Rewind to track meets I attended last year...

I was standing in front of the merch tent, looking at the prices.

 

 

I’m a university runner and a kinesiology student. I practically live in my training gear.

 

 

On paper, the stuff in that tent looked like the gold standard:

 

Limited event branding

 

Flashy, high-contrast logos

 

$65–$80 price points

 

 

You would probably guess that because it was expensive, it would be "high-performance" gear.

 

Then, you'd actually look at the garment.

 

 

 

My mistake was thinking that a high price tag guaranteed a high-quality product.

 

 

There is a very big difference between "premium branding" and a garment that can actually survive the grind of a few competitive seasons.

 

 

I saw my teammates dropping nearly $50 on a shirt that was essentially just cheap cotton with a heat-transfer logo that cracks after three washes. The industry was selling status, but the athletes were getting gear that didn't actually serve them.

 

 

Once that clicked, the mission changed.

 

 

I realized the industry was built on a "brand tax" that didn't benefit the runner.

 

 

I realized I could source high-quality sublimated garments—where the design is literally part of the fabric, meaning it won't fade or crack—and get them into the hands of the community for a fraction of the "big brand" cost.

 

 

What allowed me to bridge the gap between affordability and premium quality?

 

 

Sublimation over screen-printing: Ensuring the design lasts as long as the fabric, no matter how many miles you put in.

 

 

Cutting the "Brand Tax": Removing the massive markups that corporations use to fund their marketing, passing those savings directly to the athlete.

 

 

Designing for the OffTrack moments: rest, recovery, and the lifestyle of a runner outside the race.

 

 

That shift is the entire reason OffTrack exists.

 

 

We aren’t here to be another expensive logo in a tent. We’re here to provide the gear that athletes actually deserve, at a price that actually makes sense for someone training every single day.

More coming soon. Thanks for giving this a read.

James :)