It could have been an event... not a Fight store.
The Fight Store(Y) Chapter 2
Back in 2008, there wasn't a grand business plan. There was simply a conversation between two old friends who had worked together in the early 2000's.
Alex Wright and Terry Mason spent years helping build the UK's first MMA brand, Evolution Fightwear. Eventually things changed, Alex moved back to his home in the North East, things had gone sour at Evolution for the pair of us.
Terry and I found ourselves asking a simple question..."What's next?"
We both felt the fight game owed us something, we weren't done with it. Alex was still training and fighting himself. We still very much had the bug.
There were two obvious directions which we discussed in detail.
The first was to promote our own fight shows. Terry knew everyone in the London area. Extreme Brawl, Cage Rage, Cage Warriors to name but a few. We'd been to literally every fight show in the UK. We knew the promoters, the fighters, the gyms.....Everyone!
Thing was though, we also knew promotions from the inside, not the out. It was an unclear path to producing any real revenue and was certainly very hard work.
So, there was another option, which was to build a business that served the people who fought on them.
So whilst events sounded exciting, anyone who has ever promoted one knows the reality. They're stressful, expensive and once the lights go out, it's over and on to the next one, the next stress filled rollercoaster.
I remember saying to Terry...
"Well we know how to run a store." That one sentence changed the course of our lives.
Instead of chasing the spotlight, we decided to build something that could support fighters every single day. Somewhere people could find equipment they could trust, ask questions, and feel welcome whether they were preparing for their first class or their fiftieth fight.
It wasn't about selling gloves. It was about building a place we'd have wanted to go to ourselves. Looking back, it feels like an obvious decision.
At the time though, it was anything but.
Terry agreed. He'd been the warehouse guy at Evolution but he was brilliant at networking, meeting people. Everyone loved Terry. Me most of all in many respects.
The next challenge was building a website from scratch with almost no money, just three brands and a determination to do things differently.
That's where the real adventure began.
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Next week, we'll tell you how three little-known brands became the foundations of FightStorePro.
