Seven Studios Teaches a Lesson in Second Chances
"It can be exhausting after running a business for 10 years to feel like you’re starting all over… I see Groupon as helping us get our foundation back."
– Julie Wilkes, Seven Studios
About Seven Studios
Seven Studios is a yoga, pilates, barre, and fitness studio based in Columbus, OH since 2013. Born with a congenital heart defect, owner Julie Wilkes overcame every life expectancy prediction as she embraced fitness training and took control of her life. Now her business is dedicated to helping others reclaim their lives as well: in addition to regular classes, Wilkes teaches yoga to prison inmates, students in underserved schools, veterans with PTSD, and amputees and other people with limited range of motion.
The Challenge
In March 2020, Seven Studios had to close down its brick-and-mortar location and go virtual due to COVID. Then as they were preparing to reopen in June the business was vandalized, and ongoing supply chain issues delayed the reopening another year, by which point they’d lost much of their customer base.
"It was like we were starting from scratch again, our members had moved on to other solutions over the year and a half we were closed. We tried for a year in that location but people weren’t coming downtown anymore. So we started to look at other locations, but by this time we literally had lost all of our following. It had been two years since we’d seen people in person. A fitness studio has to have community, has to have a sense of connection and trust.”
So when Seven Studios reopened in its new location in mid-2022, Wilkes says she was “a little bit scared for the first time in a long time.”
“Fitness is seen very differently after Covid… We know how to run a great fitness and yoga studio, and we know how to connect with our people, but we just don’t know how people are going to be in this new space, we don’t know what they’ve decided is important to them in this new world, and we don’t know this new neighborhood.”
The Result
Seven Studios first became a Groupon Merchant a month after it originally opened in 2013, and Wilkes considers Groupon an “integral and important part” of the studio’s business model, helping reach people beyond her immediate network. “In the 8 years before Covid, I would say that Groupon helped generate at least 20-25% of our revenue,” reports Wilkes. But she says Groupon was especially helpful for rebuilding her customer base after reopening in a new location.
“Immediately within the first month, we start to have 30, 40, 50 people buy Groupons, without me ever even promoting it. We’re getting these people in the doors, they’re telling their friends and their friends are coming, they’re transitioning into regular sales, and it truly has been such an exhale for me. Like wow, I’ve got this silent partner who’s working on my behalf as I’m focusing on making sure everything is running well…
We just opened 3 months ago in our new location, but we’re already almost getting back to pre-Covid numbers, and a good amount of those numbers are coming in from our Groupon sales.”
“We’ve worked with multiple different sales and marketing companies, ad agencies, and so on. While all of them have played a role, none of them have had the immediate, significant, and longstanding impact that Groupon has had.”
– Julie Wilkes, Seven Studios
Top Tips for Working with Groupon
👉 “With the small business owners I mentor, I recommend starting Groupon on Day 1 and offering multiple packages. Offer the most successful package you really want to drive people to, and a lower-cost package for people who just want to try it out. Actually I recommend three packages – a small package with little commitment, your best package you want people to buy regularly, and then a big package that makes a really nice gift – but it depends on your business."
👉 "I also recommend monitoring your Groupon data monthly to see where the trends are, and staying nimble in shifting your campaign. Maybe you need to adjust your deal options to offer more of one package than another.
For example, our goal is for customers to end up buying directly from us, but we had people buying the Groupon month after month because they love it so much. So, we changed the cadence of how often they can buy it: every three months they can go buy their Groupon, but in the two months in between they’ll buy from us. They still feel good about it because they know every couple of months they’ll get a deal, but they don’t mind paying for it.”
Fun Fact:
“We donate 10% of earnings from some classes to a local pet shelter, and my pup Charlie comes in to help me teach those classes.”
Related Reads
