New School Academy (NSA) is a well-known dance studio offering a large variety of different types of dance classes at all levels. When the pandemic started, they knew they would have to transition to a virtual business model in order to survive.
We spoke to Jorge, the owner of New School Academy and the person in charge of this transition. You can find NSA’s storefront here.
The problem
At the start of the pandemic, NSA quickly adapted and started streaming their classes for free through Google Meet and Zoom. They first created a simple, low-cost website to promote all of their virtual content on social media. ‘’Although this was a good start and helped us stay connected with our community, our website did not seamlessly support payments’’
At the same time, Jorge was doing all the communication and organisation manually, which turned out to be time-consuming, “I specifically hated how tedious it was to be sending out links and sorting out all the info in excel ”. When it came to charging, he had to be in communication with all his clients on a regular basis, constantly sending reminders to complete the payments before a certain date. After some weeks, he knew he needed to change his virtual business model in order to scale.
The solution
This is the moment Jorge got in touch with us via our website. After our account manager gave Jorge a first demo of Fitune he beyond excited to automate not only his communication but also his payments. “With Fitune, I was able to set up my personalised storefront in minutes. I could monetise individual classes, something I was not able to do before. Besides, offering packs and monthly memberships with automatic payments has been a game-changer for me”.
After one month using Fitune, NSA saw their monthly income increase by more than 50% after gaining over 30 new subscribers. Jorge was able to capitalize on the individual activities, for all those new customers that were not 100% sure about paying a monthly membership, or that were sceptical about virtual content. “I saw some first-time customers paying 3, 4 individual classes before subscribing to a monthly plan”. Jorge says he could concentrate on actually growing his business, rather than spending time on operations as he did prior to Fitune. NSA’s customers were able to purchase a monthly plan whenever they wanted, many coming from his client’s referrals, which also accounted for part of his growth and marketing strategy.
Jorge pointed out how at the beginning of his transition, he felt intimidated using a new software to manage his business. “What I like the most about Fitune, is how simple it is to use. I was able to set up my page within minutes, and the user interface was not as complex as other software I’ve tried. Oh and the customer service, it's nice talking to a human every once in a while”.
At Fitune, we are always making our software better, and we take pride in supporting the fitness community throughout these difficult times. That’s why we really value all the feedback we get from our customers. Jorge provided many helpful observations when he first started using Fitune, and now he is one of the leading fitness brands monetising through virtual content in the region. “I plan to use Fitune in the future, not only for my virtual classes but in-person activities as well. I love it and my clients love it, I can’t recommend it enough”.
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