With the weather gradually warming up, people’s demand for fitness is also increasing. If there is any hot fitness program in recent years, it must be “yoga“. Yoga is healthy and trendy. It has become a popular sport in this era of national fitness. It has also created big yoga clothing brands like Lululemon, Alo yoga, and so on.
According to Statista, the global yoga clothing market is forecasted to generate revenues of $37 billion. It is expected to reach about $42 billion in 2025. The yoga economy continues to perform hot in the consumer market. But men’s yoga clothing has long been neglected by the market. The proportion of men among yoga enthusiasts has been rising.
Taking Lululemon as an example, the proportion of male consumers increased from 14.8% on January 21 to 19.7% in November of the same year. From GoogleTrends, we can also see that the number of searches for “male yoga” is nearly half that for women. So, the demand is not low.
Vuori has targeted this market demand, using men’s yoga clothing as an entry point and raising five rounds of funding in six years.
The number of visitors to Vuori’s website has remained stable at over 2 million for the past 3 months. Vuori’s advertising efforts on social media have also been increasing in the last month.
Brand Product & Marketing Analysis
Vuori was founded in 2015 and is a relatively young brand. In terms of products, Vuori focuses on the concept of “high performance” in clothing. Product features include moisture wicking, quick drying, odor resistance, and portability. In addition, Vuori’s products are made of organic cotton and recycled fabrics. This allows Vuori to add value to its products by using “ethical” manufacturing and sustainable fabrics.
Although Vuori started with men’s yoga wear, it has now expanded to 14 product categories covering both men’s and women’s wear. Vuori targets a consumer group similar to Lululemon: the middle-class consumer group. This group has a strong sense of brand consumption and values the brand concept and service experience. The price of Vuori products accounted for 60.8% of the price between $60 and $100, 13.4% of products over $100, and only 4.3% of products below $40.
Vuori also places great emphasis on providing customer service. Vuori has divided its products into five major sports scenarios: training, surfing, running, yoga, and outdoor travel. This allows Vuori to meet the needs of its customers in a more specialized way.
On the other hand, similar to Lululemon, Vuori is committed to creating a “core club” around the brand. They try to provide value to customers while improving brand cohesiveness. The V1 Influencer Program and the ACTV Club they operated offer exclusive purchase discounts and professional training courses.
Social media marketing is an integral part of this product category. Lululemon, for example, has become a phenomenal yoga clothing brand because of its strong social media presence and marketing. Vuori has accumulated 853,000 fans on social media. Their main venues for marketing are Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
Their social media content is mainly based on influencer promotion and product feed. There is also regular fitness class live streaming.
Brand Advertising Analysis
According to GoodSpy, Vuori’s advertising volume has been relatively stable over the past year. Their key promotional and marketing periods focused on September-November. September saw the highest volume throughout the year, with a 116.1% year-over-year increase. In addition, Vuori’s advertising volume also increased in January, up 3.1% year-over-year.
In terms of placement channels, Vuori mainly placed ads on Facebook. But the distribution of advertising volume across the four media channels is relatively even. Messenger’s ads volume increased in January, reaching 24.72%.
In terms of regional distribution of placements, Vuori is mainly targeting the US, Canadian, and UK markets. It is in line with market trends as North America is still leading the global yoga market. In particular, Vuori’s share of placements in the U.S. increased in January from a year ago, reaching 94.44%.
Vuori’s video advertising materials accounted for 88.02%, and 93.7% of the videos were within the 30s in length. It shows that Vuori is still mainly focused on short video infomercials. In addition, 11.9% of Vuori’s advertising materials are images.
Analysis of Creative Ads Material
Creative ad material ①
Form of expression: Founder’s appearance
Effect: The brand manager conveyed their brand concept to customers through the video. And a product clip is interspersed to show the product’s highlights. It can shorten the distance between the brand and the customer. It helps to improve the trust of the brand through the actual feeling.
Material type: video of 36s.
Days of placement: 48 days
Region of placement: U.S.
Estimated exposure: 2.2 million
Creative ad material ②
Form of expression: Show the performance of the product
Effect: Show the products’ performance, design details, and fashion attributes through professional scenes. Highlighting the professionalism and high level of the brand.
Material type: video in 15s.
Days of placement: 49 days
Region of placement: USA.
Estimated exposure: 817,000
Creative ad material③
Form of expression: Real-life cross-dressing
Effect: This material increases the ad video’s fun and vividness through real-life cross-dressing. It also solves some pain points of customers’ daily dressing.
Material type: video in15s.
Days of placement: 57 days
Region of placement: USA.
Estimated exposure: 1 million
One thought on “Male Yoga Brand: Successful Niche Marketing Strategy”