How Flip Tease Studio tripled its numbers after two bad software switches

Highlights

Problem

• Six years on Timely, a hair salon platform that was never built for fitness classes
• A six-month attempt at Fit Degree that delivered constant glitches and broken bookings
• Manual paper punch cards for class packages, signed off by hand every visit
• Editing a six-week series after a snow day or sick instructor required rebuilding the whole thing

Solution

OfferingTree’s Studio Max Plan

Results

• Student numbers more than tripled in two years
• Class booking dropped from 10 to 15 steps down to three
• Packages, privates, and event tickets all moved into a single platform with custom rules per offering

Overview

Danni is part of the Flip Tease Studio team, a pole fitness studio in Atascadero, California celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It was founded as a safe space for women to explore movement, and two years ago opened up to all genders without losing that founding identity. The studio’s whole pitch is that pole fitness is a full body workout you don’t notice you’re doing because you’re having too much fun.

Today the studio has seven instructors with three more in training, around 80 active students, and 24-plus classes a week across multiple skill levels. Danni teaches across the curriculum, including the advanced levels, and she’s also the person who runs the full admin side of the business. The other instructors handle check-ins, contact profiles, and occasional email work, but the platform itself is Danni’s domain. Beyond regular classes, Flip Tease hosts a yearly student showcase, instructor takeovers, a yearly bootcamp, and private parties, all of which now run through OfferingTree.

The challenge

Six years on the wrong platform, then six months on the wrong-er one

For its first six years, Flip Tease ran on Timely, a $20-a-month platform a friend of the studio’s founder had recommended. The catch: Timely is designed for hair salons. None of it was built for movement classes.

When the studio was ready to upgrade, Danni took on the research. She went deep.

“I spent six months researching different softwares. I narrowed it down to Bookeo, Wellness Living, and Fit Degree, and we ended up going with Fit Degree. It was beautiful in all the marketing and the demos and I was in love with it. I was like, my God, this is amazing.”

Then they switched. The polished demo did not match the reality.

“Everything they promised was not working. We were having glitch after glitch after glitch. Students couldn’t book classes. It just wasn’t working that badly that we ended up switching within six months.”

Series edits that broke the whole series

The clearest example of what Fit Degree couldn’t handle was something that happened all the time at a pole studio: a six-week class series needs a date change. An instructor gets sick. The weather makes it unsafe for students to drive. One date has to slide so students don’t lose a class.

On Fit Degree, that small edit could blow up the whole series.

“The glitch was so bad it would basically delete the whole series and you had to completely refresh.”

Underneath all of this was the bigger fear. The studio had just put its students through one bad platform switch. Danni was not going to let that happen twice.

The solution

Deep research and deeper vetting

When Danni went back to her research, she found OfferingTree, and she was not going to be sold a demo again. She did four or five calls with the team before the studio signed up.

“I felt the need to be so thorough in this because we couldn’t put our students through this again. It was so bad.”

Once they made the switch, the thing that mattered most was almost boring: it worked. Series edits took twenty seconds instead of a full rebuild. Booking flows actually completed. Packages stopped requiring a paper punch card.

With OfferingTree, there’s just this little edit button, and you can just change the date on it and it takes 20 seconds. And it’s the best thing ever.

The results

Numbers more than tripled in two years

Danni recently pulled the studio’s growth numbers and even she was surprised. Student counts have more than tripled since the switch. The website builder is what she credits most directly.

The website builder with OfferingTree in it is pivotal for us in making it so easy for students to book. We’ve made our website so user friendly. There’s no questions, students just go and they know how to book everything. It’s three steps to book a class instead of 10 or 15.

Reducing friction at the booking step did exactly what reducing friction tends to do. More students completed bookings. More bookings turned into recurring students. And the studio kept growing into the space its old software couldn’t support.

Spending more time on admin (in a good way)

Asked how many hours of admin she does compared to before, Danni admitted she actually spends more time in the platform now. Not because the work is harder, but because the work is finally interesting.

All these options are now available and I can do all these cool things. Packages, the website builder, the new building blocks, the automations, the customer segments. I love the automations.

The packages feature is one of her favorites. Flip Tease used to track packages with a physical printout card that an instructor signed every time a student used a pass. Now packages are automated, students buy them directly online, and each package is clearly tagged with which classes it can be used for. Custom packages for events made one-off bookings significantly easier to run.

Cancellation policies got a similar upgrade. The standard policy covers regular classes, but parties and privates use a custom no-refund policy, all configured per offering. Privates added a tiered pricing option for groups, which collapsed four separate booking types down to one.

Events stopped being a headache

The yearly student showcase used to be paper tickets. On Fit Degree, event ticketing wasn’t really possible. On OfferingTree, it’s the same flow as any other class.

It was easy, there was no paperwork on the back end for us. And then we got to use our little check-in screen too. When they came to the door it was just find your name, click check-in. It was just so smooth.

Flip Tease is leaning into events more this year. The yearly showcase continues, plus instructor takeovers and a second annual bootcamp for the studio’s 10-year anniversary, this one structured as a mini-showcase plus classes. Two-for-one. All booked through OfferingTree.

Students who refuse to be moved

Roughly a year ago, a pole-specific booking platform reached out to Danni and pitched her on switching. She did her usual due diligence: she floated the idea past her students.

“Every single one of them was like, don’t you dare do that to me.”

That reaction tracks with what Danni hears from people in the broader pole community. She recently tried to book a yoga class at five different studios and spent an hour cycling through the booking systems competitors use.

“It was a headache at these five different locations. It went through all these booking softwares that I looked at and that I tried. It was garbage. The biggest thing with OfferingTree is it works like it’s supposed to.”

A team that ships requests

Danni has a running list of feature requests she keeps in an email draft and sends to the OfferingTree team when something causes any friction. The product has surprised her more than once by shipping things she’d asked for.

I actually typed up this full email and then you guys released another update and two or three things on there were in that update. Oh my God, that was amazing. One of them was a big one.

The packages-in-website-builder update was the one she remembered specifically. Before, she had to list packages out individually as a separate webpage. Now they’re a building block in the website editor, and the right packages just appear where she wants them.

What’s next: more classes, more students, less stigma

Flip Tease’s growth plans are deliberately measured. No moonshots, just steady expansion: adding daytime class slots to a schedule that’s currently evening-only, bringing yoga into the studio, and exploring kids’ classes for the 10-year anniversary year. All of it will run through OfferingTree.

The harder challenge is one no software can fully solve: the cultural stigma around pole fitness. Even now, Danni still has conversations in the parking lot where she’s clarifying that the studio is a fitness business, not a strip club, even as Flip Tease stays openly sex-worker positive. The software does what it can do: it makes signing up frictionless enough that curious first-timers actually follow through.

Danni’s advice to anyone considering OfferingTree, especially after a bad experience with another platform, is short:

The biggest thing with all the other softwares that I’ve tried is the glitching and the problems. We really don’t see that with OfferingTree. It works. Our students don’t have any problems. Admin doesn’t have any problems. It does what it says it’s going to do.

Ready to see what OfferingTree can do for your studio?

Curious about if OfferingTree could do the same for your pole studio? Start a free trial or book a demo with our team.