By The Numbers: The Growth of Yoga & How Yoga Brands Can Stay Competitive

Yoga, as we know it today, is a far cry from its origins in ancient India. Western yogis certainly enjoy the yogic benefits to the psyche, but the contemporary practice appears to be far more interested in the physical benefits. Much of what we see around the yoga conversation has to do with muscle tone and lifestyle issues (such as the white girl uniform). Regardless of which benefits yogis enjoy most, there’s no questioning that it’s a growth industry you can’t ignore.
And that’s why Channel Signal collects and measures consumer comments to bring you our monthly category report on yoga. It is ripe with opportunity for the outdoor and lifestyle industry. Here are some quick-hitting stats for your Monday.

Statistics on the Growth of Yoga

$27 Billion
amount spent annually in the U.S. on yoga products
87%
percent increase on yoga product spending over the last 5 years
29%
percent increase in yoga participation from 2008 to 2012
20.4 Million
number of yoga participants in the United States in 2012
4.8%
anticipated average annual increase in industry revenue through 2017

Yoga Interest Over Time

When compared to other similar forms of indoor recreation, yoga not only dwarfs the competition, it’s the only activity experiencing steady growth. This growth has not gone unnoticed by the thousands of studios, apparel and nutritional companies reaping the benefits of the $27 billion dollar industry.
Download 2013 White Paper: yoga-december-2013
Download 2014 White Paper: yoga-january-2014

Can Yoga Brands Sustain Growth?

Some of the world’s biggest brands have tapped into the tremendous growth of the yoga industry. Think Nike, Adidas, Champion, Reebok and Under Armour. But the craze has also spawned successes from up and comers like Lululemon, Gaiaim, Yogitoes and more. Assuming the yoga industry continues to grow, how can these brands stay competitive?
It starts with being in touch with the customer. Today’s customer relies on independent research to make buying decisions. This stems from three primary sources:

1. Retail sales experts
2. Peer conversations
3. Online reviews

While the first two are difficult to measure, the third bullet point can be a game changer in terms of delivering actionable, competitive analytics data. The beauty of product reviews is that there is an existing data set just waiting to be mined. Even brands considering entering the yoga space can aggregate the product review data for the category to make informed decisions based on customer opinion.

• Competitor Intelligence – Product reviews are a unique competitive analytics solution in that it is one of the only data sources that polls your competitors’ users. What’s more, it’s an existing data set that does not require your work to generate, only to aggregate.
• Curated Data – Another historical challenge of aggregated reviews is how messy the data can be. With varying product and category structures across sites, even if you can get around the aggregation challenge, making the data usable is a whole other challenge. Channel Signal uses human-augmented machine learning to ensure data is clean and measurable.
• Service-Based Approach – Product reviews are a new frontier of data, and Channel Signal lives and breathes it. Unlike traditional SaaS companies who take your monthly fee without interaction, insights, support, and training come standard with Channel Signal. We partner with you in your quest to discover what users think and why they think it.

Interested in aggregating and analyzing your reviews? Request a no pressure demo today.