Yoga studio is hot stuff for former Innis & Gunn executive

Hot Yoga Edinburgh founder Allison Harrison teaches between 1,500 and 1,800 students a month and is hoping to open at least one studio a year

Allison Harrison runs Hot Yoga Edinburgh, which opened a custom-built site in the city centre in January. She started teaching yoga as a hobby, including to fellow employees at Innis & Gunn where she looked after the off-trade.

She ran a part-time operation alongside her day job, and explains: “I started just quietly to build the business with a view to eventually taking on a full-time studio but it’s come around a bit quicker than I would have imagined.”

Capital has come from Harrison and her husband plus a small business loan, and the number of students per month has reached between 1,500 and 1,800. “We’ve more than doubled our business every single year since we started,” Harrison adds, noting that it has achieved 42 per cent of its most recent financial year’s turnover in the first two months of this year.

Harrison says she would like to open at least one studio a year, eyeing locations such as St Andrews in Scotland and Paris in France.