Hugger Mugger is a fitness brand founded in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1986.
Hugger Mugger's first yoga mats were German carpet underlay, and they crumbled within months. Founder Sara Chambers asked for tougher ones. "They wouldn't do it," she told Yoga Chicago in 2000. "Nor would they make more attractive colors at our request." So the Salt Lake City company had a chemist help design a U.S.-made mat called the Tapas. The company says it was the first mat designed specifically for yoga.
In 1986 Chambers, a custom furniture builder, sat in a workshop where teacher Mary Dunn kept borrowing a student's belt to demonstrate a pose. It beat the thrift store neckties everyone else was using. The next week Chambers brought a cotton D-ring strap to class, plus maroon velour shorts with thigh-hugging elastic. She took orders that night. The shorts named the company. Hugger mugger means to conceal.
She made props in her basement, including blocks made to B.K.S. Iyengar's specifications. By 2000 she said she had sold "hundreds of thousands" of Tapas mats.
David Chamberlain became her partner in 1997, and both have since retired. The company is privately held. Its catalog still carries a cotton D-ring strap, so nobody in class has to borrow a belt.
Hugger Mugger's Ultra mat was twice as thick as a standard sticky mat, and the company told Yoga Chicago in 2000 that it sold a lot of them in colder states like Alaska.
