If you haven’t read Part 1 of Pilates Day — here it is. Are you curious about the results? I woke up at 5:30 am that day — wondering how many people would show up at Rivercity Pilates. I too, was curious about what kind of results we would have.
The results were pretty awesome. The first class was at 8am and people started walking thru the door at 7;45. As we had hoped, some people took advantage of the opportunity to try yoga and Pilates, attending one session at 8 and a second session at 9. Clients brought their friends, and there was a lot of what I’m going to call “community gathering”. Prospective clients talking with current clients, but not just about Pilates. People were getting to know one another, trying to figure out if the studio was a “fit” for them to reach their fitness goals. Prospective clients ranged in age from a 21 yo college basketball player to women in their upper 50s and 60s. There were quite a few soccer moms, and there were people that said they didn’t know the studio existed.
“Tasting Sessions” also went pretty well! The equipment room was relatively empty when time for tasting rolled around. We asked the instructors to take their places, and I stood ta the door to handout the prize form and grouped people in groups of 2-4. We had a sheet that people needed to complete to “earn” their sparkle bag of goodies, and even current clients went thru the stations. Carey had invited a client of hers who had just written a book to talk about her book, and her station was well received as well (although ill placed on our part). We had worried about the noise — having 4 “mini-sessions” going on in a room that usually has 1 class sounded intimidating — but things went well!
Customers found an empty “tasting station” when they were done with their current one, or they sampled the fruit/veggie trays that we had placed at the studio. At one point, folks went into try Barre, and I saw 8 people “getting a taste” of Barre — and although it was still a tasting, when they came out, they were talking about how they could feel those muscles in their legs!!
Sparkle Bags were stuffed during one of our TV spots and contained information (giveaways) from the three sponsors, as well as random prizes (a theraband or a playground ball). They will be used for another contest (stay tuned) later this summer so we will get more use out of the bags.
Carey’s priority was to try and book every potential client for their complimentary private session. Turned out this created a bottleneck as people were leaving (only one computer, trying to jive schedules, and make each potential client feel special. See our Hotwash blog (coming later) for ways we thought we could solve this next year.
All in all — a terrific day. International Pilates Day is about celebrating Pilates as an exercise method and introducing people to Pilates, and that’s just what happened! If you’d like to talk with Farm Girl about an Open House, or ideas you can implement at your studio, please go to the Make Appointment page, and set up a time that is convenient for you!
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