PACE: So how did things start?

ACID: Funnily enough, when I was in my 20s, I was a political consultant, very different from what I'm doing now. However, I always had this family legacy around fashion and garments. 

My family had a tailoring background dating back to the 19th century. My great-grandfather and his brother started a tailoring firm in 1908 in London. The flagship store was where Gymshark now is on Regent Street. They built that brand up from a family brand to a global business and sold it to Burberry in the 1970s. It then became a sub-label of Burberry.

I always had that as a dream in my mind: to do something similar to what they had achieved. When Burberry didn't renew the trademark on Hector Powe, I thought a sensible thing to do would be to try and relaunch the family business, despite having no knowledge or experience.

PACE: Why running? 

ACID: I was a runner myself, but I never really connected with any of the running brands that were out there. I was never going to be someone who connected with the big multinational sportswear brands, but at the same time, the new group of what you could call 'boutique running' brands never really appealed to me.

PACE: How come? 

ACID: I felt that there was still this fixation on two separate things. First was the idea of running as a competitive sport. Of course, running is a competitive sport, but when you break free from the idea of competition on the track and in athletics, you begin to see a broader truth about running. It is primarily a lifestyle and a discipline, within which competitive sports exist. However, there is a vastness to running that most brands weren't tapping into, which didn't reflect how I viewed running.

The idea that running should be centred around short-term gains or rewards, such as performance and personal bests, didn't resonate with us. Similarly, the concept of the runner's high, which also focuses on obvious rewards, felt misplaced. Therefore, we framed Acid Running with the tagline "Pursuit of Suffering”.

PACE: That offers a nice segway into a bit more around the philosophy of the brand. Can you talk us through more about ‘the pursuit of suffering’? 

ACID: Everyone advised us not to do that. Marketing orthodoxy and brand orthodoxy will tell you that you have to communicate an immediate benefit to people, or else they won't lean in. But we knew that runners didn't think that way and didn't need to be told what the benefit of running was.

The really important thing for us was to reframe what running was.

For us, running is a reflection of the human condition and a reflection of life. The idea that nothing great can ever be achieved without some form of suffering is important to us, and we lean into that. We live in a world where the characteristics of virtue, resilience, and courage are underplayed, while optimisation and vanity are overplayed. We wanted to flip that.

PACE: And how has that been received by the running community?

ACID: I think the reason we've managed to grow as quickly as we have in two years is that we're able to connect with both younger and older runners simultaneously. Younger runners feel that it's in tune with not concealing the truth about life, the human struggle, and growth. At the same time, older runners connect with the depth of the philosophy, with many saying they've been looking for a meaningful running brand all their lives. Now, in their 50s and 60s, they're connecting with Acid Running.

People might be surprised when they see our customer demographic and how wide that age range is. We had a runner in his 60s send us pictures of his Acid Running tattoo just this week. It's amazing to be able to make an impact on people in that way.

PACE: You mention going against the orthodox marketing approach. Can you give us an insight on how you stayed authentic to these values and push through that first barrier? 

ACID: A runner is a different beast compared to a normal “customer”.

The idea of going out at 6 a.m. in the winter in the UK when it's raining, while your partner is warm in bed telling you not to go, and still going out for a run—even if it's a bad run or you're hungover—shows that we're not normal beasts. So the idea that you need to apply normal marketing rationale can be overlooked.

The unique thing about a runner is that they're suspicious of the idea of an immediate benefit. We were able to convince our support teams and the agencies we work with that we wanted to communicate in a way that was authentically Acid Running.

PACE: Circling back slightly -  you touched on your family's experience being tailors and when we talk about the product specifically how did those roots come through initially? 

ACID: They came perfectly in tandem because as soon as you conceive of running as a lifestyle and a discipline, the garment needs to serve that purpose for us.

I think our t-shirts are a better reflection of the challenge of being a lifestyle brand. We wanted the garment to have a relaxed silhouette, not only because we think that aesthetic is superior, but also because the relaxed silhouette means you can wear it in a performance and lifestyle context as well.

PACE: We’ve touched on the tailoring roots in your family, what other kinds of culture and industries did you take inspiration from?  

ACID: Design-wise, I think it's interesting. When I look back at how I conceived my family's old brand, which was in a completely different category, I realise that, without intending to, I've reflected those values and aesthetics in our current designs. My family's brand was about tailoring, priced at a point that was clearly premium but also affordable for aspirational people. We've intentionally priced our garments to make it obvious to our customers that they are luxury items, yet still affordable. It's really important for us that if you are a stylish working person and not affluent, you can still save up to buy a pair of shorts or a t-shirt that won't break the bank. This was also a principle of my family's tailoring firm, making luxury accessible.

Additionally, there's a darker edge to our designs. We have a clean, cold aesthetic, but there's also an element of grunge in there. We're really touching on that European blend, combining a colder Scandinavian feel with Western European counterculture.

PACE: It stands out to us that your brand supports a sense of individuality and self-expression for your customers, is this something you guys set out to do?

ACID: Recently, we introduced a really strong sock and managed to make it affordable at £19. When we introduced that sock, we were able to access a whole new group of customers who couldn't afford a £95 pair of shorts at their stage of life. Maybe they just don't have that disposable income, but they could still buy into Acid Running. 

It was quite an emotional moment for us when we saw this surge of customers coming through and buying socks and caps. We realised these were people who had been watching us from day one, and just as deserving of quality apparel as more affluent runners.

PACE: I think that blends us perfectly into the final talking point, I just want to get a little bit more of your take on this modern running culture and how you see acid fitting into that?

ACID:  I think the running scene is absolutely fascinating at the moment. It feels like we're in the second or third wave of the running resurgence. The lockdown really changed the game for running.

The amazing thing for us, in terms of how we see running and our business, is that running is crisis and recession-proof. Now that people have returned to running in the 21st century, you realise that you could run during lockdown, you could run when COVID was around, and you can run when you're broke. You can always find a way to run if you have the courage and resilience to do so, even in challenging weather conditions. Society has now realised that running is so available to them and so innate to human behaviour. We've almost gone back to the original roots of running.

I like to think we've removed some of the baggage from running—the idea that you have to join a track club or a cross country club, the idea that you have to dress in a certain way, or that something has to be tight-fitting to reduce wind resistance. These margins aren't necessarily important when you're a lifestyle runner.

PACE: Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us, wishing you all the best for the rest of the year!