Goga Goat Yoga Before Shark Tank
Yoga is a series of exercises that people have been doing for thousands of years because of its physical, mental, and spiritual benefits. Nowadays, yoga studios can be found anywhere in the world and people have added many twists to the workouts to make them more beneficial and fun.
Trey Kitchen and Rachael Phillips decided to add animal petting to their yoga programs to increase the relief that people get from it. Petting animals and being with them has been shown to reduce levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Not every person who enjoys spending time with an animal can own one though but with their program, you can enjoy being with an animal even if you don’t have the time to raise one. Rachel and Trey named their program Goga Goat Yoga.
The goats in use in the program are fitted with adorable diapers that ensure that you remain clean throughout your session. Trey and Rachel started the program in their garage and it had grown to the point that they were about to open their second studio.
Unfortunately, Tray and Rachel lacked sufficient capital to grow their business. For this reason, they reached out to Shark Tank for an opportunity that was of mutual benefit. They were called to be on the 14th episode of the 10th season. Â This episode featured Alli Webb, the founder of Drybar as a special guest shark.
Goga Goat Yoga On Shark Tank
Rachel said that they got a tremendous amount of positive feedback from people who had been through very stressful events. Kevin suggested that they start making goat barbecue as a supplementary source of income. Rachel said that the goats weren’t good for meat or milk.
Mark was curious about how often they did their classes and their rates. Alli Webb also wanted to know where they kept their goats. Trey said that they used to keep the goats at the bottom of their garage when they lived in Downtown Austin. However, they now kept them in the studio that they worked at but it was temporary. They used the studio in exchange for the traffic that they brought into the studio and they had just acquired a second location.
Robert then asked who the yoga instructor was and Rachael told them that neither of them was a yoga instructor. Instead, they hired them. Lori then asked them if they thought that the excitement of working with a goat wore off. Trey said that it did. For that reason the business was moving onto a second phase where they would have full yoga classes for 90% of the time and the goat classes would be done every other weekend.
Alli then asked them if the prices of the classes with and without goats were the same. Rachael said that regular yoga was $20-25 per person but with a goat, it cost $30. Goga Goat Yoga also did a lot of goat yoga. Â Alli said that the product felt a lot like a gimmick.
Trey said that many of the people who come to the studio have never done yoga before but they did sign up for a membership after that. He did, however, agree that it felt very gimmicky. Robert then asked them what their revenue for that year was. Trey said that they had done $250,000 in sales that year.
Rachael said that competitors had started to pop up all over the country and they had one competitor in Austin. Alli then asked them how they differentiated themselves from everyone else. Rachael said that one competitive advantage they had was that Trey’s mother, Roxy, provided them with baby goats. Their competitors were doing their yoga with large goats that had horns. Roxy had over 200 baby goats.
Robert then left. He said that his wife had opened a fitness center the previous year and he had seen how competitive it was. Rent and fixed costs were constantly on the rise in that business. He also said that it felt gimmicky because the only difference is that they provided yoga with a goat. He, therefore, couldn’t be in that business with them.
After Robert left, Trey added that the other studios were not situated in locations as ideal as his. Mark Cuban said that that was not an issue because it was not like many yoga practitioners would switch to goat yoga. Mark suggested that they keep the goat yoga studio on the rooftop as it initially was and then build the regular yoga studio and integrate it.
He thought it was a niche market and if they managed to open more than one, they would just become a regular yoga studio. He didn’t think that it was an investable business and for that reason, he was out. Alli said that the fact that neither one of them was a yoga instructor made her hesitant to invest. To her, many girls took their yoga seriously and would be hesitant to sign up if they heard that neither of the people running the business did it.
Alli concluded that it didn’t seem like it was for her so she left. Lori followed suit. Although she thought Goga Goat Yoga had done well in making itself stand out, she did not think that it was the business for her. Kevin then left saying that he felt better eating goat than investing in it.
Without an offer on the table, Trey and Rachael had to leave. They did not have a parting shot to give.
Goga Goat Yoga Now in 2024 – The After Shark Tank Update
However, the goat yoga classes are as active as ever. Goga Goat Yoga has also started private goat yoga parties. The private goat yoga parties are charged at $40 per person and require a minimum of 15 people or $600 on-site. However, the classes are held only twice a month and Rachel has gone back to doing her regular classes.
As a supplier of goats, Roxy has started her own website (2crazygoatladies.com) that offers sessions for people to play with goats and also offers people training lessons if they want to raise their own goats. Some goats are also available for sale.
On social media, Goga goat Yoga has received a lot of positive reviews. It has over 5,800 followers on Facebook and more than 2,600 followers on Instagram. Â The company has an annual revenue of $1,1000,000 and although the business has slowed it still goes to show that a rejection from the sharks is not the end of doing business.
