15/03/2021

Last week, we had the pleasure of running an interview with the wonderful owner of De Uria, Catherine Florez. We asked Catherine a handful of questions relating to her company and to the hospitality sector in general; check it out below! What is the inspiration behind the company? I always wanted to create beautiful products that would be sustainable AND help people and communities, enhancing their handcraft skills. Yoga is my passion and I started with hand woven organic cotton and natural gum yoga mats, then I added organic premium bath towels. Nature is our inspiration, as well as health and well being. We use therapeutic herbs from the indian traditional Ayurvedic medicine to hand dye our yoga mats and our ayurvedic bath towels. DE URIA products offer a very sensorial experience of touch and smell. What are companies short and long term goals? We are working on a sustainable sportswear line soon. We are based in Switzerland and France and are launching in the UK in the next 2 months and in the USA in the next 6-12 months How have you found COVID-19 has effected your business, and how do you feel it may impact you moving forward? We were mainly B2B and it pushed us to developing more B2C. What does the brand’s logo mean? The root and heart chakra of the yoga system are combined together in our logo, to symbolize our wish to anchor the heart energy in the physical plane. This means to us, giving back to the Planet and the People, helping the communities in India by paying a decent wage, we offer training to women in villages in South India, they get a health insurance and retirement plan and we are empowering them to become financially independent. If you could change any one thing about hospitality, what would it be and why? I would love to see all hotels supplies be ORGANIC and earth friendly and use DE URIA organic supplies.