CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ccording to the official Forbes list, Australian active-wear entrepreneur Casey Hoskins is reportedly worth over six million dollars – and she owes it all to an amazing idea she had while travelling around London late last year.
“Everywhere I looked I saw people walking around the city with yoga mats. In the streets, on the tube, at cafe’s,”
“I thought ‘surely not all these people are doing yoga’ – and I was right. It was mostly just an image thing,”
Under the clever brand name of “Fauxga” – Ms Hoskins says her idea to start designing and manufacturing fake yoga mats was an instant hit.
From Sydney to New York, a booming market of predominantly young women have taken to the idea carrying a “unroll-able” yoga mats under their arms to give off the impression that they are actually on their way to a yoga session.
“It looks like a real yoga mat, the only difference is that you don’t need to bother with with rolling and wrapping… or the actual yoga for that matter,” says the ambitious 24-year-old.
“Our target consumer is single women between 20 and 30, but we also have a growing male market,”
“The FauxGa appeals to them because they can get between A to B with an extra spring in their step. They are able to carry the product as an accessory, not a necessity,”
Darlinghurst-based financial lawyer, Davey Pincombe, says the Fauxga mat is an Australian entrepreneurial success story, one that he has no shame in buying into.
“Yoga is yoga. My partner and I enjoy it… but we are too time poor really. I’d much sooner shell out $300 for the Fauxga and carry it to and from work then pay $50 dollars a week on an actual yoga session,”
Another FauxGa loyalist is 42-year-old Mosman woman, Clare Botha-Humphries.
“Mothers groups, book clubs, tennis, bridge, coffee… I carry my FauxGa with me everywhere I go,”
“It looks just like the real thing and that’s all I want,” says the full-time, stay-at-home mother of two.
“I’m not the type of person who would actually sit in a communal room of strangers, listening to a Brazilian man hum to us about some third-world meditation rituals,”
“It’s great because it comes with a strap on the side, which makes it easier for me to hang on the coat handle above the passenger window in my Range Rover,”
Within six months, FauxGa processed over 500,000 orders and Ms Hoskins says she’s not finished yet.
“Right now I’m working towards releasing another three colours before Christmas,”
“This new line is quite testing but I think the aqua and pink will be big hits going into summer. Our factory in China is working around the clock!”
