My shiny object syndrome is 12 and 0 this year. But I’M NOT GIVING UP!!!!!
If you caught my reel last week or have been following me for a bit then you already know the setup. I consistently tell people to stop trying to start a clothing brand and go start an accessory / prpoduct brand instead. This email is me digging deeper & showing my work.
It all started with a number I did not believe. Sports mouthguards alone are almost a $6B market, projected to hit $11B by 2034.
Mouthguards…That chunk of rubber your kid loses in the grass twice a season.
So I did what I always do. Tapped into Particl through Claude to see who is actually eating in there.
The Brand Doing $1M a Month to 12 Year Olds
S/o to Particl for the data
Battle Sports. About $1M in the last month selling fanged mouthguards, chrome visors, shiesties, and turf tape to youth football kids.
Then I pulled NXTRND, a brand your kid can name and you have never heard of. Just under $1M in the last 4 weeks running the exact same play.
Two brands, one aisle nobody was watching, both printing $$$$$$$$
And honestly what they figured out has almost nothing to do with mouthguards.
Shock Doctor Has Been Winning the Wrong Argument for 20 Years
Go look at the incumbent. Shock Doctor has owned protective mouthguards for two decades. And when I was a little pee wee football player… i thought Shock Doctor was THE ONE! Tbh their product is genuinely better engineered than most of what Battle sells.
Now read their product names. Gel-Fit. Max AirFlow. InVent.
That is language built to win an argument with a parent standing in a Dick's aisle. Safety, fit, certification, price. And sure.. it works, because the parent is the one holding the card.
Battle looked at the same aisle and clocked something else. The parent pays, BUT, The kid picks.
A 12 year old picking gear is not shopping for protection. He is shopping for how he looks walking onto the field in front of everyone he knows. Or wants to look like one of those 7on7 kids that has a viral clip on Overtime tiktok.
So Battle sells swagger. Fangs printed on the mouthpiece. A shirt that says I'M HIM. A cleat called the AstroFly. An entire collection called Slime.
Not one word of that is about protecting your teeth.
What's Actually Wrong w/ This Category
Walk the protective gear aisle for any sport that is not football and you get the same thing every time:
Product names that read like a spec sheet
Packaging designed to survive a parent's price comparison
Black, white, and if you are feeling wild, red !!
Product photography of equipment, never of a kid
Every claim pointed at safety, which is the parent's fear and not the athlete's
Safety is table stakes. It is the whole reason the product exists. It is also the least interesting thing you can say to the person who has to wear it.
ZOOM OUT
Youth sports is one of the few categories where the customer physically cannot opt out. If your kid plays, your kid needs the gear. Every season. Every growth spurt. Every time something gets left on a bus (sorry mom i did this a few too many times)
And there is a real tailwind under the participation side. Flag football is in the Olympics in 2028. Girls flag is the fastest growing high school sport in the country right now!
More kids playing. More kids who want to look like somebody while they do it. And most of the equipment they get handed still looks like it came out of a 1997 catalog.
No hate to Eastbay catalogs tho… still goated!
Four Lanes I'd Actually Build Into
Battle & Nxtrnd own football. Bruce Bolt has done the same thing to baseball with batting gloves. Going head to head with either one is a bad idea. Here is where my head went instead:
1. Hockey. Mouthguards, tape, helmet decals, neck guards. Hockey is the most superstitious, most ritual-heavy youth sport there is. Kids tape their sticks a specific way and refuse to wash a jersey during a win streak. That is a culture begging for gear with a personality, and right now the entire accessory drawer is beige.
2. Wrestling. Headgear has not been redesigned in my lifetime. It is the most visible thing on a wrestler, it sits on his head, and every option on the market looks like medical equipment. Wrestling rooms also have the most intense identity culture in high school sports. Whoever makes headgear kids actually want to wear is going to have a very easy first year.
3. Swim. Caps and goggles get replaced constantly, cost close to nothing to make, and every brand in the pool sells on hydrodynamics. Meanwhile a kid spends six days a week in a blank silicone cap that says nothing about him. Cheap, high-repeat, zero personality on the shelf.
4. Girls' everything. This is the biggest one and it is not close. Softball face masks look like surgical hardware. Volleyball knee pads come in one color. Girls flag is exploding and most of what those athletes are handed is a men's product in a smaller size, maybe in pink. An entire generation is wearing shrunken versions of gear designed for boys, and nobody has built the brand that talks to them like they are the point.
Same product. A person nobody is designing for. THAT is a brand!!!!
I could not get to lacrosse, volleyball, or cheer in this one, and all three have the exact same hole in them.
How To Actually Run This Play
Three rules if you take one of these lanes:
1. Design for the person wearing it. The parent is your checkout. The athlete is your customer. Every design decision should answer one question: would a 13 year old want to be seen in this.
2. Start with the cheapest thing in the kit. Battle did not lead with helmets. Mouthguards, tape, socks, and gloves get lost, worn out, and rebought constantly, they cost very little to produce, and they are the pieces a kid gets to choose himself. Wedge in there and earn the right to sell the expensive stuff later.
3. Name things the way a kid actually talks. Slime. I'M HIM. Doom Speed. Nobody under 16 has ever said the words "gel-fit liner" out loud.
Weapon of the Week: The Buyer Swap
Half the boring categories I dig into have this same crack in them. The person paying and the person using are two different humans, and every brand in the category is talking to the wallet. This prompt finds that split in whatever you sell.
Copy and edit this:
"I sell [PRODUCT] in [CATEGORY].
1. Tell me who actually pays for this and who actually uses it. If they are the same person, say so and stop here.
2. If they are different people, describe both. What does the payer care about? What does the user care about? Where do those two things conflict?
3. Tell me which of the two every existing brand in the category is designing and writing for. Use real brand names and their real product language as the evidence.
4. Rewrite my positioning for the other one. The one nobody is talking to.
5. Give me the first product to launch under that positioning, a price point, a product name in the user's own words, and 3 ad hooks that would make the user go ask the payer for it.
Be opinionated. The goal is to get the user doing my selling for me."
Run it on anything sold to kids, pets, patients, employees, or given as a gift. Those categories are stuffed with brands talking to the wrong human.
Source It
I said in the reel I would hand over the factories, so here they are. This is who Battle actually imports from, pulled straight from customs records:
Get one sample in your hand before you spend a dollar on branding. With gear, fit and feel decide whether a kid wears it a second time.
And to close out another brief, the weekly word from The Muse himself, Rick Rubin:
"The best art divides the audience."
Which is more or less the whole thesis here. If a parent looks at your product and thinks it is ridiculous, you might be exactly right.
Til next time soldier,
Carson
P.S. I used to think I was league bound but now these days I put that energy into brand teardowns instead »»» Subscribe to the YouTube channel.
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