Tracksmith just disclosed a Series A funding round worth $4.1 million.
Which is cool for a number of reasons. For starters, they're first and foremost a running apparel company based in Wellesley, the halfway point of the Boston Marathon. But moreso, they're betting big on content, and British VC firm Pentland Group, which led the round, believed in that vision enough to pony up.
“With the addition of our women’s line, it’s growing bigger and bigger and faster and faster.”
The Series A comes a year after the brand's launch, and as founder Matt Taylor told me, it sort of came by accident. Thinking they'd raise money from existing investors, and not really putting too much effort into courting local dollars – "Lots of traditional tech VCs were looking for a growth model that we weren’t pursuing," said Taylor – Pentland instead reached out to them. They saw early success as an investor in Reebok, and are now heavily involved in the intersection of sportswear and fashion.
“They really understand the challenges of making physical products and supply-chain distribution," said Taylor, praising the relationship as one built on a core understanding of the industry and where Tracksmith can carve a meaningful niche.
The whole process took about three months, with Pentland visiting Tracksmith here in Boston and Tracksmith returning the favor with a trip to London. Now that the dust has settled, it brings the company's total money raised to $5.7 million.
Tracksmith launched in July 2014 as a heritage-inspired performance running apparel company for men. With products like singlets and short shorts, they were catering to the hardcore runners among us. Taylor is a graduate of Yale, where he ran cross-country. The New England nods are evident in the colorways, logo and imagery splashed across the website.
But from the start, it hasn't been all about apparel. Flip through the pages of their Deep Bo lookbook – shot as an escape from East Coast winters on the edge of Mt. Tam State Park – and it's easy to get lost in the imagery, the pull of the trail, the lifestyle of a serious runner, whether you are one or not. Images like the one above evoke a sense of freedom that only pounding the pavement can provide.
“From a brand perspective, a big focus will be on content and community," said Taylor, when I asked what the Series A will be put toward. "People are participating in events, run crews, pop-ups, etc. It’s a natural extension for a brand like ours to invest in content.”
There's also the Tracksmith magazine, METER, a print product about running culture that's produced quarterly. Taylor wants that frequency to increase, and a digital version as well.
“If you do content really well," he said, "you create a digital community around that.”
Tracksmith's digital community is growing, in part because of the apparel and pop-up events like they one they held at this year's Boston Marathon, but also because of their "everyone doesn't get a medal" mentality, a stark departure from many athletic competitions today. (Including adventure races like Spartan Race, which Taylor mentioned, and I have waxed emphatic about.)
In fact, they debuted a line of singlets for the Boston Marathon that only qualifiers could buy. As in, you literally had to earn the right to wear it.
In the next 12-18 months, the brand will continue to bet big on content. It is, after all, their most successful tool for customer acquisition. An entire fall line is coming soon, too, including women's clothing, which they expanded to recently. Taylor is intent on increasing the community presence, through run clubs and more pop-ups. And he's bolstering the headcount as well, adding five key hires to the existing team of seven, including a product director and a head of content.
He's even considering retail possibilities down the road. “It’s clear to me than an omnichannel approach is where we’ll end up," he said. "We can’t just be sold online forever.”
Right now, though, he's really psyched about cross-country, a particular track of running that's not accessible to everyone, but to which he thinks people can still relate.
“If we do it well, it can have a wide appeal," he said. "Nobody will tell cross-country stories to adults like we will.”
