Local yoga studio closes storefront, cites difficulties returning from virtual fitness culture
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A local yoga studio is having to be flexible when it comes to navigating business during the pandemic.
Yoga Fire is closing their brick-and-mortar in August after just 16 months of business.
Before the pandemic Cassandra Daye and her husband were on track to be in a much different position with their business after opening in May 2019.
“Our events were going really well our partnerships were excelling. Everything was going so well,” said Yoga Fire owner Cassandra Daye.
When they were forced to temporarily close in March they went completely virtual with intentions to open back up and continue with their usual in-person class schedule.
“When you are forced to go virtual you lose all of that so free just becomes free. There is no really tie to the place that you love,” said Daye.
Now that the fitness industry across the country has gone online and businesses are posting free content to continue to engage clients, it has hurt locally owned businesses like Yoga Fire that rely on class fees to stay in business. Free doesn’t pay the bills.
“We can’t compete with YouTube. We can’t compete with the studios that are giving away classes for free. It really just hurts the little guy,” said Daye.
Daye was forced to make the decision to close their storefront and stop doing virtual classes.
“It feels like I am kind of getting a piece of myself taken away,” said Daye.
It was tough to lose something that the couple invested their own money and time into making Daye’s dream come to life.
“I just sat there and I was thinking like ‘oh my gosh we are going to have to shut down our website. We are going to have to shut down our Facebook, close the physical location.’ And I was like ‘that is not an option, absolutely not an option,’” said Daye.
Now, she is calling on one of her other passions, supporting local businesses, to transition Yoga Fire into the next phase of becoming an event-based studio.
“We will be able to really branch out and partner with a lot of business that want to partner with us and we will do just events,” said Daye.
Yoga Fire will host events across the state in partnership with other businesses. They already have a free event planned on August 7 at the studio before they close their doors for good on August 8.
You can find Yoga Fire events and register on their Facebook page.
Daye says she hopes to be able to reopen a physical location eventually.