happy new year, and 2025 changes
We are into the last few hours of 2024, and while it was a hard year for many people I care about, and indeed pretty awful for the world at large, within our little East of Eden community, there were some things to celebrate too.
We lauched RIDE in March. We’ll be adding more classes in 2025, we have weights arriving in Jan for RIDE/sculpt classes, and Karaoke RIDE is also on its way;
We also gave the reformer studio a glow up in March, and over this year we’ve added classical reformer plus more strong and open classes, and in Jan we’ll have 73 classes per week for all levels.
2024 was also the year we got serious about inferno pilates with 6 classes per week;
We launched Calisthenics with Jonny, with 2 new Weds classes coming in Jan (8.15am and 1.30pm);
We launched our first barre training with Tara. Expect round 2 of the barre training in 2025, as well as our first reformer Pilates teacher training launching March 2025. Plus yoga CPD with Catherine Weston and masterclasses with Claire Missingham;
We brought yoga out to the community, at Fellowship Square, at London Zoo, plus Natural History Museum, a partnership that has been running for 7 years;
Eryck and I took 15 people for a magical retreat in Costa Rica, many of whom are coming back to Portugal in May – and in fact we only have 3 spaces left, so if you are thinking about it, don’t sleep on it.
Most importantly, we welcomed thousands of you to classes, taught by our brilliant teachers, with the amazing front of house and behind the scenes team holding it all together. Any fuckups were almost certainly my fault.
We are making some changes to our memberships, and the booking window in 2025, and we are raising our prices slightly for some classes. We haven’t changed the price of our mat classes (or reformer!) since 2016, but we have continued to improve the studios and facilities. I’m about to receive a substantial rent increase from the council, so unfortunately, we do now need to make this small change:
All mat classes without equipment, barre express classes and the handstands and gymnastic conditioning class will now be 8 credits, £16 dropin, or £10 with our biggest credit bundle;
All other classes except standard reformer will be 9 credits, £18 dropin, or £11.25 with the biggest bundle;
Reformer stays at 11 credits, £22, or £13.75 with that bundle, and we continue to offer the lower cost basics, gentle, pre-natal and express classes at 9 credits. This is the best value reformer in town, and we will also continue to offer our community pricing of £8/10, with spots going on daily.
We are completely off Classpass in 2025, and you can read more about why here.
Other changes we are making in order to try and operate more efficiently, is to reduce the booking window to 1 week. Too often, people book into classes 2 weeks in advance, and then plans change and the classes end up with empty space, which is frustrating for everyone. We are trialling this reduced booking window to see if that helps improve things. The unlimited member cancellation policy is now just 1 late cancel, and zero no shows, with a £20 fine for exceeding this. However if you let us know you can’t make the class and we can fill your spot, we will waive this.
We’ve introduced 2 new memberships:
£99 per month for 81 credits per month to be used on any class. It’s 9 x 9 credit classes, or if you do a mix and have a random number left over, you can purchase more single credits to make it up to another class. Credits cannot be rolled over, and it’s a 6 month minimum.
£129 per month – unlimited everything except reformer, subject to the cancellation policy above, 6 month min;
£159 per month – same pricing as last 4 years, unlimited everything including reformer, subject to the cancellation policy above, 6 month min;
We’ve got lots of new classes coming - more calisthenics, more strength, more reformer, and lots to look forward to in 2025 – the launch of BBB, our ante-natal course, the Soho Theatre finally being done, East of Eden turns 10 (and I turn 50!), to name a few.
Wishing you all a happy new year, and a big thanks to all of you, customers, staff and teachers, for sticking with East of Eden in 2024. Maybe 2025 will be an amazing year, maybe not. Most likely, and if we are lucky, it will have some highs, some lows, lots of the mundane day-to-day, all of which will add up to 12 months of living and connecting and breathing and growing. If we can say we survived, we are winning. Life is fleeting and precious. Let’s live it.
Abby x