Nike Selects SF Yoga Mat Company YOGO For First Place Award In Innovation Challenge Award, And Future Partnership

PRESS RELEASE FROM YOGO

San Francisco yoga mat company YOGO has been selected as First Place Winner of Nike’s Circular Innovation Challenge. The two will now team up to develop a series of innovative yoga mat props utilizing recycled Nike Grind materials.

On Friday October 19, Nike announced that the First Place winner of their Circular Innovation Challenge was San Francisco yoga product startup YOGO. YOGO’s winning submission included a collection of yoga props using Nike Grind Materials (including a yoga bolster, yoga cushion, yoga mats, and yoga block). The companies have now begun collaboration efforts to develop a group of products that use Recycled Nike pre- and post-consumer materials in sustainable yoga props, in order to pilot innovative waste and plastic reduction techniques in the yoga industry.

For the Challenge Nike teamed up with OpenIDEO, an SF-based design consultancy, to lead challenge entrants through a user-based design process. Over three hundred teams submitted proposals and the final cohort was judged directly by top executives at Nike. All top five winners received a cash prize and an opportunity to advance discussions to utilize recycled Nike Grind material streams in their products.

Company Background

Established San Francisco Bay Area YOGO (www.yogo.net,@yogo) is a woman led and owned sustainable yoga gear company and the maker of the award winning ‘YOGO Ultralight Travel Yoga Mat’. The YOGO Ultralight uses a patented innovative design to fold up small and secure for travel and everyday carry. The company was founded in 2014 to develop compact, sustainable, and design-centered gear accessible to both global and urban nomadic yogis. All current and upcoming products are either plant-based or recycled, and YOGO plants one food-producing tree with a poor community in Africa for every product sold.

Founder Background

Having grown up in California close to nature, Jessica found yoga through her martial arts practice and used it as a way to increase strength, focus and alignment. In 2014 she left the climate change  finance world in Washington DC to create a radically sustainable yoga product company with an initial co-founder, later going on to scale it herself, and with a small team. YOGO uses design to combine clean materials with beauty and function, while at the same time reducing pollution in the environment.

To learn more about YOGO visit www.yogo.net.