Crisis? What crisis? From 30 to 300 participants per session. By live-streaming their yoga and HIT sessions online, the number of participants following Rotterdam-based Yogaground's classes has increased tenfold and expanded around the world.
At RotterdamStyle.com we always focus on 'positive news.' With that in mind, we love to share how some local businesses are reinventing themselves and adapting their services in these strange times.
Yogaground is a local yoga and HIT studio in Rotterdam, founded in 2016. From their two studios at Weena and Veerhaven, Yogaground offers more than 70 classes of Yoga and High Intensity Training, 7 days a week. When they closed, as a consequence of the coronavirus measures, they started live-streaming their classes on their Yogaground Instagram profile.
What happened surprised founder Ferdinand Berghuijs enormously. While they were used to having a maximum of 30 people per class in their yoga room, now all of a sudden there were sometimes up to 300 people participating (or at least viewing) live. Berghuijs: "Immediately after the corona closure, we announced online lessons; we felt that we should continue to serve our customers. We just filmed with an iPhone and broadcasted live on Instagram. Suddenly 300 people were watching. We got a lot of encouragement from our customers who missed us as much as we missed them. That's living proof to us of the power of our community."
They also started uploading some of their sessions to their Yogaground YouTube channel, which they never used to do anything with before. It wasn't long before their total subscribers went up to almost 600. Part of the reason why they saw so much growth is that the online lessons were no longer only attended by active Rotterdam members. All over the world people are now able to participate in the online lessons.
One such example is Jemma Lampkin, an American who worked in the Netherlands for a long time and former member of Yogaground. "I liked coming to Yogaground because of the international atmosphere and because all lessons are given in English. When I was able to move to Singapore for work it was a great opportunity, but I knew I was going to miss my club terribly. I never thought I would be back at Yogaground remotely. I can now take my favourite lessons from my favourite teachers again."
