169 Improvements to TULA in 2014

2014 was a great year for all of us at TULA - and that includes are customers too! Looking back, we improved TULA a total of 169 times and maybe more. That means, we added or improved features, fixed bugs, and increased the performance and stability of TULA 169 times in 2014.

Here's the complete list (in case you were wondering):

Even with all of these improvements in 2014, you can expect the same from us in 2015. We strive to do all of this without complicating our product. You can count on us to keep things simple while making you a more powerful business owner.

Racking up the WOW points

This is a blog post by Derek Hopper, Lead Engineer of TULA.

One of my first jobs was with a company called Mike's Carwash (they're a big carwash chain throughout Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky). Our main focus was the customer and giving them the best experience possible. Customer retention is high because the employees are friendly and always do the right thing.

Mike's Carwash has a concept called "WOW points".  For example, you get a point if a customer mentions you by name when you're not around. If a customer takes the time to send in a comment card about a great experience, you get a point.

It's a reward system at its core, but it's so much more than that. Doing these things becomes second nature. You become less focused on the points and more focused on continuing to do the right thing. You start racking up the points with customers because you're always focused on them.

I like to think we have a pseudo WOW points culture at TULA. No matter how long a customer has been with us, we treat them the same - we treat them as we would want to be treated. Our glowing reviews reflect that.

We are racking up the WOW points as best we can. That's how we try to stand out. Customers that have received responses from us in less than a few minutes know this. Customers that ask us for advice know this. Customers that need website help know this.

Each time a customer comes to us with a request, we handle it in the best way possible.

Here's the best part. You can translate WOW points into many different parts of your life. You can do it at your yoga studio. You can rack up points with your friends or at the office. If you focus on it for at least thirty days, you'll form a habit of it. Eventually, you'll forget about the points altogether and all you'll have left is a better culture, a better yoga studio, and a better you!

Improved Special Events and Event Series

We're super happy to announce today a big improvement to our special events feature, the way in which the special events are created, how multiple events are tied together and the way in which you go about tying passes to events.

Previously the feature was super powerful, but we felt the experience of create the events and tying passes to them could be optimized to be a lot better. We wanted people to be able to very easily tie together both multiple events to a single series, as well as tie multiple passes to each of the events in the series.

For example: A beginners workshop that happens on Monday nights and Saturday afternoons, or a retreat that has 15 classes inside of it, or a guest instructor teaching 5 workshops over a weekend, all of which are part of a specific series.

Below are a few screenshots highlighting the new and improved feature:

Associate Repeating Events or Random Events to a single series
Now you have the option of not just adding repeating events, but also random events, to a single series.

New Event Series Page: Easily add and remove events to/from an existing series
On the event series page, you can now view all events in that series, detach events from the series (or delete them entirely) and add new events to the series. Added bonus: When you add a new event to the series, it automatically gets all the valid passes for that series attached to it.

Add new passes for a special event, while creating the special event
Previously it was a little bit clunky to add new passes and new special events. Now it's all part of the same workflow.

We're thrilled with how this enhancement turned out, and hope you find it a lot easier and pleasant to make your special events!

A filter on every frame

I somewhat regularly go through the #yoga hashtag and others similar ones like it on Instagram. Lately though, I just can't get this thought out of my head: A filter on every frame.

The pictures are beautiful, and let's face it, sometimes the bodies too. Men and women alike.

But everything looks so fake.

Remember when technology was trying to get good enough to represent the real thing? Now our technology is so good that reality just isn't good enough, so we spend time where everything has to be even better than reality.

And then we put a filter on every frame.

Why I think this is interesting though is because for all of this 'stuff' there is it's opposite, and what I love about the irony of the yoga hashtag, is that it's anecdote is the yoga studio.

We can put filters on our frames, but we can't lie to ourselves.

I can only speak for myself, but I think I need to spend a little more time putting my body on a yoga mat, and a little less time putting filters on my frames.

 

 

The yoga industrial complex

My entrance into the world of yoga was a surprise, happened by accident when Maile opened her studio, and my immersion has been at least as much in the context of business, if not more, than the yoga itself. 

While I still consider myself a complete novice when it comes to the practice of yoga, it's teachings and the ways in which one can improve their life through yoga, I do feel that over the past few years we've been able to get a pretty clear picture into the business of yoga and various trends in the industry.

One theme that comes up repeatedly in my mind, as well as in conversation, is that there very much seems to be different yoga worlds. I've noticed though that these different worlds often fall into one one of two categories:

Independent business on the one side, and what I've started referring to as the yoga industrial complex on the other side.

Like I've written before about some of our competitors, different doesn't necessarily have to mean better or worse, but different is.....different.

The yoga industrial complex sells volume.

Independents sell loyalty. 

The yoga industrial complex is Groupon, calling every studio multiple times per week trying to get them to sell their yoga for a dollar, while the independent shuns the daily deals and instead works to get a new monthly member.

The yoga industrial complex is Lululemon, mocking the women who shop at their stores, while selling to them at the same time. The independent is Teeki, coming out with intriguing designs and working to be sustainable and making the world better at the same time.

Yoga Journal, owned by Active Interest Media which publishes over 100 magazines, is definitely part of the Yoga Industrial Complex. Yoga Iowa is the independent.

Core power is part of the yoga industrial complex. Your new studio is the independent. 

I bring this up, and it's worth thinking about, because small business often think they need to emulate big businesses. This usually isn't true, I think even more-so in the world of yoga, and even more-so still when we're talking about yoga studios.

As yoga becomes more and more popular, as more studios open, as more clothing manufacturers like Reebok, Nike and Under Armour all work to gain market share in the world of yoga, it's important to ask, what kind of business are you trying to build?

Are you trying to compete with core power? Or are you trying to inspire someone that's never done yoga to give it a try?

These are very different questions that lead to very different business decisions. Are you building a studio that aims to be part of the yoga industrial complex?

Or are you an independent?