- Beyond Yoga stands out by promoting a “progress over perfection” philosophy with its Seek Beyond platform, resonating with consumers seeking authenticity and joy.
- Backed by Levi Strauss & Co., Beyond Yoga benefits from the agility of a fast-growing brand combined with the solid infrastructure of a 160-year-old company.
- The brand has moved beyond traditional activewear into dresses, outerwear and versatile lifestyle pieces.
- CMO Katie Babineau shared details about how physical retail is booming and the brand’s social-first storytelling approach.
In a premium activewear market growing faster than its mass-market counterpart, Beyond Yoga is betting that a “progress over perfection” philosophy — and the infrastructure of a 160-year-old parent company — can set it apart from a crowded field of competitors.
Katie Babineau, CMO of Calif.-based Beyond Yoga, said that rather than viewing the competitive landscape as a threat, the brand sees it as validation.
“We don’t really see it as a zero sum game,” Babineau said in an interview on the Retail Remix podcast. “What we’ve seen in the data and the research is that the premium activewear category is actually the fastest-growing. And the consumer, the customer, is really open to discovering new brands and they’re really open to challenger brands, which we believe we are.”
To understand where the brand could stand out, Beyond Yoga conducted community research — gathering input from customers, community members and thought leaders. What the team heard was consistent: consumers were fatigued by messaging centered on perfection and performance.
“What we heard overwhelmingly was this opportunity for a place in the market that showed up as permission to chase joy and focus on progress over perfection,” Babineau said. “People were a bit burnt out, exhausted and wanting permission to fail, to believe in trying new things.”
What Does ‘Seek Beyond’ Mean?
That consumer insight became the foundation for the brand’s Seek Beyond platform, launched in July 2024. The initiative debuted with a campaign featuring actor Issa Rae, chosen because, in Babineau’s words, she “really embodied this growth mindset.”
The response was notable. “We saw tremendous response — 100% positive sentiment, which you just don’t see online nowadays,” Babineau said. “We were really overwhelmed by the positive response and it really worked hard for us in bringing new audiences into the brand.”
But Babineau is careful to frame Seek Beyond as more than a marketing campaign. It functions as an internal operating principle as much as an external message.
“When I came to Beyond, there was [also] a real need for the internal team to understand what is our purpose, what do we focus on every day,” she said. “It influences everything we do, from how we think about product and how we service customer support calls. That growth mindset really is about internal behavior and external behavior.”
This year, the brand extended Seek Beyond into real-life experiences. A spring event planned around the March equinox brought the community together for movement and a musical performance in partnership with Sofi Tukker. The event generated content that was distributed through digital channels to reach new audiences beyond those who attended.
Under the Levi Strauss Umbrella
Beyond Yoga was acquired by Levi Strauss & Co. in 2021, and Babineau credits that relationship with enabling a pace of growth that would otherwise be difficult for a brand of its size.
“What it allows us to do is move quickly with the support and infrastructure that Levi’s has — being a 160-year-old legacy historic brand, they’ve got solid, steady infrastructure that we can lean on from time to time when needed to scale systems or deliver quicker speed to market,” she said.
The organization gives Beyond Yoga the agility of a high-growth company with the stability of a large parent — a balance she called “outstanding and best in class in go to market.”
Expanding Beyond Activewear
Product expansion has been another front of growth. Beyond Yoga has moved beyond its core activewear offerings into categories including dresses, outerwear, fleece and lifestyle pants — items designed to take the customer from workout to work to special occasion.
“For Beyond Yoga, it was always about the promise of getting people beyond the mat,” Babineau said. “Some of the new categories that we’ve launched, like dresses or outerwear or fleece or lifestyle pants, truly do allow people to go beyond the mat now.”
The brand’s approach to expansion is anchored in its product DNA. “The fabric has to be the best thing that you’ll wear all day,” Babineau said. “We want that promise of comfort, versatility. We know that softness has always been a part of our product DNA, so we want that to be true in any new fabric that we introduce.”
Early signals have been positive. “As we roll out these new categories, we’re continuing to see strong momentum there and growth for the business,” she said.
Brick-and-Mortar and Community
Physical retail is a meaningful part of Beyond Yoga’s growth strategy. The brand doubled its store footprint to 14 locations and plans further expansion this year. Babineau said the brand typically enters markets where it already has an established ecommerce customer base, then builds hyperlocal events and partnerships around those store locations.
The in-store experience reflects the brand’s cross-generational appeal.
“In our retail locations, we’re seeing moms, daughters, grandmas, husbands, partners, all shopping together, which is really cool to see — just kind of a wide breadth of relevance in the line,” Babineau said. “We want to scale that in real life.”
Social-First Storytelling
On the digital side, Beyond Yoga has shifted toward social-first storytelling and user-generated content, incorporating real customer perspectives into paid channels and commerce touch points such as the website and email.
“About a year and a half ago, what we were seeing work really well organically on social started to scale for us in paid,” Babineau said. “So we built the ecosystem, the infrastructure to fuel more of those real human stories into paid.”
The strategy is grounded in a practical consumer truth: people want to see how products are worn in real life. “People want to see, how are you wearing that jacket with that dress? How are you pairing that fleece?,” she said. “Part of that is product education as well, but doing that through a really human, relatable point of view.”
Measuring What Matters
Babineau tracks both short-term and long-term metrics to gauge brand health. On the short-term side, the team monitors revenue, site traffic and conversion rates. For longer-term brand equity, the company conducts an annual brand survey measuring awareness and familiarity — metrics Babineau views as critical indicators of future growth.
“Once we bring people in, we see long-term loyalty, which is really unique to us,” she said. “Moving the needle on awareness and familiarity is very critical to our long-term health.”
The team also monitors community sentiment closely when launching campaigns or content. “We look at sentiment often, we look at engagement rates, we look at [whether] content getting shared,” Babineau said. “Are people interpreting this and really holding it as valuable as a share to their friend or family?”
The underlying question driving all of it, she said, is straightforward: “Are we bringing new people in? Are we resonating? And are we bringing people further down the funnel?”
