BEFORE THERE WAS BARE

Hi, it’s Maria, and BARE turns one this month.

Which feels like a pretty good excuse to go back to the beginning. Except the beginning of BARE is a little weird, because four weeks before we opened the

doors in Odessa, BARE wasn’t supposed to be BARE.

When I first started building the Odessa studio, the plan was to open it under the fitness studio brand I had already been working with for years. That was the plan through almost the entire process. The space was under construction, the X-Formers were ordered, instructors were being trained, an opening date was on

the calendar, and all of the pieces that go into opening a studio were already very much in motion.

Then, about four weeks before we were supposed to open, the plan changed. I was going to open the studio independently instead. So there I was, less than a month away from opening a fully built fitness studio,

and suddenly I also needed to build a brand for it.

A name. A logo. A website. Social media. Signage. The voice.

The look. The

entire identity of this place that people were going to walk into in approximately four weeks.

Normal four-weeks-before-opening activities.

And somewhere in the middle of trying to figure out what the hell I was going to call this place, I remembered an Instagram account I had made years earlier.

BARE Wellness.

Back in 2021, I had this idea for BARE Wellness. It wasn't a business. There was no lease, no business plan, no investor deck, and certainly no timeline. I wasn't secretly building a future Pilates studio on the side. I just had an idea for a name and a concept that I really liked, so naturally, I did what anyone does when they have an idea in 2021. I made an Instagram account.

The original idea behind BARE was pretty simple. At the time, I felt like boutique fitness had become very wrapped up in looking the part. The matching sets were becoming a thing, everything looked perfect online, and walking into certain fitness spaces could feel like everyone else had somehow received instructions beforehand on what to wear, where to go, and what they were supposed to be doing.

I had spent my whole life in dance and fitness spaces, so I was comfortable in them. But I knew that wasn't everyone's experience. I knew how intimidating it

could feel to walk into a studio for the first time when you didn't know the workout, didn't know anyone there, and already felt like everyone else belonged

more than you did.

I loved the idea of creating something that felt like the opposite of that.

A place where you could just show up as yourself. You didn't have to already be good at it. You didn't have to know what you were doing. You didn't have to have

the right outfit or look like the person next to you.

Come as you are.

That was BARE.

Or, at the time, BARE Wellness.

I made the account, liked the idea, and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it.

For four years.

It just sat there on my Instagram while I went on with my life. I kept teaching. I kept managing studios. I worked with thousands of clients. I trained instructors. I learned the business side of running a studio. I saw what worked and what didn't. I saw the difference between having a room full of people and actually having a community. I saw what made people fall in love with a studio and what made them quietly disappear from one.

And because I am me, I developed a lot of opinions along the way. I paid attention to the tiny things. I noticed when someone at the front desk

remembered a client's name and when they didn't. I noticed how different a class felt when an instructor actually knew the people they were teaching instead of

just delivering a routine to a room.

I noticed when people stayed after class to

talk and when everyone immediately grabbed their things and left.I learned that the workout matters tremendously, but so does everything

surrounding it. How you're greeted matters. Who teaches you matters. Whether someone

notices you're new matters. Whether an instructor can read the room matters.

Whether the studio feels like somewhere you're allowed to take up space before

and after your fifty-minute class matters. I learned that people remember how a place makes them feel long after they've forgotten exactly what exercises they

did that day.

None of that was me consciously working on BARE.

I wasn't going home at night adding ideas to some secret BARE business plan.

BARE Wellness was still just an unused Instagram account I had made years earlier and almost forgotten about. But I was becoming very clear on what I believed a studio should be. So fast-forward to 2025. I suddenly needed a name, and for whatever reason,

BARE came back into my head. I remember saying it to my sister and my best friends and genuinely expecting them to tell me it was terrible.

I think I was almost testing it on them more than pitching it. Like, Okay, I had this idea years ago called BARE. Tell me if that sucks.

Instead, they immediately loved it. And the second they did, something clicked for me too.

Because the meaning behind the name still fit. Actually, it fit better than it had in 2021.

By then, I knew exactly what I wanted this studio to feel like. I wanted it to be elevated without being intimidating.

I wanted the workout to be challenging

without beating up your body. I wanted instructors who knew how to actually teach and who cared about the person on the X-Former as much as the routine

they had planned. I wanted a beautiful space where you didn't have to look a certain way to feel like you belonged in it. I wanted people to know your name. I

wanted people to hang around after class. I wanted high standards without pretension.

The name I had come up with four years earlier suddenly had an entire identity behind it that didn't exist when I first made that Instagram account. BARE Wellness became BARE Pilates Studio.

And four weeks later, we opened the doors.

It's funny because when I tell that story, it makes BARE sound like it was created in four weeks. And technically, the brand people know today really was.

But BARE itself took much longer than that.

It took years of teaching. Years of managing. Years of seeing studios from almost every angle. Years of learning what clients actually care about. Years of figuring out the difference between something that looks good and something that is good.

Years of watching instructors, building teams, making mistakes, changing my mind, and slowly developing a very clear point of view about what I would do

if I ever had the opportunity to build something myself.

I just didn't know I was building toward BARE while I was doing it. And I think that's the part of this story I've come to love the most.

Because making that Instagram account in 2021 felt completely insignificant.

I didn't make it and think, This is going to be my company one day. I didn't know

that name would eventually be on the front of a studio. I certainly didn't know

there would eventually be an Odessa BARE, a Wesley Chapel BARE, and a St.Pete BARE.

I liked an idea.

I made an account.

And then I went on with my life.

Meanwhile, BARE Wellness just sat there on my phone.

I think life is full of little things like that. Things we do that feel completely random or insignificant in the moment. You put something in your Notes app.

You save a photo. You buy the domain. You make the Instagram account. You meet someone once and don't think much of it. You send a text. You have an

idea that goes nowhere, so you assume it was nothing.

Then sometimes life circles all the way back around and hands it to you again.

Except now you're different.

You have more experience. You know more. You'

ve met people you hadn't met yet. You've lived through things that changed what you want. The idea might be the same, but you're finally the version of yourself who knows what to do with it.

I don't think every tiny thing we do is secretly leading somewhere. Sometimes an Instagram account really is just an Instagram account.

But BARE wasn't.

While that account sat untouched, I was unknowingly collecting everything I would eventually need to give the name meaning.

I wasn't building BARE on Instagram.

I was building the experience, the opinions, the standards, and the point of view

that would eventually become BARE without even realizing that's what I was doing.

The name was just sitting there waiting for me to catch up. And four years later, when I suddenly needed it, there it was. That's pretty funny to think about now as we celebrate our first birthday. The BARE everyone knows is officially one year old, but this tiny little version of her had been sitting on my phone since 2021, while I was off doing everything that

would eventually turn her into something real.

BARE Wellness never became what I originally pictured when I made that account.

She became Odessa. She became a team of people I couldn't have named in 2021. She became clients and classes and a lobby that rarely seems to empty out on

time. She became Wesley Chapel. She became St. Pete. She became something much bigger and much more specific than the vague little idea I started with.

And apparently, while I was busy living my life and thinking that old Instagram account wasn't doing much of anything, BARE was manifesting herself the entire time.

From my core to yours,

Maria Stege

Founder & CEO, BARE Pilates Studio

…and that’s The Naked Truth