This Charlotte fitness brand almost took a hit from COVID-19. The owners ‘HIIT’ back.
If you thought you’d tried every HIIT workout in Charlotte, you’re in for a treat.
Female-founded fitness brand West Kept Secret will celebrate the grand opening of its first brick-and-mortar studio in Dilworth on Oct. 17 from 8 a.m. to noon.
The studio, founded by Marissa West and Heidi Hillman, will feature high-intensity interval workouts that combine cardio, strength training and Pilates. And if you think it’s just another boutique fitness studio, think again: Celebrity Olivia Culpo (also known as Miss Universe and the Queen City’s very own Miss Christian McCaffrey), is a dedicated client.
“This journey to opening day has been a true labor of love,” said West, founder and creator of West Kept Secret. “A decade of a dream, two years searching for the perfect place, two trainer classes hired and many a setback — including one global pandemic — later, it’s hard to believe we’re just days away from welcoming clients old and new into our new home.”
The grand opening will feature classes, as well as treats from local partners including a braid bar by Kenna Kunijo, samples from Village Juice Co., mimosas from Mimosas Nail Bar and a swag bag filled with offerings from 15+ local businesses.
“We feel lucky to have been so supported up to this point by our family and friends, our team, our clients and so many other amazing small businesses who we’ve leaned on tremendously during this process,” said Hillman, co-owner and master trainer.
“Thinking back to March until now, when everything in our world completely changed, we worked very hard, were able to pivot and continue to grow. I’m so humbled and thankful to be a part of it. I’m grateful Marissa invited me on this journey with her three years ago. We are so ready for this next chapter.”
If you’ve never been to a West Kept Secret workout, prepare to be hooked. Yes, it’s a boutique fitness studio in Charlotte. But it’s not a chain. It’s not a fad. And it has heart.
The humble beginnings
Though the new space may feel glamorous, behind the curtain lies a tale of hard work and dedication.
West first experienced the world of personal training firsthand when she hired a trainer while preparing to audition to be among the TopCats for the Carolina Panthers.
“He got me into great shape. After cheering for a few seasons and retiring, I was really inspired. I felt like fitness was truly my passion, and I wanted to dive deeper into that discipline,” West said.
West initially started one-on-one training out of her apartment complex in South End, either having clients come to her or going on home visits. Then she and her husband moved to Plaza Midwood, and they had a studio inside their home.
“It was definitely challenging when clients would come at 5:30 in the morning and we had music blaring and he was trying to sleep,” West said. “You have to make it work with what you have at the time. And that’s what we could afford, what we could do.”
To solve the space issue, West and her husband built a two-car garage with a mother-in-law suite in their backyard, which later became their 600-square-foot, one-on-one studio space.
“Clients were able to pull in, go into our gate, have their privacy and we weren’t disturbing anybody,” West said. “That’s where the magic started.”
“I had somebody tell me that Steve Jobs started out of his garage. And it’s just such a cool thing,” West said. “We were fresh out of college, we barely had two pennies to rub together.”
Hillman, who started as a West Kept Secret client in 2017, was instantly hooked on the program. She started helping West with social media, as well as training clients. The duo continued to see an uptick in interest from clients but didn’t have the space to add more.
“Heidi had seen such great results, and it really gave me the encouragement to take the next step, to bring her on board, and in addition, to make this leap to a commercial space, because it is a big leap, and it’s very frightening,” West said. “And we’re able to do little by little, slow and steady, and do it in a safe and financially reasonable way for us.”
“We started running Saturday classes. We would open on Monday at 12 o’clock, and they would go on waitlist in less than five minutes every single week,” Hillman said. “And everyone was like, ‘Why can’t we get in? Why don’t you run more classes during the weekdays?’ But we had clients that we couldn’t move. The need [for a commercial space] has been there for a long time. It was just making us sick to our stomach that we were leaving money on the table. So we knew we had to search for a larger space.”
One of West’s main concerns when expanding was not wanting to grow too quickly. Instead of offering 20 classes and only filling 10, she opted to start small and expand when needed.
“We don’t want to be that gym that opens too many classes, hires too many trainers and overprices. You never want to have to go backward,” West said. “We always wanted to start small, see what works, what sticks against the wall and then keep building from there.”
The new space
West and Hillman embarked on a two-year journey when looking for a commercial space.
Parking was one of the main issues the duo ran into. South End and Plaza Midwood are notorious for lacking parking, and West and Hillman wanted to find a space that had enough parking to accommodate their clients. They also faced a noise issue, as they blast music to create a fun, engaging class.
After a long search, their commercial agent sent them to look at a space in the Berkshire Dilworth luxury apartment complex across the street from Levine Children’s Hospital.
“When we walked in, we fell in love with the location,” West said. “We have all this natural light, and we just felt like it was a bright, airy, beautiful space to conduct classes in,” West said.
Another big bonus? The new studio will have 14 dedicated spots in the nearby parking deck. Clients won’t need to climb for these coveted spots, either — they’re right on the first floor.
“That was huge for us, because we feel like we’re able to give our clients that premier experience from the second they park and walk in to the second they leave,” West said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to classes to support other trainers in South End, and I’m stuck in traffic, and I pull up and there’s no parking, so I have to turn around. We didn’t want to have that feeling of anxiety for clients.”
The noise issue in the space was solved, as well. The luxury apartment building’s gym lies directly on top of the West Kept Secret Studio space, so the team can blast the music and not worry about disturbing tenants.
When you walk into the new 2,200-square-foot space, you’ll be greeted by a cheery lobby with a gallery wall of team photos, a hand-carved wooden desk by 2-dash-1 and a mural by Elizabeth Rose. The space is meant to be both a welcome to classes and also a spot to take sweaty post-class selfies in front of the neon sign. The entire studio was designed by Sarah Catherine of SC Collective.
“She and her team came in and measured where you stand against the column to take the photo from the neon sign to make sure everyone would fit and where you’d stand to take the photo,” Hillman said.
Clients will be able to enjoy cold-pressed beverages from Village Juice Co. either in the lobby or outdoors on the 300-square-foot covered patio. There are two locker rooms and restrooms.
In the workout area, there will be three machines per station, including treadmills and reformers. There are also punching bags, a ballet bar space that doubles as a bodyweight station, and TRX straps. There’s a second mural by Elizabeth Rose in the workout space.
As part of its COVID-19 safety precautions, the West Kept Secret team will keep the middle of the three machines open/off limits until capacities can safely increase.
The owners are also offering virtual sweat sessions during COVID-19. You can find live and pre-recorded 30- to 45-minute total body workouts, short glute workouts, recovery sessions and more online.
West and Hillman signed the lease for the Dilworth studio space in January. In February, they began new hire training. Then in March, COVID-19 hit.
While most companies laid off or furloughed employees, the duo asked the new trainers to stay on board. They knew they’d have to put their efforts toward a streaming service.
“We’d always thought we wanted to stream, but we thought we had to have this huge brick-and-mortar following in other cities before we had the buzz to get virtual streaming done,” Hillman said. “And so we were like, screw it, we’re going to go backwards.”
“We closed our doors on March 16, and by March 27, we had two weeks of 30- to 45- minute options for streaming recorded, we had built the platform into our website and made it so that you could become subscribers,” Hillman said.
By April 1, West Kept Secret had 100 subscribers, all paying a $49.99/month recurring subscription fee. Since then, they’ve expanded the library to almost 60 videos, and they still have over 100 subscribers.
The method
In the early days when West first started training clients, she also experimented with different training styles. When she would add in elements of cardio, clients would mention that they enjoyed it, but missed the strength portion from a prior day. In the next session, she’d offer a Pilates-based workout, but clients would say they weren’t sweating enough.
“Over time, I felt like results were taking longer than my clients would have liked, and I started experimenting with infusing these different modalities in different disciplines of cardio, strength training and Pilates into one high-intensity interval format,” West said. “And what I found is that style really gave results quickly. It was fun. It made people work really hard because they weren’t on a treadmill for 30 minutes.”
Now, West will use the treadmill for a minute of work, then move on to adding a strength station with TRX or boxing. Then, she’ll take clients to the Pilates reformer and back to the treadmill.
“It was such a fun way to experiment to find what truly worked,” West said. “Once we knew what worked, we realized no one else was doing this.”
West reached out to Pilates to confirm whether she could take the reformer and put it into her own trademarked WKS methodology, since typically, these machines aren’t used in HIIT workouts.
“They were totally on board,” West said. “And what sets us apart is nobody is doing this, because we wouldn’t have been able to trademark the methodology if somebody else had done it. So we’re the first in the world to be able to say that we’ve included these three modalities with the machines that we have to give our consumers something fresh, something new and also something that delivers quick results.”
The team at West Kept Secret prides itself on the openness and accessibility it provides for all fitness levels. The trainer will begin each class by privately asking for your name, whether you have any injuries and what else you do to work out (and if you’ve ever gone to any boutique fitness classes, you know this is not a common practice, though it should be). Then, they’ll ensure that your circuits are customized to both your fitness levels and your abilities, with special care paid to any injuries or discomfort.
“We have that one-on-one feel where we know who you are. We’re here to help you even though there’s other people in this class, whereas some studios I know just send you on your way. And then I’m looking around and I’m watching all these people do different stuff and I’m thinking, ‘someone’s going to get hurt here.’ So I do think there’s a lot to be said about us coming from a one-on-one background,” Hillman said.
West Kept Secret also offers one-on-one personal training. The owners added nine trainers to its staff this year, including Arthur Pulley, the first male trainer to join the team.
Now, just days before the official opening, the team reflects on the work that allowed them to flourish amid the pandemic to see their studio opening through.
“You see other female entrepreneurs who are the pinnacle of badass: hard-working, smart, patient business owners. Heidi and I always said, ‘We want to be that way, we want to learn from others,’” West said. “We’re always hungry to learn, because learning is what’s going to get you to the next place.”
West Kept Secret
1444 Harding Place
Class Schedule:
Monday: 5:30 a.m., 6:30 a.m., 7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m.
Tuesday: 5:30 a.m., 6:30 a.m., 7:30 a.m., noon., 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday: 5:30 a.m., 6:30 a.m., 7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m.
Thursday: 5:30 a.m., 6:30 a.m., 7:30 a.m., noon, 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m.
Friday: 5:30 a.m., 6:30 a.m., 7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., noon
Saturday: 8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m.
Sunday: 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m.
Instagram: @westkeptsecret
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 1:25 PM.
