The running journalist Mario Fraioli still remembers the shorts Matt Taylor sent him in 2014, when Taylor was launching a new apparel brand. Dubbed the Longfellow short, the prototype pair had a button at the waist, they were longer than typical running shorts, and they didn’t have a liner. The idea was, in Fraioli’s telling, that you could go straight from an easy run to a coffee shop and still look presentable.
Taylor wanted to know what Fraioli thought. The sizing was off for him. He was, however, intrigued by Taylor’s passion for the apparel and the nascent brand.
With $35,000 of his savings from a previous endeavor and seed round capital, Taylor launched Tracksmith later in 2014. The initial product line was four men’s items, including those Longfellow shorts and a “Grayboy” T-shirt that mimicked the standard-issue shirt of college athletic departments, plus a spike bag and Meter magazine. Women’s clothing followed about nine months later.
Top-quality running apparel for people who were not professional athletes, but trained hard and loved their sport. The names and designs of the products reflected the roots of the sport and Taylor’s reverence for its history. Frugal runners initially had sticker shock.
Tracksmith manufactured its clothing in the U.S., using quality materials, which cost more. But the company was one of the earliest independent running brands selling apparel for serious runners outside of the major shoe companies. Women’s running apparel brand Oiselle had hatched earlier, in 2007.
It added retail locations in Boston and New York, and hundreds of items for sale—including four shoe styles, which were added in 2022. Now, Taylor has been abruptly pushed out of the company he founded, and industry observers are left wondering if the brand can keep growing without him. Fraioli, who is now a coach and writer of the Morning Shakeout newsletter, announced the news of Taylor’s departure in his October 13 email, writing that the newsletter would no longer have Tracksmith as a sponsor.
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