For many of us in Canada, Oxygen Yoga & Fitness is a familiar and beloved brand, with around a hundred studios across the country. But in Iowa, USA, where new studio owners Amy and Pete live, likely no one in the community had heard of Oxygen Yoga & Fitness before their studio opening. So what drove Amy and Pete to invest in the brand? We talked to Amy and Pete about why they decided Oxygen was just the thing their community needed.
Amy is a high school teacher, having just resigned from her position after her 25th year in education to open the studio. Pete has a Masters in exercise science, worked in personal training for a while, and now works in business finance. They’ve always considered opening a yoga studio but, as Pete puts it “frankly never had the guts to do it.” It was a combination of the infrared technology and clear sense of community at Oxygen Yoga & Fitness that led Amy and Pete to decide it was finally time to take that jump.
Amy and Pete have both been active their whole lives and connected over their passion for sport and fitness when they met at twenty-five. While they’ve tried various forms of fitness, Pete shares he connected with yoga because, he shares “I’ve noticed as I get older, you know my flexibility and balance and what not just needs to be a part of my daily routine or weekly routine”.
For Amy, “it’s been just like a mental health type of place and space for me. We are kind of selfishly opening the studio because we have an infrared sauna in our house, but it was, like we needed the benefits, but we wanted this space that didn’t exist in our area so we’re opening it for ourselves and the rest of the community gets the benefit.”
Before Amy and Pete opened the studio, there were no other Oxygen Yoga & Fitness studios in the area, but still, Pete and Amy had been dreaming of the community their studio would create.
“ I get like a little choked up thinking about it because I’m just really excited about being able to bring that to people” Amy shares.
Pete adds, “[…] what gets me excited is just offering really quality yoga, with very quality instructors in an environment that’s very nice, very clean, very inviting, but, you know, just kind of having the best place in Des Moines is what gets me excited.”
Pete and Amy are also excited to bring their own community into the business with them, whether that means supporting each other on the hard days or sharing the experience of opening a studio with their children.
Pete shares that one of the things they’re most proud of in their journey so far is how him and Amy have worked together.
“I just think teaming up as a couple and knowing that you know, things are going to be hard, but as long as we can keep it, you know, get through it together and just, you know, when one of us is having a bad day or a stressful day, the other one kind of picks up the other one up and it keeps going.”
Amy and Pete are also excited about how their children can be involved with the business and the way it lets them model entrepreneurship and hard work for their kids.
“Our oldest daughter, she’ll be a part of the gym, a front desk person[…]. Our son is going to be a part of it, probably as a cleaning person, and then our youngest, she’s already been part of a lot of our social media posts. So, you know, I think it’s it’s fun and exciting just to have a family that, you know, we get along time, we can get them involved as much as they want to be involved” Pete explains. “You know, if they didn’t want to be involved, that would be, you know, totally fine. But, you know, they, like our son came down and said, hey, can I do something? What can I do? And then our daughter, she’s, you know, she’s got a part-time job and she’s like, hey, you know, I would I’d like to work at the studio too, so I think that’s cool.”
“And just being a role model for that” Amy adds. “Like they see us working hard and then they get to see the thing that we’re producing too. So that’s exciting to me.[…] In the beginning, they thought we were a little bit crazy, They’re like, yoga, what. But now I think they’re really embracing it and realizing, this is pretty cool.”
Amy and Pete’s studio is now open in Urbandale, with many fun challenges and activities like the thirty-day challenge being offered regularly. Rave reviews have come in for the friendly crew and fabulous instructors.
To check out the community for yourself, stop by their studio or follow along their journey on Facebook or Instagram.