
Chicago Yoga Studio: "Why I won't do a Groupon" - awicklander
http://blog.tulayoga.net/2011/08/why-i-wont-do-groupon.html
======
klenwell
Didn't take long for a Groupon sockpuppet to show up in the comments:

 _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..._

Rachel Baker User Stats

On Blogger Since August 2011

Profile Views (approximate) 7

~~~
awicklander
Rachel is not a Groupon employee. I share of office with her in Chicago. She's
a wordpress developer, founder of PluggedIn consulting
(<http://pluggedinconsulting.com>) and a great person.

~~~
BasDirks
great persons can be sockpuppets, but I think said qualification is quite
unreasonable.

~~~
tptacek
Is it really up for discussion when someone says "I actually share an office
with this person and know they aren't a shill"? I don't think it is up for
discussion anymore.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> someone

It's a grouponspiracy all the way down, man.

------
mathattack
And this comes from Groupon's hometown. Ouch!

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.

~~~
mturmon
The post you refer to was a good example of a business that had intelligently
thought through whether Groupon was _good for them_.

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.

~~~
mathattack
Exactly! Groupon is good for some but not all. Same with Network TV
advertising. Same with newspaper coupons.

------
TrevorBurnham
One thing no one has mentioned is Yelp. Yelp is _huge_ for yoga. If your yoga
studio doesn't have any reviews on Yelp, a lot of people are going to be
hesitant to pony up $15 just to try one class. (Many studios offer a discount
for new students, but this one doesn't.)

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.

------
marquis
500 groupon customers is a lot to bear considering her calculations, but would
it not make sense to offer, say, 50 groupon codes and write these off as
marketing costs? Or is there a minimum limit to what groupon will work with
you on.

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.

~~~
silvestrov
Your second paragraph (sort of) contradicts the first: it says that (some)
groupon users will never return unless presented with another groupon. No
repeat/loyal customers.

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.

~~~
rsheridan6
Even if they don't come back, it's still better to have the Groupon chasers in
your studio. You get paid at least a little bit if they buy a Groupon,
compared to nothing if they don't. The marginal cost to a Yoga studio of
adding another student is zero.

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.

------
johnrob
Reminds me of the most recent conclusion I had come to regarding Groupon: it
appeals to broken businesses. If you can't get new customers by simply
lowering prices (instead of offering a Groupon), then your business is on very
weak ground. Leveraging Groupon's email marketing distribution for a one time
boost is not going to fix this fundamental problem.

~~~
rachelbaker
Forget lowering prices, if you cannot get customers into your business than
you really need to take a step back and review your current marketing efforts.

What can be done to get more of your target customers in the door - and to
keep that up on an ongoing basis?

------
georgieporgie
I can't think of a worse application for Groupon than yoga. It's a long-term,
continuous process. You want a reliable teacher and a relaxing, focused
experience you can count on. Having the studio jam-packed with new faces isn't
the way to accomplish that.

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.

~~~
blackguardx
$130 is a lot of money, but investing in your health is probably the best
investment you can make. Some people spend $130 just on coffee every month.

~~~
georgieporgie
I'm guess I'm spoiled. I'm used to Mission Cliffs in San Francisco, where a
~$65/month membership got you climbing, cardio, weights, along with spin,
kickboxing, and yoga classes.

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.

~~~
impendia
I practiced at Yoga Tree Castro for a long time, and found the instruction to
be excellent and worth every penny.

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.

------
Alex3917
Her business aside, anyone who joins an organized religion because it's on
sale is probably a moron.

~~~
blackguardx
Yoga isn't a religion. It is basically just a group stretching class. Some
people put various "new age" elements into it, but I don't see how it could be
considered a religion. I could be wrong though. I've never been to place where
people considered it to be much more than a fitness class. Maybe I've been to
the wrong places.

~~~
Alex3917
The word yoga literally means 'yoke', in other words basically a connection to
god. That's what those stretches are designed to do. It's a form of mysticism,
like Kabbalah.

~~~
shiven
You made my day!!

Alex3917 you are now permanently listed under the birfer/truther/tin-foil-
hatter category in my book!

You, Sir, are simply HILARIOUS!

~~~
gruseom
I really object to that. Alex3917 is one of the most well-informed commenters
on here. That he takes unpopular and unconventional positions is cause for
admiration, not rude ridicule.

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.

~~~
tptacek
Hm.

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.

~~~
gruseom
Well now I feel guilty for communicating in abrasive shortcuts myself.

"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!)

