Lululemon spent two years designing his new mattress. He worked 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 use areas by monitoring the points that people reached the most during their practice. These data, combined with the analysis of worn areas on worn yoga mats, gave the design team a clear picture of where the ripples should be placed and where the lining should be given priority.
Most of Lululemon’s previous yoga mats were made with a rubber base layer covered with an adhesive polyurethane surface layer. According to Morris, the usual method of creating a three-dimensional surface, such as the waves in the Take Form carpet, would be by stamping – pressing a heated mold into the surface to make the material take shape. The problem is that Lululemon cannot apply this process on his yoga mats, given their construction. The rubber base does not retain the memory of the mold, and the surface layer uses a type of porous polyurethane that would melt from heat.
The solution was to develop a foam mixture that would harden and retain its shape. That foam strip is then inserted between the rubber support and the polyurethane surface. Lululemon will not describe exactly how this foaming process works, citing its proprietary nature, but Morris compares it to baking a cake.
“Foams start as a liquid and, as a remedy, foam,” he says.
The Take Form mat costs between $ 118 and $ 128 depending on version and will be available worldwide on March 23rd.
Sanchia Legister demonstrates proper technique. Remember the placement of her hands and feet. Perfect!
Photo: LululemonThe market for new yoga mats – whether or not they are adorned with 3D ripples – is much different now than it was when Lululemon started developing Take Form. Stimulated by the isolation of the pandemic, the demand for home training equipment exploded in 2020. But even as vaccines become more available and the world approaches a certain appearance of normalcy, the tendency of people who prefer to sweat in their homes, in place to be in gyms. and yoga studios may not leave.
Alignment mats can be especially helpful if you don’t have a yoga instructor floating over you and actively monitoring your form.
The equipment that offers this type of self-guidance is in line with Lululemon’s strategy to fully embrace the trend of home training. While the company lost sales in its retail stores at the beginning of the pandemic, its online sales increased. Also in June last year, Lululemon acquired fitness company Mirror for $ 500 million. Pairing a rug that helps align with personal lessons delivered directly to your home through the Mirror comes pretty close to the in-person yoga training experience. 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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