In the latest yoga industry news, California-based uKarma Corporation is set to acquire Yoga Shelter, “Michigan’s #1 Network of Yoga Studios.” While the name conjures up a halfway house, Yoga Shelter is actually a fairly well-established company with 4 studios (three of them corporately funded, one in a mall), and offerings such as teacher trainings and worldwide retreats. What we find even more interesting is it also owns a consulting arm called YogaMedics which deals in providing medically based yoga programs for injury prevention, existing medical conditions and pre and post-surgery. Since we’ve been told this is the future direction of yoga we’re placing our bets that YogaMedics will play a much larger role down the road for uKarma.
What we know about uKarma is they are the fiery bunch behind Xflowsion, an exercise trend that mashes yoga, martial arts and dance in one program, and that they have quite the outrageous infomercial-style website hawking their multitude of DVDs.
Another tidbit, one of Yoga Shelter’s members and investors is Hannan Lis, former CEO of Weight Watchers. This is clearly going to be vertical integration at its best, perhaps the first in the yoga industry?
This new merger will definitely be one to watch in the race to mass market yoga. Would you like xflosion fries with that low-cal organic mcyoga shake?
uKarma to Acquire Yoga Shelter Fitness Studios [BusinessWire]
