With each new store opening, fitness apparel brand Beyond Yoga is taking a hyperlocal approach to marketing, said Chief Marketing Officer Katie Babineau.

The 20-year old brand was focused on wholesale and direct-to-consumer online sales until August 2021, when denim manufacturer Levi Strauss & Co. acquired Beyond Yoga for $400 million. Since then, operating its own stores is now apart of the brand’s channel mix. Today, Beyond Yoga has 14 stores, and in 2025 it doubled its footprint with plans to expand in 2026, Babineau said.

Larger Stores To Showcase More Product

Last year, Beyond Yoga embarked on a new retail concept where its store footprint is two-times larger so the brand can showcase more of its products, including its new men’s line and more lifestyle clothes. The brand is choosing the store locations where it knows — based on its customer data — that it already has a customer base either through ecommerce or wholesale, she said.

When the apparel retailer opens a new store it has a hyperlocal approach to marketing, Babineau said, in which it hosts joint events with local fitness studios. A number of studios sell Beyond Yoga’s clothing, so the brand works with them to promote the store opening and possibly host a class on the day of the store opening. Beyond Yoga has a few avenues it takes, such as doing a product giveaway, having influencers attend a class or sponsoring an entire class at the studio. Then, the retailer will always have some incentive to have the participants walk over to the store, such as a promotion or party.

“It’s pretty effective in terms of driving awareness to the store and traffic to the store and really building excitement to the brand and market,” Babineau said.

In addition, Beyond Yoga uses social tools to identify potential brand ambassadors in the market that are talking about the brand and the market, she said. Beyond Yoga then hires those local fitness influencers to post about the store opening.

In-Person Marketing

Connecting in person is key to Beyond Yoga’s marketing initiatives. Even though its young customers are digital navies and spend a lot of time online, they crave real life experiences, Babineau said. While the brand has to market digitally — cutting through the noise with relevant content, Babineau said — it also has to provide opportunities for consumers to meet the Beyond Yoga brand in real life too, she said.

“The exciting opportunity is to continue to connect with the customer in real life and figuring out a way to do that at scale,” she said. “There’s so much happening online now that we’re really seeing the customer at a macro level, there’s sort of this digital fatigue. And so wanting to give people a reprieve from that and get them out in the real world, moving more, connecting more.”

One example of that is in October 2024, it had a commercial pop-up in New York City, which showcased its holiday collection, plus included exercise classes taught by its fitness ambassadors.

“We saw strong brand engagement, but also commerce and new audience acquisition through that model,” Babineau said.

Beyond Yoga’s Seek Beyond Platform

In 2025, Beyond Yoga debuted its Seek Beyond marketing platform which focuses on the message of progress over perfection and “offering people a different point of view in the journey of movement and wellness,” Babineau said.

Beyond Yoga launched with inclusive sizing for its activewear, which was novel 20 years ago but more common today, Babineau said. The Seek Beyond campaign is how the brand is evolving that position by staying true to its origin but giving consumers an alternative message about finding joy in the fitness journey, she said. The brand will continue to expand on this platform in 2026.

This message resonates even more in the age of generative AI, when consumers are craving authenticity. Beyond Yoga is embracing generative artificial intelligence for tedious tasks, such as naming a picture so AI can read it, and not having an employee naming each image. This then frees up its marketers for more creative output, Babineau said.

“There will be even more of a need for more human-based creation so that you’ve got a good distinction of less polish, more real and less flawless looking content. We’ll crave that realness a bit more,” Babineau said in her National Retail Federation panel discussion in January.

More Resources With Levi’s Acquisition

Beyond Yoga’s brand positioning is working well,  as Levi’s recently reported Beyond Yoga’s revenue increased 45% year over year in Q4, fueled by positive consumer response to the Seek Beyond campaign and products in new categories. Direct-to-consumer sales also performed “particularly well,” CEO Michelle Gass told investors Jan. 28, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. For the 2025 year, Beyond Yoga ended up 17%, Gass said.

Even though Levi’s acquired Beyond Yoga, the brand and its marketing team run independently, Babineau said.

“It has allowed us to fuel our growth in all the right places,” she said. “We can lean on infrastructure and resources in all the right ways, but they’re great in really allowing us to run independently.”