By QIN Siyue

Yoga chain FineYogs suddenly slammed the shutters down on all 82 of its studios on February 24. Thousands employees have not been paid and prepaid lessons worth hundreds of millions of yuan are unaccounted for.

The “official” version is that operations would be suspended for only a week, but everyone knows that FineYoga has breathed its last.

‘We are (not) all in this together!’

In a WeChat post, founder and chief yogi YAO?Qiuyu promised to pay back the money.

“As long as I’m here, I will try hard to pay my debt,” she said. Yao is, after all, to blame, but the article gained more than 100,000 clicks in less than two days. Highly sanitized comments are lopsidedly supportive of the angelic guru’s struggles.

“I believe in you!” said one. “We are all in this together!” volunteered another.

Others were less supportive. Customers have been quick to notice that their personal information and chat history in the FineYoga app has vanished since the article came out.

Disgruntled ex-customers have formed themselves into WeChat groups to share legal resources and attempt to collectively bargain with their local studios. In one of many Shanghai-based groups, more than 400 members are owed a total of 3 million yuan in membership fees and unused lessons.

To make sense of how much money is at stake, one first needs to understand that FineYoga is not just another yoga chain.

Young, rich, privileged

Yoga, together with Lululemon and mindfulness, has only recently become a status symbol for the young, the rich, and the cultured in big Chinese cities.

FineYoga, founded in 2002, evangelized yoga among the young, the rich, and the privileged. A private lesson here costs 500 yuan (US$72.3)?and annual membership can be as much as 10,000 in some locations. That’s more than the average college graduate makes in a month.

Many customers have thousands, if not tens of thousands of yuan, in their accounts. The law only allows 5,000 yuan to be held in prepaid accounts like these. Many customers appear to have be blissfully ignorant of this detail until they became all too aware of recently when they came to file their complaints. One Beijing adherent told Jiemian News that she deposited 28,400 yuan in November alone.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that Yao plans to blame the whole mess on the pandemic.

“The pandemic has affected how much people are willing to spend and led to our losses. It is hard to do anything when we are short on cash. So improving our management is out of the question,” she said.

Where’s the money?

But customers and employees are doubtful that FineYoga has ever been “short on cash,” and FineYoga’s clientele are the kind of people who would notice something like that.

WANG?Yin, manager of a Beijing location, told Jiemian News that business had always been great: “As long as we were open, every class was full. I can’t imagine we were unprofitable.”

The real reason for FineYoga’s failure, she said, was that “Yao wears too many hats.”

Yao has money invested in 47 companies in addition to FineYoga, of which she owns 90 percent. They are concentrated in fitness, food and cosmetics, and many were founded after 2021 – the most recent in December and are wholly owned by Yao.?

The finances of all FineYoga studios are centrally managed and all the takings go direct to the headquarters, where they apparently run short.

“All added together, our costs are less than 400,000 yuan a month, but we make between 800,000 to a million in revenue,” said LI?Bin, who worked at a Shanghai location. He hasn’t been paid for the past five months. “We really want to know, given there’s more coming in than going out, where the money has gone. Probably vegetarian restaurants, probably tech, who knows. We didn’t see a dime, that I know.”

Sense of loss

The first time salaries went unpaid was last August although nothing seemed awry from the outside. Classes went as normal and customers were encouraged to renew their memberships. “Except in lockdown, almost every studio, nationwide, hit sales targets last year. We could see every month from internal communication,” said Li Bin. “We did exceptionally well during the Singles Day sales in November?so everyone thought December salaries would finally be normal. Nothing happened.”

FineYoga employed about two thousand people. Most have had their salaries and benefits suspended for at least five months. Li Bin and his colleagues have asked about arbitration. To file a case, they must first form a big enough group and hire a lawyer.

On the night of the shutdown notice, Li Bin and his colleagues stayed up until midnight answering customer questions and canceling private lessons. Jophy, a five-year customer, is all praises. “The managers didn’t just disappear. They are always available and have been really helpful.” She had paid in advance for 30 private lessons and unlimited group lessons for a whole year.

QIN?Xiao, a member in Xi’an, said many teachers have been offering free online classes since the studios shut own. “Aside from worrying about the money, the general feeling is that it’s too bad the classes are gone. I really like my studio.”

Li Bin said the bond between employees and customers is genuine and strong. Some members have volunteered to find new gigs for the now-jobless janitors. “We hope to find someone to take over. We do want to save ourselves. Many of us have been working here for years and hope the community will continue to exist.”

Yoga community to the rescue

The fall of a leading institution as big as FineYoga is a blow to an industry already in distress. Since last year at least four gym chains have reportedly rejected cancellations and delayed refunds.

Competing studios have posted on social media that they “welcome former #FineYoga teachers and members,” some going so far as offering free venues and honoring unused lesions.?

At least one has revoked the offer because “too many people have inquired.” Some former FineYoga customers have decided not to join another studio at all. just in case the new one disappears as well.