Eddie Arpin: The Vision Behind OfferingTree, Serving 2000+ Yoga Businesses Worldwide

College and Mindfulness

Eddie grew up playing sports and continued in college, playing club and intramural sports. His college roommate started a student-led mindfulness group, and Eddie started attending regularly. Eddie found that a mindfulness practice was a good complement to college life and a physically active lifestyle. It was there that he met Alex Haley (his current co-founder of OfferingTree).

Exploring Wellness

As Eddie explored meditation further, he was exposed to other eastern forms of wellness, including Yoga, Qigong, and MBSR. After his time at the university, Eddie moved into the software industry and developed software to help youth sports organizations spend less time on admin tasks and more time with youth athletes. It was during this time that Alex and Eddie came up with the idea for OfferingTree.

The Spark of OfferingTree

Alex was managing a donation-based Yoga studio in Minneapolis at the time, and they were struggling with adopting a software that would fit their needs and culture. Because they were a walk-in donation-based studio, nothing on the market was working for them. This sparked the idea for OfferingTree. Today, Eddie still stays active with yoga, basketball and golf, and is really enjoying being a new father to his two young children.

Founding OfferingTree

After those initial discussions with Eddie and Alex, they discovered it wasn't just Alex's yoga studio that needed better booking software solutions. They saw an opportunity to create something that could not only help studios but also individual teachers and trainers trying to make a living doing what they love and supporting their communities. Eddie brought in two of his former colleagues, Arvind Menon and Alec Gorjestani, and together they founded OfferingTree in 2016. For the first few years, the founders worked nights and weekends while keeping their day jobs. The founders decided they wanted to start with their own money and resources because raising venture capital funding creates a lot of pressure to grow fast or fail.

After two years of talking with teachers and studio owners and iterating on the initial product, OfferingTree launched in the Spring of 2018.

Growth and Partnerships

In the early days, most of OfferingTree’s growth came from partnerships with influential organizations, teachers and leaders in the yoga community. Shannon Crow's The Connected Yoga Teacher and Amanda Kingsmith’s Mastering the Business of Yoga podcast were a few examples of partnerships that brought in early customers. When the pandemic hit in the Spring of 2020, OfferingTree saw a spike in new interest from the teacher community. With studios shutting down and students wanting access to their yoga teachers, OfferingTree was the perfect solution for scheduling, booking, paying, and hosting classes online.

Where We Are Today

Today, OfferingTree serves over 2,000 teachers and businesses, as well as hundreds of thousands of students and clients booking classes and services. What has been core to OfferingTree’s growth is creating easy-to-use software, providing best-in-class support to its customers, and providing education and resources to help people achieve their goals. That has created organic word-of-mouth referrals and growth, which is the main driver of OfferingTree’s growth. Organic search (SEO) and partnerships have also contributed significantly to OfferingTree’s growth.

Eddie and OfferingTree continue to be driven by the desire to empower health and wellness professionals and businesses to reach their goals through its all-in-one software and supporting community and educational resources.

Lessons I've Learned

Eddie attributes OfferingTree’s success to perseverance and focus. “There are a lot of ups and downs when you're a business owner, and sometimes finding a way to keep going is your competitive advantage and allows you to achieve your goals. When you are a small business or solo owner, there are also a million things you could do, so it's really important to know what to say no to and what to focus on.”

Business Takeaways from Start Small

Bootstrapping in the early years can give founders freedom to shape their product without outside pressure.

Community First

Strong partnerships with trusted leaders can unlock growth faster than paid tactics.

Organic Momentum

Word-of-mouth and authentic relationships build deeper trust than quick wins.

Perseverance Matters

Ups and downs are constant. The ability to keep going often becomes the true competitive advantage.

At , we don't just share inspiring stories — we break down what makes yoga businesses succeed. By learning directly from real founders and entrepreneurs, we extract actionable lessons and proven strategies you can apply, so you can avoid common mistakes, feel more confident, grow faster, and make bold choices with clarity.