AtelierEmber
Advisory for founding teams building sauna and contrast therapy venues worth belonging to.
Built on the operation that defined the category — Othership New York.
The heat and cold in a beautiful setting, even with the guided format, is not enough. The hard part is someone walking out feeling something they can't get anywhere else — every session, consistently — until it's something they fold into their lives and bring their friends into.
Atelier Ember works from the inside — shaping the experience, the atmosphere, and the positioning that make a venue distinct, felt, and impossible to substitute.
People understand contrast therapy by now. The same heat, the same cold, comparable prices — that part is easy to copy, and it's being copied fast. What's harder to copy is the guidance, the atmosphere, and the community people see themselves as part of.
There's a science to it, and an art. Some guests come for the science — the physiology, the protocol. Others come for the art — the room, the feeling, the community. A venue has to hold both. The art is the harder part.
The market is still learning. Expectations of what a sauna even is — silent and introspective, or social — vary by city and by culture, and most guests walk in carrying one assumption. Part of the work is deciding where a venue sits, and teaching its market what to expect.
Some of the highest-leverage input happens at the drawing stage: the flow from sauna to plunge, the changing rooms, the distance between lockers, the number of showers. Decisions that are cheap on paper and expensive in concrete. And underneath it all, the systems, protocols, and automation that make a great experience repeatable, safely, every shift.
- Spatial Flow & Layout
- Pre-Build Advisory
- Operational Systems
- Safety & Protocols
- Automation
The arc of a guest's time with you is the design paradigm — from the first message before arrival to the moment after the cold plunge to what they carry home. Atelier Ember treats the full journey as the product.
- Session Arc
- Guidance Framework
- Scent & Atmosphere
- The Post-Plunge Moment
- What Guests Take Home
A room full of strangers and a community are different products, and the difference is designed. Through how a space is hosted, how sessions are guided, and how membership is structured to mean something, first-time guests become regulars and regulars become advocates. This is the layer that compounds into a moat.
- Hosting Framework
- Loyalty & Milestones
- Ambassador Programs
- Retention Mechanics
- The Social Fabric
As the category fills with venues offering the same heat and the same cold, sameness becomes the real risk. Differentiation isn't a louder brand — it's a clearer point of view, expressed through every decision a guest can feel. The goal is an experience and community that can't be substituted, not one that competes on price and proximity.
- Positioning
- Brand Point of View
- Sensory Identity
- Referral & Word of Mouth
- Market Education
- Launch Strategy
Atelier Ember works with a network of specialists — sauna and space design, thermal and cold systems, guide training — brought in when the work calls for them.
Work compounds most before launch — when the space, the experience, and the positioning are still being decided. That's where input matters most: the spatial decisions that are cheap on paper and expensive in concrete, the guidance framework, the point of view before the market defines it for you.
A market-specific advisory relationship, tuned to your vision and strengths, not the same playbook. Work can happen on-site or remotely, depending on what the engagement requires.
For venues already open, work usually begins with a short diagnostic — a few days inside the operation, watching real sessions, mapping what's working and what isn't. From there, a defined engagement or ongoing advisory.
Amongst other things, Iván is an experience designer and strategist whose work sits at the intersection of brand, community, and the design of meaning. He has found his most resonant work in spaces built around community and transformation — heat, cold, and the social fabric that forms around them.
- Othership New YorkOperations Lead, launch through stabilization
- Premier venues, Paris & BarcelonaFounding Advisory
Embedded and on-site.Europe & North America · Pre-concept through post-launch