Chat EYT Episode 9: The Retail Playbook That Built a Runaway Success

This week, Jessica tackles two topics every studio owner should hear.

She begins with a deeply personal story about her own cancer journey and explains why she made the decision to eliminate plastic water bottles from her studio long before research began connecting plastics, inflammation, and rising cancer rates. It's an honest conversation about leadership, health, and the responsibility wellness professionals have to influence the communities they serve.

Then Jessica shifts gears into one of the most overlooked profit centers in boutique fitness: retail. Drawing from her own experience building an incredibly successful in-studio boutique, she shares the retail strategies that actually work—and why most studios approach merchandising all wrong.

In this episode you'll learn:

•  Why plastic water bottles may be doing more harm than you think 
•  How wellness businesses can lead by example 
•  The biggest retail mistakes studio owners make 
•  What products actually sell to repeat clients 
•  How to merchandise for your specific community 
•  Why basics often outperform trendy inventory 
•  Creative ways to keep retail feeling fresh 
•  When outsourcing your retail operation might be the smartest business decision you make 

Whether you're looking to create healthier habits for your clients or increase retail revenue without wasting inventory dollars, this episode offers practical advice you can implement immediately.

When in doubt...just exhale.

Transcript

0:06

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Chat EYT, the podcast. This is Jessica Spillane, your host, and you're in for another episode of insights, opinions, commentary, and who knows what else. We all know that I like to go off on tangents. Today's episode is about in-studio retail and the strategies that I have found to be successful and how they're different from, traditional retail, and, approaching it through a different lens so that you're successful. But I'm gonna actually start out with something that is retail adjacent. So it does work with the episode in its entirety, but it's a little sub-segment that has been extremely important to me for a very long time, and that is water. You're probably saying, "Okay, press pause. I'll tune in next week." But I do promise you, it's interesting. Water is something that we all need, something we all drink, and something that all of your clients are probably bringing with them or you are selling in your studio. I am going to make a plea with all of you to stop selling plastic bottles of water. I am going to beg you from the bottom of my soul with everything that I have that you either install one of those hydration stations where people can refill their own reusable Or if you want to sell and add it to retail, that you sell glass bottles of water. And here's why. So about I don't know how many years ago now, I was diagnosed with one of the cancer genes. Yay me. I have a long list of family members who have passed away too early from breast cancer, and I went and had genetic testing done, and the results came back. I do not have BRCA1 or 2. I have a subset of BRCA2 called PALB2, and it's only breast and pancreatic. So once again, yay me. Lucky duck I am. And at that point I was not at the stage of my life to make any big decisions, but I tried to make choices in my daily life that would help in the short term what I felt give me some control over my health, other than just, the screenings and the regularity of doing my cycle of ultrasounds and mammograms Doing my research about, clean living, healthy foods, I came across a study that was on the whale in the Pacific Ocean, and the whale in the Pacific Ocean were actually getting breast cancer. Many of us, if we didn't pay attention on this day in seventh grade science, may not realize that whale are mammals just like we are. They have mammary glands just like we do. They're really the first animal, mammal other than humans, that they were seeing have breast cancer. When they did the biopsies and they would do the studies after the whale had passed away to look at w- what the causes were, they were finding plastic in the tumors, and this was happening specifically in the Pacific Ocean, and that is where our big, giant plastic garbage dump floats. Many of you may not even realize that we have a big, giant garbage dump of plastic that floats in the Pacific Ocean, but we do. Go America. This became, to me something that I felt like I could take control over. As silly as it sounds, when you get that kinda news and you don't have any ability to really do anything about it at that particular moment, you just try to control what you can control. And I was like, "I am giving up plastic. I'm, in any way that I can. Obviously, I can't do it in everything, but I'm going to cut back on the amount of plastic that I consume the water bottles that everybody is very comfortable using and selling and buying, Poland Spring, Aquafina, whatever it might be, pH balanced, we have absolutely no idea of its journey from the time that the water was put in that bottle till it gets into your hands. You may have gotten it out of a refrigerator, and that's great, but prior to it being put in that refrigerator, it was very likely on a hot truck where that plastic was being warmed up, and those plastic particles were going into the water, and you are then drinking that. So you are consuming the plastics with the water. When I say get rid of the plastic, I'm all about saving, the planet, and I'm all about the environmental impact that this makes. But the origin of my change really was from a health standpoint. Fast-forward a couple of years, I got to 2018, and I was in the stage of my life, I'd had all of my children at that point, where I felt like I could take another set of action, and I did have a prophylactic double mastectomy and reconstruction, and it was a tough year. I felt better that I could sleep at night. I didn't just feel like it. I did. I lowered my risk from a 90% chance of getting cancer in my 40s that would be aggressive, I now have an 8% chance So that's great. I still have a higher chance than the average person, and I still have to do pancreatic screenings, but I certainly did a good job of saving my own life by taking that action. I never stopped drinking my water out of glass. I specifically use Mountain Valley. That's the brand that I fell in love with, and I sold the Mountain Valley at my studio. I actually didn't even really sell it. I had a take one, return one policy, if somebody took a bottle, I asked them to bring back a bottle the next time they came in. And it was actually a way to convince them to start drinking out of glass themselves. I can honestly say, if you walk around Bergen County, New Jersey, and people with the glass Mountain Valley bottles, I'm the one who got them there, right? I completely and totally pushed this agenda because we are in the health and wellness field. We are dealing with people, primarily women, who are health-focused and who want to do good things for themselves, and this is a very simple thing that they can do that gives them some control over the big C word, right? So now I'm gonna fast-forward to yesterday, I was out for a walk, and I was listening to the most recent episode of the Oprah Podcast, and she had on a world-renowned cancer researcher, and he was there to talk about the rapid and staggering increase in breast cancer, endometrial cancer, and colorectal cancer in young people, specifically the twenties and thirties. What is happening? Why are the rates jumping after we had a good period of time where there was a reduction? Is it just early detection? His answer was no, because the mortality rate was also increasing. Early detection usually leads to a lower mortality rate, where in this case, our mortality rate is skyrocketing at the same time as the diagnosis rate. So Very long story short Oprah basically said, "So what's going on? What is happening?" His answer was they've identified that it's a certain kind of inflammation that is really what the cause is. They don't have a test yet for that kind of inflammation. They haven't really dissected the kind of inflammation that it is, it's probably not the kind that you have on your regular standard blood tests that we all get every year. She then went further and said, "So what's causing that inflammation?" And his number one answer was plastic. That was his answer. And I felt like Someone out there heard me. Even though that's not the case, and I certainly didn't discover this by any means. I found that one article, I think it was 15 years ago, and I took it very seriously, and I changed my patterns. I got rid of all my Tupperware. I got rid of all of my plastic cutting boards. I only use wood. I got rid of all of my frying pans that were non-stick. I switched to cast iron. I did a lot to get rid of the plastic in my life, and people thought I was crazy, turns out I wasn't I just listened and followed what felt like the right path. Now, 15 years later, the top cancer researcher in the world is telling us that plastic is the number one root cause for the inflammation and the inflammation in our bodies that's leading to this cancer rise in young people. And he didn't get into this. This is my own thought pattern. With the rise really happening with people who are, under 40, that's the generation that was raised with so much more plastic than I was or my parents before me. That's when plastic water bottles came out. I'm of the generation where you weren't allowed to drink water. You had to raise your hand, and you were allowed to go to the water fountain once a day. We played sports. No one gave us water breaks. Nobody brought water bottles. We're the most dehydrated generation, but then this boom of Poland Spring, Dasani, Aquafina, and now we have, more fancy waters. We have our smart waters and all that kind of stuff. It is still coming to us in plastic, and we are drinking these plastic particles. We are storing our food and putting it in the freezer in the plastic Tupperware, and then it contracts, and then you heat it up, and then it releases more plastic into the food. We do takeout. The takeout is coming in plastic containers, right? There is so much more plastic out there right now, and we have to start trimming it. As studio owners who live in this health and wellness sphere, you have direct trusted influence over your client base- Get rid of the plastic and tell them why. Encourage them to get rid of the plastic. And you don't have to make it about the environment. Everybody's got different opinions on global warming and whether it's real and whether it's not. I'm not looking for you to start a political conversation. But we now have concrete evidence that there is a direct link between plastic and inflammation is the root cause of all disease, but cancer specifically. Do that for your community. Be a leader in this. Do it for your own health, for your family's health, and for your clients' health. Be a role model and show them the way and help them discover why plastic is so bad and start breaking that habit. Okay? So that's my pre-retail lecture. Like I said, it's retail adjacent 'cause you can sell water but just sell the glass. Get rid of the plastic, all right? I appreciate you taking this seriously 'cause it really does matter to me. And I hope that it matters to you all right, moving on now to the topic of in-studio retail.:. the reason why I wanted to talk about this is because So many of us bring retail into our studios and don't think through the best use of that space or how to go about it. And it's of no fault of your own. It's simply because there's an entire industry out there called retail, and there are specific jobs within that industry that people get paid big bucks for and actually go to school for. There's buyers, there's merchandisers there's planners, real estate planners, all who know how to optimize selling retail. We are studio owners. We are Pilates teachers. We are not necessarily retailers, so you're not expected to have this knowledge. But it is important to do a little bit of research, studying to understand what some best practices are so that if you are investing money in buying retail items to stock or you're investing some square footage to it, that it works. You don't wanna just have items sitting there forever not moving. Obviously, this is generalizations. Some of you have a great eye. You have awesome retail items. You have the coolest logos ever. You have a cool name to your studio. Having branded stuff just works, it moves. I'll use one of my studio partners in New York City Pearl. Wendy has such a great eye. She's so artistic. Her logo is fun. The name of her studio isn't so Pilates centric. It's very branded. When she puts her logo on hats or on T-shirts or on socks or anything, it moves, and it moves because it's cool and people don't mind wearing it. If you have an ordinary logo or a name of your studio that is, something like, Pilates on West, something like that it just isn't necessarily brandable that people wanna buy a whole bunch of clothes or a apparel that have that name all over it. So the logo wear is something that I'm very wary of. I don't even have logo wear for me, for my brand, and that's because EYT, what is that, right? EYT. Nobody wants to wear just a T-shirt that says EYT. They're not gonna go out and, wear that after class and go play mahjong or go out to lunch. It's my business, people just aren't going to buy it. I certainly have a cool little E that's in a circle. That's fun. That's fine. It's great for my website. It's great for my products. It's great for my intellectual property, I'm not gonna go put it on clothes. Wendy, I'm totally giving you a shout-out here, but I think Pearl is different, and that's where it does work. So the first thing I think you need to do is really evaluate your logo wear. How much of it do you really want? How kind of kitschy or brandable is your logo, your icon, your name? How much are people really going to buy? That's the first step. The second step is to think about what you're actually selling, I have visited so many studios over the years, very often one of the biggest mistakes people make is they stock their shelves with things that a consumer or a client is only going to buy once, right? Once they buy a yoga mat, they don't need another yoga mat. You are going to have a whole lot of leftover yoga mats. The same clients are coming in every single Tuesday, so once they bought that yoga mat, they're not gonna buy another one next Tuesday or the Tuesday after that or the Tuesday after that. They're not going to move Just like if you buy a set of Pilates cards where the exercise picture is on it and the cues are on the back and how to do it. If they buy that, they don't need to buy it again. When you have a repeat clientele, you need to get items in stock that they will buy on repeats, things that they might run out of and they need to restock. Or maybe it's a shirt that's got a cute cut to it, doesn't have a logo on it, and you sell it in three different colors. Once they fall in love with the black one, they will come back and they will buy the blue, and they will buy the gray, and they will buy the white. Having something that they will buy on repeat is optimal. Whereas stocking things that once you buy one, you can stock jewelry. If they buy that necklace, they're not gonna buy another necklace. They're not gonna come in every week and buy more. That's the second thing to think about. You are speaking to the same group of people every day. They're not coming off of the street just to go shopping. They're coming to you for Pilates, and you're hoping that they purchase something on the way out. They're not just coming in, shopping with their friends, walking down Main Street on a girls' day and, going in to buy a sun hat, right? It's not that kind of environment. That should be something you think about. The third thing is when you're doing your ordering of clothes or accessories buy with your clients in mind. Don't just buy what you love. Take notice of the people who are walking in and out of your studio. If you notice that people in your studio tend to wear bright colors or tend to wear more neutrals, then make sure that you buy that way. If the people in your studio tend to be younger and they wear the bra type tops or the matching sets, then lean towards matching sets. If they tend to wear short sleeve because they like to cover their arms and they like more boxy size shirts, then that's what you should stock. Just because you like something doesn't mean they like it. Look at the people. Take note of what they're wearing. Take note of what they're carrying. Take note of the colors. Take note of the shape, the size, all of the different things that make your clients tick, and those are the items that you wanna try to stock You also wanna try to stock things that are easy to reorder. I'll tell you the reason why I have this knowledge at the end, my suggestion is that you buy the minimum you're able to, and you just simply restock. So there are a lot of companies who have things that are always in stock. It's not seasonal where you have to buy six or eight months in advance. They have them always prepared. It's their basic lines. And that's really what you need is the basic lines. People need basics. They always want basics. And if you have something that's trendy, it's gone. You might not have sold three and you're never gonna sell those last three. It's just gonna go back into your closet or you're gonna give it to your daughter so try to think basics, the fundamentals, right? Just like in Pilates, always go back to the fundamentals. What do people always need? They need, the basics in their T-shirts, whether they like tanks or crops or long cut or a short cut and basic colors that go with everything I think is the most successful. People will purchase that, and if they like the shape, they're gonna come back and buy it in all the colors. Don't you do that? You want that kind of easy reorder so that you can stock as little as possible. Another suggestion would be because you're seeing the same clientele all the time, change what you have on the rack frequently. Make a schedule where, you get a shipment and let's just make it easy. Four different types of shirts that were in the order. Only put two out. Keep the other two back behind the desk and next week change them. Change which two shirts. Just take them off and put those in the back and put the new ones out in the front 'cause it looks like new stock is in, right? Fresh new merchandise, something new to look at. If they come in every single week and constantly see the same thing, it looks like it's not moving. It looks like nothing's happening here. So that's a problem, and then they start to not even notice it anymore. They walk right through your retail area. They take no notice because nothing's changed. So keep it fresh, even if it means just switching which is hanging on the first hanger of the rack. Switch which one is in front or just alternate what you even have out on the floor at any given time. Now, my biggest suggestion, and I'm leaving an Easter egg here, if it's possible, is to outsource this to someone who actually knows what they're doing Find somebody who's a buyer. Find a store that might be in town, there might be a great store that people love, and ask them to include your space in their buying. Give over that 80 square feet, that 20 square feet, ask them to take it over. You can do a revenue share, or you can just have them pay rent. Let them know that the space is there, or when they're ordering for their store, they can rotate their stuff in and out of your place too. So offloading it to someone who actually knows what they're doing, knows the buying habits of the community, knows the brands. Maybe they even travel to New York and go to the shows. Those are the people that you wanna solicit and pass over the retail to. Take it off your plate and make it actually successful rather than a burden, something else you have to keep track of. Now, that would be the ultimate, right? That would be the best bet. But I know that's not always possible for everybody, so if it's not, then think about those other tips that I shared. Now, the reason why I have experience with this is because many years ago I had one client in particular, who was always talking about fashion, and everybody would ask her at the end of class or during class "I have this event this weekend. Do you think I should wear that black dress that I wore to that event or that bar mitzvah, but just change it with this necklace?" She was so trusted, and she was so good at it. So I approached her and her best friends and I said, "What do you guys think about opening up a retail store in my studio?" And this is long before people did this, before Lululemon was even in the United States. I think Lululemon was still in Canada. I approached them, and they were all into the idea, but then they got nervous. They're like, we don't know what we're doing. We don't know how to do this." I said, "Neither do I. We're gonna experiment. We're gonna take 80 square feet from the studio. We're gonna turn it into a little store. Let's go to Coterie in the city." And we walked the floor at Coterie, and I said, "Ellen would wear that. Amy would wear that. Julie would wear that. Elise would wear that," and that's how we bought. And I texted all of them and I said, I'm at Coterie. I found this shirt. You're gonna love it. Picked it out for you." Texted Amy, "I found, the leggings that you love. Found a pair in a new color that's coming out. Ordered them for you." I just dropped this information to them. We also bought with the mindset that- It's the same people coming every single week, so how can we reorder? We can't do a bunch of different sizes. We can't stock that. So we tried to do as many one-size-fits-alls as we could, and then we ordered. We just did simple. We did the basics, black, white, gray. I think we did do navy blue at the time. And then we would do one accessory per season that had a pop of color. May have been a scarf, may have been a pashmina, may have been a bag, may have been a hat. That was where the color was. Everything else was basics. And when I tell you the success we had was outstanding. We also didn't put price tags on anything. That wasn't actually intentional at first. We hadn't gotten around to it, and people started buying right out of the box. And I had everybody's credit cards on file. So we just simply said, "If you don't return it within the next three days, we'll just charge your card on file." And that was how we did it. We made it like they were shopping in their girlfriend's closet. It felt less like a store and more like they just went over to their best friend's house, went into the closet, picked out a few items, and said, "I'm taking this." We had a dry erase board that was up. They would sign out the outfits that they had and we never lost one item. Every item was always accounted for. We just charged everybody's credit card. If we were in the middle of something, they would just show us what they took, and we would write it down on the dry erase board and calculate it all. We had the date, the item, and the person, and within three days, we charged their card if they didn't come back in to return it We were a runaway success. That store actually had to move out of my studio because I couldn't fit it anymore. There were so many people. So it got its own location, and I sold my shares to somebody else 'cause I was sticking with Pilates as my direction, and we needed an actual person who understood retail. Once, they got their own space, I needed to sell my shares to somebody who actually knew what they were doing because they were taking on much more debt, in terms of buying and filling a huge store and doing all the merchandising so it became a different animal. But it was so much fun and such a runaway success, and we employed completely different buying strategies than if we just had a retail store that was, forward-facing to the street. You have to think that way. You have to think about how you buy, who your consumer is, and not just buy things that you think are cute and slap your logo on everything. It's not gonna move. Maybe yours does, and that's great, but the general, population, a lot of these places, stuff just sits. So you have to think that through, this isn't a retail store. This is a unique situation, and you have to buy for that unique situation. All right. That's all I got for today. When in doubt, just exhale. Love you all. I'll be in your AirPods again next week. Have a good one Thank you for listening to Chat EYT, the podcast. And a special thanks to Christy Carrubba at Next Chapter Exchange for producing and editing. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, leave us a rating and a review if you like what you heard. We'll see you next time