In 2013 Nadia Kean was calling her teammates a "fine group of strong, athletic women" as a way to protest the instances in which they were referred to as "girls". Nadia loves the word girl, but only when it's being used to refer to an actual child. When adult females are called girls, she finds it to be belittling and problematic. Her team mate Cristen Perks was used to hearing her refer to her team this way. At the same time that Nadia started using this expression Cristen started to play around with graphic design and screen printing. For Christmas 2013 she gave Nadia a shirt that she had created for her. It was a simple grey Tulex capped sleeve t-shirt with the words "Strong Athletic Woman" printed in white ink across the front. Nadia put the shirt on immediately and basically could only be found not wearing it on laundry day. Once she started wearing it other people began to ask her where they could get one, and so in 2014 with Cristen's blessing and support, she ordered a batch of shirts from Cristen and started to sell them. 

This shirt is based on that original design of the simple grey t-shirt with lettering in white ink. The original design was just the words but we decided to add a logo to the front of our shirts for the second edition to differentiate it from other grey shirts with white lettering. The original logo was the Get Smarty Coaching logo, which is Nadia's coaching company. The third edition included the logo on the back. Finally in 2015 we decided that the shirt should stand alone as its own thing separate from Nadia's coaching company, so Nadia asked her teammate Angel Ortega if she'd create a logo for her, and she christened the company Strong Athletic.  

About the Production of these Strong Athletic Shirts  

We know that there are a few companies that make awesome shirts with great slogans and sayings across the front. One thing we notice is that our shirts are usually about $5-$15 more expensive than other shirts on e-commerce sites. Ever wonder why there is such a price difference? There's a good chance that some of those companies are simply producing more shirts, faster and so their overhead costs are lower. We can't speak for them and how they set their prices, but we can speak for ourselves. At Strong Athletic, we only use small-scale screen printers and the garments that we print on are always made in either W.A.R.P. Certified facilities or other facilities that meet CPSIA standards. We also pay all of our contract employees a pay rate that is in line with living wage standards. The majority of our shirts are associated with a non-profit and we donate a portion of profits (sometimes 100% of profits) to causes that hold dear.  We believe that when products are cheap, someone is losing out on income. We don't want those people to be anyone involved in our supply chain or who work for Strong Athletic.

Every single Strong Athletic product is produced by a small scale screen printer or embroidery shop. The majority of our shirts are printed by Amanda in Austin, Texas who prints out of the Austin Screen Printer's Coop, a screen printing shop that is member owned and run in East Austin. When our shirts are not printed by Amanda they are printed by other small-scale screen printers such as Second Avenues Ink in Portland, Oregon. 

Every Strong Athletic Shirt comes wrapped in our signature "You are so Strong" wraps which are held together with a kraft Strong Athletic sticker. Each shirt is then packaged in a biodegradable kraft mailer. We include a postcard that shares the origin story of Strong Athletic and that is addressed by hand to the person receiving the shirt. Also included in every package is a Strong Athletic logo sticker and one of our "We Believe" stickers. Every time you open a package from Strong Athletic we want it to feel special. Especially if you're sending the Strong Athletic shirt as a gift for Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, Christmas, someone's Birthday or simply for being your kid's awesome gym teacher.