It was 2012 and Tribecan Robyn Berkley had just returned from a yoga training retreat in Bali when she got chatting with a stranger at the bar at The Dutch in Soho. Turned out she and Jared Vere had friends in common, and their conversation eventually turned to her trip and the ideas she had hatched there: to fuse content and active wear in one company focused on health and well being.

“Jared told me it was the dumbest idea ever,” Robyn said. “We launched two years later.”

Live the Process now is just what she envisioned: they started by building a library of lessons, tips and accounts of personal experiences on emotional and physical transformations, then they got to designing the workout gear — non-branded, simple and minimal, all for women — as a direct-to-consumer product. That was all before the big active wear boom, and they launched the line at Barney’s — a dream, Robyn said. The pair quit their day jobs in 2020.

But while living in Tribeca for the better part of 15 years, she always imagined a space here where she could take the idea even further with in-person classes — in her mind it was a dance studio with windows on both sides.

The space at 102 Franklin almost fits that bill. It’s a huge, airy, old-school loft (with windows on one side) that serves as the company’s office, showroom and event space. The first event was scheduled for the day the world shut down for the pandemic — so that pushed things off for a bit. But they kept the space and remained hopeful; this past winter they started again, and now offer yoga from Sky Ting, movement classes, breathwork exercises and more.

(There’s also a winner of a Tribeca shop dog: Bode.)

Before she went full time with Live the Process, Robyn had her own communications agency; she manages that part of the company as well as the classes. Jared runs the website and the back of house. They launched the brand at Barney’s, and now customers come from all over — some in person, most online.

The line is huge, with leggings, bodysuits, tops and bras, but also wrap dresses, cardigans, jumpsuits and polos. They have something brewing in Soho as we speak. And the ideas seem to keep blooming.

“It’s been an amazing, challenging experience,” Robyn said. “You think you know what to expect but you never really know.”

 

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