Looking for a good home
Move is ‘second chance at life’ after pandemic
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In this occasional series, we feature Wisconsinites who have faced hard challenges from the coronavirus pandemic but found the inner resources and creativity to tackle them.
GREEN BAY - If you walk into Jenstar Movement Studio’s new space at 1212 Marine St., you’ll find a mural of larger-than-life flowers.
The mural, by De Pere artist Peter Koury, is a metaphor. The enormous flowers depict every stage of a flower’s life, from a small sprout to a full bloom. They are meant to evoke the idea for visitors and studio clients that every person is in a different chapter of life.
Owner Jennifer (Jen) Berres vaulted into her own new chapter with the closure of her old De Pere studio last year due to the coronavirus pandemic and a shift to online classes only before reopening on Marine Street.
“My vision was around a theme of ‘bloom where your plant is.’ And I really wanted flowers because there’s beauty in all stages of life: some of us are just beginning, others are finding a closed chapter of something,” Berres said.
‘My dream studio’
The pandemic caught Berres off guard when she had been investing a lot of time, money and energy into upgrading her business.
The newly renovated De Pere studio, in a 3,000-square-foot, two-floor space, hosted more than 20 teachers offering about 37 classes a week for 100-plus clients. She had recently moved there from another location across the street.
“I literally moved into my dream studio. The space in De Pere is what I had always envisioned: an old historic building that’s been renovated, two studio rooms, a space to be able to collaborate more with local and outside presenters,” Berres said. “Those were the things I was really looking to do with my upgraded De Pere space, and it all came crashing down.”
March 2020, the month the pandemic arrived in Wisconsin, marked nine years of teaching and six years of teaching in-studio. The second studio was designed to be a step up.
“I had expanded everything: I had expanded the number of classes we had,” Berres said. “I expanded the relationships with the various teachers and workshops we were offering. So, my business costs were at a pretty high level that were not pandemic-proof.”
The pandemic led to reduced attendance. Some instructors had to leave teaching to take care of their families. Berres wasn’t paying herself for much of 2020, and instructors had accepted
reduced pay to support the business.
“We didn’t even have the teaching staff to fill the building,” Berres said. “Everything just was pointing to ‘Jen, you need to scale down.’”
She’s thankful her landlord allowed her to break her lease when the cost of rent became too much. It was heartbreaking to make the difficult choice to close her longtime dream, Berres said. It was a low point.
“You always have to have faith that something bigger is out there,” Berres said. “At least, that’s the mindset I had: that I would land on my own two feet in the end.”
Berres said she had been saving up money for what-if and just-in-case scenarios, which became her reality in 2020. She had to use that money in addition to scaling back her business. She also tapped into state and federal resources for grants and loans.
“That included moving out of that dream studio, per se, because I would have definitely gone into the red and would have had to go into our family savings funds, and that was the last thing I wanted to do,” Berres said.
She is not alone in making difficult decisions in this pandemic economy, which has been a perilous environment for small businesses to operate. Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit located at
Jen Berres, owner of Jenstar Movement Studio, in her Green Bay studio. After closing her De Pere studio and moving online, she reopened the studio in a new space at 1212 Marine St.
Harvard University, reported on March 3 that Wisconsin saw a 27.7% decrease in open small businesses compared to January 2020.
Berres said she had to make peace with the possibility that she may not have a physical business again. As she taught yoga online, she nevertheless kept an eye out for new spaces.
“I just knew I loved my brick-andmortar business enough that I was going to give it my best shot to find the right situation to be able to do that in the future,” Berres said.
Finding the new space was serendipity
In a random after-class conversation, Berres mentioned to clients she was keeping an eye out for new spaces. De Pere resident Stacy Richards told Berres the 1212 Marine St. space was available.
Richards had happened to see the “for lease” sign up for that space and had even previously toured it as a possible location for her own business.
Richards has been practicing yoga with Berres even before Berres had her first studio. To Richards, Jenstar is a second home, and Richards even trained with Berres to be a yoga teacher three years ago.
“I just thought, as she was navigating the waters of COVID and what that would look like on the other side, this space offered her a lot of options in terms of maybe outside classes or space in the studio, or different options she could have,” Richards said.
Berres said this will hopefully be the last move.
“I put every piece of my heart, all my energy, into this,” Berres said. “It was do or die, if that makes sense. Like, I’m not doing this again. This is three times now, and I’m done. I think just the beauty in it is just me putting my entire heart out there.”
Berres said she feels like she’s starting out again, almost from scratch, as a new business owsner, and the stress of keeping up a larger business is gone. She appreciates the opportunity the scaled-back studio offers for her to focus more on being a yoga teacher and less on the business side.
“Now I’m back to the beginning and I feel like, in some ways, I have this second chance at life. And I’m just happy to be here,” Berres said.
The new start, she said, presents an opportunity to become more passionate and purposeful. She says she’s focusing even more on quality and human connections.
“This is a time of refinement,” Berres said.