What If I Told You Athleisure Was Created By Urban Black Millennials in the 1990s?
Athletic, technical clothes worn for leisure. Sounds eerily similar to the striped trackpants we used to wear in high school. The skinny-cut, overpriced athleisure you see today is a sorry imitation of real athleisure activewear of yesteryear. Stretchy black yoga leggings didn't create the athleisure category. No more than Columbus's journey to the Caribbean "discovered" America. There were streetwear-shaped footprints here before. We started RuggedBlack to retake the category for Rugged Urban Millennials. Comfortable Clothes for Rugged Men
Creating A Goldilocks Option
RuggedBlack was founded in 2020 by a husband-wife team. During the height of the pandemic, we realized men had two bad options for WFH athleisure wear.
1. Low-Quality Activewear (worn by paid athletes)
2. Overpriced Athleisure (worn by yoga-practicing females)
With no outside investors, industry connections, or social following, we launched a Kickstarter and bootstrapped the business. We wanted to test if other rugged men felt the same way we did. Spoiler alert: They did.
Enter RUGGEDBLACK - Our response to the boujee-fication of the athleisure industry. Our counter-culture response to joggers cut like skinny jeans for a teenager.
Our goal is to be inspiration and comfort to all men everywhere. To comfort and inspire Rugged Men of Purpose.
Our brand is our reputation. Our reputation will be built by delivering the best customer experience - through product quality, customer service, and innovation.
Hustle requires three components - humility, hunger, and hard work. To comfort and motivate the Rugged, these qualities are essential to our ethos.
Every company claims diversity is a brand value. Being a black-owned company, we truly live it. True Diversity means hiring, developing, and retaining talent from underrepresented groups.
We are not a profit-first company. We want to make an meaningful impact on people and our environment. We practice Corporate Tithing.
We commit to donate 10% of our profits to charity. We believe our mission is twofold.
1. We want to encourage and fund entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups
2. We want to be an environmentally-positive company
We believe that reducing inequality in small business ownership will reduce pay disparities, employment/promotion gaps, and socioeconomic injustices. Being an apparel brand, it's just right thing to do - reducing our environmental impact and carbon footprint.
Our Founder
I didn't start RuggedBlack, because I wanted to make money. My wife and I created it, because we saw a problem with how the athleisure catered to a subset of men.
Like many other apparel companies, we want to make our company about more than clothes. We want to comfort and inspire men from every background.
Our motto is simple—Hustle and Motivate.
Hustle on every aspect of our business. Product quality, customer service, and customer experience.
Motivate the next generation of business leaders and world beaters. Prove that you don't have to have any built in advantages to succeed.
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