The Float Spa: Winner – The Business Resilience Award

Because The Float Spa’s raison d’etre is to help people, being forced to close when people needed them most was a real blow.  Fortunately, the wonders of modern technology, some innovative ideas and sheer determination allowed them to continuing offering services.  Being recognised for doing this with a Business Resilience Award voted for by the local people they set up to help felt like a real privilege and just the boost they needed after such a hard year.

Looking After Mental Health

Camille Pierson founded The Float Spa after realising she needed to take better care of her own mental health and wanted to share the mental health benefits of floatation with others.  The business was the first of its kind in the area but, as soon as people began discovering how much floating could improve their mental and physical wellbeing, it quickly became popular.  When the pandemic struck and The Float Spa was forced to close along with lots of other businesses on 20th March, it had a huge effect on people’s mental health as anxiety rose and depression and loneliness started to set in as the lockdown went on.  Not being able to offer people floatation therapy to help them feel during this time was heart-breaking but, fortunately, it was not all The Float Spa offered.

Continuity

Yoga at The Float Spa was also very popular so they were very fortunate in being able to use technology to continue those classes online.  The speed with which they got the online classes up and running was impressive as well as the safety features built into their online platform.  It meant people could login and pay securely to see their favourite Float Spa expert yogis teaching live from their homes.  Additionally, they added all kinds of pre-recorded yoga and meditation content to the platform for people to access on demand so they could get their yoga and relaxation fix whenever they needed it.  They felt this was very important for people who depended on their yoga for their peace of mind and physical health. 

New Starts

Technology wasn’t the only option to help people during lockdown either.  A new scheme by the NHS offering acupuncture to its staff allowed The Float Spa to offer its facilities for their use.  This first of its kind research project yielded some impressive results.  The Float Spa offered the NHS their facilities initially free of charge but now have been forced to charge a small fee to allow it to remain open.  When they finally reopened in August, they had to make all the kinds of adjustments to stay COVID safe but still found themselves shortlisted for the Small Business Saturday 100.  The online platform continued to be popular until the opportunity arose to expand the online offering even further.

Limited Support

The Float Spa’s situation meant they received very little financial support through the first two lockdowns (and still aren’t receiving it through the latest one) but were fortunate enough to receive a small fund from Coast to Capital Funding to create an ecommerce platform to sell the branded goods they’d been selling in a very limited way into local small independent retailers.  This means they went from selling a handful of bath bombs and bags of Epsom Salts each month to making over 800 bath bombs in November and December alone as they were so popular through the webshop.

Future Proofing

Since the 2021 lockdown began, The Float Spa have been working harder than ever to expand their offering to keep supporting people’s mental and physical wellbeing during this difficult time.  In addition to the booming online sales and popular online yoga classes, they recently introduced beginners’ yoga courses which people can purchase and follow at their leisure.  These courses are designed for total beginners to learn specific styles of yoga rather than just generic yoga-type practices.  They hope these classes will introduce new people to the benefits of yoga and give them the confidence to join a real life class once lockdown is over.  Camille Pierson herself has been adding to her skillset to expand her offering going forward by training to be a behavioural scientist.  She is now fully qualified and offering online coaching through Zoom.  The total lack of support for company directors made this a necessity but she has found it a really interesting opportunity to learn how she could help people to achieve their goals and live a happier life.

Winning the Business Resilience Award after such a hard fight to keep going, keep helping people and keep looking to the future has really given The Float Spa the recognition they needed to push on, continue expanding and improving.  Obviously, they’re desperately looking forward to opening again to see all their lovely visitors but The Float Spa have learnt a great deal from these lockdowns and believe it will help them to offer an even better service to help people in the future.