Sarah ready for a new game
Sarah Giovannone, who brought yoga to the masses in St. Catharines, is rolling up her mat and starting a new adventure.
The founder of Yoga By Sarah has found love up north and a desire for new beginnings.
And she’s sold the business to a “supercouple” she’s confident is passionate and will do well carrying it on.
“It’s time,” she says. “Everything has a time. This has been my whole adult life.”
In 19 years, the St. Catharines native has gone from learning yoga in her living room with a couple of friends to running a popular studio that has about 600 to 900 clients a week.
She was the first to bring power yoga to Niagara, the first to bring prenatal yoga and the first to bring aerial yoga. She also started yoga teacher training because she didn’t have enough instructors and has seen 120 people through the program.
Giovannone, now 41, first discovered yoga on the shelf of That’s Entertainment.
She had been fighting with eating disorders at the time and was working out at a gym three hours a day, then going to the Lake Street store to rent workout videos.
One night she saw a power yoga video, brought it home and something clicked. She had a couple of friends join her each morning at 6 in her Russell Avenue living room where they’d push aside the furniture and do yoga.
Soon she was seeking out classes. “There was nothing like that here, so I would go to Toronto a couple of times a week after work or on weekends,” she says.
There came a point where she thought she should bring yoga to St. Catharines and teach her own classes. In November 1998, she started teaching family and friends in the showroom of her dad’s construction business on St. Paul Street West, where she was the office manager.
Eventually she left his business to teach yoga full time.
“Everyone thought I was crazy,” she recalls. “That’s the thing about being 22, you have nothing to lose and you think you can conquer the world.”
She rented space at White Oaks and Body Max for three years and had waiting lists for every class.
It was a special time, Giovannone says. Yoga was growing. Madonna was on Oprah saying she ditched all her workouts for yoga. The phones wouldn’t stop ringing.
In 2002, she opened her own studio on Queenston Street and stayed there for seven and a half years. When the space became too small, she had to decide whether to close or Go Big.
She chose to open Yoga By Sarah’s present location on Grote Street in July 2008 with three new studios, including hot yoga spaces.
Yoga by Sarah now holds about 60 classes a week and has 30 to 40 mostly part-time staff.
A little over two years ago, Giovannone was in Prince Edward Island where she spends her summers and met her now-fiancé Colin Travis. They’ve been going back and forth between St. Catharines and Collingwood, where he lives and works as a developer, ever since.
Even before she met him, Giovannone says it felt like it was time to do something else. She’s ready to retire from running a studio and hand over the reigns.
“Back in 1998, I felt like it was my responsibility to bring yoga to Niagara and I feel like I won that game,” she quips. “I feel like it’s time for a new game, if that makes sense.”
April and Bill Janzen are the new owners of Yoga By Sarah as of Sept. 30. April is a social worker by trade and longtime student at Yoga By Sarah and Bill owns Future Access.
“They have an entrepreneurial spirit,” Giovannone says, adding they are the “real deal.” They’ll be moving the studio at the end of the year to a new, bigger space at Grantham Plaza.
Giovannone will still be around until the end of the year helping with the transition and running teacher training.
She’s had to keep the sale a secret for three months. The announcement was made publicly Monday by email to her clients and on the studio’s Facebook page.
Giovannone says she has no plans to open another yoga studio up north. She’s do something outside of “yogaland.”
“I’m ready for a break,” she says. “I’m joking I’m going to move to Collingwood and sleep for a year, but I’m an entrepreneur so I know I’m going to have something else cooking.
“A year from now we can talk.”