Sportswear Maker OMORPHO Launches with $5M in Seed Funding

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Portland-based sports activities attire firm OMORPHO launched after elevating $5M in a seed funding spherical led by KB Companions, with participation from Bullish, Viking Maccabee, and others.

Its coinciding product debut, GRAVITY SPORTSWEAR, delivers an modern line of weighted clothes to an more and more technical activewear market.

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Spearheaded by ex-Nike VP of world digital innovation Stefan Olander and joined by a bunch of almost 20 execs with Nike ties, OMORPHO is bucking the development of light-weight threads within the title of efficiency.

With weighted polyurethane microbeads dotting the outside of tops, vests, compression shorts, tights, and extra, the GRAVITY line can add as little as seven ounces and as a lot as 10 kilos relying on the garment — all whereas reaching a superhero aesthetic.

Extra than simply fashion, sports activities efficiency is on the forefront. In response to the corporate, this always-on resistance coaching has confirmed outcomes, suggesting its attire can result in a rise in caloric burn by 8% and growing work required by 6%.

Of notice, girls’s bike shorts are the most cost effective merchandise at $150, whereas a males’s weighted vest is $450.

However, with high-profile athlete-ambassadors just like the NFL’s Julio Jones and Olympic heptathlete Annie Kunz, OMORPHO is taking a web page out of WHOOP and Tonal’s playbook, the place expensive elite efficiency tech trickles right down to these searching for the high-performance way of life.

Technical Threads

With the activewear market anticipating $157M development via 2024, OMORPHO joins a bunch of different firms creating the threads of the longer term.

  • lululemon’s latest Lab collectionfeatures thermoregulating spacer layers, waterproofing, and airflow-enabling Swift cloth.
  • WHOOP (by way of WHOOP Physique), Prevayl (secured $10.3M in June), and Cipher Pores and skin (raised $5M in March) are main the way in which on good sensor clothes.
  • Researchers at MIT are pioneeringself-ventilating efficiency materials made with reactive micro organism.

Because the COVID-19 pandemic altered how we gown, emphasizing a function-over-formality choice that has normalized activewear properly past the exercise, our garments are anticipated to do extra.

Weight a minute. It’s essential to notice that OMORPHO shouldn’t be the primary to attempt to reinvent the weighted vest with lycra. TITIN, maker of weighted compression gear, confirmed promise within the early 2010s. The startup raised $100K on Kickstarter, then one other $1M on Fundable earlier than showing on Shark Tank. Touchdown $500K from the present’s investor/character Daymond John, the corporate reached a valuation of $2.5M.

However, after liquidity and stock platforms, public disdain for the product from Mark Cuban, and a sequence of scandals from the founder, TITIN was no extra.

Takeaway

The useful sportswear market is starting to throw its weight round, however whether or not OMORPHO turns into novelty or need-to-have for high-performers might rely on what number of skilled athletes they’ll flip into evangelists.

 

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