Yoga's latest move not much of a stretch

By Julie Schmit
USA Today

Having attracted the masses, yoga is now attracting big business.

Rob Kay, at Manoa Yoga Center, is among the 15 million Americans who practice yoga. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

And like other big-name athletes, superstar yoga teacher Rodney Yee for the first time is endorsing a consumer food product: Vitasoy milk and tofu. Yee is also featured in 26 yoga videos and DVDs.

"Yoga is at the top of its game," says Dan Gurlitz, general manager of Koch Vision, whose distribution of Yoga Zone DVDs and videos is a "serious seven-figure business" for the private company.

Yoga Journal estimates that 15 million U.S. residents practiced yoga last year, up almost 30 percent from the year before. The explosion hit a couple of years ago, shortly after Gucci grabbed headlines with $850 yoga mats it no longer sells.

Although yoga appears to be still growing in popularity, other fitness trends, such as the body-conditioning Pilates, are now more explosive, says the IDEA Health & Fitness Association.

Still, yoga has moved into the big time. Instruction is offered at 60 percent of U.S. fitness clubs. With 15 million participants, yoga has about half as many as aerobics does, says the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

Yoga means to deepen feelings of well-being though a series of physical poses and a focus on the breath. Devotees can find plenty of accessories to help.

The yoga mat, preferred so that hands and feet don't slide, runs from $10 for vinyl to $50 for natural rubber to $69 for natural cotton. Need a mat bag? It starts at $10 and goes up to $199 for leather. Yoga clothes, while stretchy, don't have other features particular to the activity, as padded biking shorts do. Still, they're all the rage. Think $55 "Zen flare" pants.

Big retailers have zeroed in on the market, long held by niche players. Gaiam, which markets yoga videos, equipment and health products, this month announced disappointing second-quarter revenue of $17 million, in part because of competition from Wal-Mart and Costco.

At REI, the USA's No. 1 specialty outdoor store, sales of yoga mats, blocks and other props are up 98 percent this year over last. REI says yoga is the big driver behind a 70 percent expected jump this year for yoga and climbing clothes, down from a 134 percent jump in 2003 from the year before.

"Even large, mainstream apparel makers are putting 'great for yoga' on everything stretchy," says Demian Kloer, general manager of Vista, Calif.-based prAna, which makes and sells clothing for yoga and rock climbing and was REI's 2003 vendor partner of the year.

Yoga vacations also are going strong. The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lenox, Mass., claims to be the nation's biggest yoga retreat center with room for 450 people. It expects guest stays to be up 12 percent to 18 percent next year from this year, which is running about 10 percent ahead of last year. Typical cost of a five-day yoga stay: $615 to about $1,200 depending on dormitory or luxury room.

Yoga Journal has likewise grown. The magazine, founded in 1975, has 310,000 subscribers, up from 90,000 in 1998. Thanks largely to new, big-company advertisers, national advertising is up 35 percent in the current 200-page issue from a year ago. It publishes seven times a year.

The magazine also has a new look — "less academic, more inviting" — to reflect that most yogis are beginners, says magazine spokeswoman Dayna Macy. One cover headline reads 'Downsize Me!,' a play on weight concerns. Yet the article is true to tradition as the writer explores aparigraha, the principle of "greedlessness."

Although the headline could be in any mass-audience magazine, "The article wouldn't be," Macy says.

Commercial evolution

Soul-searching has accompanied the change.

"It's like an oxymoron: yoga business," says Elle Price, who recently began selling a self-designed $1,199 diamond pendant saying "Om," a yoga chant. She's also a partner in the 6-month-old studiYO of Scottsdale, Ariz. It offers not only yoga classes, but also baby showers, bachelorette parties and corporate team-building seminars — all with a yoga twist.

"You want to keep yoga a spiritual practice, to give and heal. Yet you've got to charge because you've got to pay the rent," Price says.

Yee helped set off the yoga craze with an appearance on Oprah Winfrey in 2001.

"Yoga has come of age," he says. Most people are happy that some longtime devotees are finally are making a living out of it. Financial details of his Vitasoy deal weren't released.

Yoga Journal knows it offended some with its first wine advertiser, Sutter Home.

"It is not possible to never offend a reader," Macy says.

The magazine won't accept ads for hard liquor, cigarettes or meat. Although car ads are new, an ad for Hummer would ""never happen," she says.

Few industries operate without lawsuits, and yoga is no exception. It's embroiled in litigation regarding whether a yoga routine can, in essence, be owned.

Beverly Hills yoga master Bikram Choudhury, who put together a sequence of 26 poses and related dialogue, in 2002 started sending cease and desist orders to studios teaching Bikram yoga, saying they were exploiting his intellectual property.

He won one undisclosed settlement from a yoga studio in California. Last year, he was sued by a California nonprofit, Open Source Yoga Unity. It maintains the poses have been practiced for centuries and has asked a judge to rule Choudhury out of bounds. The case is pending.

Managing success

PrAna's Kloer says more yoga entrepreneurs will suffer as the market gets more crowded. Near prAna's offices in the San Diego suburb of Vista,

"There are more yoga studios than places to buy milk," he says.

PrAna's clothing is now in 1,000 stores nationwide. Even if yoga slows, he says prAna, which has stayed true to its specialty roots, will be fine. "If we were just a yoga mat company, I would be concerned," he says.

That's the challenge Alon Sagee, 44, hopes to capitalize on. The former marketing employee for tech giant Unisys claims to be the first management coach for yoga businesses.

A lot of yoga entrepreneurs, he says, know yoga but not the business world, and they fall flat when they mix the two. He helps them set goals, strategies and marketing plans.

Sagee, based in the San Francisco suburb of San Rafael, has done yoga for 16 years. Since starting his business earlier this year, he's worked with about a dozen yoga studios. This fall, he expects to teach a class on "The Yoga of Business" at The California Institute of Integral Studies.

He doesn't accept the notion that yoga in the United States is a passing fad.

"Once yoga gets under your skin, you're hooked," he says.