Surviving When You Can’t Meet in Person: A Guide for Gyms and Studios

In this time of uncertainty, we know one thing for sure: innovation and a willingness to change are essential. For people, this means changing their daily routine and learning how to adjust what they knew to this new lifestyle. For small businesses, it means being open to new ways of interacting with customers, discovering new ways to accumulate revenue, and, more generally, maintaining optimism in a time of negativity. It is critical to accept that for the foreseeable future, life will exist in this way.

Our team at Parthean, has been working with small businesses to develop strategies to help them maintain their businesses throughout this challenging time. We’ve created a list of four strategies that will help you maintain cash-flow in this new environment:

1. Sell custom merchandise online

It only takes a couple of minutes to set up an online merchandise store with custom apparel/items that manages itself (that’s right, you don’t need to manage inventory or anything). We recommend using a combination of BigCartel (for building the storefront) and Printful (for building and delivering the custom and on-demand merch). Here’s a guide to doing that (https://www.printful.com/integrations/bigcartel).

2. Offer gift cards or future classes at discounts

Your customers want to help you in this time. Offering gift cards or future classes at discounts encourages people to buy them now for friends and family. On social media platforms, many people are encouraging each other to buy gift cards at small businesses as gifts to both help small businesses and give a great gift for when this is all over.

3. Engage with your customers virtually.

Your customers are at home searching for ways to continue their normal lives whether through exercise, eating habits, etc. They want to feel connected to others. To assist you in your online transition, we have made our platform, Parthean Community completely free throughout this crisis.

The product allows you to post videos and other content, hold challenges, create discussion, and collect a monthly subscription fee from the members of your community. Online communities will look different for gyms, dance studios, bars/breweries etc. If you want to discuss what a free online community could look like for you, email me at sofia@parthean.com to see if you qualify or to brainstorm strategies about what could be right for your business.

4. Rent out your equipment

Instead of having your equipment collect dust, consider renting it to your customers. This could be bundled with an online solution; for example, if you are a pilates studio, you may consider renting out exercise balls and blocks in addition to releasing online videos with exercises where these items are used. This is a great way to maintain the relationships that you have with current customers and show them that their well-being in this time is important to you! Please keep in mind the CDC’s recommendations of social distancing when moving the equipment around and remind your customers to clean them before use (you could even throw in some wipes!).

This period of stay-at-home uncertainty will not be easy, but small businesses play a large role in improving the lives of people everywhere. Nelson Mandela once said, “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” The choices made in the weeks to come will be critical to the success of your business. Remain hopeful in these times of uncertainty and decide what you want the future of your business to look like. As always, we are here to help!