FightStorePro's Next Chapter: This Is What We Started Years Ago, But It's Finally the Right Time to Turn the Page

If you've read the founder story part 1 you'll know a little of how we got started with the store. But by 2012 we had become much more than the online store we originally created.

We'd become a hub, all the top North East fighters came to Fightstore to buy their gear, hang out, have a coffee. The vision became to be the real hub of the North East Martial Arts scene but one simple thing stood in our way. The good news is, that thing is no longer there....

When we started the store in 2009 the combat sports scene in the UK was very much in its infancy. Of course there were some great fighters, gyms and coaches, but compared to many other sports, it was simply a niche area.

As a retailer we had little choice but to serve the entire country. We loved the local interactions, the fighters, the coaches, the people of the region and the craic, but we had to pay the bills. Online was really our only choice to survive.

Over fifteen years later things have changed.

By the end of 2025 we realised there were almost certainly more combat sports gyms just within a few miles of the store than there had been in the entire country when we started. Online had become a habit but our heart was always in the local store. We decided it was time to make the shift to what we really, truly always wished to be. A purely local facing store!

And in 2026 we have worked all year to make that vision happen.

There is still a lot of work to do, but the new chapter of FightStorePro means North East fighters ALWAYS come first.

You may be wondering what's actually different, beyond the words on this page.

Walk in today and the first thing you'll notice is the basics are just there — reliably. We've spent real time this year rebuilding core stock, so the essentials are always on the shelf, alongside re-engaging the relationships with brands people trust and expect to find, like Rival and Adidas.

Summer is usually brutal for us — it always has been. But this year, for the first time in a long while, we've actually seen new customers grow through the summer months rather than just survive them. That's when we knew this wasn't just a plan on paper anymore.

And from October, that starts to properly show. We used to be known for championing new and hard-to-find brands — the ones the bigger, safer retailers wouldn't bother stocking. This year marks a real return to that. New stock starts landing from October, and keeps landing right through into the new year.

Alongside that, we've built something we're calling Fight Tribe — because so many new clubs have opened across the region that we needed a proper way to engage with them. It sits perfectly between a trade account and a retail relationship, and it's given us a real way to work directly with the North East's up-and-coming fighters and coaches, not just sell to them.

If there's one thing we'd want you to take from all of this, it's this: once upon a time, we were a leading national online store that happened to have a decent shop. Today, we're very much a local specialist store that happens to have a website.

If any of this resonates, the best way to see it for yourself is simple: come in. Have a coffee, try the gear on, meet the team — that's always been the real FightStorePro experience, and it's more true now than it's been in years.

Can't make it in just yet? Follow along and be part of Fight Tribe — you'll see the new stock land, meet the fighters and coaches we're working with, and get a proper look at what "North East first" actually means in practice.

And if you do need to buy from us online in the meantime — that's still absolutely fine. Just know that behind that website is a real, local, specialist store, not a warehouse. That's never going to change.