Case Study: Interview with Henrike Fröchling, CEO of Yogaeasy.de

YogaEasy is Germany’s largest online yoga studio. With YogaEasy you can practise yoga comfortably at home using yoga videos. Beginners and advanced practitioners have access to more than 700 professional yoga videos, filmed with Germany’s best-known yoga teachers. The short and long videos fit into any daily routine. Variety is guaranteed too: every well-known yoga style is represented at YogaEasy. We talk to Henrike Fröchling, founder and CEO of Yogaeasy, about finance and cash flow planning.

Ms Fröchling, you are the CEO of YogaEasy.de. Your website currently says: strength + relaxation = yoga. What is YogaEasy.de all about?

We are an online yoga studio, a kind of Netflix for yoga videos. That way you can do yoga at any time, at home or on the go, with the best German-speaking yoga teachers.

But be honest. How does a product as, let’s say, analogue as yoga actually fit into the digital world?

It fits wonderfully – after all, these are real, charismatic yoga teachers preparing yoga classes for real, breathing people at home. And so much the better if you use your smartphone for mindfulness and movement.

With this approach you are effectively Germany’s largest yoga community! And if I see it correctly, the community keeps growing?

Henrike Fröchling, founder & CEO of Yogaeasy

Yes, we grow more strongly every year. Yoga has been a megatrend for decades because it gives us exactly what is missing from our hectic, sedentary everyday lives.

And with our app everyone can build more yoga into their day. What challenge does this business model pose for you as CEO?

The customer-friendly subscription model provides a stable financial basis for continually expanding the product. More videos, more functionality. The technical environment and the competition, however, are constantly changing, so I have to make sure that we always stay on the ball.

As an independent and still comparatively small player, you cannot afford to make big mistakes on the internet.

Is there still time left for finance? How have you organised your finance function, and how important is the topic of liquidity for you?

For us, finance simply has to work alongside everything else and yet be absolutely reliable. Cash flow planning is the most important part of that, because we have to be able to pay our bills but also must not run the business too conservatively, so that we do not give away growth opportunities.

We have a very solidly built cash plan, which our (part-time) controller updates weekly and discusses very regularly with the budget owners.

What advantages do you see for YogaEasy.de from using COMMITLY?

COMMITLY is super simple and pragmatic. Before, we had an Excel list I had built myself, with pivot tables for evaluation – of course that was error-prone and somewhat cumbersome. Now the account transactions come in automatically via an interface, and combined with the planned figures for the rest of the year an up-to-date forecast emerges almost by itself. This makes it far easier for us to reach the planning certainty that is so important for a relatively small internet company.

Many thanks for your time!

Credits: Photos by Yogaeasy