The transition from a knee-surgery patient looking to regain her strength through exercise to a fitness group founder with an expanding network of 13 luxe Muse Pilates studios hasn’t been such a stretch for Allana Ford.
Ford has always been a fitness fanatic with an eye for opportunity, but after her knee surgery it was the search for a sustainable path to recovery that led her to discover the benefits of Reformer Pilates.
Now the Newcastle-based Ford, a finalist in the 2024 Australian Young Entrepreneur Awards, is actively mapping out an ambitious strategy to significantly grow Muse Pilates to 100 locations over the next five years as the business has found its niche delivering an upmarket fitness studio experience to its members.
With a head office team of 18 and its first two franchises in the ACT secured, Ford is capitalising on exponential growth in the business since she opened her first studio at Dulwich Hill in Sydney’s inner southwest in 2019.
Supporting that growth is a new venture, Spicy Pilates - an online Reformer Pilates teacher training course accredited in Australia and Canada that Ford hopes will cultivate a new generation of professional Pilates instructors.
It’s a formidable track record for Ford who has bootstrapped her business from the outset, navigating the early years through the pandemic and creating an experience that sets Muse Pilates apart in a crowded Pilates space.
Muse Pilates has grown rapidly on the back of a unique approach that eschews the “industrial” gym experience that many fitness studios offer.
“Our brand is exclusive but in very much an inclusive way,” Ford tells Business News Australia.
“There are so many things that we do differently. It starts with beautiful studios and quality fitouts where no expense has been spared.
“This really makes a difference that gives the brand a sense of permanence.”
The inspiration for Muse Pilates came when Ford was recovering from knee surgery. She quickly found out that her local gym just didn’t cut it when it came to getting herself back into shape on the recovery journey.
“As a gym junkie, I always loved to exercise and would go to classes regularly, but after my operation I couldn’t find any classes where I could complete the whole session,” she says.
“I found myself sitting down for half of the session or I found I wasn’t really getting a proper workout.
“That’s when I stumbled across Reformer Pilates which gave me the workout I needed, but then the Pilates studios I started going to had this ‘daggy’ feel to them like a gym. That’s when I saw a gap in the market for beautiful studios with upmarket fitouts.”
Ford describes each Muse Pilates studio as an “oasis of calm, with small class sizes, luxurious facilities and expert instructors who provide personalised guidance”.
The vision for Muse was to make Pilates “fun, accessible, and inclusive for everyone, regardless of body type, fitness level or experience”.
“At its core, Muse Pilates is about real movement for real people. My vison has been to create a welcoming community where clients can enjoy a fantastic workout while feeling supported and accepted,” says Ford.
“For me, the motivation has always been about helping people feel good about themselves and their bodies. At Muse, we’ve worked hard to ensure that our studios are a judgment-free zone where everyone can leave feeling stronger, more confident, and better than when they arrived.
“We largely market to the female 30 to 60-year-old demographic and all of our imagery reflects that, but we are not exclusively female as we definitely have a lot of male clients as well.”
Business growth has been aided by a “killer sales and marketing strategy that really works well”.
Reformer Pilates differs from mat Pilates because through the reformer machine participants can add resistance in a controlled environment.
“This means you don’t have to go to the gym to get that type of workout,” says Ford. “It provides low intensity that is really hard work which is why a lot of females love it.”
Ford says the early success of the business gave her the confidence to keep growing, and now she believes the “formula’s right” to keep going.
Muse Pilates recently opened a new studio on the Gold Coast, the company’s first in Queensland which Ford says is a strategic move establishing the business in a third region outside of NSW and the ACT.
“It’s strategic also by allowing us to prove our business model and particularly the franchising model across more states and territories,” she says.
“People really jumped on board quite quickly. Our two franchises in Canberra were existing studios bought by our first franchisees.
“After getting the model right, we now see franchising as the growth path. We will be opening another studio in the next couple of months in Wagga, and from there we are franchising all the way.”
Critical to the growth of the business is Spicy Pilates, an online Pilates trainer certification business that is delivering a cohort of new trainers for the booming sector.
“I established Spicy Pilates because we had so many people come to us at Muse asking where they could get trained,” says Ford.
“In the past, we would send them off elsewhere but if they came back to us, we found we were still having to retrain them to be compatible with our own systems.
“So, I could see the opportunity where instead of sending these people away we could keep them in our world, funnel them back into Muse and hand pick the best instructors. We have had quite a few people coming through the Spicy Pilates program and we are growing.
“Speaking to a lot of potential franchisees they see great benefit in having people already trained to potentially work for them.”
Ford says she is currently speaking with potential franchisees to further expand the Muse Pilates footprint nationally.
“Our long-term strategy is to ensure that there’s a Muse Pilates studio in every state across Australia, providing more communities with the opportunity to experience the transformative ‘Muse effect’ and become the best version of themselves in a supportive, empowering environment,” she says.
“We are also exploring opportunities for international expansion, with the goal of taking Muse Pilates global. As we move forward, our commitment to building an inclusive and empowering community remains at the heart of everything we do.”
Help us deliver quality journalism to you.
As a free and independent news site providing daily updates
during a period of unprecedented challenges for businesses everywhere
we call on your support