Chris Riccobono Disrupted Menswear With Untuckit. Now He’s Tackling Athletic Apparel

Chris Riccobono, and Derek Jeter taking a look at designs for Greatness Wins athletic attire.
Greatness Wins

Chris Riccobono constructed the clothes model Untuckit on the assumption that there was unmet demand for males’s shirts designed to be worn untucked.

Now Riccobono believes that he, together with three high-profile superstar athlete co-founders, can capitalize on unmet demand for higher high quality exercise gear.

In June, Riccobono, together with athlete companions baseball celebrity Derek Jeter, hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky, and ballerina Misty Copeland, launched Greatness Wins, a direct-to-consumer line of tops, hoodies, shorts, joggers, golf shirts and different athletic put on. The firm at the moment is producing a males’s line however a girls’s line is deliberate to launch subsequent 12 months.

Riccobono, who co-founded Untuckit with Aaron Sanandres and constructed it from an internet model to an organization with 86 shops and gross sales of greater than $300 million, mentioned he discovered himself, when retail floor to a halt firstly of the pandemic, with the time to work on disrupting one other class.

Just as Untuckit was born when Riccobono couldn’t discover a shirt that appeared good when he wore it untucked. Greatness Wins is a response to Riccobono’s dissatisfaction with athletic put on.
Riccobono and his athlete companions are betting they’ll parlay the teachings Riccobono realized about match, manufacturing and advertising and marketing with Untuckit right into a premium athletic model that matches, and performs, higher.

Jeter, Gretzky and Copeland are true co-founders, Riccobono mentioned, not simply model ambassadors, and are immediately concerned within the growth of merchandise and in guiding the corporate.
The firm is being funded privately by family and friends and Untuckit contacts.

The Greatness Wins brand on a pair of shorts.
Greatness Wins

Riccobono mentioned his expertise sporting, and researching athletic put on from the highest manufacturers satisfied him there was a market alternative for a brand new model.
“The high quality was simply horrible. The stuff would measure 4 inches out of spec, the match was horrible, it didn’t wash effectively, it pilled. You might inform they only weren’t specializing in high quality,” he mentioned.

“I might see that there wanted to be a brand new higher-end athletic model, – a real athletic model – and none had come into the trade since Under Armour,” Riccobono mentioned. He defines an athletic model as one which sells merchandise for all sports activities, which Greatness Wins plans to do finally.
Then there have been the ath-leisure manufacturers, the place the merchandise have been high-quality, however the messaging is a bit muddled, Riccobono mentioned.
“They’re attempting to be the whole lot to everybody. They promote laying in your sofa in probably the most comfy clothes, that you may exit in it and in addition work out in it,” he mentioned. “I do know sufficient about vogue that you may’t be all issues to all individuals. You can’t decide a cloth based mostly on 5 various things.”
The Greatness Wins tackle ath-leisure is “there’s no athlete in ath-leisure, and also you shouldn’t be understanding in the identical stuff you’re laying in your sofa in” Riccobono mentioned.
“And that’s not simply in case you are a professional athlete,” Riccobono mentioned. “That’s in the event you’re going for a protracted stroll. We assume you have to be sporting one of the best product obtainable.”
“We needed to change into sort of the Lululemon of athletics – a super-high curated model. Not having 500 joggers like the large guys do, however having possibly eight joggers with an understanding by the shopper which needs to be worn during which exercise,” he mentioned.
The firm makes use of high-end materials designed to face up to a exercise and a number of washings, and chosen for his or her sustainability. Eighty p.c of the corporate’s shorts are made with recycled polyester, and 98% of its base supplies are Bluesign or Oeko-Tex licensed as being freed from dangerous chemical substances and dyes and different adverse environmental impacts.
The worth factors might be larger than Nike or the opposite mainstream athletic manufacturers, with t-shirts priced at $55, shorts at $69, and joggers at $99.
Riccobono mentioned he believes customers can pay extra for higher high quality merchandise that lasts.
“Our product, identical to Untuckit, prices some huge cash to make. It’s one thing we’re keen to do,” he mentioned.

Derek Jeter sporting a Greatness Wins quarter-zip high.
Greatness Wins

Riccobono mentioned he enlisted his athlete companions as co-founders as a result of he realized with Untuckit that manufacturers with a narrative usually tend to resonate with customers.
With Untuckit, the story was his irritating seek for a shirt that match proper and appeared good, untucked. With Greatness Wins, he needed the story to be high athletes and their want for higher exercise and efficiency put on.
“I made a decision I ought to get among the biggest athletes of all time to confirm that there’s room for a greater product on the market,” Riccobono mentioned.
Ballet star Misty Copeland is concerned within the design and launch of the Greatness Wins girls’s line, which might be launched subsequent 12 months.
Jeter, Copeland, and Gretzky have been selling the model on Instagram, and Riccobono mentioned extra social media advertising and marketing and commercials are deliberate.
While the model at the moment is barely bought on-line, Riccobono mentioned he expects to finally open Greatness Wins shops. “I’m nonetheless a powerful believer in shops,” he mentioned, noting that gross sales at Untuckit shops have rebounded strongly after the preliminary pandemic pause.
“Seventy p.c of males gained’t purchase product except they contact and really feel it,” he mentioned.

https://www.forbes.com/websites/joanverdon/2022/08/21/chris-riccobono-disrupted-menswear-with-untuckit–now-hes-tackling-athletic-apparel/