Fitness fashion
Samantha Bosa is used to dealing in threes.
She has three children and six months ago the West Vancouver resident opened three new businesses on Marine Drive.
Well, the trio is more like one, Bosa explains, a gym, a fitness apparel store and her own athletic clothing line all under one roof — Forma Athletics.
“I have ADD big time, so I dabble in everything,” Bosa jokes. “It is way more work than I thought it would be, but I am driven.”
With a background in fitness training – and after her third child, becoming the trainee – Bosa knows exactly what she wants from a gym and the clothing she puts through the paces.
Struggling to find what she needed, she decided to create them herself. So far it’s paid off.
Clients ranging from teens to those in their late 70s are turning out for fitness classes, which include everything from personal training to stretch classes and a kid fit program for girls and boys ages 7 to 11 and 12 to 16.
The fitness studio comfortably fits 10 to 12 people, which means class participants get lots of individual training, explains Dustin Ellsworth, Forma Athletics and Apparel’s retail manager.
“It is more like personal training put into a group setting,” he said.
Bringing the gym into the 21st century, participants wear a monitoring belt which relays their heart rate onto a large projector screen. Not only does this help instructors watch trainees’ intensity level live, but the technology also emails individuals a graph of their body’s workout rates and tracks improvements.
As for the fitness boutique, over the past three months, Bosa’s sold more than 200 tights from her clothing line — Forma Apparel. By mid-February, Bosa hopes to launch Forma Apparel’s first batch from a new line.
“It is all about how it looks on the bum,” she half jokes.
Bosa says she was sick of the limited workout clothing options in Vancouver, so besides her in-house brand, the store sells gear from names like Under Armour, Icebreaker and Arc’Teryx.
Opening the facility in West Van’s commercial heart made sense, she says. It’s close to her children’s school and an area she knows and loves.
“Starting Forma Athletics has been a huge endeavor,” Bosa says. But, she says she wouldn't have it any other way.
For more information on the gym, store or clothing line visit
www.FORMAathletics.com or call 604-922-8884. The studio is located at 1455 Marine Drive.
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