Author | Wang Xiaojun

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

Alo YOGA is going to confront lululemon head-on once again.

Recently, there have been reports that Alo Yoga is preparing to enter the China market, and has brought in former Arc'teryx Vice President of Marketing Aurora Liu to lead the China team. Additionally, Alo Yoga has begun site selection in locations such as the Jing'an Kerry Center in Shanghai, with the first offline store opening in 2025.

For many middle-class girls in China who love yoga wear but are not particularly enthusiastic about Lululemon, there's finally no need to search for a purchasing agent. However, for Lululemon, maintaining its primary growth drive in the current Chinese market has become more challenging.

According to Lululemon's latest third-quarter Earnings Reports, the company's global net revenue reached 2.4 billion USD, achieving a year-on-year growth of 9%, while net revenue in the Chinese market reached 0.318 billion USD, marking nearly a 40% year-on-year growth.

This performance proves that Lululemon is still well-received by the middle class in China, but it also shows other competitors the continuous potential of the yoga wear market in China, with Alo Yoga as an emerging competitor on the way.

Previously, André Maestrini, the Executive Vice President of International Business at lululemon, stated: "By fiscal year 2026, mainland China is expected to become lululemon's second largest market globally."

With Alo Yoga entering the Chinese market, doubts about lululemon achieving this goal have increased.

Alo Yoga, like its competitor lululemon, originated in North America. It is a junior to lululemon, founded in 2007, and initially took a niche approach before recently starting significant expansion.

It is hard not to think that Alo Yoga's current expansion strategy has been stimulated by lululemon. For the past decade, lululemon has firmly dominated the Athletic Apparel Industry and, in 2022, its Market Cap briefly surpassed Adidas.

Alo Yoga began its expansion period in recent years. From 2020 to 2022, its annual sales rose from approximately 0.2 billion USD to 1 billion USD. Interestingly, in the USA, many of Alo Yoga's stores are located within 0.5 miles of lululemon outlets.

It has proven that Alo Yoga’s offensive is indeed rapid, and is taking over lululemon's share of the wardrobes of wealthy women in North America.

In the North American market, according to credit card data from Earnest, during Black Friday 2023, users who originally purchased lululemon started spending on Vuori and Alo Yoga, of which the consumers of Alo Yoga have a 63% overlap with lululemon. Subsequently, lululemon's comparable sales in North America decreased by 2% in the third quarter.

This is also easy to understand, as for the middle class, newer and more niche brands are always more attractive, which is a consumer trend favorable for the newer Alo Yoga.

In terms of brand positioning, lululemon focuses on the highly educated and elite 'super girl,' emphasizing professional yoga practice; meanwhile, Alo Yoga targets the Gen Z 'IT girl,' who emphasizes becoming younger and more fashionable in everyday casual wear. In comparison, it is evident that the latter has a broader applicable scope.

Currently, Alo Yoga has nearly a hundred stores across more than 10 countries globally. Although it cannot yet compare to lululemon, its store count has been growing at almost one new store per week over the past year.

In recent years, it has begun a major offensive in the Asian market, opening stores in Thailand, Indonesia, and other locations. It is even set to open its first flagship store in South Korea's Island Park in the second quarter of next year, expected to be about 600 square meters and six stories tall. Additionally, in choosing spokespersons, there is a preference for Asian public figures, such as BLACKPINK's Jisoo and BTS member Jin.

Entering the Chinese market seems to be just a matter of time for Alo Yoga.

With lululemon already proving the potential of the Chinese market, Alo Yoga naturally wants to take a share of the pie, and it already has a large audience base domestically.

Currently, many young women are sharing their experiences of purchasing Alo Yoga on social media. Among these, content tagged with 'alo' on Xiaohongshu has garnered over 45 million views. During the Singles' Day Sales, a store called 'ALO Flagship Store' became the tenth in this year's Tmall Outdoor Sports November 11 Shopping Festival-Related sales rankings.

As a newcomer, Alo Yoga will also face a series of challenges.

The first challenge is in distribution. According to its official website, lululemon has 162 stores in mainland China (including duty-free and pop-up stores), and many locations have already penetrated the lower-tier markets. Alo Yoga will require a considerable amount of time to establish its stores and will find it difficult to compete with lululemon in the short term.

In addition, long-standing issues such as counterfeiting and alternatives that have troubled lululemon also need to be faced by Alo YOGA.

For example, the aforementioned "ALO flagship store" is not an officially authorized store by Alo YOGA, and customer service is evasive about whether the products are genuine; the products in the store are quite similar to those on the Alo YOGA global website, but the price difference is huge.

Besides Tmall, similar stores can be found on mainstream e-commerce platforms. This also means that Alo YOGA's first battle after entering is not against lululemon but rather a struggle against the "counterfeits". After all, consumers who have already bought fake products are starting to avoid them; some consumers lament, "If Alo doesn't act soon, it will be tarnished by piracy before even entering the market."

However, the stories of these popular brands seem quite similar.

Starting from a niche track and then collaborating with KOLs to showcase a fashionable and healthy lifestyle; it rapidly gains popularity, sales surge, and achieves success in the Capital Markets; soon after, it enters the mass market, where brand performance growth levels off, and middle-class young women, finding the brand too mainstream, begin searching for the next brand that can satisfy their desire for novelty.

In the long term, consumers are rational. Whether a brand can remain popular depends mainly on its ability to continuously provide products that are fresh and meet the evolving needs of consumers.

Whether it's Alo YOGA or lululemon, the upcoming competition in the China market will require them to offer products that meet the needs of Chinese consumers.

The new year is approaching, and the battle in the yoga apparel sector has already ignited.