“It was doing writing, photography and short films. I was really bad at all three of them but this was pre-Flotrack, pre-you guys. If you were into this content, there really wasn’t a place to find it. I just learned as I did that project what was really interesting was what people were actually interested in. I went into it thinking everyone wanted to know what splits everyone was doing in their workouts. In my first week, I was at the University of Portland and those guys were kind of wild and crazy and really fun to be around. I did the equivalent of an MTV Cribs thing to show their house, how they lived and the bikes they would ride around campus. That was the thing that everyone was like, ‘We want more of that content!’ They didn’t care that they did 5 x mile with three minutes rest. That was really interesting and pretty fundamental in my experience with Tracksmith and how to tell stories in an interesting way and what people will resonate with.”

Matt Taylor is the founder and CEO of Tracksmith. In this episode, we discuss how he built the company through his early start in track and field storytelling. We touch on how the brand has started to cater beyond the serious runner and into the athleisure and general running community + now the throws? The episode was recorded at the Olympic Trials. Kyle Merber co-hosts the conversation as we explore some of the areas that he wants to see change within the sport, what his company is doing to be part of that and much more. We’re on the cusp of a running boom and so there’s much more to come from Tracksmith.

You can catch the latest episode of the podcast on iTunes so subscribe and leave a five-star review. We are also on Stitcher, Google Play and Spotify!

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Notable Quotes

– “I think there are a lot of opportunities to continue to grow a business while still staying true…We won’t veer outside of running but within running you can go extremely deep and vertical.”

– “For us, we focus on runners who are committed to it….We all know that once you make that shift from running just to run for health and wellness or some other reason to wanting to get better, there’s a shift that happens. Then, all of a sudden, you’re starting to think about training, nutrition and how much sleep you should get. Once that shift happens, we feel that’s the world that we can bring someone in. It doesn’t matter at all how fast you are or how many miles you can. You can be the slowest person or the fastest person. The psychographic profile of that is very similar. To us, that’s way more where we focus on. We do that through storytelling. For us, we don’t necessarily need the best athletes in the world but we do need athletes who are pushing very hard and competing at a high level.”