What building and closing my own wellness studio taught me about branding

I was the kid who was always drawing, always making something and always had a better way of doing things.

Hi, I’m Nia Mallia, a Maltese-born Brit raised in Manchester. I’m co-founder and Social Media Management & Content Director at Rekognition, a branding agency in Manchester for wellness and lifestyle businesses. This is the rollercoaster ride of how I fell in love with branding, including the studio I built from scratch and then had to let go.

From a young age I was creative and ambitious in equal measure. My parents ran a successful business together, and I used to tell them that one day I’d be way more successful than them. They’re still waiting for me to prove it.

I was academic, but school never really held my interest, and I’ve never been one for doing things the conventional way. If I found a simpler way that worked better, that’s how it got done, even when I was solving maths equations. I was far more drawn to creative outlets, the places I could express myself when I didn’t feel I could use my voice: dance, gymnastics, art, singing, writing poetry, or getting lost in the adventures of a Jacqueline Wilson book.

Where it all began: learn the craft by making things

Eventually, all those creative outlets found a focus. I’d always had an eye for moments of beauty, the kind most people walk straight past: the way light falls, a fleeting expression, the small details. Photography gave me a way to capture them and hold on to them, and that’s what took me to college to study Media Production. It quickly opened up a whole creative world.

I tried a bit of everything, but photography, graphic design and videography were the ones that stuck. What I really loved, though, was the whole process: coming up with an idea, designing it, seeing it through to the end, then watching people react to the finished thing. It was the best feeling.

Events gave me exactly the same feeling, so for my final college project I organised the college prom from start to finish. I called it TTYN, short for Talk To You Never. I booked a local nightclub and a DJ, designed the flyer graphics and ran all the advertising, and had other students taking photos and filming on the night, and I edited the video afterwards. Seeing it all come together told me what I wanted to do next, so I applied to the University of Greenwich to study Event Management, a business degree with marketing built in. It was the first time my creative side met the commercial side, and I liked how they fitted together.

After graduating, I went straight into the corporate world as an Assistant Brand Manager at Co-op Food. It taught me how established brands operate and how they talk to the people who buy from them.

You can’t be the whole brand on your own

In 2025 I finally opened the doors to Sabiha Studios, my own creative and holistic studio in Macclesfield. On launch day the room was full of friends and family, and it felt like the business I’d been promising myself since I was little. I’d always known I wanted to help people. I just never knew how. Now I did.

And we filled that space with life. Sound baths and reiki, breathwork, red light yoga and trapeze yoga, Pilates, cinema nights, craft workshops for home-educated kids, and a little boutique shop. I’d trained in yoga, sound healing, reiki and myofascial release, so much of it I led myself. Everything people saw, from the logo to the last Instagram post, I’d made too.

But behind the scenes, it was already getting harder.

The business partner I’d opened it with had to step back for personal reasons, and suddenly everything was on me. I was a single mum going through family court, homeschooling my son, still working and dealing with my own health. At the studio I was the teacher, the marketer, the content creator, the events team, the admin and the accountant, all at once. And every month, £1,400 of rent was waiting.

I’d poured my heart into that space and the community around it, but I was pouring from an empty cup. Slowly, it burnt me out.

The moment I knew was when I caught myself resenting the work. Somewhere along the way it had stopped being about helping people heal and started being about making rent. And how was I meant to help anyone when I was barely holding myself together? There was nothing left over, not for me and not for my son.

In September 2026, I closed the doors.

It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, but the right one. It taught me that a brand isn’t a logo and a launch day. It’s every class, every post and every email, week after week, and when one person is carrying all of it, something has to give.

I take that into every brand I work on now. It’s a big part of why I do what I do: so the people we work with never have to carry their brand alone.

Keep the brand, read the room

Before Sabiha, I’d spent over 18 years working in marketing, events and content creation, including brand activations for Diet Coke, Sephora, Marc Jacobs and Brutal Fruit.

Brutal Fruit is the one I still tell stories about. I was the event manager on a huge cider sampling campaign that toured up and down the country. That meant driving a 7.5-tonne van full of sample stock, then running the activation and managing the team on the day.

One day we’d be in a busy London train station or St Ann’s Square in Manchester, with commuters and shoppers rushing past. Then we’d be glamping at the Henley Regatta. Completely different crowds, from different backgrounds, with very different expectations.

That’s where I learned that a brand has to feel the same everywhere, but the way you deliver it has to adapt. Keep the brand consistent, but read the room. It still shapes how we work with clients today: the same message, voice and outcome, but always tuned to the person in front of you.

My career has never followed a straight line, and I value that. I’ve worked behind the scenes and in front of the camera. I’ve managed teams, delivered campaigns and helped turn creative ideas into something real.

Alongside the big names, I’ve worked with a lot of businesses in the wellness world. That’s meant everything from brand strategy and identity to logo and website design, UGC, content creation and social media management. Working closely with owners taught me how to listen to a vision and turn it into an identity and an online presence that people actually remember.

The right people turn up in unexpected rooms

Back in 2023, I was working with The Conscious Man, a breathwork instructor who wanted to bring The Conscious Self to Manchester. Events were already my world, so I took on a run of breathwork and sound healing nights across the city, bringing in sound facilitators and designing the branding and flyers along the way.

At one of those nights, a man walked in with a little crew. He’d been building a community, and a couple of the faces with him were ones I already knew. That was Nathan Flowers. Once the session began, I found myself watching the way he wove mudras (yogic hand positions) into his breathing. It stayed with me.

We got talking afterwards, and somewhere in that conversation we realised we’d both known someone who had died by suicide four years earlier. It’s not the kind of thing you expect to share with someone you’ve just met, but it bonded us straight away.

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Before long, friendship turned into working together. We started taking people outdoors: I’d lead a forage walk, Nathan would guide breathwork along the way, and on the right day we’d add yoga or a wild swim. Later, when I was getting Sabiha ready to open, he was right there helping with the set-up, and he went on to run breathwork and yoga sessions there too.

All the while, Nathan had been building a dream of his own. He created Rekognition to help businesses like the ones we’d been running get properly seen. So when the chance came to join him, it didn’t feel like a career move. It felt like the natural next chapter for the two of us.

Rekognition is Nathan’s baby, and I’m proud to be building it alongside him. I bring years of marketing, brand development and content, plus the lessons of running a business of my own, some of them learned the hard way. You can read more about us both on our about page.

My role at Rekognition, as Social Media Management & Content Director, is about helping your brand show who you really are, through creative strategy, honest storytelling and the kind of content people stop scrolling for. If that’s what your business needs, here’s how we approach social media and content.

Your story is part of your brand

There’s a thread running through everything I’ve done, from the little girl who couldn’t stop drawing to the woman building businesses and helping others build theirs.

I’ve always loved making things, understanding people and turning ideas into experiences that mean something.

Rekognition is the next part of that journey, and I get to build it with a friend.

For me, great branding is about making people feel something, and giving them something worth remembering.

My path at a glance

If you’re building a brand of your own and want to talk it through, book a 30-minute call. No briefs, no jargon.