If you go shopping for yoga gear, you’re likely to find some foam blocks, mats made of synthetic materials and not much else.
All of those sterile, lab-made materials seem a bit out of place in a practice like yoga, which tends to stress the concepts of purity and being in tune with nature.
So, Joseph Guerra and Sina Sonrab decided to do something about that. The pair, which makes up the industrial design studio Visibility, recently teamed up with clothing brand Outdoor Voices to design yoga gear that is both timeless in design and made from natural materials. Guerra told Fast Company:
“What’s on the market for yoga equipment is a little drab and underwhelming. A lot of it has a hippie vibe. All demographics are flocking to yoga. We wanted to make something a little more timeless that is functional at the same time.”
It’s true that the yoga practicing community has grown in recent years, both in terms of numbers and diversity. So it seems necessary for businesses to also offer that same diversity when it comes to yoga gear.
The other upside to the gear created by Visibility is its functionality. While each item is clearly made with aesthetics in mind, they work exactly the same as those foam or synthetic items you can find in most sporting goods stores.
Currently, the items are just in the prototype stage. But Outdoor Voices plans to make some of them available for purchase later in the year. So those eco-friendly or design conscious yogis will soon have a new option for all of their yoga gear needs.
And since the natural felt, cork and birch wood are all sustainable, natural materials, buyers can feel good about the purchase in more ways than one. Sonrab told Fast Company:
“There’s something nice and poetic about making them out of natural materials since it’s something you’re using to get healthier.”
Image: Visibility
[“source-smallbiztrends”]
