Why Most Pole Studios Are Pricing Their Classes Incorrectly (And It Starts Before the Math)
You opened your studio because you love this art form. You wanted to build a space where other people could feel what you felt the first time you flew, inverted, or found your own strength on a pole. The business side was never the reason you started. It was the cost of doing the thing you actually cared about.
Most pole, aerial, and circus studio owners price their classes by looking at what other studios charge. They check the studio across town, the studio in the next city, maybe a few well-known studios on Instagram. They average it out, ‘adjust for their market’, and call that their pricing strategy.
That’s not a pricing strategy. That’s just copying.
And it is the single biggest reason so many studios in this industry are quietly running at a loss, paying their instructors in studio credit, and watching their owners burn out within three to five years of opening.
This post is for studio owners who suspect their pricing is off but are not sure where the real problem starts. The short answer: it starts before the math.
What is competitor-based pricing, and why does it fail?
Competitor-based pricing means setting your class prices by referencing what similar businesses charge. It is the default approach taught in most general business resources, including the article on pricing pole-based services published by the International Pole Industry Association, which recommends researching competitors as the first step.
For most industries, this approach has obvious problems. In the pole, aerial, and circus industry, it has a specific and severe one.
The studios you are using as reference points may not be profitable.
You don’t know if the studio across town is paying its owner a real wage. You don’t know if its instructors are being paid fairly. You don’t know if the owner is funding the business through a partner's salary, a credit line, or savings that are quietly running out. You see a number on a website. You do not see what that number is actually supporting.
When you set your prices based on theirs, you are likely setting yourself up for failure. Their numbers cannot run your business. Only yours can.
Why is this so common in the pole, aerial, and circus industry specifically?
Three reasons.
The industry grew from passion, not from business operators. Most studios were founded by movers who loved the art form and wanted to share it. Pricing was an afterthought, set low to make classes accessible, often without a real understanding of what the studio cost to run. Those early prices became the reference points for the next generation of studios, which then became reference points for the generation after.
The community values accessibility. Pole and aerial communities are some of the most generous and inclusive in the fitness world. That is genuinely beautiful. It also makes raising prices feel like a betrayal of the community, which keeps owners frozen at numbers that do not sustain their businesses.
There is very little open conversation about studio economics. Owners rarely share what their actual margins look like, what they pay themselves, or whether their pricing is working. Without that information, everyone assumes everyone else has it figured out. Most of them do not.
The result is an entire industry where the prices look consistent on the surface and most studios are struggling underneath.
What should pole and aerial studios price from instead?
Your own numbers. Specifically, four of them.
What it costs to operate your studio every month. Rent, utilities, insurance, rigging inspection, equipment replacement, software, instructor pay, marketing, accounting, cleaning, and every other line item that keeps the doors open.
What you need to pay yourself. Not what is left over at the end of the month. A real, defined owner salary that funds your life. Studio owners who treat their own pay as optional are not running a business. They’re running an expensive hobby.
What margin you need to stay open long-term. Equipment wears out. Rigging needs replacement. Insurance premiums rise. Without a margin built into your pricing, every unexpected cost becomes a crisis.
Your realistic capacity at realistic attendance. This is the piece most studios miss entirely. Your math has to be built on what your classes actually fill and it’s unrealistic to base that off 100% capacity.
Once you have these four numbers, the next layer is structure. How you organize your pricing matters as much as the numbers themselves. A studio with the right total revenue target but the wrong pricing structure will still struggle with client flow, retention, and monthly recurring revenue, which is the steady predictable income that makes a business feel sustainable instead of fragile. Your pricing structure has to support the natural client flow that will increase your monthly recurring revenue and your intro offer should be priced strategically.
When you build pricing from these four numbers, you may find your current prices are 20 percent too low. You may find they are 50 percent too low. Some studios discover they have been losing money on every class for years.
This information is not a verdict on your skill as a studio owner or a movement educator. It’s a measurement. Measurements are the only place real change can start.
Does this mean ignoring what other studios charge entirely?
No. But it shouldn’t be your focus. Competitor pricing is useful as context, not as a target.
Knowing what other studios charge tells you what the market is currently used to. It does not tell you what your business needs to charge to survive. Those are two different questions, and most owners collapse them into one.
A useful way to think about it: build your pricing from your own numbers first. Then look at the market. If your math says your beginner series needs to cost a specific amount and the going rate in your area is much lower then you have decisions to make about how you communicate your positioning and value. But you need to make those decisions from a position of knowing what your business actually requires, not from copying numbers that are likely wrong for you.
Will the right students still come if I raise my prices?
Yes. And more importantly, the right students will be MORE attracted to your studio at sustainable prices than at unsustainable ones.
This is the part most owners struggle to believe, so it is worth slowing down on.
Your pricing communicates something about your business before a student ever walks in the door. When your prices are built from real numbers, they signal that you take your studio seriously, that your instructors are paid properly, that your equipment is maintained, that the business will still be here in three years. Students who value those things are the students you actually want.
The students who choose a studio purely on lowest price are not your long-term community. They are price-shopping, and they will leave the moment another studio offers a cheaper intro deal. Building your pricing around keeping those students costs you the students who would have stayed for years.
Your ideal student is the one who wants a studio that is going to be there for them. Who wants instructors who are not burned out and underpaid. Who wants equipment that has been inspected and maintained. Who is willing to invest in their own practice because they take it seriously. That student is not looking for the cheapest option. They are looking for the right one.
When your pricing reflects what your studio actually requires to run well, you become more visible to that student, not less.
What is the first step a studio owner should take?
Stop treating your competitors' prices as data about what you should charge. Start treating them as data about what the market is currently used to seeing. Those are not the same thing.
Then sit down with your real numbers. Every operating cost, every line item, including paying yourself like the badass business owner you are. The full picture is uncomfortable to look at the first time. It is also the only foundation that produces pricing you can actually defend, raise, and build a sustainable business on.
The math comes next. The mindset of raising prices comes after that. There is real work in both of those layers. But none of that work matters until you stop pricing from someone else's spreadsheet.
Rachel Yacobucci is a business coach for service-based entrepreneurs, with a specialization in fitness coaches, pole and aerial studios, and 1-on-1 practitioners. She is certified in the Pricing Overhaul Method® and brings a mental health background to her coaching work.
If you want a clearer picture of where your studio's pricing currently stands, the Pricing Clarity Diagnostic is a 10-minute strategic tool that gives you a snapshot of your current pricing stage, the red flags costing you money, and your next concrete step.
