For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Sixth Street Pilates.

Courtesy Sixth Street Pilates

Pilates used to be more of an Upper East Side thing, but for nine years, Sixth Street Pilates at 525 East Sixth Street has quietly been aligning and providing intense, balancing workouts to those who don’t dare travel above 14th Street. Of course, the East Village is also a Mecca for yoga students, but co-owner Jeremy Laverdure doesn’t sweat that. “I am much more worried about spin and spin hybrid classes,” he said. “SoulCycle keeps me up at night more than Bikram. There are also five million other Pilates teachers out there and while there aren’t many in the neighborhood, there are a lot of teachers out there who are not working for us.” The Local spoke to Mr. Laverdure about the core strength of Sixth Street Pilates and how the roughly 1,000-square-foot studio has made it for nearly a decade.

You’ve been surviving as a business owner in the East Village for almost a decade.

We’ve been in business for nine years in one way or another. Our first year we were in a little studio apartment across the street. My friend Abby started the studio and I was the first person to work there for her. After a year and a lot of flooding – we were in this kind of ground level subterranean unit – we moved to where we are now. After another three years Abby moved to Texas and sold the business to me. I was the sole proprietor for four years until I made Anula Maiberg a partner about a year ago.

What kind of space did you upgrade from?

The most we could have in the old studio was four people for a mat class. Now we can have three pre-trainer client private session at a time and our mat classes can hold up to ten people.

Why did you decide to be a part of the Pilates franchise?

I was a dancer and not making a living at it. I was tired of waiting tables to make ends meet and I was already taking Pilates classes. It really came out of necessity. I needed to make money so I decided to study Pilates and become certified.

Pilates definitely had its moment of super popularity, but it seems, especially in the East Village, that yoga wins out.

There have always been more yoga studios than Pilates studios. I did yoga before I did Pilates and I still do it. We offered yoga for years, but our classes didn’t gain any momentum. In our studio the yoga and Pilates populations are not overall overlapping populations. There are plenty of other things that we compete with in terms of personal well-being and yoga is not at the forefront of our worries.

Who is the Pilates person?

Well, it started out as a niche thing that dancers did, and because it started on the Upper East Side, it had a rich-lady population at first. We have old East Village artsy types, we have young, and we have a lot of guys come to the studio. It’s not just a girls thing anymore. Now, I don’t think there is a demographic. It is more a personality thing. Pilates people tend to find yoga boring. They don’t like the mystical or Eastern edge, they think it is too slow. They also prefer an hour class to the often 1.5-hour yoga class. We also have yoga people who come in when they are injured and want something to do as they heal.

How is business?

We’re doing great right now. Gross-wise this is our best year. We typically have around 80 privates a week where some people are coming in two and three times a week. Last week we had 108 people came to classes. It’s typically around 120 and 130 people. Since Anula has come on things have really taken off in a new way. She puts all of her energy into our students and doing social media and online stuff which has been huge for us. I am a bit older and I never had the temperament for it.

Do you ever use Groupon or LivingSocial?

We stopped doing it after a few really bad experiences. We used to allow more people into our classes and we cut back the numbers because of the Groupon. A lot of people were coming in but it didn’t translate into long-time clients. It was really a disruption. There were tons and tons of people in here who didn’t have a sense of the culture so we lost some of our homeyness.

What was your hardest year?

Our worst year was around the Summer of 2010. That was because of some business choices I made and how I was structuring things. I was slow to fix things on my own. Anula brought better class scheduling to the studio. We figured out why certain classes weren’t being attended and we fixed things so we weren’t just paying teachers for classes that weren’t really being taken. We are more responsive now to times that work for our clients and what is going on seasonally.

How is your rent?

Our rent is $3,150 now and it’s gone up from about $2,750. That’s about a $50 raise a year, so we’ve been able to manage. We keep the overhead really low. We don’t have a front desk person to check people in. Our teachers do that. Our phone goes to voicemail. Teachers handle their own scheduling. The space is nice, but it’s not a spa. There is no shower. What we do spend money on is paying our teachers a competitive rate.