La Luna Wellness Studio goes with the digital flow
Going back to normal after the pandemic may never really be all that normal. Too much time has passed.
People have sat with themselves, they’ve had to learn things about themselves the pace of ordinary life doesn’t seem to allow for. And it might end up being a good thing.
La Luna Wellness Studio founders Melanie Ollivier and Paula DiGiuseppe have been trying to remember that. They’ve been trying to go with the flow and adapt as the world changes quickly around them and the Thunder Bay Wellness community, a flow which pushed the just-over-a-year-old studio to bring its classes online. “We are doing good and I feel that things are good, but there's still just a whole weird vibe to everything,” says DiGiuseppe. “And that's normal, that's natural for right now – we can't fight that and there is no need to fight it. You just have to go with the flow of things.”
La Luna Wellness Studio isn’t alone. The entire wellness industry has had to rethink its model. Prior to the pandemic, the Thunder Bay studio had focused on using social media to build its digital presence in order to get people through the doors. DiGiuseppe started the business out of her house before bringing Ollivier onboard.
“It's just been growing organically and so we never really had the thought about moving online but we were kind of forced to do that in this certain situation,” says Ollivier. “It's actually benefited us because we are seeing new people jump on… we are expanding our market to people who might not necessarily have known we were even here in Thunder Bay.”
They’ve also found an audience online of people who aren’t in Thunder Bay, a possibility they hadn’t really considered. It’s equal parts a spike in interest for health and wellness amidst the pandemic, and efforts by La Luna Wellness Studio over the past few months to grow their digital presence.
To do that, the duo work
Digital Main Street a été créé par la Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA), avec la contribution directe de la Ville de Toronto. DMS est aussi appuyé par plusieurs partenaires d'affaires stratégiques comme Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Microsoft, Facebook, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Pages Jaunes et Lightspeed.
This case study was completed during a prior expansion of DMS in partnership with the Province of Ontario and Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
In June 2020, a $42.5-million investment from FedDev Ontario and an additional $7.45 million from the Government of Ontario brought together the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, Communitech, Invest Ottawa and the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association to expand the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital as a response to the impacts of COVID-19.
