Yogamatata is a business run entirely by two French women – Ondine Martinez and Johanna Stauffer! 

Ondine started the business in 2018, and was quickly joined by her friend Johanna as a partner. 

Ondine was already involved in a more responsible consumption approach and environmental activist! Johanna, on the other hand, was already very committed to feminist issues. Both had been practicing yoga for years.

Ondine and Johanna met while cultivating a vegetable garden together (it sounds crazy, but it’s true!) and together they brought Yogamatata to its current success!

Our business approach, by Ondine and Johanna :

Yogamatata is a SAS (a shared company : 100% of the shares are held by us Ondine and Johanna : there is no other shareholder, and we have no bank loan! Yogamatata is therefore a totally independent company and is 100% owned by us, its managers on a daily basis. We are not accountable to anyone but ourselves!

In the choice of our professional partners (providers, etc.), we prefer to work with women as much as possible. Why do we do this? Simply because they are often business owners themselves, and we know that being a business owner is more complicated for a woman than for a man (difficulty to obtain bank loans, to support both a family and a business, to get contracts etc.).

In a world where companies are overwhelmingly run by men, and where men are also in the majority in positions of power, being women company directors necessarily has a political dimension. Being a woman and a business leader is also about enlarging the path opened by other women before, and continuing to show all women that entrepreneurship is not only for men, and that it is a way to emancipate oneself and gain independence!

It is also to propose a different model, far from the relentless and unreasonable capitalism that the majority of companies have shown until now. Our feminism is not limited to considering that the world should continue to function in the same way with just a strict parity between men and women.

We dream of a better world socially and ecologically.

Yogamatata is a small structure : only the two of us manage it and make it work on a daily basis: accounting, business development, product development, production management, administration, customer service, communication, everything is taken care of by us, Ondine and Johanna. Neither of us has studied in these fields.

We don’t spend our time doing yoga on sunny beaches, we pull our hair out on financial balance sheets that are difficult to understand, on legal muddles that often overwhelm us… in short, we are very far from the role-model of female entrepreneurs with an exemplary career and dazzling success punctuated by impressive fundraising, which are often the ones who are put forward. 

It is not a question of feminism-washing, but rather of having a feminist approach on all levels.

We are a company, so our goal is to earn money and to live from the sale of our products, but we want to do it with transparency and honesty.

Behind the notion of female entrepreneurship, there is more to us than empowerment.

We want the people who make our products (who are often women, as they are the ones who work in the factories, as a direct consequence of the fact that they have in general less higher education than men) not to be exploited, and that the materials we use are sustainable and natural as much as possible.

In short: it’s not about us becoming the strongest wolves in a wolf world, but on the contrary to contribute, in our modest way, to a more desirable world!

The “world” of yoga (like the one of wellness) is very feminine. And for good reason: the majority of people who practice it are women! When we know that historically yogis (and especially the great yogi masters) were/are almost all men, it is quite ironic to see how much this practice has taken on a feminine connotation in the West! But times are changing, and fortunately more and more men are practicing yoga and enjoying the benefits of this ancient practice. That’s why Yogamatata’s products are designed to be non-gendered: sober, inclusive designs that can be used by many. We also offer a variety of sizes for our yoga mats, with a range of XXL mats for all body types!