Yogasmoga Bankruptcy Filing Signals Trouble In Athleisure Land

In a phone call with founder Rishi Bali this morning, the co-founder admitted the liquidation came as a result of “overgrowing,” specifically failing to raise a new round of capital because there was a big disagreement with its main investor. “As a founder of the company, I am gutted by the news because it’s really hard to build companies,” he says. “Due to a combination of factors, we couldn’t close the financing. It was a little bit of overgrowing, and so we are filing so that we can shrink our footprint.” That makes sense. But Yogasmoga’s other big challenge is likely how the brand positioned itself in the first place: in the pursuit of taking Lululemon down. Last year, the brand sent me a pitch with the subject line “Lululemon has some new competition!” In the email, a publicist told me that “industry insiders are pointing to the brand as a threat to Lululemon.” Even though Rishi Bali told Bloomberg last year that “there’s no killing Lululemon,” he also told the New York Times he expected Yogasmoga “to be better than Lululemon, just more authentic.” The company even spent two years developing a special black dye that would ensure leggings wouldn’t be see-through — clearly a shot at Lululemon’s 2013 sheer leggings crisis. But as Chris Burch had to learn through his failed enterprise, C. Wonder, companies rarely find success when they simply try duplicating something prosperous. It’s time fitness brands stop coming to market with the promise of “being like Lululemon, but better!”(particularly when “better” doesn’t mean more affordable). Shoppers are smarter than that: Lululemon cannot just be recreated, and if brands think it can, they need to step away from the venture capitalist huddle and talk to some real shoppers, the kind who will tell them brand loyalty is about more than just catchphrases like “authenticity.” Read more at Racked.