When we were introduced to our “new normal” a year ago, Lauren Filocco, Cohort 17 alumna and owner of OpenBarre Studios in College Park, adjusted her business and led her team as all QUESTees are taught to do: by embracing ambiguity.
Before OpenBarre’s last in-person class on March 16, 2020, Lauren and her team realized they needed to prepare for the pandemic. They spent three weeks prior to the national shutdown filming and editing classes, which allowed them to launch their online classes just 36 hours after closing their studio doors. After gauging clients’ interest in online classes, Lauren’s team determined the features and pricing for their online platform. The pandemic was the precipice for the launch of this year-in-the-making project.
In the past year, the pandemic strengthened the OpenBarre community in a surprising way. According to Lauren, OpenBarre Studios was used to clients joining classes for a few years then moving away after graduation, turnover typical of College Park businesses. However, in the past year, the studio has experienced an influx of former clients joining online classes as UMD alumni living outside of College Park rejoined the OpenBarre family.
In a moment of reflection, Lauren shared with me what she’s learned about herself as an entrepreneur in the past year. She’s become more open in her communication with her team and “never wants [her] team to wonder what’s going to happen or not understand why [they’re] doing something.” She’s handled the situation similarly with clients, sending monthly updates through an online newsletter and seeking feedback to gauge their comfort levels with potentially returning to the studio when safe.
She’s loved seeing OpenBarre be the “quarantine thing” for people and feels fulfilled knowing she’s working on something meaningful. Lauren shared that she’s always known how much the instructors care about the clients, but being online, has seen how much the clients care about the instructors: “What we have is something special and worth keeping alive.”
OpenBarre is also sponsoring one of the QUEST data course projects this semester. After nearly a year of online classes, OpenBarre has collected data they never had access to before. According to Lauren, “Before, [OpenBarre was] focused on moving smoothly, and now [they] want to optimize.” With this new wealth of data, a Cohort 35 team is working with Lauren to determine what types of online classes are most popular and create a more personalized experience for OpenBarre clients.
Akriti Tripathi, Computer Science ‘23, and her Cohort 35 team BRASS Consulting are currently working on cleaning the data and are looking forward to proposing changes on “the layout of the online platform, the online library, instructors, [et cetera] to increase the number of views on the videos for online classes.” Best of luck, BRASS Consulting!
Lauren is offering a QUEST community exclusive: Try a three-day trial of OpenBarre at http://www.openbarreonline.vhx.tv and apply “QUEST” at checkout to get 25% off one month of unlimited access to all classes.