When software was hot, they worked at an educational software company for kids. And when the Internet went wild, they worked together at one of the earliest search engines. When that boom busted, entrepreneurs George Lichter and Rob Wrubel went searching for the next big thing.
They looked for a wide-open market, ripe to be plucked. And all the while they worked through their own stress-related ailments with deep breathing, sun salutations and downward-facing dogs.
Then it hit them what their next business should be: yoga.
That was 2001. With a group of investors, they began snapping up some of the nation's oldest, most prestigious yoga studios, including Yoga Works in Santa Monica and the Center for Yoga in the Larchmont district, considered the first eclectic yoga studio in Los Angeles. They recently bought five studios in Manhattan, including four Be Yoga studios. That brings the total to 15 so far. They plan to open a new studio in West Hollywood this fall and are talking to studio owners across the country.
Their goal: a national chain of yoga studios that, they say, will feature well-trained teachers and high-quality classes while preserving the authentic, community feel of a neighborhood studio.
Lichter and Wrubel don't offer many details of how they will go about that, however, and already some yogis -- as yoga practitioners are known -- are saying that the businessmen's plan for a branded national chain marks the beginning of the end for yoga as they know it. A corporate yoga business, they say, could drive many small studios out of business, squelch the creativity of yoga instruction and fuel the growing commercialism of what for many students is an intensely spiritual practice.
Their business is called Yoga Works, after the two Santa Monica studios they bought from Chuck Miller and Maty Ezraty, two yoga pioneers who opened Yoga Works 18 years ago. Miller and Ezraty, who are moving to Hawaii, have trained some of the most prominent teachers in the country and are credited by many for setting the foundation for yoga in the United States.
Though athletic types may take up yoga to build buns of steel, many who gravitate to the discipline are spiritual seekers. Among other teachings, they cite the yoga sutras written in the 5th century BC by Patanjali, an Indian sage, which stress the importance of not giving in to greed and doing no harm to others. For frazzled urban dwellers, the yoga studio is often a calm retreat from a world of commercialism -- or at least it was.
