Why Can "Yoga Pants" Support A Market

Life style has never been a unified standard concept. Even the same kind of goods can show different life styles in different groups and scenes.

The latest case we found is yoga pants. In the conventional impression, lululemon and his "Yoga Pants" have surpassed the significance of clothing and sports, and become the representatives of a new concept of life and peer identity; At the same time, through the new product understanding and sales links, the definition of yoga pants is becoming more and more popular.

As a result, in such a large-scale market as China with rich groups, strong supply chain and fast changing retail mode, "Yoga Pants" is showing a new consumption landscape and creating new business opportunities.

　　 01 Yoga Pants go out of the first tier cities

Search for "Yoga Pants" on pinduoduo and taote, and you can see a large number of products that are almost identical to lululemon style yoga pants. Take pinduoduo as an example. On the hot list of "fitness pants" or "yoga clothing", the sales volume of yoga pants is very high. Basically, the list can exceed 100000 pieces.

According to the observation of NBT, most of the merchants behind these commodities are factories and wholesalers. Some of them may have shops in Taobao and tmall, but their sales are not high, such as Jinge campaign, runaway radish, geziyu, etc.

Take Jinge sport, which once topped the best-selling list of pinduoduo yoga clothing, as an example. Although tmall flagship store has 40000 users, there are only about 20 SKUs in the store. Most of the monthly sales of single products are single digit, no more than 100; Pinduoduo's flagship store has 120000 users and more than 60 SKUs in the store. Among them, more than 100000 yoga pants with a price of 26.8 yuan have been put together, while the monthly sales of this kind of Yoga Pants by tmall are only 6.

According to the data of feigua, in the Yoga Pants live studio with sales of * * in the last 15 days, except molyvivi, a new female sports brand with nearly 100 million yuan of financing recently, the rest are basically supply chain businesses, such as tomato yoga fitness wear, Yiwu women's pants factory store, etc. An industry source told New Business Intelligence NBT that youyou fitness wear, a supply chain brand from Qingdao, has been growing very fast in shuoyin e-commerce recently.

At the same time, some female anchors are also bringing yoga pants, such as Taobao anchor Zhang Dayi, Douyin wanghong Hu Chuliang, fast anchor Kaka, MI Jie and super Dan. "Mu tuzhe", a yoga clothing factory from Quanzhou, told NBT that the factory had many live e-commerce customers in 2020, such as those through Weiya and Simba yanxuan.

Compared with the unit price of lululemon, the price of yoga pants on the above platforms or live rooms is generally less than 100 yuan, which is about 100 yuan. The product price of supply chain merchants is even less than 30 yuan, and the lowest price is as low as 5 yuan.

Different from lululemon and other women's sports brands in promoting lifestyle such as "hot sweat" and "Happy Sports", the above-mentioned businesses and anchors pay more attention to the practicality and practicality of the products themselves, and emphasize the functions of "slimming legs, raising hips and girdling the abdomen". The red Hu Chuliang also showed 20 sets of clothes in a video with goods.

"Yoga Pants" even differentiated into other identities on these platforms, such as shark pants, Barbie pants, and suspension pants. In fact, "shark pants" are essentially yoga pants with similar fabrics. Although the tightness is not as strong as that of professional yoga pants, the elasticity may be better. These nicknames are all created by businesses and anchors in order to promote the selling points of products.

For example, the nickname "shark pants" was first coined by Zhang Dayi. She first mentioned "shark leather pants" in her microblog in 2016. Later, Taobao merchants and anchors used this term. Zhang Dayi also mentioned in her microblog that their shark leather pants were "copied by the whole network".

Shark pants will really catch on in 2020. Xiaoxue, from Yangjiang, Guangdong Province, mentioned to new business intelligence NBT that since the winter of 2020, many friends and colleagues have started to buy shark pants and wear them with long sweater or long T-shirt as daily wear. "In the past winter, that kind of wearing method was very popular, and then add a pair of long socks and a pair of dad's shoes.".

In 2020, such a match will become a template for wearing, and stars and bloggers will also wear it. Several articles introducing shark pants mentioned "Yang Mi's shark pants with fire" in the title, and insert Yang Mi's wear and match diagram in the article. Interestingly, Yang Mi is wearing lululemon yoga pants.

According to the "list of top commodities in early winter 2020" released by pinduoduo New Consumption Research Institute, the number of orders, search and sharing of "shark pants" ranked second. This is enough to show the popularity of shark pants.

From the appearance and the meaning behind the nickname, Barbie pants and shark pants are basically the same“ "Shark pants" means streamline like a shark, with thin and long legs“ "Barbie pants" means wearing Barbie like legs.

Although the "suspension pants" are similar to the two visually, there is a mystery inside. According to the introduction of relevant businesses, the "hip lifting belt" in the back of the suspension pants can lift the buttocks up, while the fabric of the front end is used to close the abdomen. The fast anchor Kaka once shot a comparative video, in which a girl with long waist and belly meat put on the suspension pants, her abdomen immediately flattened. In addition to Kaka, well-known fast anchor super Dan, Xu Xiaomi and Mi Jie also brought goods for it in the live room.

For the effect of "sweat pants" propaganda is more exaggerated. Take anchor Kaka as an example. In May this year, she launched a pair of sweatpants with a price of 59 yuan. In the product details page, she claimed that nanotechnology was added to the waist of the pants, which can not only lift the hips and abdomen, but also achieve the effect of weight reduction after 28 days of wearing. According to the product details page, wearing these pants is equivalent to jogging for an hour and swimming for 30 minutes.

From the basic principle, the so-called "sweatpants" are just adding airtight materials to the waist and abdomen, which will naturally sweat after a long time of wrapping.

　　 02 Who is pushing yoga pants down

From lululemon yoga pants of nearly 1000 yuan to factory yoga pants and shark pants below 100 yuan, yoga pants are being redefined. Starting from the imitation of lululemon, the change of consumption trend and the transformation of supply chain jointly promote this process, while the emergence of new e-commerce platform makes the new "Yoga Pants" further sink and expand.

Before 2016, the yoga clothing market in China was still very small. Wang Jiayin, co-founder of Maia active, once mentioned in the podcast "inside story of entrepreneurship" that when he came back from the United States in 2014, there were hardly any people wearing yoga pants and tops. However, this was very common in New York at that time. The sales of yoga pants in the United States even equaled those of jeans. Therefore, New York fashion media put forward the word athleisure, which refers to the combination of athletic elements and leisure elements. The specific performance is to integrate yoga pants and sports underwear into daily collocation.

Lululemon officially entered China in September 2016, and the athleisure trend landed in China at the same time. Wang Jiayin began to see many fashionable young girls integrating yoga pants into their daily collocation in Shanghai Xintiandi. Coupled with the rise of the Chinese women's sports market at that time, the Yoga Pants consumption market in the first tier cities in China was officially activated.

The maturity of the consumer market has given birth to many new domestic women's sports brands. They emphasize that they are more suitable for Asian women's body than lululemon, and their prices are also cheaper, such as runaway Lori, particle fanatics, Maia active, VFU, etc. At the same time, traditional sports brands are also constantly paying attention to the product line that the corresponding users need.

Some factories began to increase the production capacity of yoga clothes when they saw the fashion trend of yoga clothes. One of them is "mutuzhe", which started with swimsuit and cycling clothes. Before 2016, there were few yoga clothing manufacturers in China, and the proportion of yoga clothing production lines was also very small. For example, 80% - 90% of mutuzhe's production lines made swimsuits and 10% - 20% made yoga clothes, and mainly served the foreign trade market.

Ye Xiangjia, the e-commerce director of Mu tuzhe, told New Business Intelligence NBT that many e-commerce brands and online celebrities were looking for them to work for them in 2016. In order to meet the needs of e-commerce brands, mu tuzhe opened a 1688 factory store in 2016 to increase inventory and stock up, providing e-commerce customers with a "one piece delivery" cooperation mode. "Their quantity is not so large, and they want to sell yoga clothes, too many people are asking.".

Due to the limited production capacity of the factory, mu tuzhe abandoned the swimsuits and riding clothes with small space in 2017, focusing on the production of yoga clothes, and the related supporting services have become more and more perfect, such as continuously introducing new products to facilitate distribution, increasing the popularity rate, shortening the replenishment cycle of fabrics in stock, etc.

There are many factories that transform from swimsuit to yoga suit. Because the swimwear is usually made of spandex and nylon, and the fabric and process are the closest to the Yoga suit, the swimsuit is also the earliest to transform. Most of the swimsuit factories in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, have transformed into yoga clothing factories in recent years, while Huludao, a "swimsuit base", has also transformed into yoga clothes. The expansion of production capacity provides a basis for the emergence of yoga pants in the sinking market.

The factory itself has a mature production process and fabric foundation, and the production cost is not high. The cost of a basic yoga pants is about 45 yuan. Supply chain brands with cost advantages and small and medium-sized businesses without premium ability can set the price very low, so there will be a large number of low-cost yoga pants on the market.

As the creator of yoga pants, lululemon has a leading position in this industry. Lululemon's styles and fabrics have become a sample of domestic women's sports brands. Some brands will cooperate with lululemon's OEM factories. Of course, these brands will also emphasize their own fabric technology, as well as adding original design to the basic version.

According to Ye Xiangjia, the market follows the trend, and the supply chain follows this style. "The whole yoga industry belongs to lululemon, everyone follows his style.". He told New Business Intelligence NBT that in recent years, the factory's products have been upgraded with lululemon in fabric, color and style.

Among them, the most obvious upgrade is the fabric. Domestic Yoga Pants used polyester and spandex, or imitation cotton and spandex in the early days, but the tightness and resilience of such fabrics are not good enough, and they can penetrate the skin. In 2018, the famous brands represented by lululemon began to use "double-sided cloth", that is, double-sided woven with nylon and spandex, which has stronger tightness and elasticity, and is close to the skin and impermeable to the skin. Therefore, the factory also adopted the "double-sided cloth".

In addition, lululemon's "no embarrassment line", micro textured texture and low saturation colors have also become factory standard. Today, when you search for "Yoga Pants" on 1688, almost all the samples provided by the factory are the same as those of lululemon, and some even claim to be the same type or manufacturer of lululemon.

A large number of small and medium-sized sellers in the industry take goods from manufacturers through the mode of spot wholesale or one piece delivery, which leads to the yoga pants in the whole market are very similar to lululemon. With the competition and popularity of domestic sports brands in the past ten years, domestic consumers have a cognitive and consumption basis for sportswear. For them, lululemon's Yoga Pants represent not a lifestyle change, but a change in sportswear. One of them is that lululemon's yoga pants have replaced the traditional "fake two" (shorts + tights), which are designed to avoid the embarrassment of skin penetration, but they are not as comfortable as yoga pants.

In this process, there are two reasons why Yoga Pants appear variants.

On the one hand, under the education of wear bloggers, the trend of sports and leisure has penetrated into a wide range of consumer markets from top to bottom, and even sink into the market. In this process, yoga pants are further weakened in their sports attributes, and their functions of comfort, versatility and shaping are amplified, becoming a basic piece that can meet the needs of daily wear like jeans. The nickname, product design and style of "shark pants" further strengthen this point, reducing the wearing threshold of yoga pants, so that even consumers who have no exercise habits and have no concept of yoga pants may wear yoga pants.

On the other hand, the merchants or anchors behind the low-cost yoga pants do not have the capital, fabric and version innovation ability of lululemon and other high-quality brands, and the production process is relatively poor. Therefore, these products can only achieve the function of professional yoga pants through "physical means". For example, the hip lifting function of yoga pants is generally realized by using supportive and supportive fabrics. Some cheap products will weave "hip lifting line" in the version design, which will lift the position of buttocks and back waist upward to produce hip contour. The latter brings uncomfortable wearing feeling. The principle of the suspension pants is similar to the hip line, but the implementation is simpler and rougher. A new layer of fabric is directly sewed on the basis of yoga pants, which is the so-called "hip lifting belt".

What's more, yoga pants and their variants can be seen in large numbers thanks to the activity of new e-commerce channels such as Taobao live, Shuo Yin, Kuaishou, pinduoduo and taote.

Fast hand, pinduoduo and taote, who are mainly engaged in sinking market, have successively proposed to support high-quality and low-cost goods from the source, which provides platform bonus for the sportswear industry belt and female anchor from some source areas. Shuo Yin e-commerce will also go deep into many industrial belts from 2020 to support good products from the source.

An industry insider told New Business Intelligence NBT that "youyou fitness wear" is a yoga clothing supply chain brand currently supported by shuoyin e-commerce. Shuoyin e-commerce will give youyou a lot of traffic support. It is also a sports and fitness business. Youyou's cost of getting traffic in shuoyin is much lower than that of them. However, the requirement of shuoyin e-commerce for youyou is "low price and good goods". The average price of youyou's products is 37 yuan. "The real brand price can't be so low, it can only be the factory.".

From the perspective of operation difficulty, the aforementioned industry insiders believe that it is very difficult to operate the brand in Taobao tmall, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Pinduoduo has low economic and operating costs, which is very friendly to small and medium-sized businesses and factories that are not good at e-commerce operation. In addition, pinduoduo is still "low price oriented" and is naturally suitable for supply chain brands with cost advantages but lack of premium capability Mu tuzhe also opened pinduoduo flagship store in 2020.

With the dividend or operation mechanism of the platform, it is less difficult for small and medium-sized businesses, anchors and even factories to reach consumers. Therefore, the production capacity of the supply chain is connected to consumers on a large scale, which leads to the sinking of yoga pants.

　　 03 What's the end of yoga pants

The sinking of Yoga Pants means that their consumption market will be further expanded, which will also promote the increase of supply chain capacity.

In recent years, more and more factories are transforming to produce yoga clothes. In addition to swimsuit, some underwear factories and women's clothing factories have also transformed to produce yoga clothes in recent years, or added shark pants and suspension pants products. "There are people in all industries making yoga clothes.". Due to the increasing demand for yoga clothing, mu tuzhe opened two new factories in Jiangxi and Quanzhou in 2018 and 2020 respectively.

The change of consumption trend, the maturity of the supply chain and the emergence of new e-commerce platforms also promote some new female sports brands and small and medium-sized businesses to grow up and further leverage the front-end supply.

For example, molyvivi, which was just established in early 2020, was cold started through live broadcast of little red book in the early stage, and began to live live live in tremolo at the end of last year. According to the data of feigua, as of the time of publication, molyvivi's live broadcast sales in the past 90 days are estimated to be more than 5 million, and the sales volume of the tremolo studio in the past 15 days ranks among the industry. Molyvivi is also opening stores in pinduoduo. The top selling yoga pants are all around 100 yuan, and only 49 yuan is sold.

New business intelligence NBT also learned that rhino intelligent manufacturing, a supply chain management company under Ali, has reached a strategic cooperation with Lycra in "liquid Lycra". Rhinoceros intelligent manufacturing association cooperates with different price bands of Taoxi department to launch "liquid Lycra" PP pants (similar to shark pants). There are not only runaway Luoli and Yiyi, which are more than 100 yuan brands, but also stores with a price of about 50 yuan.

At the beginning of 2021, a fashion platform predicted that one of the popular trends of this year is athflow, which refers to the combination of athleisure and flow. The symbolic collocation is the sports piece represented by Yoga Pants Plus loose, soft and comfortable formal wear items (such as knitwear). This means that yoga pants have further penetrated into the daily wear of the public. And such a popular trend will still be through different platforms wear bloggers and merchants, anchor gradually conduction to the sinking market.

In March this year, Evely, a women's wear brand with elegant commuters, launched its "e + life" light sports series. One of its product lines is "Yoga apparel." In April, taipingniao also launched the light sports series of "redefining the 3-kilometer life circle" in tmall's flagship store, aiming to meet the needs of consumers' fitness activities, daily going out, shopping in supermarkets and small gatherings of friends. Prior to this, Pacific bird also launched a shark pants.

As the "creator" of shark pants, Zhang Dayi will upgrade the products every year since 2018. For example, in March this year, the new version of shark pants used Italian carvico fabric in the abdomen, emphasizing "special skin friendly" and "delicate as an egg". In addition, with the spandex of Korean Xiaoxing group, "it meets all the fantasies of waist closing, hip lifting, body shaping and body shaping". According to the data released by Zhang Dayi on Weibo in September 2020, the sales volume of the first "shark leather pants" has exceeded 500000.

In the popular trend of shark pants, Hu Chuliang also launched shark pants last year. According to the "list of brands with annual sales growth in 2020 - shoes, clothing, bags and bags" released by magic mirror market intelligence, the sales volume of Hu Chuliang's shark leather pants (priced at 89 yuan) will reach 253 million yuan in 2020, with a year-on-year growth rate of 1169%.

The product changes of women's sports brands, the addition of women's clothing brands and the goods brought by Zhang Dayi will also help the daily use of yoga pants, continue to ignite the popular trend of shark pants and drive the sinking of yoga pants.

The suspension pants mentioned above have also swept the platforms of Taobao, taote, pinduoduo, shuoyin and Kuaishou, and even some anchors and businesses will directly steal the video of fast hand anchor's card with goods, and mark "the same type of card and the same factory of card" in the goods.

From lululemon to lululemon's original factory, and then to the same style / factory of Kaka, yoga pants not only sink in the sense of price and channel as sports clothing, but also have been out of the control of lululemon in some people. In this process, the practical, comfortable and versatile yoga pants have been enlarged, making them from the first tier cities to the gymnasiums and streets in the sinking market.

The end of yoga pants is more than that. People's pursuit of new style, low price and comfort is continuous, and many new scenes are created accordingly. Maybe in the near future, we can also see aunts dancing in yoga pants on the square of a county.