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Dont Start a Clothing Brand. Start a Boxing Glove Brand.
Not proud of it, man enough to say it….
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Table of Contents
Was building out a mood board for client and I saw this hypebeast pair of boxing gloves and it sent me down one of my infamous rabbit holes..
I didnt think much of it until I looked at the gear and realized every single person was wearing something built for a completely different human than the one wearing it.
So with my favorite spy tool gadget in the world we tapped into Particl to see who was actually making money off all these people.
The name that came back was Venum. The UFC brand. About $19M the last twelve months, and it is basically all gear. Gloves, wraps, shin guards.
s/o Particl for the numbers
Real money, moving in volume. But the second I looked at who that gear is designed for, I saw the same gap I love to find…. it is only speaking to one identity of the category.
Whats Actually Wrong w/ This Category:
Open almost any combat brand a boutique-boxing regular is wearing and you get the same visual language:
Skulls, blood, snakes, fight-night everything
UFC-coded, cage-coded, walkout aesthetics
Names and logos built to look intimidating on a poster
Branding for the guy stepping into an octagon on PPV
You are correct, that look is perfect for the sport it was made for. The problem is that the person who swipes the card for a 6am boxing class is not walking into an octagon for UFC 250.
They just ant a workout, and they want gear that doesn’t scream TAPOUT!!!!
What Boxing Actually Is Right Now (and who it pulls)
While down this rabbit hole I found some interesting studies and data.
Boutique boxing = a bag, some gloves, a coach, and a playlist.
If you can throw a punch at a heavy bag for forty five minutes, you can do it, and a whole new crowd hungry for cardio that isnt the treadmill, is showing up because of that.
The person in that room is a runner who wanted something heavier. A lifter who wanted some cardio. A ton of first timers. Way more women than the octagon ever pulled.
Rumble has passed 100 studios. TITLE Boxing is running dozens of franchises. Gen Z calls itself a boxing audience at five times the rate Boomers do.
That person does not want a skull on their fist. And right now that is close to the only option on the shelf.
The Number That Made Me Sit Up
Here is the part that turns this from an observation into a business.
A pair of those Venum gloves sells for around $80. A clean private label pair, made in the same factories in Sialkot that produce for half the brands you know, runs somewhere around $12 to make at low volume.
That gap is the whole opportunity. You do not need to reinvent the glove. You need to make a better looking one for a person nobody is designing for. How many times have I said that in these newsletters ???
ZOOM OUT! This is a persona storyyyyy
Combat sports gear is an $11B market worldwide, and the fastest growing slice of it is brands selling direct online. That is the exact lane a new design-led brand can walk into without fighting anyone for shelf space.
Now be honest about the ceiling. Venum, the category leader, is around $18M globally. This is not the next Nike opportunity or billion dollar situation.
This lane is a design-led glove and wrap brand, that will spit off a good lifestyle-sized business, a few million done well, not a venture rocket.
It is exactly the kind of brand one person can actually build. Especially today.
Think about what happened to running. On, Bandit, Tracksmith, Satisfy. Clean, design-led, built for someone who runs and cares how it looks.
Now look at what the boutique boxer is handed. Cage cosplay lmao. The gap between who the sport pulls and what it lets them wear is the entire brand.
Four Open Lanes I'd Actually Build Into
Going head to head with Venum in the octagon is a dead end. They own that customer and that look. Here is where my brain went instead:
The design-led glove and wrap brand. The Tracksmith of boxing. Clean, considered, zero skulls, made for the person hitting a bag before work. The aesthetic alone separates it from everything on the shelf today. Start with the two things every single boxer is forced to buy: gloves and wraps.
The essentials accessory line. The money is in the gear you are forced to rebuy. Wraps wear out. Gloves stink. A design-led line of wraps, quick-dry inner gloves, jump ropes, and bag mitts specced for the studio crowd, not the fight camp.
The gym bag play. Build the one bag that holds your gloves, wraps, and recovery and looks good over your shoulder walking out of the studio. Whoever owns the bag for a sport compounds for a decade, same as golf.
The recovery play. These people wreck their hands and wrists and most of them have a desk job on Monday. A recovery and hand-care brand pointed straight at the boutique boxer, gym-bag sized, is wide open.
Same gear. A person nobody is dressing. THAT is a brand. WOOHOO!!
Weapon of the Week: The Borrowed Aesthetic Prompt
A lot of fast-growing categories are stuck wearing hand-me-downs from an older category next door. Boutique boxing wears the UFC. Hyrox wears CrossFit. Early pickleball wore tennis. This prompt finds that gap and tells you what the native brand looks like.
Copy and edit this:
I'm looking at [CATEGORY or COMMUNITY]. Right now the brands serving it mostly borrow their aesthetic and language from [ADJACENT OLDER CATEGORY].
First, describe that borrowed aesthetic in detail: the visual codes, the language, the customer it was originally built for.
Then tell me:
How is the NEW community's actual member different from the person that borrowed aesthetic was built for? Be specific about who they are and what they'd never wear or say.
What visual codes, words, and rituals would a brand built natively for the new community use instead?
Give me 3 brand concepts built native to this community, each with a name, a one-line positioning statement, and the aesthetic in 2 to 3 sentences.
For the strongest one: the first product to launch, a price point, and the first 3 ad hooks in the member's own language.
Be opinionated. The goal is to stop dressing a new crowd in an old sport's clothes.
Run this on any young, fast-growing community still wearing the last category's uniform. Go build what they should actually be wearing.
Source It
If the glove or accessory lane caught your eye and you want to test a small batch this quarter:
Pietra (vetted small-batch apparel + accessory manufacturers): https://www.pietrastudio.com/platform/sourcing-and-production/products
Alibaba (verified sport accessory suppliers, Trade Assurance only): https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=boxing+gloves+manufacturer&assessment_company=GS
Get one sample pair in your hands before you spend a dollar on the brand. Fit and feel are the whole game with gloves.
And to close out another brief, the weekly word from The Muse himself, Rick Rubin:
"If you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it's not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker."
Till next time soldier,
Carson
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