The YogaAnywhere story

In August 2010 Gretta and I opened a door into the e-commerce world – showing that even technically challenged “creatives” can venture into the 21^st century.
Gretta conceived the YogaAnywhere project as a labour of love to put together three things she values: design, illustration and yoga.
An accomplished commercial designer, she proposed the idea that we could create a series of card sequences on different aspects of yoga for yogis to use to do home practice.
Gretta had been my yoga student for about 10 years when I had a city studio. Then Daniel and I moved to the country, and Gretta and I were forced to develop the cards business mainly by email communication.
Here’s how I first heard about the card idea:

Hi Eve,
I would love to produce A5 cards focusing on yoga, using a format that’s easily portable. I notice when I want to do home practice I’m either rifling through a book or being indecisive about what to practice, and that gets completely in the way of the flow of yoga.
Are you interested in being a part of this with me?
Peace + joy,
xxgretta

I knew in my bones the cards would be a great contribution to yoga practising, and also, this was going to be a place for my 30-year collection of archived practices to go.
Gretta’s enthusiasm was contagious. However, we never imagined the cards’ development would require a 16-month gestation period. Lucky for us, several key players stepped in to assist.
Daniel, my not-so-silent partner, offered business advice, based on years of owning and directing a graphic design company. He contributed tons of IT brilliance – plus the name of the product and website.
Even with vital IT support, various ups and downs kept delaying the birth of the cards. More than a year after Gretta’s initial contact, I wrote:

Hi Gretta,
I’m wondering about proceeding with our yoga cards project, as it’s been taking so long. Perhaps it’s just too hard to do this by long distance, and we seem to have such busy lives without taking on a business venture. What do you think?
XO Eve

Birthing the cards

This baby was determined to be born, though. It seemed YogaAnywhere just needed a midwife.
Enter my close friend Heather, who’d been cheering quietly in the wings all along, and enjoying using early prototype cards in her yoga practice. Here’s how Heather stepped onto to the stage:

Hi Gretta and Eve,
First of all, thanks to both of you for your trust in considering me as a member of your team. It’s such an exciting, worthy, sexy product. How could I resist being interested in helping you bring it to market? I look at the YogaAnywhere cards and I feel such a respect for your skills, knowledge and passion.
Let’s have a phone hook up and then decide what we want to do.
What do you think?
I look forward to next steps!
Heather

From her many years in the corporate world, Heather brought clarity of direction and rigour to the YogaAnywhere team. Mainly, she just wanted the project to succeed. She asked nuts-and-bolts questions and encouraged the team to be accountable.

With a tremendous team effort, as of today, the beautiful and practical YogaAnywhere cards are out in the world. I highly recommend them to you. Click on this link to see for yourself.  

Eve In Gomukhasana