Is this business idea for finding dance studios good?
I recently came up with an idea of doing a search engine type of thing for dance studios only. The idea is that dance studio is a HUGE market in the US but there is not enough advertisement beyond social media platforms that run by themselves. The same thing that bothers dance enthusiasts is that it’s really time consuming to find classes that interests them in their surrounding areas because of lack of advertisement.
So, with that in mind, the platform we could develop is as simple as a search engine that allows users to search up classes (using keywords or tags) and studios nearby. And for the side of Dance studios, they could register and sell their classes online on their side.
Right now it’s only an idea of mine but the potential profit even if we only take 10 percent of the sales on our app could be REALLY insane. If you think this would be a good idea let me know.
Every business idea has a weakness. The best way to evaluate whether a business is a good idea is whether you want to overcome that weakness. I think the hardest part of this business will be convincing dance studios to join. Here’s why:
1. A single dance class site devalues studio brand. If it’s easy to sort local dance classes by type, that devalues the studio brand and commodifies classes. For example if you search “swing dancing” search results imply all swing dancing classes are equal – pick the most convenient. Studios do not benefit from this type of search result.
2. Aggregating disrupts studio sales. Studios love to cross-sell different types of dances. Studios do that most effectively on their own website. An aggregator of local listings would make cross-selling more difficult because would be more likely to choose a new type of dance class by time and location.
3. Yoga studios intentionally avoid aggregators. These issues apply to a bunch of industries, but yoga studios are a good case study for you to look at because they are similar to dance studios but yoga is a little ahead in marketing strategies. In order to win the local search market that you envision, studios like CorePower in Boston or YogaWorks in LA expanded all over the city so they could beat competitors at SEO and have enough options to satisfy local searchers.
4. You probably need a massive flagship account. Another good case study for you is local movie tickets sales online. Theaters held out for a long time because of reasons above. The aggregator who won was the startup that partnered with AMC. There were so many AMC theaters in so many markets that other movie theaters had to join in order to compete with AMC in their local market.