[Thomas St.Cloud]

So, a friend of mine owns a clothing wholesale business that specializes in durable hemp & bamboo clothing, but they will work with any material.

I have the opportunity to give his people some designs for a standardized western martial arts uniform, if there is enough of a potential market for it.

Do you think there would be a market for this?
And what patterns (Upper & lower garments) do you think would lend themselves to the general practice of western martial arts?

I've been using his hemp/bamboo yoga pants to train in for years and find it's just about perfect in flexibility vs durability.
But I wondered if maybe it wouldn't be authentic enough for some, so what cloth alternatives should I offer?

It would be an investment on my end of about $5000 to submit the new patterns to the company, so whether or not they would sell is important to me.

What do you think?
Is what's out there good enough? Or is there a place for a WMA "gi"?

[Greg Mele]

There already is one. Revival Clothing has an off-the-rack wrestling jacket. http://www.revivalclothing.com/medievalwrestlingjacket.aspx

Knowing what sorts of numbers the WMA community has done in gambesons, wrestling jackets, etc, and the differences in opinion on what products should like or do, I can tell you that at that investment price point, you'd be very slow to recoup your expenses.

[Michael B.]

And now the wrestling jacket from Jessica Finely http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...mp;start=0

Seems like there's a big trend that direction, I'm pushing my group to adapt them as a standard uniform (top).

[Craig Shackleton]

I really think that it will be difficult to find a pattern that satisfies a large enough portion of the community's needs that they will want to adopt it. Each group makes its own decisions about whether to wear a uniform at all, whether it should be historical or not, and if so what period it should be and what form it should take. The wrestling jackets mentioned already fill what appears to me to be the most popular choice other than "T-shirt with club logo and track pants" or similar schemes.

That said, you might be able to find a different niche of uniform style that has some market potential. Both wrestling jackets are just that, wrestling jackets, and they work for lots of things, and both are historically inspired, but not really historical. Perhaps there is more market for a more historically accurate arming coat that could work as a wrestling jacket but could be used to point armour to, for groups that do a lot of armoured training/bouting. To be honest, arming coats seem to be in some demand, or at least often going out of stock at the bigger suppliers, and they have the added value of being marketable as an arming coat on their own, rather than just as a uniform. Unfortunately, they also tend to be a bit trickier to get a good fit for. And they are a higher price point.

But really, I think you might be better off looking at what it is that you want in a uniform, and finding out if anyone else wants the same thing. That way, at least you will get the uniform you want out of it if sales are slow.

As for me personally, my group used to use a historically inspired but not accurate dress code rather than uniform, but as our horizons have expanded, the historical inspiration has become too broad, and soon our uniform will be track pants and a shirt with a logo (once we get the shirts). I'd rather go more historical, But then everyone would have to get a different outfit for each thing we do.

Hope that helps.

[Greg Mele]

[Michael B.]