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Gaia Studios, based in Tampere, opened its doors in March 2025. Gaia is a reformer Pilates studio with a goal of becoming an approachable place to practise for people of all levels. During its first year, Gaia has streamlined its day-to-day operations — bookings, memberships and punch cards now run automatically, giving founder Essi more time to develop the studio.
Gaia Studios wants to offer its customers as wide a range of options as possible, including group classes and independent virtual instruction. There are numerous different punch cards and memberships available. The manual work required to manage and maintain all of these was starting to become too much.
”In a small business, it’s especially important to us that as many of these things as possible run smoothly and automatically. That leaves more time for developing the business itself and the customer experience.”
Essi, Gaia Studios
The old system fell behind
Before Thril, Gaia used one system for class bookings and a separate tool for email communication, among other things. The combination brought a familiar challenge: the more you wanted to offer, the more work it required.
Memberships, discounts and recurring payments were difficult to implement. Gift cards had to be handled manually. Customers wanting punch card options were welcome, but every new option meant more to maintain.
”The more different options we wanted to offer, the more work it created,” Essi sums up.
”We agreed on a meeting for the very next day”
Essi’s attention was caught by Thril through an email newsletter, right at the beginning of Thril’s early days. The message came at the right moment.
”The service felt interesting straight away, particularly because we saw in it an opportunity to reduce our own manual workload,” Essi says. A meeting was arranged for the very next day.
Gaia was one of the first Pilates studios on Thril, which naturally factored into the decision. Not everything required by Gaia’s business model was yet available. In the end, however, that didn’t determine the choice and features were developed collaboratively.
”Thril already had more useful features for us than our previous system. And it was important for us to see that the service was also being developed based on our needs.”
Essi, Gaia Studios
Manual work disappeared, replaced by flexibility
The studio’s memberships and recurring payments now run automatically. Campaigns, discount groups and courses can be created without every new product meaning a new manual process.
”We can build our services more freely. We have significantly broader possibilities to create different campaigns, discount groups and products than before.”
Essi, Gaia Studios
Managing memberships, payments and various products in particular now requires far less manual work. At the same time, running the studio has become easier with more functions handled through a single system.
For Gaia, the biggest benefit of switching systems has been exactly that: time saved. Essi notes how happy she is with how much of her own time has been freed up for developing the studio. In a small business, every hour not spent on manual admin is an extra hour for growing the business.
One unexpected favourite, according to Essi, has been Thril’s chat feature. Customers reach out with a lower threshold than they would by email.
”In chat, the bar for asking even small things is lower. Customers have praised how easy it is to get in touch directly through the system,” she says.
And the switching process itself?
The transition to Thril went, to our delight, surprisingly smoothly. Thril’s team handled the migration of existing customers, punch cards and memberships to the new system.
”We got through the switch with very little effort relative to how much data and how many different products were migrated into the system,” Essi says.
Looking ahead
Gaia continues to develop its memberships and class offering. A new trial package, which every customer can purchase once, has been launched to lower the barrier to trying the studio.
”We want customers to have as flexible options as possible to fit their training into their own everyday life,” Essi says.
Thril and Gaia continue to develop together. Wishes are put forward and, according to Essi, they have been acted on quickly. Her words for other Pilates studio owners:
”I would warmly recommend Thril to other Pilates studios too. It has been great to see how much Thril has developed since we joined as one of the first Pilates studios. As the system evolves, we continuously get new opportunities to automate our own work and build even more flexible services for our customers.”
Explore Gaia Studios’ offerings here
Contact information
📞 Phone: +358 44 2838863
📧 Email: info@thril.fi
📍 Address: Unioninkatu 24, 00130 Helsinki, Suomi
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