How Everybody Pilates turns exceptional teaching into long-term member loyalty

About Everybody Pilates

Pilates may be enjoying a surge in popularity, but Amy Kellow was teaching the method long before reformer classes became a fixture of boutique fitness.

As co-founder of Everybody Pilates, Amy has built a business around classical Pilates, small-group instruction and a belief that the quality of the teacher shapes the quality of the entire member experience. Today, Everybody Pilates operates four locations across the UK and the Netherlands, alongside a rapidly growing teacher-training business.

That emphasis on teaching is more than a philosophy. It has helped Everybody Pilates retain instructors and members for as long as 17 years. And as the business has grown, bsport has given Amy the operational and marketing systems needed to support those relationships across multiple locations.

Building on the original Pilates method

Everybody Pilates teaches classical Pilates “as it was originally designed.” Amy’s own education included mentorship under Jay Grimes, who trained with first-generation teachers connected directly to Joseph Pilates.

The classical method uses a complete system of mat and apparatus work. Rather than treating every exercise or piece of equipment in isolation, instructors observe how a person moves and use the wider system to help them build the strength, mobility and control needed to progress.

"Jay taught me about intuition, listening to the body and reading the body," Amy says. "He would say, ‘You talk too much. Be quiet and watch the body.’ You need to see where people are moving from, where they are not moving from and what support the person in front of you needs."

That individual attention is built into the Everybody Pilates model. The studios offer private and duet sessions, while tower classes are limited to four people. Instructors can provide hands-on feedback and adapt the work to the individual, something Amy believes is difficult to reproduce in a room of 20 or 30 people.

"We have always chosen small-group training because we get better results for our customers," she says.

Why instructor quality keeps members coming back

The approach reflects what members value when choosing a studio. According to bsport’s Studio Fitness Playbook, experience-led factors dominate the decision to try somewhere new. Feeling comfortable and welcome ranks first at 64%, followed by high-quality instructors at 60% and fair pricing for value at 59%.

For Amy, instructors are not simply one part of the experience. They are Everybody Pilates’ greatest strength.

"Our teachers are our best product," she says. "They are always really well trained, whether they come through our education program or work in one of our studios. They all go through the same programs with us, so the quality of teachers we produce is one of the things I am most proud of."

That consistency has created unusually long relationships on both sides of the business. Some members have trained with Everybody Pilates since it began 17 years ago, while core instructors have remained with the company for 16 or 17 years.

"Our long-term members love Anna, Kerry and the core group of teachers who have been here for years," Amy says. "The level of teaching is always really high. That is part of why our teachers have stayed for so long and why our customers have stayed with us too."

The depth of experience also allows the team to embrace Pilates trends without sacrificing technique.

"We can do all the crazy things. We have been doing them for 20 years," Amy jokes. "But we worked really hard to get there. We know how to build the foundations so people can do those things with strength."

Growing a second business through teacher education

Teaching has shaped Everybody Pilates from the beginning. Amy originally opened her first studio after being invited to train as a teacher educator and learning that she would need her own space in which to run courses.

What began as a route into teacher training quickly developed into a wider studio business. Everybody Pilates now combines four locations in Southsea, Locks Heath, Windsor and Maastricht with a separate education arm offering teacher certification and continuing development.

The two sides of the business reinforce each other. Trainees need to complete personal practice and observation hours, and Everybody Pilates offers them discounted studio classes as part of that journey. The education business is managed as its own studio within bsport, giving it a dedicated booking setup while keeping it within the same wider system.

Demand has grown rapidly. Over the past two years, the volume of teacher training has expanded to the point that Amy is building a broader network to support it. Everybody Pilates has already launched courses with a teacher trainer in Scotland, and the next phase will involve associate teaching studios and new graduate trainers.

Choosing more than a booking platform

When Everybody Pilates was preparing to open its Windsor studio, Amy knew the business needed stronger systems behind its growth. Having used Mindbody previously, she was not searching for another tool that would simply process bookings and payments.

"I have always said that a booking system is never just a system. It is a marketing tool," she says. "It should be about marketing, not only taking bookings and payments. I was looking for a better marketing option that was more efficient and could manage communication with our customers in a much better way. bsport offered that next step."

Today, bsport supports the essential day-to-day work across the business, including bookings, payments, memberships and recurring reservations. At the same time, its automated marketing and Audience features help Everybody Pilates continue communicating with members in the background.

"The customer service side and the marketing side go hand in hand," Amy says. "Monthly memberships and recurring bookings save us time in themselves. Then the automated marketing features save us a lot of time too. The Audience feature probably does more than we realize because it continues marketing to people without us having to think about it all the time."

For Amy, another important difference is that bsport does not feel static. She can see customer feedback reflected in the direction of the platform, including newer capabilities such as Insights and Audience.

"You can tell bsport is an evolving product," she says. "I feel like the team works with us as customers, listens to us and develops the product around what we need. With Mindbody, the answer was often that something simply was not in the pipeline. The new features coming through, including Insights and Audience, feel like they are moving in the right direction. That continual improvement is really important."

Putting the right systems behind the right people

Equipment and studio space can be sourced. For Amy, the more difficult part of expansion is finding the right people and giving them a consistent way to run the business.

Her advice to studio owners considering a second, third or fourth location is to establish those foundations before they grow.

"Get your systems in place before you even start looking," she says. "Make sure you can bring staff in and train them on the systems they will use. We can teach someone how to teach Pilates. It is the customer service, the work behind the scenes, the marketing and the systems that need to be in place to support you as you grow."

At Everybody Pilates, those systems create more room for the part of the business that matters most: developing outstanding teachers who understand the method, know their members and give people a reason to return year after year.

If you want to spend less time managing daily admin and more time building the experience that keeps your members coming back, book a demo with bsport.