WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LAUNCH A FRANCHISE DURING A PANDEMIC?
A NEW YOGA CHAIN FINDS ZEN IN CHAOS
CINDY COATS used to do yoga in a warm studio that relied on a space heater to climb past 72 degrees. It wasn’t exactly hot, but people still showed up. So in 2012, Coats joined with two other cofounders to launch Real Hot Yoga, a studio built to deliver a serious burn to the residents of Knoxville, Tenn. The company initially grew by issuing licensing agreements to entrepreneurs within the founders’ networks, but then total strangers started asking to join the company—so Coats and her team decided it was time to franchise. They were just finishing the paperwork in February when gym closures scared away hopes of signing a franchisee—at least for now.
What cofounder CINDY COATS learned last year:
1/ Cleanliness is always good business.
“Early on with Real Hot Yoga, we were talking about the most important thing people want in a business. We decided that it’s a clean environment. You go to a restaurant or department store in a mall, and if their bathrooms are clean, you feel better about eating or shopping there. So while we don’t have the fanciest hardware or the most expensive shower tiles, we have always kept our studios impeccably clean. We have a system that uses a UV filter to remove 99 percent of germs, bacteria,
