LAST YEAR, I took an early-morning stroll one weekend around a suburban Toronto mall. It was way before opening time and the only people in the complex were security staff making their early rounds or janitors pushing cleaning machines. Smack in the middle of the mall was a group of about 50 people — mostly women, some men — with mats spread out and doing their yoga stretches. As the first coffee shop opened for business, I rushed to grab a cuppa. The only other patrons, of course, were those with folded yoga mats trying to buy a bottle of juice and, as I was to learn later, awaiting the opening of the Lululemon store nearby.

 

Truth be told, I’d always thought Lululemon was some fancy iced drink until my eyes opened up to the burgeoning new world of yoga that day. The ancient Indian meditative practice is no longer just another hot and trendy new suburban phenomenon that it used to be a few years ago. It is now a huge multi-billion-dollar business with to-die-for double-digit growth rates. From yoga studios in New York’s Manhattan, London’s Regent Street and Singapore’s Orchard Road to specialty yoga stores in gleaming malls to customised Yoga Getaway holidays in Bhutan, it is a business segment that even large established corporations are seeking to exploit.

 

From Wall Street to Wal-Mart, from Nike to Nordstorm, Boston to Bukit Timah, everyone is jumping on the yoga bandwagon. There are now chain yoga studios in Singapore with names like “True Yoga” and “Pure Yoga” offering classes in Power Yoga and Hot Yoga. Indeed, I recently discovered that my local DVD store now sells a range of yoga videos for more than a Katherine Heigl rom-com.

 

What’s driving the rise and rise of yoga around the world isn’t just an overworked, overstressed population that wants to attain better physical and mental well-being, but purely commercial enterprises such as Lululemon Athletica, the fitness- and yoga-wear company that has gone from a startup in Vancouver 11 years ago selling overpriced yoga stretch pants to a fad, to a retailing behemoth in just a decade. Lululemon made a net profit of US$107 million on sales of US$712 million last year, and analysts expect the firm to report US$170 million ($211 million) in profit this year on sales of US$962 million, and rising to US$223 million profit on a turnover of US$1.2 billion next year.

 

While you need to pay to join a yoga class in Singapore, across North America, where the Lululemon phenomenon has spread like wildfire, the company is helping communities organise free yoga classes. At public parks, even shopping malls, the firm provides mats and yoga instructors for community yoga sessions. The business model seems simple: The more people show up for free yoga, the more customers Lululemon has to sell its gear to. Indeed, Lululemon has done so much to popularise meditative practice that it has been described as the best thing that happened to yoga since the Downward-Facing Dog (or Adho Mukha Svanasana), a popular rejuvenating pose.

 

Lululemon’s grassroots-marketing approach is fodder for business-school case studies. Before a store is opened in a city, the firm’s sales people or “brand educators” as they are called often spend time there scouting out the most popular yoga or exercise classes as well as instructors. They then rope in instructors by giving generous discounts and recruiting them as Lululemon’s “brand ambassadors”. Once it has created enough buzz and demand in a city, Lululemon then moves in to open its store.

 

Maybe it’s karma that the retail chain got to where it is this far, this fast. It has nearly 140 standalone stores worldwide and is growing its stores’ square footage by more than 25% annually. Its CEO Christine Day, who headed Starbucks’ Asian operations until 2007, recently articulated her vision to expand to 600 stores over the next few years. There are no Lululemon stores in Singapore for now, although there are two in Australia and nine more will open there between now and end of next year. The company currently sells its gear to local aficionados through yoga studios and its website.

 

And, if you think selling Made-in-China mats, mat bags, yoga towels, tops and pants must be a low-margin business, think again. Per-squarefoot sales at Lulu stores last year topped C$2,500 ($3,150) in its Canadian stores and US$1,700 in US stores and are still rising. Lulu may not be a high-end retailer like Tiffany or a mass-market one like Apple but, for a newbie sporty-apparel retailer, those are great numbers.

 

Not content with selling yoga-wear, Lululemon has in recent years expanded its apparel range to running, cycling and other fitness gear. “Lululemon is one of the most unique and intriguing companies in specialty retail,” Paul Lejuez, retail analyst for Nomura Securities, writes in a recent report on the firm. “Sales productivity levels are like nothing we have ever seen for an apparel-based retailer.”

 

To be sure, Lululemon’s yoga gear is pricey: From US$68 short-sleeve T-shirts to US$98 yoga pants or US$68 yoga mats and US$38 Namaste tote bag (for the mat), its “take the sweat out of sweaty workouts” wear is sold at price points that are the envy of even the biggest sportinggoods retailers such as Nike or GAP. Indeed, Lululemon has a cult-like following. Yoga enthusiasts don’t just want any top or stretch pants, they want the authentic Lulu pants when they hit the mat. In that way, it is similar to Apple Inc, which has a cult-like user base that will not give up its computers for any other brand. Its fans have been dubbed by the media as “Luluheads”. A friend in Toronto gave me a crash course on how to spot a “Luluhead” from a mere mortal: Keep an eye out for sporty tight pants with a distinctive logo on the side that looks like an “omega”.