To Our Fans: Thank You
I started Inverted Gear four years ago. Yesterday, our 19th gi shipment landed in the United States. Four years ago, I could never imagine being where we are today. I wasn’t even sure I could sell our first 100 gis, let alone ever have a need for another shipping container full of merchandise.
For that I thank you.
Thank you for choosing Inverted Gear. Thank you for recommending us to your friends. Your kind words in the gym and on social media have been instrumental in our growth. We have done very little advertising yet have succeeded in selling out of every batch we order. And we can’t thank you enough.
The gi landscape has changed a lot since we first opened our doors. Back when we started, there were a limited number of options for gi brands, probably less than twenty serious companies. Now we have over 100, yet you keep choosing us. That never stops amazing me. I love checking our email and social media in the mornings and seeing pictures of Panda Nation grapplers all over the world—from first time buyers, to the hardcore fans with a closet full of gis. It’s still all very surreal, but I love every minute of it.
We are working hard to pay it forward. Our sponsored team continues to grow. We are up from 20 athletes last year to 30 this year. We continue to support the great folks at Tap Cancer Out, sponsoring all of their tournaments this year and releasing another collaboration gi in a few months. We’ve been working to make more original content for our blog, more technique and match footage from our sponsored athletes, and a growing social media community.
All of this has led to a mild r/bjj addiction for me. I can’t get enough of the jiu-jitsu community.
The sport has come a long way in four years, but we think the sport still has a lot of growing to do. To perhaps play a small part in that, we have a huge announcement:
We are sponsoring Polaris 3! We believe that Polaris is doing an amazing job of pushing the sport to the next level. They are giving athletes a platform like we haven’t seen before. As much as we say we have professional grapplers, the prospects for professional grapplers are extremely limited. The success of Polaris, in our minds, is the start of something great.
We’re excited to be a part of it. And stay tuned, we have some big ideas for bringing Panda Nation along for the ride.
