From Lodz, Poland to gyms around the world - Rep In Peace make activewear for Crossfit athletes 

Crossfit is a training program consisting of cross-sectional exercises to improve your overall fitness, including: strength, speed, coordination, flexibility or endurance. We train with the weight of our own body or with the use of dumbbells, kettlebells, free weights, medicine balls, jump ropes. Crossfit can also be a business idea, as Karolina Milczarek explains.

Intensive, engaging, effective - this is crossfit training, which is gaining more and more supporters. One of them is Karolina Milczarek - a Łódź resident who started in the training room, now she successfully runs a company that produces clothes for crossfitters. Players wearing her Rep In Peace brand can be found in almost every latitude. We talked with Karolina not only about sports fashion, but also about what crossfit actually is.

Mikołaj Jaskinia: Who are crossfitters? Can anyone who regularly visits the gym say that about themselves?

Karolina Milczarek: Crossfit, in a nutshell, is a training program consisting of cross-sectional exercises to improve our overall fitness, including strength, speed, coordination, flexibility or endurance. Trainings are focused on high intensity, very high regularity and variability when it comes to the trained elements. We train with the weight of our own body or with the use of dumbbells, kettlebells, free weights, medicine balls, jump ropes. Workouts often consist of smaller tasks and rounds, and the goal is to do as many repetitions as possible or complete the fastest time - individually or in pairs. If we get into it well, and it usually is the case, we will quickly notice that we are crossing new boundaries and breaking our own records. A visible six-pack, a strengthened back or sculpted legs are just an added bonus, rather a side effect than a goal itself. This is definitely different from simply going to the gym, where we use machines or stations at our own pace, sometimes without a plan or with the same plan, recreating it every time. We practice alone, without interaction with other participants, often without a trainer who could improve our technique. In the long run, such training is simply monotonous.

Who can do Crossfit?

You can say that Crossfit is for every healthy person, regardless of experience, physical fitness or age. After initial training and familiarization with the technique, the appropriate weight load and number of rounds are selected. Anyone can try Crossfit, but not everyone will stay with it.

Where did the idea to create a brand dedicated to Crossfiters come from? When and how did it all start?

In 2012, I started to be more interested in this sport. I watched events where muscular players in bold, colorful sportswear performed. At that time in Poland, there was no such boom for colorful leggings or T-shirts with motivating slogans. I must also add to this story that the history of clothing production in my family dates back to the third generation. Parents ran a company producing women's underwear, and in the 70's my grandmother sewed womens clothes by hand ad went to other cities (e.g. Katowice) to sell her products. It all contributed to the fact that one day in May 2013, I decided that I wanted to create my own clothing brand for Crossfitters. It was meant to be colorful, with bold patterns, bold slogans and a sense of humour. This is how the Rep In Peace brand was born.

You basically run your business as a sole proprietor. Can you tell us what the daily work at Rep In Peace is like?

Although the company is actually one-person, it is of course the merit of many people with whom I have been working with all this time. Running this business is a kind of logistical acrobatics in time and space for me. I deal with planning and designing new collections, searching for new fabrics and accessories, testing prototypes, responding to e-mails, preparing offers, working with suppliers and recipients, organizing photo sessions, running social media, creating guidelines for constructors and sewing teams, submitting documents to accounting ... It's not a standard job from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m, every day looks different and that's what I value the most in my job - besides, of course, working with cool people.

Is it easy to hit the tastes of Crossfit enthusiasts? What matters most to them is comfort or do they also pay attention to design?

When the online store was launched, the clothes sold very quickly. It was a real boom! It's hard for me to say whether the collections appealed to Crossfitters so well, or whether there was such a huge demand for colorful sportswear, especially from a Polish brand. I was very surprised that at that time it was possible to compete with global companies that dominated all stores and retail chains. Today, the competition on the market is much greater, especially among domestic brands, and the customer is more aware. They can distinguish the composition of the fabrication, they have become more picky when it comes to design, and also send back a product that simply does not fit well. Since the beginning of our existence, our clothes have been tested on athletes during the toughest workouts, so in addition to the appearance, the clothes met the highest requirements regarding shape and personal comfort. We could say that the high bar paid off when we consistently modified the constructions and used better and better materials appearing on the market in subsequent years.

Do you also make clothes on demand? Are there any unusual customer requests?

Yes, we produce both under our brand as well as under the banner of other brands, sports clubs and even individual designers. We also make our products with personalized prints and texts. Over the years, we have completed a lot of interesting projects. Some were very funny - like men's running leggings with a pattern imitating women's stockings, muscles tissue or X-ray bones. Practically from the beginning, we also work with the Crossfit community, which in our social media often told us which pattern is cooler and this one went into production.

Do only Polish customers wear Rep In Peace activewear?

From the beginning, I focused on online sales and a strong presence of our brand in social media, because today reaching people around the world with our offer is no longer a problem. I can proudly say that people from such distant countries as Mexico, Australia, China and South Africa train in our clothes. However, the majority of our clients are Europeans.

 

  

Link to original article: here