UCLA grad solves yoga dilemma with her business

Ashley Cintas was struggling to clean her yoga mat after a month of outdoor yoga classes had left it a breeding ground for bacteria. Frustrated that she would have to buy a new one, Cintas started to think of an alternative solution to her problem.

Cintas’ solution was to create a sheath or cover for her yoga mat, one that was both machine-washable and anti-bacterial. This imagined product eventually became the basis for Kosha Covers.

Kosha Covers is a yoga mat cover and accessories company created in 2012 by Cintas, a women’s studies and communication studies alumna who graduated in 2009, and her twin sister Alysha Rabb.

Cintas said she started taking yoga classes at the John Wooden Center in her first year. It was this same year that she came up with the Kosha Cover.

 

“When I first thought of it, I immediately wrote out a business plan,” Cintas said. “And between the ages of 18 and 23 I would always update the business plan; whenever an idea came to me for the product I would always write it down.”

Although she had originally planned on pursuing a dual Master of Business Administration and Juris Doctor graduate school program after graduation, Cintas said she decided to abandon the idea and instead spent a year as a bartender in Las Vegas to pay back her college debt.

Cintas alsosaid she spent some time working for a cocktail waitressing company in Los Angeles, through which she met Minta Allred, currently a yoga instructor at Orcas Mandala, a yoga studio in Washington. 

“She knew I wanted to be a yoga instructor, so she would always ask me for my opinion on the product,” Allred said. “When she started the company, she’d ask me to test things out and just really valued what I had to offer.”

Allred said she was particularly impressed with Cintas’ emphasis on creating an eco-friendly product. This, Allred said, would add to the appeal of the yoga mat covers to the target customer base.

While Kosha was Cintas’ brainchild, she said her twin sister and company co-founder, Alysha Rabb, played an integral role in the creation of the product.

Rabb, Cintas said, was able to bring her experience to the company, specifically when it came to designing the covers and creating graphics for the website.

In coming up with the name for the product, the two sisters decided upon “Kosha,” which in Sanskrit means sheath or layer.

“That’s what our product is, a sheath for yoga mats,” said Cintas. “But there’s a second meaning that comes from Vedantic philosophy which is that one needs to discover each layer, or Kosha, to discover yourself.”

It is based upon this philosophy and her own experiences that Cintas said she decided upon the company’s manifesto: “Show Not Tell.”

“Growing up, I always felt that I couldn’t show who I wanted to be, and I think a lot of people go through that,” Cintas said. “That’s where ‘Show Not Tell’ came from, to tell people to show who they really are.”

In starting the company, Cintas said the greatest challenge that the sisters had to face was creating a product that was unlike anything available elsewhere, and then creating a demand for that product.

“It was sometimes difficult to maintain a sense of professionalism with my twin,” Rabb said. “On the one hand we were business partners but on the other we were still sisters.” 

Additionally, Rabb said there was a great deal of trial and error that came in designing the product, especially in finding the right fabric for it.

“We just couldn’t find the perfect fabric! It wasn’t available anywhere,” Rabb said. “So we finally found this manufacturer who agreed to make our fabric for us. ”

Currently, Rabb is no longer a part of Kosha Covers, as she said she felt it was time for her to step away and focus on being a parent and on her own career in interior design.

“It’s not that it wasn’t working for me, but this is Ashley’s baby,” Rabb said, “She’s the one that wants to take it to the next level and I just got it to where it needs to be for her to do that on her own.”

Cintas has since expanded Kosha Covers by creating an offshoot company called Kosha Fabrics, where interested customers can buy the material that makes up the product.

“The fabric we use for the covers has numerous other applications and what’s really exciting is companies from other industries, such as the medical and travel industry, have approached us for our fabric,” Cintas said.

Cintas said she is excited about the future growth of the company, and is happy to finally be in a position where she can start hiring staff.

“People have asked me, ‘What’s it like starting a company?’,” said Cintas. “And I always tell them, you just have to keep pushing through.”