Ten Thousand Raises $21.5 Million in Funding, Inks Sponsorship Deal With Life Time

Ten Thousand has lofty ambitions: to be the subsequent nice athletic model.

Towards that finish, the corporate on Monday stated it has raised $21.5 million in Sequence A funding and shaped a partnership with Life Time, a prime North American health membership operator and occasions organizer.

The funding was led by Provenance, a Beverly Hills-based agency that invests in direct-to-consumer corporations, with participation from Fernbrook and Alfa. Earlier seed buyers within the model embrace Dave Gilboa, cofounder of Warby Parker, Blue Scorpion and Elizabeth Avenue Ventures.

“There’s an authenticity and seriousness to Ten Thousand that’s sorely missing from so lots of the different activewear start-ups,” stated Anton Romash, Ten Thousand board director and principal at Provenance. “In an extremely brief time period they’ve established themselves as a real best-in-class model and are in pole place to reap the benefits of the huge alternative out there to develop into the subsequent nice American activewear model. We’re very excited to assist gasoline that progress.”

The efficiency attire model was began by Keith Nowak, a former skilled soccer participant, triathlete and CrossFit athlete, in 2017 and makes shorts, shirts, pants, tights, hoodies, parkas, socks and equipment.  

On the identical time, Ten Thousand has signed a three-year partnership with Life Time Athletic Nation Golf equipment to be the unique males’s coaching attire model of Life Time’s Dynamic Private Coaching group and its Studio, GTX, Alpha and Extremely Match lessons. As well as, Ten Thousand will sponsor choose Life Time occasions, create unique product and develop in-club activations.

The deal will embrace Ten Thousand’s participation in Run Robust, an occasion sequence created to enhance bodily power and endurance, in addition to psychological fortitude. Ten Thousand has already hosted Run Robust activations at this 12 months’s Life Time Miami Marathon and Chicago Half Marathon. Contributors had been inspired to put on weight vests and do push-ups and burpees all through the race, elevating greater than $10,000 for the Life Time Basis. Ten Thousand plans to increase on this program by including Run Robust divisions at different organized races and neighborhood occasions all year long. 

“As lifelong athletes that constantly struggled to seek out sufficient coaching gear, we began Ten Thousand to construct what we had been on the lookout for out there — a streamlined assortment of no-nonsense, premium gear that would take us by means of any and each coaching session,” stated Nowak, who serves as chief government officer. “By solely utilizing the highest-quality supplies, obsessing over the small print and dealing with elite hybrid athletes to design, develop and check each product, Ten Thousand has develop into the go-to efficiency model for severe athletes. The result’s purpose-built gear that’s made to final.”

Nowak, who was a enterprise capitalist earlier than beginning Ten Thousand, stated the model has a retention fee of greater than 50 p.c, which he stated is “one of many highest within the business. With this new funding and our partnership with Life Time, we are able to shift the enterprise into excessive gear by rising our group, investing in additional stock, exploring retail, bigger partnerships and new advertising channels.”

He added that the funding will enable the corporate to additionally improve its digital advertising efforts and enhance its manufacturing to maintain up with demand, which Nowak stated has been “one among our greatest challenges thus far.

“After we got down to increase our Sequence A, we rapidly noticed Provenance as a great companion. We had constructed relationships with their group over a number of years and knew they had been distinctive in how they mix data-driven choice making with unmatched model, product and operational experience,” Nowak stated. “Now we have each intention of changing into a family title and this funding together with the brand new partnerships will play an enormous position in serving to us get there.”

The corporate has been worthwhile since April 2020.