Women Specific Sports bags for Sweaty Betty

Sports Kit Bags and Backpacks for Women?

In 1999 the founder of Design IQ ( Guy Mathiot) observed that whenever he was asked by sports brands such as Puma to design sports kit bags and backpacks they would never accept his suggestion that they should let him design women specific sports bags.

Guy had a “designers insight” that there was a market for women’s sports bags. He felt that making a bag in pink was not the solution (!) – but that women had different demands and expectations of their sports equipment than men.

Researching the specific needs of women

So he gave a project to one of his female team members to research the specific needs of women . The designs that Guy then did were taken by him to both retailers like Debenhams and brands such as USA Pro. They all liked the designs – but no deal was reached – so out of frustration he went ahead and sampled the designs ( over 6 samples for each style were made to just get one bag right!).

He then took them to show them to the founder of Sweaty Betty who had one of the few women’s specific sports shop chains in the UK. They loved the designs and bought them badged “SweatyBetty” and continued to repeat the orders in various Sweaty Betty specific guises.