The Honorable Tony Ever Governor of Wisconsin

Dear Governor Evers,

As a small business owner, my Pure Barre Oak Creek studio employs numerous team members and supports clients to become physically and mentally healthy, a need that is more important now than ever! Pure Barre delivers low-impact, high-intensity barre classes in a small group setting. I have become increasingly concerned that my “boutique fitness” studio has been classified as a “fitness center,” alongside cinemas with a 250+ person capacity. My business has been shut down in advance of other non-essential businesses.

Unlike larger fitness centers, boutique fitness studios like Pure Barre have a typical capacity of 4-25 people. Clients attend pre-scheduled classes, limited to this capacity. While boutique fitness studios and micro gyms serve a limited number of clients at a time, we employ hundreds of thousands of team members in our $40B industry! For each week we are collectively closed, this industry loses $710M. This industry is one of the few female-led and powered industries in existence; we estimate 75% of the owners and workers impacted by this crisis are women.

I ask that you support the petition to exclude boutique fitness studios from the definition of “gyms” and “fitness centers,” and create independent directives applicable for the reduced footprint of the unique business models used by boutique fitness studios. We respectfully request that at the early stages of the eventual timeframe when government officials begin to loosen restrictions to allow non-essential businesses to reopen, you will allow boutique fitness studios to operate under strict guidelines, such as:

○ Allowing operations with a significantly reduced class size where six feet between members is strictly adhered to and instructors have no physical contact with members i.e. only verbal cues for instruction.

○ Allowing an operation of no more than an 8 client to one teacher ratio.

○ All of these operations would take place under the guidelines of intensive hygiene requirements within our studio and among our staff members and daily radical cleaning measures before and after classes.

Our industry has, and always will be committed to the health and wellbeing of all others.  We want to reopen responsibly! Thank you very much for your consideration.