Stefan Hück had developed his first yoga mat for himself, without looking at the market first. In 2018 the side project became Mantrafant GmbH, a limited company. The mat cost several times as much as a cheap one. Most sales went through Amazon. Without an advertising budget, new products ranked low there; with advertising, every sale became expensive. Ads in Google search also cost a lot for what they sold.
‘I didn’t look at the market, I didn’t think about what customers actually want, I didn’t give any thought to sales – I simply made a yoga mat for myself […].’
Stefan Hück, founder of Mantrafant, on the podcast (October 2020)
The marketing led with sustainability: the mat was made sustainably, so that was what you said first. By his own account, the founder had little marketing experience. In February 2020, there was a lot of stock of several products for the first time, and another product was about to be crowdfunded.
He had come across the Wheel of Progress at a workshop in his co-working space’s start-up programme. After a pitch night, he wrote to Oberwasser Consulting that same evening. He later described what was on his mind: why do people buy a yoga mat that costs several times as much as a cheap one?
The founder got in touch in mid-February 2020. The kick-off was on 24 February, and on 27 February four target customers came in one after another for interviews run jointly with Oberwasser Consulting. Beforehand, he had doubted whether anyone would turn up for an hour-long conversation, and whether so few interviews would be enough. According to him, patterns emerged after just two or three conversations.
The questions were not about opinions but about a real purchase: what had happened, what was compared, what tipped the balance. The four target customers had all bought yoga mats before. None of them is known to have been a Mantrafant customer. The analysis used the Wheel of Progress, developed in 2019 by Eckhart Böhme and Peter Rochel.
By early March, new messages were running in the ads on Amazon and in Google search, just over a week after the interview day.
From May 2020, the team kept working on the findings with Oberwasser Consulting in coaching calls.
The case study as a PDF (7 pages): background, project, what counted in four interviews, and the key insight. Request it free by email – form at the end of this page.
‘[…] for me a yoga session is only half a success if I can’t concentrate because I keep readjusting.’
Interviewed target customer, on a mat she slips on
In all four interviews, slipping was a reason to get rid of a mat or replace it. Looks and colour mattered to all four as well. Three said outright that they wouldn’t buy a mat without grip – two of them explicitly put grip ahead of looks. The fourth had already bought five or six mats, often because they slipped – and still bought a slipping one again for its colour.
‘For me that really is decisive – the mat could be ever so beautiful, if I just notice, or I don’t have any grip […], then I won’t buy that mat.’
Interviewed target customer
Sustainability was not the main reason to buy for any of the four. One woman only paid attention to fair production when two mats were equally good. For two of the four, though, sustainability was part of what they would pay more for: one named a figure of up to 130 euros for a beautiful, sustainable mat that lasts, the other 135 euros for an eco mat with everything she wanted, whose production could be traced back step by step.
‘But sustainability […] is one of those forces that, in the end, tends to make you go through with the purchase – but it’s not a real reason why you look for a yoga mat.’
Stefan Hück on the podcast (October 2020), on what he took from the interviews
Three of the four found shared mats unhygienic. An unpleasant smell, such as plastic, put three of the four off. For three of the four, a recommendation or a role model ended the search.
These were four conversations in one day, with target customers, not with known Mantrafant customers. They show what made a mat fail for these four and what they would pay more for – not how widespread each pattern is in the market.
It was quick to put into practice. According to Stefan Hück, the team spent half a day on new ads, took out what wasn’t working, and fine-tuned them on a second day.
On the impact, he said in October 2020 that advertising costs had fallen to roughly a third, for the same number of sales. He was mainly referring to advertising outside Amazon, such as in Google search. After that, he raised the advertising budget again; by his account, sales then rose two- to threefold.
Later, in an article on Jobs to be Done that also quotes Peter Rochel of Oberwasser Consulting, the German business magazine impulse reported that Mantrafant had increased its sales fivefold – through the new marketing copy, the 100-day trial guarantee and partnerships with yoga studios combined.
We don’t have sales figures that confirm these statements, and they refer to different periods and measures.
The full conversation with Stefan Hück: podcast episode from October 2020 (in German) · impulse article (in German)
The case study in 7 pages: background, project, what counted in four interviews, and the key insight – quotable, and ready to pass on to your team.
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The founder got in touch in mid-February 2020, and four interviews took place in one day on 27 February. Just over a week later, new messages were running in the ads. From May 2020, support followed in coaching calls.
Not as the main reason in these four interviews. For all four, slipping was a reason to get rid of a mat. For two of the four, though, sustainability was part of what they would pay more for.
To see a pattern you can test in a message, often yes: according to the founder, patterns emerged after two or three conversations. Four interviews don’t show how widespread a pattern is in the market.
A JTBD analysis framework developed in 2019 by Eckhart Böhme and Peter Rochel. It organises what people say about a purchase in interviews: events that set something in motion, and forces that push towards a switch or hold it back.
Here it was a yoga mat. For you, it might be a personal care product, a tool or a piece of software: a product you built out of conviction, and a message you take to be the reason people buy. After the first joint interviews, the team carried on running them itself – by video, before every product change. Do you know what your buyers check first when they look at your product?
The Buying-Reason Finding: a real buyer, interviewed and checked against your assumptions. In this case, there were four target customers in one day. For you, it starts with a list of what you believe today – and one interview.
View the Buying-Reason Finding
Need to know how your customers buy across the board? Then the Customer Insights Sprint is the direct route. Find out more first: podcast with real cases (many episodes in German).
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