Chicago Yoga Studio: "Why I won't do a Groupon"
blog.tulayoga.net
blog.tulayoga.net
Rachel Baker said...
I think Groupon is a guaranteed and low effort marketing platform for businesses. Every new customer has a cost of acquisition. The smarter and more efficient your marketing efforts the lower that cost. Groupon can be the best thing in the world...
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Unknown said...
Agreed 100% with Rachel's comment above. Also, what makes you think Groupon would even accept you? Top tier deal sites (LivingSocial, Groupon) expect established or reputable businesses. You're too new and unproven to make the cut. You also sound naive in general.
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It's a grouponspiracy all the way down, man.
OT: I think Google will probably make a major change to Blogger in the next year or two which may fix their identity linking issue. It will be interesting to see where they go.
I would never work for Groupon or anyone else - so I would make a very bad puppet. ;) I didn't even mean to sound like I was endorsing Groupon. Groupon = marketing laziness (IMHO)
And frankly, they both rock. :)
Words matter. If you don't know someone is a paid shill for another company, use words that indicate that.
Also, in my case, the GP expressed the same opinion that I had after seeing those comments on the OP.
Was I uncivil? Some might argue polluting blog comments with marketing pabulum is uncivil. I just thought it was kind of interesting, indicative perhaps of where Groupon invests some of its resources.
Well, one would hope they weren't an _actual_ Groupon rep. This is _not_ the sort of thing that a company trying to IPO should be saying.
My impression is that Groupon works better for brining in incremental revenue. A prior HN post on skydiving captured this very well. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2654788 What I mean by incremental is customers who would never use your business to begin with. It also helps if the business is high margin. These businesses tend to have high fixed costs too.
We recently used Groupon for a midweek booking of a fantastic bed and breakfast. Great for them - we'd have never heard of it, and the revenue was largely incremental, while the costs were fixed. Great for us - a B&B when we wanted. Also great for a bespoke suit. ($3000 - a little crazy. But $600 - not so bad)
Yoga seems much more variable cost. A big part of the cost is the teacher. Some back of the napkin (streetfighting?) math suggests a class of 15 people pays $8 per a hour class. Counting prep, set up, and tear down, it takes the teacher an hour and a half. So let's say they make 60. Then it's 60 to pay for the space, AC, etc. Very low margin business. Cutting the revenue by 75% doesn't make sense unless you're selling a lot of add-ons or expecting to convert for long term customers. Both are risky propositions at best.
Some other special aspects of that case: Due to the nature of the business, the Groupon'ers had to sign in to a slot in the schedule, eliminating the "rush of customers" problem. And, the business had upsell options like souvenir t-shirts to extract some non-discount money from customers.
There's a big overlap between Groupon users and Yelp users, so it's a great way to get a batch of reviews up fast. But that's a double-edged sword, especially if Groupon buyers are going to be packed in like sardines in the studio's first weeks.
Here's what I'd suggest: This studio needs to get a Yelp page up right away, and at least post a message there about when they're opening. They may even want to offer a deal right there: "Mention Yelp, and get $5 off your first class!" That way they'll attract more customers (but not too many), get reviews early, and cut out the discount middleman.
Having said that, I have friends who won't do sushi or yoga without a groupon, which I find fascinating. When I asked would they not return somewhere that they enjoyed without a groupon they replied that there are sufficient groupons in their city to not have to do that. I must be old-school as I believe in supporting your local businesses and nurturing your community rather than saving a few dollars.
That might be the problem with groupon: the people most likely to use groupons are the ones least likely to become loyal customers and the least likely to effectively recommend your business to their friends because all their friends know they only went there due to the groupon.
Of course this doesn't apply if you're running close enough to capacity that the addition of more students will degrade the experience for everyone else, but a lot of yoga studios don't have that problem, especially not at off-peak hours.
What can be done to get more of your target customers in the door - and to keep that up on an ongoing basis?
That said, if they're charging $130 per month, I wouldn't do it without a Groupon, either. That's a fortune for some group exercise.
OTOH, I moved recently, and a studio near my new place did a Groupon. I probably wouldn't have heard of them otherwise (there are other studios that are closer to me). They did a small deal, something like $15 for a 5-class pass, and they did it at a time of year when they're at less than peak capacity (it's summer and the studio is near MIT). So, I'd say that deal made sense.
(As to $130/mo: Actually, I was happily paying that much at my studio. This studio's pricing seems to be in line with most: $15 for a single class, $130 for an unlimited monthly pass.)
Honestly, though, I do think the fairly standard $15 per session is way, way too much for yoga. $15 per head with a class size of around 20 is $300 for a one hour session. I visited Yoga Tree (I think) in the Castro once, at an even higher price. The 'advantage' was that the studio was fancier, and they had a couple of really poorly trained lackeys running around making 'corrections'. Honestly, the yoga instruction I got at Mission Cliffs was better, and the instructor bothered to get to know me and my personal limitations.
I agree entirely about investing in health, though, particularly for people in sedentary careers.
Have never been to Mission Cliffs, so I won't claim it's not better still. But my perspective is that any yoga class which is worth my time, my sweat, my hard work, and the trouble of going there, is worth my $15.
And, if you buy the 20-class passes, it comes out at $11 a pop.
Coffee shops and restaurants seem less suited in comparison; their product is more of a commodity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga#Reception_in_the_West
Let me save you the trouble while I'm here:
"...legitimizing yoga as a purely physical system of health exercises outside of counter culture or esotericism circles, and unconnected to a religious denomination."
Alex3917 you are now permanently listed under the birfer/truther/tin-foil-hatter category in my book!
You, Sir, are simply HILARIOUS!
As for the point about yoga, it hardly seems odd to suggest that a system that's been around for thousands of years might retain some connection to its origins.
I agree with you about the comment you replied to. That comment is so bad I flagged it. So the idea that anyone would downmod you for calling it out is dispiriting.
But, much as I like 'Alex3917, I downmodded his yoga comment. I thought it was so reductionist that it sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
"Reductionist" is probably fair. Alex can be a bit of a bombthrower, and not always in a helpful way. For me the line is drawn somewhere between http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2932298 (unhelpful because indiscriminate and judgmental - and yes, reductionist. Nobody is a moron.) and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2932421 (provocative but informed). I'm guessing the line draws itself a little differently for you.
Sadly, the interesting question (what if anything is the religious significance of yoga in the modern West?) probably falls in the large category of stuff that is impossible to discuss online. It always appears possible, but immediately degenerates into binary twiddling where everyone takes their own pre-existing bitmask, ANDs it with what they perceive the competing bitmasks to be, and emits signals of "yes/like" and "no/dislike" that vary only in intensity. The informational content of this process is low. It's like addictive food that lacks nutrition.
I have a theory as to why this is. High-value discourse -- in which people experience their overlapping divergences as something other than a binary opposition and come away from the encounter slightly transformed, which is a deeply human and satisfying experience -- requires rapport, and rapport is a somatic phenomenon. It mostly occurs when people are both personally acquainted and physically nearby. Online discussions, which have neither, are therefore inhospitable. We end up with a lot of verbiage that is cognitively sophisticated but emotionally/limbically primitive. I wonder if auxiliary in-person meetups of online communities will continue to grow as a way to mitigate this. In any case we should look for a way to increase the likelihood of rapport. I don't mean to try to bring it about (that would be awful) but to ask what conditions increase the probability of it occurring spontaneously.
(Normally I'd edit this down but I'm late for brunch at my sister's house, so you get the overwrought version!)
From my point of view, my comment was of the same tone and direction as the immediate parent. Snarky, insulting and full of (in my opinion - well deserved) ridicule.
(EDIT: I appreciate the fact that any forum (HN) would benefit from keeping snark, insults and stupid fights to a minimum and in that spirit my reply was in the wrong direction. In future, I'll try to cultivate a less confrontational and/or snarky tone and be more patient than I was here.)
Having said that, I am a firm believer in the dictum of "you cannot please everyone, all of the time", but I would love to hear the basis for you taking such strong offense to my comment alone.
And, if the entire point of your comment is to inform everyone else on HN that you think another HN user is unworthy of our attention, you should rethink posting the comment at all. Comments of that sort are generally unwelcome.
if the entire point of your comment is to inform everyone else on HN that you think another HN user is unworthy of our attention, you should rethink posting the comment at all
Thank you for putting my feelings into words. I wish I could have just silently down-voted what I found so offensive instead of flaming out and coming across as being uncivil, but then again, that is a privilege not yet afforded to me on HN.
Clearly, a silent down-vote conveys much more than a thoughtless reply here.
What I do find confounding is the pile-up on my comments, instead of any voice raised (or down-votes) to the comment that started it all!
Is the messenger's tone more important than the message to folks on HN?
The "message" in this case is a totally pointless and off-topic digression about the liturgical significance of yoga.
The meta-message we are engaged in is "how shall I conduct myself on HN to best support the norms of the community".
Because one hopes you'll be contributing to discussions far more relevant and important than yoga, it's worth taking the time to explain how to better calibrate your tone.
However, I am totally confounded by (what appears to me as) the groupthink downvoting going on even now!
(that too on my comments that have nothing to do with this thread!!)
So how do you (or pg) make sure that silent downvoting is applied justifiably and not just a vindictive or punitive action resulting from superficial disagreement? Or is this a non-issue on HN?
And more importantly, are you aware/concerned that such actions (of maybe a few) may make newcomers (like me) see HN as unfriendly at best and nearly tyrannical at worst.
(Needless to say, I should have been civil to begin with, but now this reply is on wholly another point.)
Yoga is a form of Hindu mysticism which was practiced by Hindu ascetics as a form of religous penance or as part of their meditations.
Yoga came to the West as a form of mysticism, largely due in part to the influence of the Beatles and the Hippie movement of the 70s.
While yoga in the West has largely been divorced from its spiritual aspects, many American Yoga classes still incorporate them, even those taught by non-Hindus.
Maybe we could create a business where groups of people throw stones on a leather puppet and say it is good for their arm muscles and trains them in track and field.
For people who sit at a desk all day, like most people here I would imagine, doing even just one hour of yoga a week can have a huge influence on their physical well-being (not to mention posture). Doesn't need to be more than that.
All science is religious in that sense, but not all science is mysticism.
Some Yoga schools are more spiritually-oriented than others, but I assure you that the vast majority of people who go to Yoga classes do so for the health benefits alone.
I guess I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around Yoga as a secular activity. Even most if people are just doing it as a workout, it seems like part of what draws people to it is that it gives them some vague feeling of connection with something in the collective unconscious, even if they never explicitly explore its history or its role as a spiritual tool. And even just that in and of itself seems to provide some spiritual benefit.
I have no doubt that people basically just want the benefits of some thousand year old tradition, but packaged in a way that reinforces their preexisting worldview. Which strikes me as absurd, but at least I can kind of understand it. But even still, I think the fact that it's something that people have been doing for thousands of years has to inherently change people's posture, no pun intended.
I am curious because you have some very definite opinions about it, and they are quite different to what I have observed in my Yoga practise.
I've never actually done Yoga but I generally have really wonky interests, so that's generally my bias.
Unlike yoga, the Salvation Army is actually a religion. Do you avoid shopping there or donating there just because of that? Do you shop in vintage stores in NYC? Where do you think they get their stuff?
But yes, I do avoid the salvation army because of their politics.