Ask HN: If you were a small yoga studio, what would you pivot to? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If you were a small yoga studio, what would you pivot to?

6 pointsflyGuyOnTheSly10 comments

I help out at a few yoga studios and I am worried.

They started streaming online classes and trying to charge a fraction of what they usually charged for classes and that is not working out.

We put on a live streaming class this morning and asked for a donation of $5, I made the payment experience seamless, and the streaming video quality was great.

We only received a single $5 donation... from about 20 students who practiced... which is a decent number for our smaller studio.

Worst of all we now find ourselves in direct competition with hundreds of other much more professional online yoga/fitness streaming services. Like yyoga who only charges $8/mo for hundreds of pre-recorded yoga classes. Or glo.com who charges $18/mo for thousands of pre-recorded classes of all kinds.

The studio owner has negotiated the studio's rent to be cut in half for the next 2 months which is great!

However, the studio wasn't profitable to begin with, and the owner is being forced to eat 100% of that rental cost out of her own pocket.

Yoga teachers are not employees, so at least up here in Canada, there is no help from the federal government to give money to yoga studios to subsidize employee wages.

That's another discussion in itself, yoga teachers should definitely be employees with full health benefits imho but they're not and here we are.

Case in point... we have a group of 10 yoga teachers all teaching for free, a small staff of energy exchanges who work for free and are currently helping setup the online streaming classes, and a studio owner who is left footing 100% of the bill for rent... with the occasional $5 donation being thrown her way.

This is not sustainable.

The teachers will get tired of it eventually, and the owner simply can't afford to shell out the entire $2,000 check she will be getting from the government (that is meant to cover her food and living expenses) paying rent on the studio building.

What would you do?

I would think about:

A. Close the studio to stop the rent bleed. That, as others have said, is the landlord’s problem. Seek legal advice to do it right.

B. Focus on the online content space but partner with teachers to share profits. Teachers are unemployed too without the studio.

C. Focus on live classes. People are home and as social creatures we crave social connections. Innovate. Maybe have users all join a multi-way Facetime or other live session video. This lets teachers and students connect and can help with coaching and social interaction.

D. Market. Market. Market. Use social. Connect with current customers and explain what you want to offer. Give away short classes to draw people in.

E. Maybe take a small loan (not sure what government programs you can access) and help employ some great teachers as partners in all this virtual fun. Maybe seek a grant.

F. Learn from all this and make a course on how to take a studio (yoga and beyond) boldly into these uncharted waters. Charge for this content as it will be a valuable business strategy guide to other studios.

G. Seek out health care companies, hospitals, fire stations, police, etc. All of which are on duty and stressed as hell. Yoga can help. This fight needs to be managed for the long run. Keeping first responders in good physical and mental shape is vital.

H. Following ALL medical guidelines & Gov rules etc. MAYBE offer a very widely spaced yoga program outside in a park for less than the allowed group size. Get some wireless speakers and space em out. Draw on the ground to ensure more-than-very-safe spacing. Social experience at a distance. I am NOT/NOT advocating a big (or even medium) group thing there. Follow! all! regulations! And then triple the separation. Zero chit chat after class. Mamaste & go your separate ways. Give free slots to some doctors/nurses to keep it even safer and benefit awesome medical professionals!

And good luck.

Thank you kindly for that long list of well thought out suggestions!

I will read and really think about each one more thoroughly in the morning.

Have a great night!

So here are some suggestions:

First of all, you can close the studio. I am not sure what is the legal structure of the company and if there are any personal guarantees, but this is not a regular situation. I.e. if you do not have customers, how do you suppose to pay your rent.

If not:

1. Try to offer 1-1 remote sessions. You might get more than 5$.

2. Go behind your regular customers. For example, try to go after companies that are operational and would like to offer Yoga to their overwork staff - e.g. warehouse employees, Hospitals etc. They might be able to charge your lessons on some sort of relief fund.

3. Ask companies that move remotely if they can introduce remote Yoga as part of their remote schedule. I.e. as a way to keep the team engaged. Companies are usually more willing to pay than consumers.

Those are some really great suggestions, thank you for those! I will pitch them to the owner ASAP!

Sure. Good luck !

Me? I'd look into breaking the rent contract, or at least "suspending" it. That's supposed to be a thing, at least in the US (though I have no information on how or even whether it actually works). But, basically, "Hey, owner, I can't pay you the rent while this is going on, because I don't have any customers. You can sue me, and I can declare bankruptcy. Or I can just not pay you until things get back to normal, and when they do, you've got a customer for your space again."

Note well: This is not legal advice. It's probably worth asking them, though.

This is the same suggestion I just made to one of the owners.

If the government is literally blocking you from opening the door to customers, the building is worthless for the time being, and she shouldn't be expected to pay anything for it imho.

This is more her landlords problem than it is her problem imho.

The landlord's government has declared that their land is not allowed to be frequented by customers for the time being.

Also just a thought - consider offering online training classes to prospective yoga instructors. Maybe you can attract a more well-known yoga teacher in this regard, which will increase the attraction. You can charge people to learn from a popular yoga master (unsure of the industry terms in this space so I'll stick with 'yoga master'). Hope you continue to navigate through this tough situation!

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