Beyond Yoga CEO Nancy Green has an easy answer when asked why the brand didn’t go for a permanent location for its recently opened New York store.
“Oh we will,” she said of the pop-up location, which debuted in September and will stay open through January. “It's a great way to explore and to learn and sort of test out the area. But yes, eventually we will have a permanent home.”
While the company isn’t sharing metrics on the performance of its temporary New York location, Green said she was “pleased” with the results so far and that the company is receiving positive feedback from customers.
The store is located in New York’s Flatiron District and takes cues from Beyond Yoga’s 2024 pop-up, which was located nearby. While that first location was more focused on building community, this year’s pop-up offers a more built-out shopping experience alongside a studio that can be used for classes and other activations.
Activations so far have included an “Open Air” event that took place on Saturday, featuring a community run and a live performance by Natasha Bedingfield. It’s an example of what Green calls “owning joy” and “celebrating progress over perfection.”
“A lot of people and players in this space are emphasizing performance and high performance,” Green said. “We're not about that. We're about actually enjoying the experience. … I think that joy is very, very important and needed right now in the world.”
It may sound like more of a brand platform, and it is, but it shows up in the retailer’s store strategy too.
It was all yellow
Beyond Yoga has 20 stores currently, including the New York pop-up shop. They are, by and large, yellow. Sometimes on the outside, sometimes on the inside, sometimes both.
“We activate through color, and we have a very unique point of view on color, and that is part of the joy,” Green explains. “Yellow is a joyful color.”
Stores, in addition to being a convenient place to pick up product, are also deeply embedded in the communities they operate in. That includes partnering with local fitness groups, which lends credibility to Beyond Yoga’s product and also feeds authentically into the brand’s purpose, which is to support a shopper’s active lifestyle.
“We create a really important experience I think, that is very human and inclusive and fun and joyful,” Green said. “The brand is very much about joy, so you can feel that in the store.”
First and foremost, though, the brand’s stores are a way to give online shoppers a method of interacting with Beyond Yoga in person. New York is one of Beyond Yoga’s largest e-commerce markets, hence the pop-up location there, and the assortment at that store is tailored to the city.
“We know we need a permanent home in New York, probably more than one,” Green said. It’s been clear since the 2024 pop-up that demand for the brand is strong in the city.
It’s also the way Beyond Yoga has selected stores so far. The retailer first opened in Santa Monica, California, before expanding across the state and the West Coast more broadly. As a Los Angeles-based brand, those early decisions put it close to where many of its shoppers were.
Since then, Beyond Yoga has chosen store locations largely through a data-driven strategy that prioritizes the highest density e-commerce markets. That included an expansion to the East Coast about a year ago, which has been successful so far, according to Green. Like many brands, Beyond Yoga has seen a lift in e-commerce sales in the markets where it opens a store as well.
“You're creating an ecosystem, a customer ecosystem, and many of these markets, we also have wholesale — whether it's through studios or some of our larger accounts — and so they all support each other,” Green said.
Wholesale is a useful discovery channel for Beyond Yoga, and also comes into play in locations where the brand may never open a store, according to Green. For Beyond Yoga’s storefronts, though, it’s more about serving the brand’s existing e-commerce customers with a high quality in-person experience.
“This brand can have many stores. It's a premium brand, needs to be in the top markets where the customer is shopping,” Green said. “Every year we're growing, and so the markets that today might not be right for a store, three years from now they might be right as the brand grows and as we build awareness.”
