Meet Boutique Barre Studios
Meet Tempo 301
Kevin Kelly spent most of his career in hospitality management before moving over to the health, fitness and wellness industry so he knows what good operations software looks like. It gets out of the way, it doesn't create work for the people using it, and when something goes wrong at 7am before a full day of service, you can fix it in two minutes. What he found when he joined Tempo 301 as Operations Director was something very different.
Tempo 301 is one of London's original reformer Pilates studios. Founded 16 years ago by Daniel Le Roux, the studio was built around Daniel's proprietary Tempo Technique at a time when reformer Pilates had barely registered as a category in the UK. Tempo were opening their third studio before the rest of the market caught up.
Today, Tempo 301 operates across three boutique studios in Hackney, Shoreditch, and Elephant Park, offering reformer Pilates alongside strength, barre, yoga, sound baths, breathwork, and treatments in the Elephant Park location. Sixteen years in, the brand is built on a genuine method and a client experience that Kevin describes as considered at every touchpoint, right down to having a staffed reception at every session. It's that standard that made the inefficiencies in the old platform so difficult to accept.
The challenge
Tempo 301 had been on the same platform since Daniel founded the business. When Kevin joined around two and a half years ago, the gap between the standard Tempo held itself to and what the software was delivering became hard to ignore.
The everyday stuff was just harder than it needed to be. Creating a new class package, changing a trainer payrate, pulling a report, contacting a group of students after a class change: all of it took more steps than made sense. Cover class management was where the administrative burden was most visible. When a trainer arranged cover for their classes, updating the replacement trainer across multiple shifts over a two- or three-week period was a time-consuming process across three sites. What once required significant manual admin can now be completed in moments.
Beyond the day-to-day friction, there was no real marketing engine behind the business. Converting clients off their intro offer relied on reception manually reviewing expiring packs every morning and following up by hand. Lapsed members got a win-back email if someone remembered to run a report that quarter.
"The system wasn't supporting the team," Kevin says. "The team was supporting the system."
Changing software became a personal priority from his first week.
The solution
Daniel put together a shortlist of options and Momence stood out for covering the most ground without requiring workarounds to fill the gaps.
What Kevin needed wasn't just a cleaner booking system. He needed something that could run the marketing the business had never really had, automate the client communications that were eating into reception time, and hold three locations together without adding complexity. Momence gave him all of that in one place.
The automated sequences were where he started. Intro offer conversions, win-back flows, and ongoing client communications that had previously relied on someone remembering to do them could now be built once and left to run. For a team that prided itself on the in-person experience, getting that administrative weight off the front desk mattered.
Two years on, Kevin still uses the Momence feedback form every week. The platform has continued to develop around how Tempo actually operates, and that ongoing relationship has been as much a part of the experience as the product itself.
"We went from a 15% no-show rate to around 5% within the first month of switching to Momence. That one change alone made a visible difference to how our classes ran."
The impact
The change Kevin noticed first was the no-show rate. Within the first month it dropped from around 15% to around 5%. Automated reminders played a key role. We set reminders to go out one hour before the 12-hour late cancellation cut-off, prompting clients to either commit to their booking or reschedule in time. This meant any released spots could then flow through to the waitlist, allowing it to work as intended and helping fill spaces that would otherwise have gone unused.
What followed was quieter but just as meaningful. The manual work that had been absorbing the reception team's attention, chasing intro offer conversions, sending win-back emails, reviewing reports, started happening automatically. Clients move through those touchpoints now without anyone having to manage it, and the reception team got that time back.
Kevin tracks the results monthly. Win-back campaigns that used to run quarterly now run continuously. Client reviews, which previously trickled in through third-party platforms and rarely reflected the experience of long-term members, now come in at around 200 a month. That volume has changed how Tempo develops its trainers, giving Kevin real client feedback to work with in performance conversations rather than relying on internal observation alone.
The London reformer market has become significantly more competitive over the last two years, and Tempo is not standing still. New class formats are coming, international expansion is on the horizon, and the business Kevin joined to strengthen its operations has become one he's building.
