Good Sweat first began offering cycling classes in April 2019, aiming to give people both a challenging work out and a way to pay it forward in their communities at the same time. A portion of the cost of each paid class was earmarked to either donate to local causes or subsidize the cost of a class for another community member.
But less than a year later, the COVID-19 pandemic swept through Northern Virginia, leading to lockdowns that few small businesses could have predicted.
“I feel like we had such bad timing,” says founder Alessandra “Ali” Hashemi. “For so many new businesses, the first few years are critical to your long-term success and building up your reputation, your clientele.”
She recalled Good Sweat’s “great upward trajectory” in that first year.
“It was just building and building and building until we had our first sold-out Saturday in March of 2020, the weekend before the pandemic,” she says, describing the subsequent closures as being struck by “a ton of bricks.” The fledgling business then struggled to repeatedly adapt to shifting pandemic health policies.
Hashemi added that she was “obsessed” with maintaining riders’ health and safety, expressing how that should be critical for a health and fitness company. To that end, at various times the studio shifted classes outside and hauled its stationary bicycles out onto the parking lot of its storefront (in the shopping center that includes Guajillo, Mele Bistro, The Simple Greek, and Pho 75).
Good Sweat also pivoted to online classes and, during its initial pandemic closure, even allowed riders to rent the bicycles for use at home. The studio remained closed for inside classes beyond Virginia’s pandemic lockdown policies for gyms.
(Despite closures, Good Sweat was voted the region’s “best cycling studio” in Northern Virginia magazine last year.)
Throughout the roughly three years that the studio was open, Good Sweat raised and donated $21,000 to “close to 100 nonprofits,” Hashemi says.
“What’s been really beautiful is … not just the monetary impact that we’ve had, which matters to me as someone who used to be an executive director of a nonprofit, but even more so hosting nonprofits in our space in our first year, pre-COVID,” says Hashemi. “We’ve connected riders to nonprofits to volunteer [at]. We’ve held other nonmonetary fundraisers,” like supply drives for Black Lives Matter protesters.
The studio’s last session will be held April 30. A memo will be sent to email subscribers on March 27, detailing Hashemi’s plan for those with paid memberships or class packs. However, Hashemi briefly explained that Good Sweat will stop billing for memberships after April 7. Any 12-month unlimited memberships will be valid through the cycling studio’s last ride.
“No one’s gonna get charged on April 25 for an unlimited month,” she says. “If people have credits — which the vast majority of our clients do — they’re automatically going to expire by April 30 or whatever their [class pack’s] expiration date is.” She also says Good Sweat would work with individuals with special circumstances “on a case-by-case basis” if given enough notice via email.
She encourages clients to continue coming in through the studio’s closing date, and to buy single classes instead of class packs.
“We hope people can keep coming in; we’ll do some sort of celebration on our last day,” Hashemi says. “But we want people to keep riding. We don’t want people to think that we’re closed now.”
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