Most athletes start to have a following even before stepping into the professional sports arena. At the collegiate level, star players already have celebrity status, with fans closely following their performance. Luckily for young athletes, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has allowed college athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness as of 2021. This development allows the students to license and sell their merchandise to their supporters. Consequently, merchandise companies nationwide jumped at this opportunity to partner with them to make it a reality – but only the star athletes.
After almost ten years in the world of custom apparel, Luke McGurrin and Karthik Shanadi founded Athlete’s Thread to cater to the needs of these promising athletes. McGurrin and Shanadi’s experience in the college merchandising industry allowed them to capitalize on some gaps in this opportunity. First is the lack of offers for merchandising for the lesser-known players, and the second is the lack of know-how on the athlete’s side regarding the licensing process.
With the technology McGurrin and Shanadi perfected over the years, any athlete, regardless of their team, gender, or social following, can license, design and launch their personalized merchandise just three days after signing. Athlete’s Thread walks the students through their simple and understandable licensing process and allows them to create original designs for their brand with the site’s customization tools. As a result, Athlete’s Thread provides all college athletes an equal opportunity to maximize NCAA’s policy and build their own brand.
Since its launch, Athlete’s Thread has flourished and now serves 2,000 athletes across 12 colleges on its platform. Heisman Trophy Winner Bryce Young and break-out players Jahmyr Gibbs, Jalen Milroe, and Trashon Holden are some notable names on the platform. “While Athlete’s Thread is a new opportunity, this is ten years of experience leading us up to this point, and we’re ready to scale like crazy after refining and perfecting our technology,” McGurrin said.
Such efficient and disruptive technology was hard-won by the two visionaries through their years of experience in the business, starting with their first venture, Greek House. This custom apparel ordering platform has served greek life at over 500 colleges. After that, they expanded their business to cater to student organizations and college departments with College Thread, then scaled this business model even further with Threadly, which caters to clients outside the college market, such as businesses, churches, creators, and more.
Needless to say that McGurrin and Shanadi are ready to expand their business further in the sports merchandising industry, setting their year-end goal for Athlete’s Thread to launch collections for 8,000 athletes. These visionaries also aim to diversify their product line to include posters, coffee mugs, stickers and water bottles. As founder Shanadi said, “Our goal is to become a leader in the Sports Merchandise Industry. We are starting with licensed merchandise for college athletes, then expanding into collegiate retail merchandise and professional sports after.”
With a business model that ensures a win-win situation for all parties involved, Athlete’s Thread and the whole merchandising empire will surely take the world by storm.
