✳️What if Running Apparel was Cheaper?

On Terignota and the challenge of starting a running business with low prices

Hey Pals,

I’ve recently started living half my week in London and oh-my-days are there a lot of runners there! The streets are full of them morning, noon and night. You certainly get the feeling that running has become everyone’s new favourite personality trait. If anyone in London wants to chat, reply to this email, would be great to see more of you lovely lot.

To today’s piece. Terignota entered my radar a few weeks ago and caught me off guard with their radically low prices. I say radical because we’re so used to seeing prices for running apparel keep rising, and starting any business is hard, but starting it with such low prices adds an extra level of difficulty. I sent Alex, the founder, a few emails for the backstory and he graciously levelled with me on the reality.

Hope you have a great week,

Matt

I came across Terignota like anyone who is chronically online does – on Reddit. There, amongst the questions of an author’s readiness for 100-milers and hot takes on Garmin watches, was a thread about the name of a brand mentioned on the SWAP podcast. As fellow lurkers do, people swooped in with the answer – Terignota, a new trail running apparel brand that wants to make trail running more accessible through selling clothes at low prices. And when I say low, I mean jaw-droppingly low. Like Decathlon low for you Europeans.

Take their shorts. $29. For a pair of black shorts with a storage belt and pockets for days. For $29. Compare that to Salomon, and you’re paying $80. T-shirt? $22.

See what I mean by jaw-dropping?

As a cost-conscious Northerner, I pride myself on finding deals. I’ll happily go out of my way to big supermarkets out of town, fully aware that I can get better discounts on larger items than in small city centre shops. So when I see these prices, part of me lights up with glee – rejoice! Bargain time! I save a boatload of cash and get neat products. What could go wrong?

Another part of me got a little on edge.

I’ve recently been trawling Alibaba and blanks websites because I’m looking to make some merch (get hyped, it’s coming to a newsletter near you… whenever I get round to it), so I have a rough idea of the cost of making these products. And I know they’re not far off the prices Terignota is selling them for. I then sent the website to a good internet friend, Seb Beasant, who founded the sports apparel business Torsa and writes the exceptional newsletter “Friday Threads” to get his thoughts on the business (honestly, if you’re in the apparel business, his newsletter is a must-read). His response? Cautious. To quote Seb, brands with such low margins “don't survive in my opinion.”

Harsh, but it comes from experience. When I asked Alex King, founder of Terignota, what those margins were, for the shorts it was $16. $13 to make the shorts, sold for $29. A 2x markup. A typical markup is 3-4x manufacturing cost to cover operational expenses, marketing, and leave room for wholesale cuts.

Alex knew this. He did it on purpose. The aim of the game for Alex was to make trail running a more accessible sport for more people. An enviable mission, but it raises a broader question: how do you price products to be affordable while also sustaining a business?

Alex’s story starts with his time as an athlete for Salomon.

“I have been a trail runner all my life, competing at a high level for the last few years until I fully ruptured my achilles just before I was supposed to run CCC by UTMB in 2023. I've essentially dedicated my life to the sport, constantly feeling like I was on the brink of 'making it' as a professional runner and being able to turn it into a financially sustainable endeavor.

I got a sponsorship from Salomon in 2022 (just gear, no $$$) and felt like I was finally turning the corner towards becoming a 'professional runner'. Unfortunately, Salomon offered me a 'demotion' from athlete to ambassador when 2023 rolled around and I said screw that and went back to square one. I was the most fit I've ever been in my life in 2023 and was having a good year in terms of performances and had put all my effort and savings towards training for CCC thinking that would be my 'entry onto the world stage', then 3 weeks beforehand my achilles blew up and when CCC rolled around I was laid up in my parents house watching the race through a computer screen with my leg in a rigid boot unable unable to even walk for the next 3 months.”

The foundation of Alex’s approach is minimalism. Low overheads, no staff, no marketing budget, and a direct-to-consumer business model to cut out the middleman. Alex does everything from design to fulfilment to keep costs low. On his Instagram, he’s been transparent about Terignota’s reality – an office that looks the size of a porta-loo and living in a van that’s not much bigger than a yurt. It’s a romantic depiction of the dirtbag lifestyle, living minimally to dedicate his efforts to making Terignota a reality.

His business philosophy mirrors this lifestyle. Alex believes products today are too expensive, inflated by unnecessary costs and detached from serving real human needs. Terignota serves as his challenge to that norm. It’s a mission as much as a business – a hypothesis that brands don’t need as much as they have.

With low margins, Alex needs to generate as much volume as possible to afford the next round of apparel, let alone grow. However, without much money to work with, marketing investment is minimal, so he’s reliant on word-of-mouth and community-driven growth. In the vast algorithmic world of social media, organic growth is possible, but slow. That means Terignota’s future isn’t entirely in Alex’s control.

Price, however, plays a role beyond affordability—it also influences perception. A lower price can lead customers to assume lower quality, even if that’s not the case. It’s a challenge every budget-friendly brand faces. Established players with higher margins can mitigate this by investing in marketing and distribution to reinforce quality perceptions. It’s the classic Bezos quote: “your margin is my opportunity.”

Seb’s critique of Terignota’s prices isn’t that they’re low—it’s that they might be too low. “There is a fine line between accessible and cheap, and he needs to reevaluate his pricing structure. Shame, because the product looks decent. In the about page, he's said "reasonably priced," but it's not, it's hugely underpriced”. The balance of presenting the brand as innovative, whilst having a low cost, is tricky to negotiate. If customers associate the price with compromised quality, it could impact trust in the long run.

A question I bluntly asked Alex was about environmental and ethical compromises made to achieve these prices. As expected, Terignota’s products are made in China, but according to Alex, in the same factories that major brands use. “Many of the manufacturers we use are the same manufacturers that produce product for the big name brands that we all know. We do not pay any less for the product than the big guys. We are able to offer the clothes at affordable prices by the way we've structured our business …not by cutting corners with labor and environmental practices.” While that means Terignota isn’t necessarily worse than industry stalwarts, it does highlight the reality of making products at this price point. Manufacturing with lower-carbon methods, in locations closer to home, isn’t feasible at these prices, which limits how environmentally friendly the brand can truly be.

Then there’s the question of whether cheaper clothes really make trail running more accessible. Trail running only gets more expensive the deeper you go. Race fees, mandatory kit lists, travel, running backpacks, poles, gels—it all adds up. T-shirts and shorts? Helpful, but not the biggest barrier to entry. It’s possible to run in a cotton t-shirt and discount shorts from TKMaxx. And that’s before we even consider the social and cultural barriers, as the SHEraces Trail Series debacle revealed.

This isn’t a critique of Terignota specifically but of the broader industry notion that accessibility can be solved through more affordable apparel. Many brands with admirable intentions could make a greater impact if they focused on funding solutions to systemic barriers rather than just reducing product costs.

That being said, accessibility is a broad, unwieldy issue that no one brand can solve alone. I admire Alex’s fortitude in starting Terignota because it challenges widely held beliefs: that prices will always rise, that cost reflects quality, and that what you see is what you get. When these assumptions go unchallenged, the floor for what is considered “affordable” keeps creeping up. Brands like Terignota remind us what products really cost to make.

Alex’s frugal living to build Terignota highlights the realities of trying to launch a low price brand in running. Whether it is sustainable for the long run or not, it stands as a reminder that value is a moving target—and that challenging price conventions is as much a part of the industry’s evolution as any technological breakthrough.