Alo Yoga sale fuels IPO and deal speculation for Goldman bankers

SanMar agreed to buy Bella+Canvas on May 18 for an undisclosed sum, and the deal had not closed by June 23. The transaction drew little interest on Wall Street, but it stripped out a wholesale T-shirt business that made Alo Yoga easier to value on its own.

That is the sort of move Goldman Sachs deal teams watch closely. A cleaner perimeter can sharpen the pitch for both equity capital markets and M&A, especially when the remaining business is a branded consumer platform with scale, visibility and a story investors can underwrite. Alo has already been through that kind of scrutiny: in October 2023, its founders hired Moelis to advise on options, including a possible stake sale in a process that could have valued the parent at about $10 billion.

The backdrop matters because Alo is no side project. Danny Harris and Marco DeGeorge started Bella+Canvas in 1992 out of a garage and later built Alo, founded in 2007, into the larger asset inside Color Image Apparel. Reuters-linked reporting said Alo now has more than 150 stores globally, some with yoga studios, and an invite-only gym at its Beverly Hills headquarters where celebrities train. Another profile pegged Alo as responsible for the vast majority of Color Image Apparel’s estimated nearly $2 billion in revenue in 2024, which means the company’s economics already sit overwhelmingly with the athleisure brand rather than the wholesale label.

For bankers, that concentration is the point. Once a group sells a non-core division, the next question is whether the remaining business looks cleaner for an IPO, a strategic sale or a new growth narrative that can hold up in public markets. Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, said Alo is a mature business and that companies at that stage often go public, sell, or launch a complementary growth area. That framing will sound familiar on Goldman’s consumer coverage desks, where the work is often less about proving demand exists and more about sequencing the steps that make a mandate possible.

The competitive backdrop adds another layer. Lululemon, the category pioneer, has struggled while new players circle, which gives a streamlined Alo a better shot at attracting either public-market buyers or strategics looking for a luxury-adjacent athleisure asset with celebrity cachet and a global store base. Harris and DeGeorge have not publicly said whether they are pursuing a sale or an IPO, but the Bella+Canvas separation has already put both options back on the table.