An architect, a yoga teacher and one mat.

Manduka was founded by Peter Sterios, whom the company describes as an architect turned yoga teacher. Its US website dates the start to 1997: that year, it says, Sterios came across a simple, black yoga mat with a firm grip and full support, and set out to share it with other people who practised. Its European website adds that he began selling mats out of the garage of his home in California, and that the mat he sold came to be known as the Black Mat PRO. Valor Equity Partners, an investor in the company, gives the founding year as 1998 on its own profile of Manduka.

The early customers, the company says, were teachers. Sterios had, in Manduka’s telling, benefited from the generosity of other yoga teachers, and to repay that he sent mats as gifts to teachers he admired, among them Erich Schiffmann, Rod Stryker, Angela Farmer, Victor van Kooten, Rodney Yee and Shiva Rea. Manduka says those teachers were its earliest customers and that they shared the mats with their students.

The name has a story of its own. Manduka says Sterios chose it in homage to his teacher and mentor, Shandor Remete, whose practice and teaching always included a pose from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika that the company calls Mandukasana, or frog. The company writes that the sound of the word gave Sterios a sense of childlike delight when he heard and repeated it, and that the word and the pose were mirror images, “simultaneously playful and profound.”

That origin story is told in the company’s own words on its own websites, and it is the version Manduka still uses in 2026. The US site sums up the company as “a company built by and for yoga teachers and their students,” and says it is still introducing new products. It ties the brand to three things at once: a single black mat, a circle of teachers and a pose with a playful name.

From one mat to a range of mats, towels and props.

The Black Mat PRO remains at the centre of the brand. Manduka’s European website calls it “the foundation of our brand” and describes it as German-made; that is the company’s own statement about where the mat is produced. In 2026 the US website arranges its mats into named series — among them the PRO, eKO and GRP lines — alongside travel mats, a beginner’s mat and, more recently, mats for Pilates and general fitness.

The range widened in 2013 through an acquisition. On 31 July 2013, LA Yoga magazine reported in August that year, Manduka announced that it had acquired yogitoes, a privately held yoga-towel brand known for what it called Skidless technology. The magazine quoted Manduka’s chief executive at the time, Sky Meltzer: “We have a deep respect for the yogitoes® brand and share many of the same values.” It reported that yogitoes products would stay on yogitoes.com until 2014 and then move to Manduka.com.

That is how the towel line looks today. Manduka’s 2026 website sells Yogitoes towels for mats and hands next to its own eQua towels, together with blocks, bolsters, straps, mat bags, mat cleaners and a small clothing range for women and men. Yogitoes kept its own name inside the Manduka range, rather than being folded into the parent brand.

The company also sells beyond the individual buyer. Its website runs separate programmes for yoga teachers, studio equipment, hotel and spa equipment, gym equipment and corporate customers, and offers custom branding on its products for businesses. It publishes an online magazine with teacher and studio profiles, and keeps a page of counterfeit information for buyers.

Logos on gloves, mats and gym floors.

Boxing, fitness and yoga brands put their names on objects that are handled, stretched, sweated on and stacked in a gym corner. A logo on a glove has to sit on a curved, padded surface; a mark on a mat has to survive being rolled and unrolled; a name on a treadmill or a rack is read from across a room. That gives these brands a practical design problem as well as a commercial one.

Many of the names in this group have also changed hands over time. A brand may begin with a founder in one city, pass to a holding company or a licensing group, and be sold in places far from where it started, while the logo on the product stays familiar to the people who use it.

Each guide sets out what independent, dated sources record about a brand — who started it, who has owned it since when, and what it is known for — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word. The palettes and typefaces shown are our interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

A California yoga brand with an investor behind it.

Manduka is privately held, and its outside backing is documented mainly by its investor. Valor Equity Partners, an investment firm, lists Manduka as an active company in its portfolio and says the two have been partners since 2015. Its profile, dated 2025, gives Manduka’s headquarters as El Segundo, California, and names Michael Soenen as its leader. Valor describes the opportunity as scaling a yoga lifestyle brand for a growing global market for yoga gear, apparel and community events.

The company describes its own offices in two places. Its European website says the Americas headquarters is based in Los Angeles, and that a second headquarters for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific is in Amsterdam, run by Manduka B.V., which opened its doors there in 2019. The company sells through separate regional websites for the United States, Canada and Europe.

Leadership has changed over the years. In 2013 LA Yoga quoted Sky Meltzer as Manduka’s chief executive; by 2025 Valor named Michael Soenen. The founder’s name, Peter Sterios, remains at the heart of the origin story on the company’s websites, along with the teachers who received those early mats.

The brand’s voice is short on its websites. The US site closes its founding story with the two-word sign-off “Practice on,” and the same phrase appears on the company’s European About Us page, just above its account of the founder and the mat.

For a design guide, Manduka shows how a brand can be built on a single object and a single colour, with a short name taken from a yoga pose carrying the rest. Compare Gaiam, a Colorado yoga name of the same era that changed hands, and Alo Yoga, another California yoga label. For this guide we use mat black, forest and stone with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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