Lymphatic drainage treatments, products and tutorials are suddenly everywhere. Throw a gua sha in almost any major U.S. city, and you’ll probably hit a spa that offers its own version of a lymphatic massage or facial. The de-bloating, circulation-improving practice of lymphatic drainage can be found in Brazilian, Danish, Indian, Chinese and even ancient Egyptian cultures going back generations; but recently, American consumers have caught on to its merits on a larger scale.

Enter: The Tox, a studio chain that offers its own streamlined take on the practice, as well as a full product line to support clients’ at-home efforts. Its (literally, legally) trademarked method — “The Tox Technique” — is “a unique blend of lymphatic drainage, body sculpting and holistic detoxification,” as the company describes it. And business is absolutely booming.

Founder Courtney Yeager launched The Tox in 2019 after struggling with her own wellbeing. Despite having worked in fitness and wellness for years, around 2012, “I just started feeling like crap,” she recalls. “I had my two young kids, I was working 15 hour days nonstop and my digestion has always been really bad. Even as a child, I was always seeing gastro doctors.” She began researching the lymphatic and digestive systems, seeking out treatments nearby in Los Angeles, where she lived at the time.

By getting regular lymphatic and body sculpting treatments, she saw real results, but she also craved more from them. “There were different parts of the treatments that I loved, but nobody was doing all of those modalities together,” she tells Fashionista. “So we started to put all of these different modalities together — from lymphatic massage to digestive treatments, to body contouring, body sculpting — curating one solid technique.”

In April 2019, The Tox opened the doors to its first location in Los Angeles, timed fortuitously just ahead of Coachella. The rest was in the hands of the almighty algorithm: “I put [news of our opening] on Instagram, and right away we had every celebrity in our DMs wanting to come in,” Yeager shares. “It just really took off organically, strictly on social media…I feel like the influencers and celebrities really created our brand for us.” To this day, says Yeager, the company hasn’t done any paid social marketing. (The Tox’s before-and-after pictures — which the studios offer to every client — tend to speak for themselves.) The founder cites Paris Hilton and Lily Collins as fans, but also adds, “If you name a celebrity, they probably have come in.”

As The Tox went viral, people across the country contacted Yeager to request locations in their own cities. Initially, she expanded the business herself: “My husband and I built out all of our locations; I can’t even tell you how many chandeliers I’ve put together at this point,” she says. After establishing 12 corporate locations between 2019 and 2023, Yeager was ready to scale the business even more. Having worked for a fitness studio franchise location early on in her career, she turned her attention to bringing that model to The Tox. 

Yeager signed with a franchise organization, and now, the company is on track to expand to more than 90 franchise locations by the end of 2025. This type of explosive growth is something Yeager envisioned for The Tox from its inception. “I was like, ‘I want to do this, but I want it to be the next Drybar,'” she says. 

Yeager emphasizes that The Tox is not a spa. “I will compare it to the vibe of a nail salon in the sense of the noise level,” she says. (Rather than individual rooms, most The Tox locations curtain off treatment spaces.) “We don’t consider ourself a spa. We consider ourself a studio. I wanted it to be a place of community where clients feel welcome.”

With black-and-white branding and upbeat music, The Tox’s locations do resemble fitness studios in many ways. Its signature treatments differ from what you’d find in most spas, too: The 60-minute “Master Tox,” for instance, sculpts and massages the body to “increase metabolic rate, eliminate excess toxins and assist with water retention,” per brand materials. There’s also an extended 90-minute version, a standalone sculpting facial and a specialized pregnancy version for expectant clients between 13-37 weeks (with physician approval).

“The Tox technique is blended — it’s not just lymphatic. It has the body sculpting element and the digestive element. So you’re stimulating your lymph nodes, but you’re also stimulating your digestive track with every single movement,” explains Yeager. The founder declines to go into the “specifics of the timing of the strokes” for the proprietary method, but says that “It does play a very crucial part in the results that we get.”

Yeager embraces competition as the knowledge of and desire for lymphatic drainage treatments grow. “In New York, L.A., big cities, everybody’s talking about it, but there’s still so much education to be done,” she says. “I always say competition is really healthy, and I think that it’s great that there is more awareness around these types of treatments.”

The founder adds that she believes The Tox sets itself apart by leading with education and a specific focus. “We aren’t just a service on a service menu; this is what we specialize in,” says Yeager. “Our technicians are not doing one treatment every week at a spa. They are doing five to six treatments every day that they work. So we’ve really been able to position ourself as the masters of any lymphatic treatments from a branding perspective.”

The treatments also incorporate a signature device the company manufactures itself. “The Tox Machine is really just a light suction device, but it has a specific range of pressure that’s able to move the fluid towards the lymph nodes,” explains Yeager. “If you do it too hard or too light, you don’t have that same result — you can actually have the opposite effect or have the client bruise. So it’s dialed into a perfect amount of suction to be able to draw the fluid that our hands didn’t reach.”

When I ask the entrepreneur about the challenges of scaling the business so massively in such a short time, she doesn’t mince words: “Oh, a lot of it is challenging,” she says. “You’re now dealing with B2B versus B2C — and B2C is what I love. I love the clients. I love how the treatment makes you feel and the whole experience. And now franchising is tough. You are dealing with people who feel like they bought something, and I feel like I awarded them an opportunity. So it’s really, for me, learning that dynamic and also making great hires.” 

The Tox has brought on an executive team with franchise experience, and Yeager is evolving in her own role at the company. “I love both sides [of the business], but it’s teaching people that dream of being an entrepreneur. I’ve always been one. So it’s a difficult dynamic, if I’m being honest.”

Another challenge has been maintaining the same level of customer service across The Tox’s many new locations, “especially in a world of AI where everything seems automated,” notes Yeager. “We want to know who our clients are when they call, [have them know] who they’re speaking to and be addressed by their name. All of those things that have made our clients feel really special [over the years], that created our brand.”

Of course, consistency is also important when it comes to the actual treatments. To that end, The Tox opened a training center in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood this summer. Technicians hired by franchise owners or corporate locations must visit the center for an eight-day training program. And it’s rigorous: “About 60% make it through the training. It’s pretty intensive, and we are very choosy with who we allow to represent the brand and the technique,” says Yeager. Franchise owners, on the other hand, must complete a 50-hour online training program. “They also come to New York and they work in one of our busy studios, like Soho, for three to five days, until we feel that they know how to run a studio inside and out.”

For those willing to put in the work, it’s worthwhile. The company reported an average annual revenue of $1,120,458, with an average of 28.4% earnings across its franchise locations in 2025. (Additional details about the franchising process and financials can be found at thetoxfranchisinggroup.com.)

As she looks toward The Tox’s future, Yeager says she wants to continue to grow the brand’s already-extensive product line, which currently includes at-home wellness items like mouth tape, bloat gummies, “lymphatic deodorant,” a dry brush and branded compression socks. “We already have more than 60 SKUs, so that’s been really insane, but great for our franchise partners to be able to always have new products coming out,” she says. 

Yeager’s sights are also set on continuing to expand internationally. “We have a lot of interest,” she notes, citing Dubai, Italy and France as dream locations. “I dreamt for [the business] to be this large, and I hope that it will be able be even larger one day,” she says.

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