Why So many Fighters change their mind then they visit the store

Every day at FightstorePro on Team Valley, Gateshead, we see the same thing happen.

A fighter, or often a small group of fighters, walks through the door already having a pretty good idea of what they want. They have probably seen something online. Maybe it was on our own website, FightstorePro.com, or perhaps they found it somewhere else. They have looked at the photographs, read the description, checked the specifications and possibly even looked through the reviews.

And then they do something that makes perfect sense.
They come into the shop to see it for themselves.

That is usually where this story begins to take shape, and it happens literally every day at the store.

Truth is, combat sports equipment is difficult to judge from a photograph. A pair of boxing gloves can look fantastic online but feel completely different once they are on your hands. Shin pads can appear to offer plenty of protection in a photograph, but when you actually put them on, you might decide that another pair gives you better coverage. A BJJ gi can look exactly right on a screen, but the fit, weight and cut can feel completely different when you actually wear it.

And perhaps most importantly of all, it may be that the item you kind of fancied is okay but once you can compare it with others, you find something that suits you better, that's the beauty of OFFLINE shopping.

Put two pairs of gloves on your hands and the difference will usually be obvious to anyone who has done the sport for more than a few months.

Try two sets of shin pads and you will know which one feels more secure, more protective and which fits best immediately.
Put two different pieces of equipment side by side and you can feel the difference in construction, weight and materials.

Sometimes the customer will say: "That's not what I expected" or "This one is so much better than the one I was looking at". We hear it everyday.

Sometimes the item doesn't look quite the same in reality as it did in the photographs. Sometimes it doesn't feel right. Sometimes another product simply feels better.

When looking at protective gear, sometimes the customer realises that the level of protection isn't quite what they were looking for.

This happens particularly with boxing gloves and shin pads. Fighters have different hands, different leg shapes, different preferences and different requirements. What works brilliantly for one fighter might not be right for another.

That is the thing about buying fight equipment: there isn't always a right answer until you try it.

Our job isn't to convince someone to buy the most expensive product, the product with the biggest name or even the product they originally came in looking for. It is to help them find the equipment that actually suits them.

Sometimes that actually means confirming that their original choice is exactly right but quite often it means showing them something they hadn't considered.

All the time we watch customers them put one item down and say, "Actually, I'll take this one instead."

That's why we believe having a proper combat-sports shop still matters.

You can browse hundreds of products online. You can zoom in on photographs, read specifications and scroll through reviews. But you can't feel the weight of a glove through a screen. You can't test the fit of a shin pad. You can't compare the protection, construction or comfort of two products standing next to each other.

At FightstorePro, you can.

Come in, try it, compare it and make your own decision.

Because sometimes the best way to know what you want is to discover what you don't.