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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

a studio by any other name...

naming a new yoga studio can be almost as difficult as naming a baby. you want to make sure the name's pleasant to the ear, it (hopefully) reflects the studio's (or baby's) personality, and it's not a name that people can easily mangle nor make fun of (and i'm sure we're all guilty of mercilessly teasing a playmate about his/her name at one time or another).

so i can only imagine the thought process that went on when the trifit people were trying to name their new yoga studio. since they already had the name "tricycling" for their indoor cycling classes (and no, it doesn't involve riding around indoors on three-wheeled cycles), it made sense to call their yoga studio "triyoga". right?

wrong. you see, there's already a triyoga studio in LA. and while it's perfectly legal for you to give your kid the exact same name as someone else, maybe even someone you know, you just can't do that when it comes to setting up a business name. people can be very protective (and possessive) of their identity and their name. not only that, but it could prove to be quite confusing to their customers, especially when they're trying to google studio information.

so the minds behind trifit must have decided to solve their naming problem by just dropping the "i" altogether, because by the time i started hearing about the studio's opening, the chosen name was officially "tryoga". and teaser information for the new studio was made available online at www.tryogala.com (probably adding in the "la" in an attempt to match www.trifitla.com, trifit's website).

(note that i said "teaser" because as of this morning -- only a couple of days before the studio's grand opening on january 12th -- there still was no class schedule to be found anywhere on their website. with free classes being offered all opening week (jan 13th-20th), i wanted to know which classes i could fit into my busy work/play schedule. and COMING SOON didn't help much.)

having this need to know something i couldn't find anywhere online, i moseyed over to the yet-to-be-opened eco-studio. i walked in, picked up a class schedule, and started to read what was printed on it.

to my surprise, the name on the top of the schedule read "truyoga". a typo? no, it looked pretty intentional, especially when there were two dots over the new "U", making it look like a smiley face grinning at me.

after tracking down an employee at the trifit gym next door, i found out that, with just days to go before the studio's grand opening celebration, they had to change the name of the studio. she wouldn't go into why they had to, but i have my theories. like maybe because it still sounds like "triyoga"?

talk about having to rename your baby after you've sent out all the birth announcements! let's see... there were the press releases that went out to the media, the website URL that bears the (now) incorrect name, and all the studio merchandise that has the wrong name emblazoned on each and every piece... are we having fun yet?

it'll be interesting to see what name will be on the studio's signs during their grand opening celebration this friday...

... by the way, do the people at true yoga in westlake village know that there's a new studio in LA that has a name that sounds just like theirs? they'd better speak now, or forever hold their peace :)