How did Samyama, who was newly established for two years, win the "double" championship for yoga?

There are two types of brands in the Chinese yoga market, one is a segmented brand that focuses on yoga products, and the other is a well-known sports brand like Nike and Li Ning, and even underwear brands. Yoga products only account for their product line. a small part. In the category of yoga, the sales volume doubles every year, and Samyama has its own routine.

Three stores were opened in Beijing and Shanghai for one month. Lululemon, an international sportswear brand known for yoga, decided to develop the Chinese market. In the face of the giants, the newly established two-year-old local brand Samyama has been quite calm, because it defeated Lululemon in the double 11 and double 12 this year, and won the “double” championship for yoga.

There are two types of brands in the Chinese yoga market, one is a segmented brand that focuses on yoga products, and the other is a well-known sports brand like Nike and Li Ning, and even underwear brands. Yoga products only account for their product line. a small part. This relatively small and scattered market brand concentration is low, consumers have not formed a trend of collective awareness, so it will be the opportunity for the brand to stand out.

The 10-year yoga practice has also allowed Samyama's founder, Chen Hongjun, to see the potential of the domestic yoga market: “In the yoga studio, less than 30% of the students wear professional yoga clothes and practice yoga.” In 2014, he stripped the brand Samyama. Focus on training and choose to further incubate the brand with online channels. In 2015, Samyama won 20 million yuan in sales in the first year of its launch, and this achievement has more than doubled in 2016.

Samyama brand founder: Chen Hongjun

“Vertical products, recommendations from people and opinion leaders are very important.” In Samyama’s promotion, Chen Hongjun invited a large number of inside professionals to try on the experience and sponsor professional yoga activities to promote the industry’s visibility and distribution system. Move to the line and cooperate with Tmall to form online and offline interactions.

The “contradictory body” of distribution and retail

A distribution system similar to “Taobao” is an important reason for Samyama to quickly spread, and this practice continues Chen’s entrepreneurial experience of selling yoga clothes through wholesale.

In 2009, Chen Hongjun has sought a way out in the yoga equipment industry. He has established cooperative relationships with hundreds of yoga studios across the country. Students can purchase yoga clothes through yoga teachers, and yoga teachers can get a way to get yoga clothes. Sales.

Different from general clothing, yoga clothes need to be worn close to the body. Under the effect of lifting the hips and legs, it is also necessary to protect the stretchability of the consumers during the yoga activities. The products are more professional, and the entry threshold of the enterprise is relatively high. "This way of promoting products by word of mouth has a ring in the middle that determines success or failure, which is the quality of the product." Chen Hongjun, who was born to learn architectural design, has certain advantages in controlling the style of the product. However, he has some shortcomings in the difficulty of producing yoga clothing products. The market feedback effect of the early products is not ideal.

"At this time I chose to stop and overcome my short board." Chen Hongjun took the team on the version and fabric of the yoga clothes for two years. "When the quality was almost the same, it was just at the time of talking with Mr. Fang (the chairman and CEO of Huimei Group, Fang Jianhua), feeling The brand of the product should be made more vivid."

Chen Hongjun, who started again, jointly established a new company with Huimei Group in 2014, and separated the brand Samyama from independent operation. In 2015, Samyama moved its distribution system online. First, the mode of opening a full-service shop was opened on the likes, and the teachers of the yoga studio were invited to distribute the products with the VIP customers of the products, so that they could get the commission share. Among them, a micro store called "Yoga" sold 220,000 in 4 days and received a commission of 100,000. However, the benefits of online and offline benefits have also made the brand somewhat unprepared.

“Walking distribution is equal to wholesale, while Tmall is retail. The coordination of price balance is not good and it is easy to cause conflicts.” Chen Hongjun said that due to the lack of experience of the team, there have been cases where the price of products sold by yoga teachers is higher than the price of products during the active period of Tmall. "This is likely to cause a crisis of trust between teachers and students, which is not conducive to long-term development. ". To this end, Samyama closed the offline distribution system in August this year.

Please, yoga instructor

The closure of the offline distribution system does not mean that the established yoga teacher network has been discarded. Samyama still put his competition point in the yoga studio.

“These people are the potential customers who are most likely to become brand consumers.” Chen Hongjun analyzed that the brand's output through yoga instructors and professionals is more conducive to the trust of yoga students. Samyama sponsors yoga studio activities, including helping yoga teachers set up courses, opening yoga teaching videos and more.

Yoga requires more cultural recognition than general clothing. For example, Lululemon provides free yoga courses for customers and organizes a running club, which creates a sense of partnership between consumers and brands, and the community operations that Lululemon is good at. It is also an urgent need for Samyama, which has a relatively simple approach to the operation of the circle.

In Chen Hongjun's view, the creation of a yoga spirit like Lululemon and the management based on the community model are indeed very important in the niche vertical category: “To create a high recovery rate, you need to interact with vertical people. To give consumers a sense of participation."

It is understood that Samyama's late distribution system will be reopened, but will adopt the mode of offline goods: "The goods will go to the store and the price will die." Samyama plans to open the back-end system with the cooperative yoga studio membership system, using the member mobile phone number as the identification information. After the bound member conducts the consumer in the Tmall flagship store, the brand will deduct the product from the product to the yoga studio. To alleviate online and offline price conflicts.

Of course, the previous community operations mentioned are still based on the product. Faced with the strong entry of Lululemon into China, the reason why most local yoga brands are calm is because the target consumers are different. "Samyama's strategy is to lower the consumer's buying threshold and cultivate the consumer market with the price of the people." Chen Hongjun cited the price of a lady's yoga trousers in Lululemon ranging from 750 yuan to 1,000 yuan, while the price of products in Samyama ranged from 200 to 300 yuan.

However, due to the complexity of the fabrics of yoga apparel, the large-scale products that provide the big brands for Lululemon are more stable, but their order quantities are deeper than those of small and medium-sized factories. Samyama chose to put together the evergreen orders that were not particularly seasonal, and produced them in one or two factories. The orders with smaller orders often only cost more. “There is no special shortcut because of doing business. Still have to talk about mutual benefit." In line with this line of thinking, Samyama has gradually established cooperation with major suppliers such as Lululemon and Nike.

Do not wear yoga or wear yoga pants

Lin Hao, a 25-year-old girl, is not so keen on practicing yoga. For her, yoga pants are not sports equipment, but everyday clothing. “The yoga pants are very good to wash, don’t have to go hot, wear loose and comfortable. And it’s much cheaper than jeans,” she said. For many men, yoga pants can also be used as running equipment - sweat absorption, elastic bands at the mouth of the pants.

It can be worn in sports and can become a trend-setting item for everyday wear. At this time, we will seize the trend of sports and leisure, and do not limit the products to only the yoga crowd, and create products with more application scenarios. Overcome the low ceiling of subdivisions.

“Yoga is actually a legging, which is more comfortable than a general legging.” It is like Lululemon replacing the bloomers with tight yoga pants, setting off a fashion trend in American sports and leisure. Samyama plans to move to the future. Fashion expansion product line.

“The team is developing some new products to make the products more suitable for use in many occasions, such as work and sports. We hope to integrate yoga culture into life to inspire the women's casual wear market.” Chen Hongjun introduced that Samyama is constantly introducing new products for different scenes and people.

At present, 70% of the team with nearly 40 brands has invested in products and design, so as to ensure that the brand launches 300 new models every year, and an average of about 20 new models can be launched every month. This kind of product line-based expansion and new protection is also an important reason for the brand's recovery rate to remain more than 30%.