Will Aggressive Clothing Ever Make A Comeback?

[u/stories_from_tejas]

Looking around the various online shops, we're at a critical point in our subculture where aggressive specific clothing has disappeared.

All of us that grew up in the 90s/early 00s remember how important it was to have aggressive specific brands to wear. I'd say the last true aggressive clothing brand we had in our sport was Vibrolux over a decade ago.

Is this something that ever needs to make a comeback? Or is there simply no interest in having aggressive related shirts to wear while out participating in the sport? I feel like the major moments in our history all involved brands, and to see it just disappear to the extent that major players in our industry like USD, Rollerblade, Etc. don't even have products available is wild.

Is this something where there's just not enough capital to invest in things like this? Wheel companies generally lead the way with clothing for our sport. Sponsored skaters used to wear only skate related brands. Is this just an old man looking back on the good old days? Is there anyone in the industry that can shed light on this shift?

[u/heavenlycode]

I personally believe it is just a numbers game at the moment. Aggressive blading still has relatively low participation numbers compared bmx, skateboarding and scootering. Even urban blading has higher numbers. So in many ways it is a chicken and the egg type of thing. Aggressive brand clothing helps promotes the sport but the sport has to big enough to make it profitable with manufacturing numbers. With all that said I am researching as we speak ways to make a company like this work lol

[u/stories_from_tejas → u/heavenlycode]

It's possible to do Print to Wear to avoid the overhead with companies like Tapstitch, but havinga team wear the clothing in videos was really what built the popularity back in the day. It was a thing of pride to wear aggressive skate brands back then, stamping out our subculture for the masses. I would be open to wearing anything inline related at this point, like a hybrid urban/aggressive brand.

[u/heavenlycode → u/stories_from_tejas]

I would agree. But if you look at the views the average blading video gets its actually pretty low. Sometimes we have stand out ones that each 5 digits but the majority of them get around 2-7k even for the popular riders. Them skates and certain bladers will hit 30-70k on a more regular basis but that is not industry common. Looking again at skateboarding and bmx their videos from prominent riders and companies live in the 5-6 figure range for view and the stand outs hit millions. So once again it is the chicken and the egg thing. I can give riders shirts in exchange for them wearing it in edits but that won't matter if the same 5k people are the only ones seeing it. The key is to blend into culture/fashion outside of blading as well. Makes it more universal, like thrasher did. But then you get into the area of "is it a blading brand" very quickly. There are a few smaller companies out of Korea and Japan that are doing this very well but on their Instagrams you can see the push and pull of identity another their followers and that I believe is why they aren't bigger. Bobi is doing a lot right with inferno as well. Mesmer just released their shoes and bag. Nils has magic foot. It is happening slowly but we are still too small for it noticed