These lockdown legends were all teaching classes for free online during the quarantine, now that they are allowed to resume some kind of business activities, how are they doing?
Maria “Yoga Marisol” is a yoga teacher based in Palma.
Q: Were you able to operate during lockdown, and how did you change your business during this time to cope?
A: Yes, I moved everything online, gave up my hours in the yoga studio and I am now I am teaching outdoors as well as online
Q: Did you get or are you getting any help from the government?
A: No, I didn’t apply for any help from the government
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: It‘s really hard to predict. The first couple of weeks were quite successful but this week has been very quiet so far. I am going to make a few adjustments to my business plan to make my business more sustainable. I will need to raise prices in the long run as I have realised I have been offering my services for too little in the past and therefore it is not sustainable.
Q: Do you have any advice for any other businesses who are going through the same thing?
A: Yes to keep charging for their services. I think everyone, including myself is giving special rates at the moment but I see a lot of people offering services (yoga, pilates and so on) for free or only for a tiny fee. This potentially damages small businesses especially when it’s offered by nonprofessionals.
www.yogamarisol.com
Ian Bonsall is a Martial Arts and fitness trainer. He runs his training studio, Renegade Martial Arts, in Palma.
“We were instructed to close immediately the beginning of the lockdown, on March 14th. Our lights were off and doors were locked. We were therefore placed in a position where we had no revenue into the business. Equally as our business relied on face to face instruction we had no means to generate any further income.
“We looked to change our business model to online line delivery. In this instance we developed some free to air videos for our students to use at home via YouTube. We also took our Taekwon-do sessions online and delivered these via Zoom. Additionally, we sought to support the wider community through Facebook Live sessions, which were made available to everybody and communicated through Facebook groups.
“As our business was forced to close, we did seek assistance from the government and we were successful in getting some aid. The de-escalation plan has allowed us to reopen however we are vastly below the session occupancy levels which we had prior to the lockdown. There are opportunities for us to diversify our offering across the summer to potentially mitigate this and we have a children’s summer camp scheduled, which we are currently promoting. Additionally during lockdown we had an opportunity for further professional development, qualifying as certified NLP Practitioners. This has provided further opportunity to diversify our product and service offering to include life coaching, to complement our existing personal training programmes.
“Innovation and diversification are key values for us, and we believe that this has been crucial to our ability to work through the lockdown period. The capability to retain a flexible view of our business model and delivery has been of real benefit during this period. www.renegademartialarts.net
Rachel Shuckburgh is a Pilates teacher and has her own business in Pollensa. She spent lockdown with her daughter Darcey.
Q: Were you able to operate during lockdown?
A: I operated in a way by continuing with Facebook Live classes.
Q: Did you get or are you getting any help from the government?
A: I didn’t at the beginning but had my first government help payment this week.
Q: Now you are out of lockdown how do you see your business recovering?
A: I am hopeful my business will recover and it has started to as I’ve been doing outside classes on a beach terrace that I was very kindly allowed to use. Also my studio has opened for small classes in the evening.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: To continue with what I do, I have a lot of people who live here permanently coming to the studio, and during the summer lots of tourists, so I hope I’m the future they will come back too.
Q: Do you have any advice for any other businesses who are going through the same thing?
A: I think if we all support one another’s businesses and keep being positive as best we can is the only option. www.facebook.com/SimplyPilatesPuertoDePollensa
No comments
To be able to write a comment, you have to be registered and logged in
Currently there are no comments.