Mission: To bring yoga to the masses via a “guest-focused” approach
Assets: Seven upscale yoga studios in B.C. in less than four years
Yield: 1,665 client visits per day, on average (all YYoga locations)
By Noa Glouberman
Although Lara Kozan has long aspired to be an entrepreneur, she hasn’t always been into yoga. In fact, the latter became a passion for the University of Regina graduate only after she had obtained degrees in psychology and business administration and moved to the West Coast from her native Saskatchewan to take a sales job with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in 1998.
“I grew up doing dance and gymnastics, as well as fitness training,” said the founding partner of YYoga, which, since its official launch in 2007, has opened numerous highly successful, upscale yoga studios in and around the Lower Mainland. “Yoga wasn’t really on the radar until I got to Vancouver. But as soon as I tried it I was hooked – I didn’t want to miss a single day of class.”
Kozan’s enthusiasm for the ancient Indian discipline, which is said to offer its practitioners myriad physical, mental and spiritual benefits, led her eventually to become a certified yoga instructor. Shortly thereafter she began offering a corporate yoga program to staff at Vancouver’s Nettwerk Music Group.
Among the devoted employees that completed several of Kozan’s “40-day yoga challenges” was Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride, who admitted to a Vancouver Sun reporter in 2008 that he initially started practising yoga mainly as a means to meet women.
“I had come out of a long relationship and I wanted to start dating,” he said candidly. “I didn’t know where to start; I sure didn’t want to go to bars, so I said to the women in the office, ‘What do you suggest?’ They snickered and said, ‘Come to a yoga class; there’ll be 20 women and two men.’”
Though he didn’t find romance among his fellow downward dog-doers, McBride did discover a “love and passion for yoga” – not to mention a budding business relationship with Kozan, who said she knew from the very first time she stepped onto a yoga mat that “there was a studio in my future.”
“Terry was getting more and more serious about his practice, and we got to know each other really well over those three years,” she said of her time leading classes at Nettwerk. “He had sort of seen my trials and tribulations over having this idea for opening my own studio here, and he knew that I had sort of let that dream die, especially after my grandmother, who meant the world to me, passed away.”
Sensing that Kozan could use a friend as she struggled to come to terms with her grandmother’s death, McBride asked his yoga teacher to have dinner with him at local eatery East is East. Over the course of the meal, the two discussed “how yoga made me feel, how it made Terry feel and wouldn’t it be amazing if we could somehow help more people to feel this way?”
A studio, they decided, would help them to achieve their goal. But several questions remained: how would they differentiate themselves from other operations in Vancouver’s seemingly saturated yoga market? What could they offer to attract and retain more – and more varied – practitioners?
“The market [in Vancouver] was fragmented at the time; [there were] a lot of small, single-discipline studios,” Kozan recalled, adding that many “mom and pop” yoga outfits seemed to struggle to attract clients from various walks of life, like men and new moms.
“To us, the heart of yoga is the connection not only to self but also to others,” she said. “That led to this idea of a network of studios that do for yoga what Whole Foods did for the organic food industry: consolidate and connect.”
Today all seven YYoga studios – in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Whistler – aim to “provide a social centre where all are welcome and inspired to practise yoga, engage in wellness and … build relationships and community.”
To draw clients to their community, Kozan and McBride have developed a business strategy that is based on multiple customer-service “sticking points.” Beyond a generous offering of yoga classes that draw from various styles to suit all levels, each multi-studio YYoga centre embraces a guest-focused approach, providing such spa-like amenities as:
mat and towel service;
complimentary toxin-free shower products and organic teas;
infrared saunas;
social spaces with free wireless Internet; and
wellness services like massage, acupuncture and reflexology.
“Everything that goes along with great service,” Kozan said, adding that some YYoga locations even feature elements that reflect the surrounding community. The “yoga wall” – a unique prop that allows clients to use gravity to improve their practice and increase their flexibility – at the Northshore Elements centre, for example, suits North Vancouver’s outdoor appeal.
So far the strategy has been successful. Averaging 1,665 visits a day, YYoga’s sales in the fiscal year to date (10 months) have increased 23.48%, and its newest centre in Vancouver’s trendy South Granville neighbourhood turned a profit in just six months of operation.
Now, along with McBride and the rest of the YYoga team, Kozan is eyeing expansion to Toronto – a city where the yoga scene, despite having access to a population twice the size of Vancouver’s, lags several years behind.
Her reasons for continued growth, however, have to do with something much larger than profit. Rather, they remain intrinsically linked to her belief that “the more people that do yoga, the better the world will be.”
“That’s the legacy I want to leave,” said Kozan, who nonetheless knows that, in order to bring yoga to as many people as possible, “you need the business to back that up.”
“The balance of yoga and business is something I’m constantly striving to achieve,” she explained. “As our business grows, we have to stay rooted and connected to yoga, but we also want to continue to expand and be innovative. That’s how we’re going to successfully fulfil our dream.