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Pilates Business Podcast
Small Studio, Big Profit: What the BFS Pilates Industry Report Reveals About Top-Performing Studios
00:35:42
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- [00:00]
A
What if I told you that the most profitable Pilates studios aren't those that are the biggest, but perhaps even the smallest? Or that the studios pulling in half a million or over a million in revenue aren't just grinding harder, they're working smarter, with perhaps tighter class caps, premium pricing, and very, very, very fantastically driven teams. In today's episode, we're diving into the latest industry data that reveals exactly what separates those top performing studios from the rest, and how you might be able to start making some shifts in your own business, no matter where you are right now. So whether you're curious about where your studio stacks up or you're looking for clarity on what actually drives profit and sustainability, this episode's for you. Well, hi there. I'm Sarah Glanfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist. Strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset, and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio. This is the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarah Glanfield and welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. This is where I give you the clarity, the strategy and the support you need to grow a studio business that not only supports your profit, but also supports you as the owner as well. Now, it's hard to believe that we're already heading into the end of 2025 and what a year of rapid evolution it's been in the boutique fitness space. I work with studio owners every single day through my Thrive Business Coaching program and I'm seeing firsthand I how much things are shifting every single week. Business is tougher for some, but not for all. And that's what makes this conversation today so incredibly powerful. Because you may have wondered where you stand relative to others or maybe you've wanted to sort of know where your studio's performance lies. And today's guest is someone who brings a blend of business and deep industry insight. Julian Barnes is the co founder and CEO of bfs, a market intelligence and growth accelerator for beauty, fitness and self care businesses. He's held marketing leadership roles at brands like Velocity Sports Performance and Oasis Day Spa, and co founded Bodi Local, New York's leading networking platform for wellness professionals. More recently, he's behind one of the most comprehensive industry reports. And today we're going to break down the numbers and look at what Top Performance studio. Top performing studios are doing differently. So Julian, welcome to the Pilates Business podcast.
- [03:07]
B
Thank you. Saran, thank you for having me and thank you for the opportunity to speak with your audience today. So excited to be here.
- [03:14]
A
So first of all, thank you for taking all the effort that I know it takes to put a report like this together. And I like to start with sort of the bigger picture and tell us all a little bit about what inspired you to go and find the data that is in this report and what perhaps you were hoping to uncover when you started this process.
- [03:37]
B
So happy to share that with you. We've actually been producing reports since we produced our first ever in person Summit back in 2018. So we've been doing this now seven, seven or eight years. But the quality, the nature of the reports has changed. At first it was simply kind of a survey of who was in the audience at this, at the summits. And then in 2020 the reports took on a very different perspective. It was a lot of, a lot of COVID a lot of economics, a lot of state of just the chaos we were all living in. And then when we came out of COVID 2022, the reports became more data focused. And this report, 2024 State of the Industry, is by far our most comprehensive report. And the intention is simple. A report is a dashboard for the business owner. You can't fly blind. The better information any owner or executive has, the better they're able to make more well informed decisions. So that is the objective. You said that we're a growth accelerator and that's true. Our mission is to help fitness, beauty, wellness businesses grow in scale. And while you work with them on a one, on one or a group basis, we've decided to provide broader support to people like you and your clients so you have data to use when you're coaching your clients. Objective industry benchmarks. That's one of the reasons we created the report. So everyone has one set of data to look after, to look at as opposed to relying on anecdotal information based upon a small set. This is a global industry report and I should say that this report is made possible through the, through the support of our partners like Offering Tree and others. We couldn't do this by ourselves.
- [05:38]
A
Yeah, I mean it takes a lot to collect this quantity of data. You know, I've worked in the Pilates industry for a number, for many for well over a decade and been a part of industry wide data gathering efforts in the past. And let me tell you, it's really, really Important to have a sample size that is significant. Otherwise you find you get a lot of very skewed data. Right. And so, you know, if you've only got 100 studios responding, that's not going to be anywhere near enough. Have you only got studios from cities responding? That's not going to represent the industry as a whole. So I think what's great about this report and how much data you are able to gather is the quantity of the data and, and the quantity across different cities and suburbs and so on.
- [06:29]
B
Let me talk to that for a second because it's, it's all that plus another fact that I think is really important. So when we talk about the data today, we're talking about profitable studios only. So even though we had over 500 studios that submitted their survey, we eliminated those that are break even or not profitable for purposes of the data that I'm going to share with you today. And as you said, the studios that participated in the report came from 46 of the 50 states, plus Washington D.C. another 40 came from Canada, another 10 from the UK, 10 from Australia, and then a smattering of ones and twos from 10 other states. And even within the United States it was about 45% in cities population half million or more, 45% from suburban areas like 50,000 the half million and then another 10% from rural areas. Every modality was covered, but you know who's not covered. And I want to make sure that, that your listeners hear this. With one or two exceptions. All of the studios that were in our survey are independently owned, not private equity backed and not corporate owned. So there's no Soul Cycle in here. There's no Barry's, there's no solid core. There's one group of Orange Theory franchisees as PE back, they're kind of an outlier. Overwhelmingly, the studios in our survey have one location. Like 71% have one location. Another 18% have two or three locations. So the data is for profitable studios all over the country that are overwhelmingly individually owned. Three or fewer. In other words, mom and pop. That's who our data is referencing.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah, and I. It's a really important distinction to make. Okay, so why don't we talk about some of the findings. So why don't we talk about some of the sort of the higher level big findings that we got out of this report? What did you discover?
- [08:43]
B
Well, so the biggest surprise to me was that this was across the board, not just for Pilates studios, but the biggest surprise across the board was that the studios that had the highest total revenue and the highest profit margin. Have a dedicated manager. And I'm using the word dedicated as opposed to full time. By dedicated I mean someone. By dedicated I, I'm excluding the instructor who you might Pay to do 5 hours of admin work. That's not a manager. A dedicated manager has the primary responsibility of either developing and or implementing the SOPs that run the studio. And when you think about it, the second takeaway was that there's no magic bullet to success. The most profitable studios are implementing, some might say boring basic SOPs and they're implementing them consistently and rigorously. And by that I'm talking specifically about a framework that, that we identify through the data and that framework we call fer, that is finding new leads consistently every month, enrolling those new leads into your community and retaining those, those members of your community by minimizing churn and having long ltv. That's what consists, that's what profitable businesses do. Find, enroll, retain. And so it's no surprise that studios that have a dedicated manager who's full time or whose primary responsibility is to implement the SOPs to find, enroll and retain. It's no surprise that there's a correlation that the studios that have a dedicated manager have someone whose job it is to make sure that they are following the FER framework. So the FER was not a surprise. The dedicated manager was a surprise. So that's probably the number 1A and 1B takeaways for us.
- [10:54]
A
Yeah, for sure. And it's like you said, it's not a surprise, makes a lot of sense. But it almost, it's, it's an interesting like consistent data point.
- [11:03]
B
Can I add to that for a second? Because one thing that's kind of hidden about, about the point about managers and revenue, I want to emphasize the highest total revenue. Right? Because we know there are a lot of owner operator studios in smaller markets where the owner is teaching half the classes and doesn't have a manager. And they can have a high profit margin because they don't have a lot of payroll. But generally they don't have a very high total revenue. In other words, there's a ceiling to the, to the amount of revenue that an owner operator business is going to make if they don't have someone else helping them do do those other things. And that's not a judgment, right? That's not better or worse. It's just a fact that, or at least it's a fact from our, our report, our data that when you have a manager that helps you Increase your total revenue and increase your profit margin. So the takeaway would be if your goal is to make as much money as you, as you possibly can, you may want to consider investing in your manager. But if your goal is simply lifestyle, you love teaching, you want to teach, and you don't really want to build a big business, then you can certainly have a profitable business without investing in a manager. There's just going to be a ceiling, there's likely to be a ceiling to your top line revenue if you don't invest in a manager.
- [12:29]
A
Yeah. And I, I, I would be inclined to add to that. Where I, what I've observed is that there are many owner, operator and founders of studio businesses out there who spend or dedicate themselves to the management of the business, who have exceedingly successful businesses and exceedingly profitable businesses towards the higher end of what the data we be, well, be above actually the data that we have seen. But the key is I think that it's the dedicated element and so they have dedicated more of their time towards business management, investment in their business growth and that they have perhaps replaced themselves within this sort of the teaching hours of their business.
- [13:18]
B
Correct.
- [13:18]
A
So I think that there is, there is a few different ways to get to that outcome. And sometimes it's hiring externally, but I should say both ways it's hiring externally, but some ways it's hiring externally to replace other roles in the business and sometimes it's sort of replacing yourself. Right. And so it sort of, it depends on a lot on I think what the owner feels is their strengths, what they want to focus on and what as you say, their goals are. So I've, I've seen, to add a little context, I've seen a lot of different models as well. And so I want to, I want to add that I, I don't think you have to hire a studio manager if you want to be very successful from a profit perspective or a revenue perspective. But I think it's the dedicated business management time that is the critical piece that I've seen. Okay, let's talk a little bit about some of what the data tells us in terms of profit margin and revenue and so on. Because I think when people think about business data, you know, they're, they're wondering, okay, how do I, how much I'm, this is how much money I'm making, how much money is everyone else making? Is that studio that, it looks really busy and has all that fancy branding, Are they actually making any money behind the scenes? So let's talk a little bit about the findings from the top line and profit margin perspective from the Pilates industry report.
- [14:38]
B
Let's go big picture for a second of as you stated, we surveyed the entire industry and today we're talking specifically about the recent Pilates subreport that we've released. But across the entire industry, Pilates studios had the highest total revenue and the highest profit margin. So that's, I think a good starting point. So for example, let me see here. The average profitable Pilates studio in our survey made less than half a million dollars. We don't know exactly what that number is, but the category was less than half a million. Half million to a million, a million plus per location. Right. So. So you can run a profitable Pilates studio at a half million revenue and their profit margin was more than 20% compared to all studios was 10 to 19% and yoga studios was less than 10%. So again, Pilates studios had a greater percentage. The Pilates studios in our report that were profitable had a greater percentage of those studios earning a 20% profit or more. 20% profit margin or more. And anecdotally we know of quite a few profitable studios that were close to 35% to 40% profit margin. And let me back up because I misspoke regarding the annual revenue, there's a split among the profitable studios. Top line revenue, there was a split between studios making over millions. So 35% of the profitable Pilates studios and I report made over a million and another 35% made between half a million and 1 million. So consistent with the first finding that profitable that Pilates studios are generating higher revenue and higher profits than any other modality. And then they are quite a few of them are generating profit margins close to 35, 40% but the average was above 20%.
- [16:50]
A
Yeah, and that's consistent with what we see as well on what I see amongst the studio owners that I work with for sure. So if you're listening in, that's a good goal. And I think that as a benchmark or as a, as a. Relative to other modalities. Right. Other other types of studios, whether that's spin or yoga. How does you mention kind of briefly, but I just want to review one more time. How does Pilates sit relative to say a yoga studio, a bar studio or a, you know, a spin studio. What, what did you see there? Relatively speaking.
- [17:25]
B
So we have four categories. We had all modalities or three categories. All modalities, pilates strength, yoga. So four categories. The all modalities category, profitability was 10 to 19%. The strength studios were 10 to 19%. The yoga studios were 1 to 9%. And so the fact that Pilates studios are more profitable and generating higher revenue is not a surprise to anyone following the Pilates industry over the last couple years. What I think is interesting is the speculation about why. And I say speculation because the report doesn't give the why. We can just have a conversation about why that is and some of the reasons we think, we think some of the reasons that drive the profitability for Plotti Studios is kind of the basics of, of any business. One of the two biggest expenses for any brick and mortar business, regardless of what they sell, is rent and payroll. And beat the nature of Pilates studios, especially reformer studios with 6 to 12 reformers. Genuinely they only need about 1500 square feet. So you're talking with smaller spaces. Smaller space means smaller rent. Quite a few Pilates studios don't have front desk staff. So you're reducing your payroll. The majority of them don't try and be a luxury studio. Luxury meaning equinox level locker rooms, if they even have that. Right. A lot of profitable Pilates studios are no frills. 12 reformers. A bathroom, a water fountain, a little cubby box for your, for your shoes and that's it. Right. And so you're minimizing your build out costs, you're minimizing your rent, you're minimizing your payroll if the instructor is serving as the front desk person, as is often the case. So those are the two primary reasons we believe profitable that Pilates studios. Oh, and I should say there's a third really important thing. I said it indirectly, the scarcity, Right. We know a significant driver of a premium products and serve services regardless of the type of service. Is the scarcity of the service. Why is the Birkin bag so expensive? Because you can't get it everywhere, right? You can only get a handful of them. Well, there are only generally 6 to 12 reformers in a pilates studio as opposed to 40 bikes at an indoor cycling studio, 40 mats at a yoga studio and maybe 30 spots at hid studio. So you have fewer spots. And the fewer spots allows the owner to increase the price of each each space in a, in a Reformer. So I know you know this, I know your audience knows this. I'm just validating that the data supports what many of us have believed anecdotally. The laws of scarcity, the laws of urgency. If you know there are only 12 spots at the 7am class, you better book your spot. As soon as that spot becomes Available because there's only 12. Right. So urgency, scarcity, smaller spaces, smaller rent, smaller payroll, higher profits, higher profit margin. It's not rocket science.
- [20:47]
A
Yeah. The good news is you guys is you are in the right industry in the right world.
- [20:54]
B
You are definitely in the right industry.
- [20:58]
A
So tell us a little bit about what, what is your kind of plan going forward with this data and do you plan to add other elements to what you seek to uncover from the reports?
- [21:15]
B
Absolutely. So, so we think about it like the report should be a tool that business owners have access to on a regular basis. So instead of thinking about completing the survey once a year, we've actually rebranded the survey as the BFS assessment. And you can take the assessment as often as you want. And we're going to be encouraging owners and executives to conduct the assessment at least quarterly. And the reason for that is because when, and it's obviously, well, it's not obvious. Let me just remind people there's no, there's no charge to take the assessment. It's free. You can get on our website, bfspilatesreport.com take the assessment. So why should everyone take the assessment more than once a year? Well, because when you take the assessment, you will instantly receive the BFS scorecard. And the scorecard has five KPIs in it that I'm sure you've talked about with your audience over the last decade. These, these KPIs are number of leads per month, conversion rate of lead to first visit, conversion rate of first visit to next purchase. However you define that next purchase, number of recurring payments per month, churn and ltv. And so when you take the assessment, you receive the scorecard and the scorecard compares your numbers to or the scorecard benchmarks your numbers versus the the average of the profitable studio. So every quarter you can find out where you stand versus other profitable Pilates studios in your market size. Right. So if you're, if you're in the city, we're not going to compare New York to Syracuse, we're going to compare New York to Chicago, Louisiana. We'll compare Syracuse to Naperville to Huntsville. So suburb to suburb, city to city. So, so what we're going to be doing in 2026, in addition to, to producing the 2026 data of the industry, is encouraging owners and executives to complete the assessment on a quarterly basis and receive their scorecard for benchmarking purposes on a quarterly basis. So the owners and executives and managers have real time data, real time on a quarterly basis to help them check in where they are, adjust where they need to rather than wait once a year. I mean a year is a long time, right? Things happen quickly. So we're going to be doing that those two things. And the third thing I guess I'm happy to announce here is that we're going to be publishing the BFS 100 next year for the first time. And I'm going to start by saying what it's not. It's not going to be a ranking 1 through 100 of the hundred top studios. It's not that we're. We seek to showcase 100 of the most successful and interesting studios that cover a wide variety of types of modalities different. We want to make sure it represents the cross section of both North America and the world. They will overwhelmingly be profitable, but there may be a couple and they're that are not yet profitable but they're doing really interesting things like studios that are innovating with co working spaces and recovery spaces and longevity and concierge medicine. Things that take an investment that might make the profit. The, the timeline to profitability might be longer, but they're innovating. So we're going to showcase innovative studios across the world in the BFS100 next year and not just take, publish the list of them, but tell their stories throughout the year.
- [25:18]
A
That's so exciting. So exciting. You know, I'm such a big fan of data. It's one of, you know, all data is, is interesting and it's always, it's. But it always makes so much more sense when there's context behind it. So I'm curious, I will be curious to see some of the, what you share in some of those case studies you're gathering. You know, and I mentioned you guys listening to Julian when we first hopped on this call before we hit record that you know, numbers can tell all sorts of different stories, right? And so whenever we hear a number, there's always something. There is a story behind it. There is context there that is really, really important to understand as well. And so when we see, when we see data points, it's sort of one piece of this story. And I'd so, you know, it's important to know where that, where that data's come from and what it's really telling us and what it might be missing from it as well. So whenever we get these reports, it's always, always I'm always so, so curious and I think that the, this report and I'm excited for the future reports is to, to see because there is, you Break it down in, in a way that is, is really informative and really helpful to studio owners in the industry. So I'm excited for that.
- [26:26]
B
Glad to hear that. I would say to kind of piggyback on that in this case with this report for the Pleiades industry, there's probably less that's new and shocking and surprising to everyone and that's okay. It's validation that the, the basic rules of running a profitable business are in effect here. The reason Pilates studios are profitable are because they're doing the things that we've talked about. So it's less that there's something new in the Pilates report and more that I think it validates what we all believed anecdotally are the reasons why, why Pilates. And again I should, I should have said at the beginning we only talk about the business of Pilates. So I'm not talking about front of house and the, the exercise phys. The exercise benefits of Pilates as a low impact ex. We're not talking about any of that. We're just strictly talking about why Pilates studios as a business are more profitable than other modalities. Is the standard rules of business apply.
- [27:37]
A
Right, right. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Absolutely right. There was nothing, I mean there was, there was some interesting data points that as you mentioned, you know, having a studio manager is sort of a, is. It was an interesting sort of. Yeah, that was interesting. And you know, seeing I think, you know, we, we, we've talked a lot and have talked a lot in the past about, you know, profitability across, you know, the entire industry and how many studios are profitable and how many are not. And I really like how, you know, you were clear about, you know, the, these are, you know, this is, these are. All this data is based off of profitable studios. So we're not being skewed by perhaps people who are not quite there yet. And so that's really important context for this because I think that there is a lot of noise out there amongst with other data that we, we can see and find that isn't as sort of focused on that group that perhaps we're most actually when we think about data and how to organize data we're actually most interested in.
- [28:37]
B
Well, so I'm glad you, you mentioned that because you asked me at the beginning why did we produce this report? The primary reason was to be able to show studio owners what the path to profitability is for their modality in their market size. That's why we asked the question two questions that we did not ask in prior surveys. We asked your market size and we asked your profitability. And that allows us to segment every question by profitability, modality and market size. So we can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. And that makes the data more relevant to the person listening. And they won't say or they have less reason to say, oh well, you know, they probably had, you know, private equity investors or they probably had, you know, a big corporate marketing team. Nope, not the people in this survey. People in this survey are individually owned, self financed, three locations or fewer, overwhelmingly one location. So in other words, what we hope someone takes from from this report is the realization and the inspiration that they can do it too. Because there's no magic bullet in this report. There's no one saying, oh yeah, we dumped $10,000 a month in paid ads. Nope, not the case. The number one most effective lead gen tactic among profitable studios across all modalities is referrals by far like 100% higher than number two, which is paid ads. So note paid ads is still number two. Profitable Pilates studios are investing in paid ads, but it is half, there was at half the responses of number one, which is referrals. So as we wrap up, I would go back to. If you ask me what the theme of this report is, it is a reminder to go back to basics. And the basics are find new leads consistently, primarily through referrals and a little bit of digital ads, implement sops to nurture those leads. So they walk into into the studio, deliver a phenomenal experience before they walk in, when they walk in, during the class, after class, after they leave the class, deliver a phenomenal experience to both convert them into members of your community and to keep them, convert them into recurring payments, keep them for as long as possible. Those are the basics. And the studios that implement those basics consistently and rigorously have higher total revenue and higher profit margin. It's just that simple.
- [31:24]
A
Absolutely. And one of the things that isn't in the report, and I think it's always interesting to think beyond the numbers that are in front of us, is that there is no franchise businesses in this report, which means that you do not need to be a franchise in order to be successful. And there's a lot of noise amongst owner operators and founders of studios who feel perhaps they are on the back foot because they are not a franchise or because franchises maybe have a deeper pockets and are PE backed. Right. And so when we see this report, what it does is exactly as you say, it gives you it it is, it shows. Right. Proven validation that it is absolutely possible to build your business.
- [32:08]
B
So there's. I would, I would amend what you said there slightly. There are some, there are some franchisees represented in the report, and I think there's a lot of misunderstanding among independently owned studio owners who think franchisees have more support than, than the independent studio. No, it's the same business, the same rent, the same payroll. And within the fitness world, the only franchise that advertises nationally is Planet Fitness. I don't see any club Pilates advertisements when I'm watching tv. I don't see any strong Pilates, any Jet Pilates advertisements. So they're not. They don't. The franchisees, the individually owned franchisees of these national brands don't have an advantage over the individually locally owned business from marketing. And they have to hire the same instructors, they have to pay the same rent if they pay the same taxes. It's the same business from our perspective.
- [33:15]
A
Yeah. Awesome. All right, well, let us know where can people go to read this report and to. To. To.
- [33:24]
B
To take the assessment? Yeah. Bfsp report.com that is bfs report.com they can take the assessment. Once they take the assessment, they get a free copy of the entire report. They will receive their own scorecard which benchmarks their performance. All this is free. We encourage everyone to complete their first assessment by the end of the year. So we can use your 20 include your data from 2025 in the state of the Industry report that we will publish in March of 2026. So we'll spend January and February crunching the data and then we'll release the 2026 State of the Industry in March. So if you have a chance, please visit bfspilatesreport.com before into this year and take the assessment.
- [34:16]
A
Awesome. Thank you so much, Julian. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all of this information with us and I look forward to seeing what the next report shows.
- [34:26]
B
Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to spend some time with you and your audience today. Really appreciate it.
- [34:32]
A
Welcome. So I hope this is helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness studio business. If you loved what you heard today and you enjoyed what you learned, I'd be so appreciative if you could take a quick minute, go to wherever you're listening to this, and rate and review this podcast. It would mean a ton to me and help to get this podcast out into our amazing community so the more teachers and studio owners just like you can feel encouraged and supported on their business journey. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to spring3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder. There is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.
- [35:32]
B
Sam.