Gameness Gets Into MMA
August 14, 2008
On Tuesday we featured the work of Steven Silver of The Tennessean of Nashville. Steven did a series of pieces for the print and online version of The Tennesseean on mixed martial arts. One interesting piece that got left on the cutting room floor was a piece on local MMA apparel company Gameness. That name may sound familiar to our readers, as Gameness was featured in a recent piece on IMMAE. Mr. Silver was nice enough to allow us to post the article for our readers:
Local gym wades into mixed martial arts apparel business
By STEVE SILVER
Staff Writer
A stinging jab and a mighty kick can take a fighter only so far.
Eventually, a mixed martial artist will have to rely on his or her pure combative spirit − or “gameness” − to overtake an opponent.
That term has become a calling card for Gameness apparel and fight gear owners Ed Clay and Shane Messer. Once just a way to make a little extra cash when Clay started Gameness in 2001, Gameness products are now sold in more than 450 stores around the world.
Gameness has even grown into the world’s largest supplier of Brazilian jiu−jitsu Gi’s with about a 30 percent market share of the BJJ standard competition uniform, which is similar to a karate kimono.
Despite its success, Gameness still doesn’t have the mainstream name recognition of MMA’s leading clothing line, TapouT. TapouT, which has its own reality show on Versus and retail agreements with Foot Locker and Champs Sports, is expected to sell more than $100 million in apparel in 2008 and close to $225 million in 2009, according to mmapayout.com − the MMA industry’s leading business news source.
But Clay and Messer plan to chip away at TapouT’s market share.
The basic idea is to sponsor young competitors with Gameness apparel and then train them to reach the pay−per−view and national television level.
“I can’t go after the big clothing lines financially,” Clay said. ” My strategy will take longer. But in a few years we’ll have guys wearing Gameness in the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) because we raised them right from our gym. That will put us right in the mix of things without spending close to $40,000 to have a guy wear it once on TV.”
