China’s largest direct-operated yoga chain, Saboten, announced the completion of a 150 million yuan B-round financing, jointly invested by Oriental Fortune Capital and Cowin Capital, with Qingtong Capital serving as the financial advisor.
Xu Jianxiong, Chairman of Saboten, stated that this round of funding will primarily be used for upgrading the yoga industry and building two major brands under Saboten: the offline store yoga brand “V Yoga” and the yoga lifestyle brand “Luojia.”
What kind of yoga brand is Saboten?
“We aim to create a ‘yoga+’ lifestyle ecosystem. Yoga itself is a new way of life. The demand from China’s fitness population is sufficient to support an international yoga brand. The key lies in whether entrepreneurs have an international vision and the perseverance to invest in brand building.”
”Xu Jianxiong positioned the development of “Saboten” as starting with a large-store model, improving the store system, and committing to creating an international yoga brand. After this round of financing, “Saboten” will integrate its direct-operated yoga chain brand “V Yoga” and the yoga lifestyle brand “Luojia” to build a “yoga+” lifestyle ecosystem.
Founded in 2003, “Saboten” centers around the core philosophy of “Health · Life · Home.” After fourteen years of development, it has transformed from an initial community-based family fitness club into a comprehensive wellness service provider primarily focused on yoga training and yoga culture promotion, while also offering special functional training, SPA, yoga therapy, and children’s fitness courses as value-added services.
Saboten currently operates nearly 30 direct-operated studios across the country, with an average store size of 1,000–2,000 square meters, making it the largest yoga fitness service provider in China in terms of operational scale and membership base.
As a veteran in the sports industry with over 20 years of fitness club management experience, Xu Jianxiong has unique insights into the industry. “The difference between yoga and fitness is that yoga requires a certain amount of accumulation and maturation. Although it can be replicated, the replication cycle is long and the cost is relatively high.”
“Saboten has inadvertently gained a first-mover advantage by establishing a competitive barrier through strong teaching faculty and a comprehensive curriculum system,” said Xu Jianxiong. “Yoga has huge growth potential in China, representing at least a 200-billion-yuan market. ‘Saboten’ will implement concepts such as ‘yoga + retail,’ ‘yoga + travel,’ and ‘yoga + postnatal recovery,’ using yoga as an entry point to healthy living and infusing it with new experiences in daily aspects such as clothing, food, housing, and transportation.”
In fact, Saboten is not the only yoga brand recently favored by capital. Internationally, there’s lulumoon, which focuses on selling yoga apparel, and domestically, there are Daily Yoga, which entered through media, and another high-end yoga experience brand, Wake. Various experience-based fitness brands related to the yoga field have also secured financing, which may signal that the offline consumer service industry is beginning to boom first in the fitness sector.
Previously, the nail polish brand Liujuan Nail Art also received capital attention, indicating that sectors centered around female users and focused on the explicit need to become more beautiful—such as nail care, weight loss, beauty, and yoga—are gradually gaining favor with investors.
Why is the yoga industry attracting capital?
Why has this offline consumer service industry started to attract capital? Oriental Fortune Capital and Cowin Capital, the investors in this round, shared their perspectives on this matter.
Chen Yiwei, a partner at Oriental Fortune Capital, believes that with the arrival of the consumption upgrade era, the sports industry holds unlimited potential. “The Oriental Fortune Cultural Consumption Fund is optimistic about the investment prospects of the sports industry.”
Oriental Fortune chose “Saboten” for three reasons: First, it has strength—“Saboten” already operates nearly 30 direct-operated stores and is undoubtedly a leader in the industry; second, it has uniqueness—“Saboten’s” concept of a “yoga + lifestyle ecosystem” aligns with the personalized demands of the consumption upgrade era; third, it has vision—the founder, Mr. Xu, has been rooted in the sports industry for over 20 years and is professional, dedicated, and passionate. This is a team with dreams, and Oriental Fortune is willing to build those dreams together in the sports industry.” Chen Yiwei said.
Duan Yao, a partner at Cowin Capital, stated: “As a sport with cultural depth and meaning, yoga is increasingly recognized by China’s middle class, making it a consumption upgrade area that Cowin is optimistic about.”And “Saboten,” as the undisputed industry leader among Chinese yoga companies, has a solid foundation built over many years and a well-established international management team, international curriculum, coaches, and management systems, forming a high competitive barrier. Founder Mr. Xu, with over 20 years of industry experience, has strong resource integration capabilities—these are the reasons we chose “Saboten” among numerous yoga projects.”
Qiao Jianhua, Managing Partner at Qingtong Capital, stated: “As a leading enterprise in the offline yoga industry, ‘Saboten’ has a solid user base, a comprehensive curriculum system, and an international perspective.”Qingtong has witnessed “Saboten’s” efforts in systematization and compliance. As the number of managed stores increases, the advantages of informatization will gradually emerge. We are optimistic about “Saboten’s” future market development prospects.”
From the investors’ perspective, we can summarize the core investment logic:
From an industry standpoint, the investment is in the big business of offline consumer services. Yoga naturally combines popular labels and attributes such as femininity, experiential consumption, and sports.It has always been an overlooked big business, so if a major leading brand emerges in this field, it holds significant investment value. Moreover, as a brand that naturally has longer user touchpoints, it has great potential for retail conversion in the future.
Another point lies in the advent of the era of professionalization in yoga course offerings. For a long time, the yoga industry was dominated by small-scale, workshop-style brands, facing major pain points in brand chain operations and course standardization. However, during periods of explosive growth in overall consumer demand, it is highly likely that brands with specialized, high-demand offerings will emerge in this field.
What other major opportunities exist in this field?
In July of this year, I previously mentioned the remaining opportunities in emerging consumer areas such as fitness and yoga. At that time, I believed:
Fitness chain clubs with strong professional content capabilities still hold significant investment opportunities.The U.S. fitness chain sector has already seen companies valued at 4 billion USD. China’s massive fitness consumer market also holds such investment opportunities, provided that the fitness club has strong content and R&D capabilities, as well as excellent fitness coach incubation, certification, and training capabilities, thus having the opportunity to achieve scalable expansion.
There are also broad investment opportunities for fitness clubs in third- and fourth-tier cities.As consumption habits in third- and fourth-tier cities increasingly align with those in first- and second-tier cities, there are still vast investment opportunities. Investment institutions can focus on regional brands, which may have the potential to be integrated by leading first- and second-tier brands in the future.
Professional content developers are still very scarce.Content developers in the fitness sector are akin to specialized supply chain service providers in the catering industry. In the future, any brand that possesses exceptional content development capabilities will have the opportunity to enter the business of coach training, certification, and incubation through content as an entry point. Moving further along, they could become specialized fitness property operators. Therefore, it is recommended that investment institutions focus on leading brands with strong content capabilities.
Individual specialized fitness studios hold significant investment value, such as those focused on a specific niche.If the team has strong content development and systematic coach training capabilities, and if the niche category has broad appeal among the Chinese population, it is recommended that the investment institution focus on several leading categories.
Locally branded fitness apparel and food products that meet more personalized user needs are still scarce.These also hold considerable investment value. Compared to a super giant like Lululemon, China should also present investment opportunities for similar local brands. There are also opportunities in the professional food sector and fitness meal replacement product space, but the products must have high technical barriers.
Investment opportunities in low-cost fitness products.Any originally niche, professional-grade products have the potential to achieve mass-market adoption by reducing professional complexity and cost. Therefore, whoever can create low-cost, high-value products—much like Home Inns did in revolutionizing the hotel industry—will bring significant change to the sector. The trend toward miniaturization and affordability in fitness equipment is also evident.
The growing enthusiasm of capital in this field is gradually validating the author’s viewpoint. Especially in the past six months with the arrival of the new retail wave, we believe there are numerous opportunities at the intersection of sports + new retail and cultural content + new retail. The opportunities within these intersecting business models will be substantial, and we have reason to remain optimistic about this new consumer trend.
Source: Consumer New Participation