00:00Music
00:23We make boxing shorts for professional fighters and amateur fighters all over the world.
00:30Music
00:34It's a family affair.
00:35My mum and dad always worked in sportswear and my dad was working for a company at the time that was sponsoring a boxer.
00:42Went to look for a pair of boxing shorts, put the branding on and couldn't find anything.
00:47So him and my mum went to a fabric shop, bought a bit of fabric, made a pair of shorts and the rest is history as they say.
00:55We started with a professional fighter.
01:00And at the time, professional fighting in Manchester was huge because you had the upcoming of Ricky Hatton, Anthony Farnell, Steve Foster Jr., Michael Gomez, huge fighters, Jamie Moore.
01:12You know, they were all on the scene with Frank Warren and they were filling out what's now the AO arena.
01:17We used to call it the MEN.
01:18And that was basically where we started.
01:21And then obviously that has an influence on amateur boxers because they start to see, oh, where are they starting to get these fancy shorts?
01:28And obviously with the boom of the Internet, you know, that really helps because that enabled us to show our product to people all over the world.
01:37We were using like special fabrics, trims, embroideries, you know, Swarovski crystals, things like that, things that people had never seen before.
01:51So we were taking what was traditionally, you know, just a black pair of shorts, which everybody thinks Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali, a black and white short.
01:59We were taking that and making it something fancy. And, you know, boxing is a show that people pay. They want to be entertained.
02:06And if you go to the theatre, you want to see fancy costumes, you know, and that costume has become as important to the fighter as, you know, the gloves that they wear and the boots that they wear.
02:17They want to feel special.
02:18Boxers in themselves are performers, you know, they're full of confidence. You know, they have certain traits that they have.
02:36And that's what makes them entertaining. You know, people watch the press conferences because you want to see what they turn up in or what they're doing or what they're going to say.
02:43And, you know, we have to think of fighters like Princess Eve, you know, he was a real showman.
03:00Some fighters are very different now, like they trust us because we're so experienced and, you know, we know what fabrics we've got in.
03:08So a lot of them will just say, listen, I'm going to wear blue boots. I want a kit to go with it. Here's my budget. You just come up with something.
03:15And actually some very, very high profile fighters never know what they're wearing until it's delivered.
03:20Introducing the Gypsy King, Tyson Fury!
03:31We've been making Tyson's kit since he was an amateur, so everybody had great hopes for him.
03:37And, you know, he's gone on probably, he would have thought that he would have become unified heavyweight world champion.
03:44But, you know, he's gone on to surpass all expectation, really.
03:49We recently did a piece for Lewis Richardson that had been bronze medalist at the Olympics.
03:56And he wanted his kit to enable himself to show the Olympic rings and have this like bronze tone undertone to it.
04:04Josh Warrington, you know, huge Leeds fan.
04:07And virtually every kit I've ever designed for him has been inspired by a Leeds kit at some point.
04:13Say a piece that we created for Dillian White, you know, that was a real testing piece, shall we say.
04:25Just because we used like, I think we used over 40, 50,000 Swarovski crystals on the item.
04:33You know, all these things are hand placed, it's handwork.
04:36He had all spikes on his shoulders of his jacket and, you know, a big luxury piece.
04:42It was embroidered. I mean, it spent days on the machine.
04:45And then actually probably Michael Conlon as well.
04:48We do huge gowns, huge luxury pieces for him, which are embroidered.
04:52They could take over a week on the embroidery machines just to embroider.
04:56And then to make, well, the robe can take, you know, maybe three days just to make the robe.
05:06We're using all sorts of methods now, like we use a lot of embroidery, print, Swarovski crystals.
05:28We're using studs, we're using studs, velvets, faux leathers, faux furs, boxes like glitzy things.
05:35So anything sparkly, like the fabric suppliers will come to us and I'm like, anything sparkly, we'll take it.
05:41There's only so many things you can do, but it's the way that we execute, you know, fabric choices and trims and things like that.
05:49And I mean, we're complete masters at what we do now. We've been in this game over 25 years.
05:55We've been in this game over 25 years.
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