A Studio That Became a Platform

A wellness community with nowhere to grow

Gabs and Mel had built Reset Collective into a wellness community people genuinely loved, but it could only ever reach the people who could physically get to a class. Every session was live, in person, in one place. They came to ThinkStory wanting to keep the warmth of that room and put it somewhere anyone in South Africa could reach: subscription website development, a new brand, and a way to keep fresh classes coming. What they did not want to lose was the thing that made Reset Reset, the feeling of belonging.

• Reach capped at whoever could travel to a class
• No recurring model, so income depended on filling the room each time
• A brand and a website that did not match the quality of the classes themselves

What does a studio become when it goes online?

The honest answer is: not a video library. Plenty of platforms already sell workout videos, and Reset would have disappeared among them. The question we kept coming back to with Gabs and Mel was how to move the community online without flattening it into a catalogue. That shaped every decision that followed, from the brand to the platform to the way the classes are filmed.

A new identity and a subscription platform on Shopify

We rebuilt the brand first: a warmer, more grown-up identity that finally looked like the classes felt, with guidelines Reset could apply to everything from a class thumbnail to an Instagram post. Then we built the subscription platform on Shopify. Members get the full class archive plus every new release, sorted by type, HIIT, yoga, meditation and mindfulness, so it is easy to find the right session for the day. The part we are proudest of is the community chat that sits inside it, the place where members check in, cheer each other on, and get the belonging that a video on its own never gives. That feed is the closest thing to the old room.

Filming a class a week, every week

A subscription only works if there is a reason to come back, so we set up a production line that puts out a new class every week. We coordinate each shoot with Gabs and Mel, handle the filming and the technical side, and add the category graphics that tell members at a glance what kind of session they are about to do. The point of the system is that it keeps running: a fresh class lands every week without Gabs and Mel having to become a film crew on top of teaching.

Room to keep adding

Turning an in-person studio into a subscription platform came down to five moving parts: a brand that travels, a Shopify store that handles the subscriptions, a class library sorted so people can actually find things, a community chat that keeps the belonging, and a weekly filming rhythm that keeps it all fed. With those in place, Reset can add new class types, new teachers or new topics without rebuilding anything. The studio did not move online. It grew a second home there.

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