Ice Barrels, a major step forward for one of the biggest brands in cold therapy
Ice Barrel is taking the next step on its mission to bring the benefits of cold water immersion to the masses.
This week, the brand released the Ice Barrel Chiller, a device that allows users to maintain the temperature of cold water in their Ice Barrels, including the 300, 400 and 500 models.
Using advanced cooling and SmartSense technology, the Chiller cools water to as low as 37 degrees Fahrenheit. With the Ice Barrel app, users can schedule and control the Chiller from anywhere, effectively giving them access to cold water on demand.
The Chiller’s release marks a major step forward for Ice Barrel, which has become one of the fastest-growing cold-therapy brands since being founded by Wyatt Ewing in 2017. In 2023, Ice Barrel inked a partnership with CrossFit and received financial backing from Solidcore founder Anne Mahlum.
“The market is cluttered with makeshift, fragile, energy-draining contraptions not made for the human experience,” Ewing said of the lack of quality water-chiller products on the markets, which prompted Ice Barrel to create its own. “With the launch of the new Ice Barrel Chiller, we are elevating cold therapy to unprecedented levels.”
To celebrate the Chiller’s launch, Ewing spoke with Athletech News about the new product, his journey in growing Ice Barrel, and the cold therapy market as a whole.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Athletech News: Can you tell us a bit about your decision to create Ice Barrel back in 2017?
Wyatt Ewing: I had tremendous anxiety from childhood and my corporate career. I found cold therapy as an incredible modality to reduce my symptoms of anxiety and depression, and really help me live a more holistic lifestyle. I started with cold showers, like most people, and my body and mind made an incredible transformation.
If you think about it, there’s not a lot you can do besides cold therapy which only takes two to three minutes a day which will help reduce inflammation, boost your immune system, and reduce stress and symptoms of anxiety and depression.
I became so passionate about sharing the power of cold with everybody, everywhere. I decided to do the crazy thing: quit my job and start a business out of my garage to bring cold therapy to the masses.
ATN: How has Ice Barrel – and the cold therapy market as a whole – grown over the past seven years?
WE: Early on, nobody was really taking ice baths. It was a very niche community. I was the crazy guy going around Denver, Colorado, trying to convince people to jump in an ice bath for recovery after their CrossFit class or 5K run.
After a few years, it started gaining traction. We did a great job early on at producing a lot of content and education around cold therapy – it’s incredible, some of the blog posts we wrote back in 2019 and 2020 now have millions of views. We now manufacture anywhere from 500 to 700 ice baths a week.
ATN: How much room does the cold therapy market still have to grow?
WE: There are over 15 million non-commercial hot tubs here in the U.S. alone. If you look at the trend, cold tubs are really replacing hot tubs, so there’s a huge market that’s developing. There’s a lot of room for innovation, science and research, and we’re excited to be a part of it.
We’re doing quite a bit of work on developing additional research. We partner with a lot of publications and podcasts to share the benefits of cold therapy. And we just started getting into federal grant writing for research and development.
ATN: What separates Ice Barrel’s products from the many other cold therapy options on the market today?
WE: Cold therapy is a very simple practice, but a lot of the options on the market today are extremely expensive, ineffective or inaccessible. You have these bathtub-style stock tanks with a median price point at around $10,000. That’s not sustainable or effective.
We’ve focused on making cold therapy accessible to the community and effective, at an affordable price point. We’ve done a tremendous job innovating. All of our products are designed to keep your body in an upright, natural position – nowhere in nature do you see a human or animal go into the fight-or-flight response and then lie on their back in a rested position. Why would you intentionally put your body in the fight-or-flight response and then lie in a bathtub? It’s counterintuitive to nature. If you go jump in a river or a cold lake, you don’t float and lay back, you engage with the water and lean forward.
When it comes to aesthetics, all of the Ice Barrels have a unique design: it’s not like putting a bathtub out on your balcony.
ATN: Can you tell us about the new Ice Barrel Chiller launch? Why is this an important step forward for the brand?
WE: We’ve created the world’s smartest water chiller, which will give you cold water on demand, whenever you’re ready for it. It’s got an incredible amount of technology, including powerful cooling technology, and intuitive, auto-syncing features.
Like all of our products, it connects back to our app, where you can track your ice baths, connect with the cold-therapy community, partake in our world-class coaching and control the Chiller.
Our Chiller also uses a far superior refrigeration system, which is non-toxic to the environment. It’s unfortunate that our foreign friends have imported so many water chillers into the U.S. that use R-410A refrigerant, which is extremely toxic to the environment – and we’re filling up our landfills every eight to 12 months when the compressor dies because those chillers aren’t built for cold therapy.
ATN: Could Ice Barrel ever look to expand into other wellness modalities beyond cold therapy?
WE: Absolutely. Ice Barrel is more than just a cold therapy company – we like to think of ourselves as a wellness company that has a bent toward physical sensation. You can take a pill or use red light, but you can’t feel the (immediate) effects. If you take an ice bath, sit in a sauna or use a percussion gun, you’re going to immediately feel the effects.
We have an exciting product roadmap, and I think the future of the business is very bright. We’ve really focused on two things when it comes to building this business: sustainability and profitability. When you have those two things, you can go really, really far.