Lululemon spent two years designing his new mat. It partnered with the Canadian Sports Institute in Calgary, Alberta, to study how people used their yoga mats. The team developed a kind of ‘heat map’ of usage zones by keeping track of which places people have touched the most during their training. That data, combined with analysis of the worn areas on used yoga mats, gave the design team a clear idea of where to place the ripples and where padding should be prioritized.
Most of Lululemon’s previous yoga mats are made with a base layer of rubber covered with a surface layer of non-slip polyurethane. According to Morris, the common method of creating a three-dimensional surface, such as the ridges in the Take Form mat, is through embossing – pressing a heated die into the surface to shape the material. The problem is that Lululemon cannot apply that process to his yoga mats, given their construction. The rubber base does not retain the mold’s memory and the surface layer uses a type of porous polyurethane that would melt from the heat.
The solution was to develop a foam mixture that would harden and keep its shape. That foam strip is then inserted between the rubber guide and the polyurethane surface. Lululemon won’t describe exactly how this foaming process works, citing its proprietary nature, but Morris likens it to baking a cake.
“Foam starts out as a liquid and as a cure they foam,” he says.
The Take Form mat will cost between $ 118 and $ 128, depending on the version, and will be available worldwide from March 23.
Sanchia Legister demonstrates the correct technique. Note the placement of her hands and feet. Perfect!
Photo: LululemonThe market for new yoga mats – whether embellished with 3D ribbing or not – is much different now than it was when Lululemon started developing the Take Form. Spurred by the isolation of the pandemic, demand for home exercise equipment exploded in 2020. But even as vaccines become more available and the world approaches a semblance of normalcy, the trend is that people prefer to sweat at home rather than in gyms. and yoga studios may not go away.
Alignment mats can be especially helpful when no yoga instructor is hovering over you and actively monitoring your form.
Equipment that offers that kind of self-direction is in line with Lululemon’s strategy of fully embracing the trend of home training. While the company was losing sales in its stores at the start of the pandemic, online sales soared. Also, in June last year, Lululemon acquired the home fitness company Mirror for $ 500 million. Pairing an alignment mat with in-person classes blasted straight into your home via Mirror is pretty close to the experience of in-person yoga instruction. Now if the company wants to jump on the next obvious yoga trend, it just has to start selling some goats.
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