Yoga Mats
Yoga has become incredibly popular on a global scale and looks as though it is here to stay. Regular students prefer to have their own mat rather than use the ones that everyone has sweated, drooled, and maybe even cried all over. The potential market for Yoga related equipment is huge, but most obviously the humble yoga mat.
Be super cheap, or persuade your customers that your products are higher quality than others, or come up with a unique design, whether that be graphics, shape or materials used in construction. Some research on the internet should help you to decide.
In terms of distribution, there are many ways to find customers: -
EBAY
Online shop
Gyms and Yoga studios
Training VCD/DVD
Conferences/Seminars
Universities (Sports faculty/SU)
Magazine adverts
However else you distribute your mats you absolutely must get them on EBAY. Post an advert for each colour, shape, design and brand them all with your chosen company or trading name. Your price is less important than your visibility. Link all the ads back to your website or include your phone number.
Equally, whatever else you do get a webpage up and running. You don¡¦t have to get a professional sounding domain name, but they are very reasonably priced these days and it will help. The key is to get all your stock up and allow some kind of payment gateway, whether that be Paypal, or credit cards or both. All your other promotions should link back to the site to enable easy ordering and dispatch.
Gyms and Yoga studios will usually have suppliers of products such as Yoga mats. It is still worth talking to them to see whether you can offer them a better price. Some of the other initiatives discussed below may also persuade them to work with you. Another approach is to show them your wholesale process (what you can buy them for) and agree to a fixed mark up (say 10%) leaving any additional profit for the gym/yoga studio. Don't tell them who your suppliers are though, as they are likely to bypass you.
This may seem an unusual idea, but if you can find a helpful yoga teacher they may be willing to work with you on a short instructional video. You can hire or borrow the equipment to make your short film and the instructor can simply go through 5-6 moves nice and slowly. At the end of the clip the instructor can explain why he/she used your mats (you write the script) and how to buy them. Give the DVD or VCD copy of this away for free, it costs almost nothing to copy and you own the copyrights. You can also post the video on your online website. Agree to share any profits from the video with your instructor, or pay them a fixed fee. Distribute through your local gyms and yoga studios. The benefit to your instructor is that they will gain some fame through your give away, as well as the fee or share of sales.
Conferences and seminars are great as are one off demonstrations by famous instructors, and competitions. You will usually find them advertised well in advance by your local gyms and yoga studios, or in magazines and other local publications. If you cannot find your way into any of these then you may want to consider promoting your own. You can charge for entry to cover the cost of any experts, and the cost of the venue, and because you set it up you will be entitled to have your own stand and maybe even allow other companies to set up stands providing they do not compete with your product line.
Universities and student unions will often make deals for bulk purchases in order to save money for the students, as well as equipping the University. If you plan to make an approach then bear this in mind, and speak with both the administration and the Student union representatives. You will definitely be competing on cost but a bulk order should make your total profit margin worth having. Doing 1 or 2 of these types of deals will give you credibility when you try to make more. Remember the timing of your pitch will be important and you should aim to get in well before the autumn term starts.
Magazine advertising can be very focussed in exercise related magazines, if you go for one of the big branded international ones then you may find yourself paying a hefty price per column inch, but equally you will reach a larger audience. The alternative is to find local, or up and coming magazines which will charge a smaller fee because of their smaller circulation. Another alternative is to write an article for your local newspaper, or a niche magazine and include your web address in the signature block. The key is to try to target as many interested individuals as possible for as low a cost as possible.
It is easy to source Yoga Mats, but remember what we said earlier about how price competitive this is. You definitely want to source from abroad, probably China or India but you can search other developing markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The Malaysian rubber industry is well developed and may provide some opportunities for sourcing that are less well researched than those on www.alibaba.com.
We recommend dedicating some time with your favourite search engine (you all know by now that ours is www.google.com ) and search for "yoga mat suppliers" in each country that interests you. Shipping should be cheap, as you can fit a lot of yoga mats in a standard shipping container, and you should find suppliers who can take care of this for you.
To do the paperwork before importing anything
Keep your costs low and be prepared to accept a low margin providing you can sell large quantities.
You will meet some interesting people doing this, and can feel good about helping people to live a healthy lifestyle.