Cross-Pollinating Passions
Some thoughts on how we bring the things we love into our work.
Last week we wrapped up our second annual Summer Series, a three-part community run 3sixteen hosted with Queens-based World’s Fair Run Crew. Over the past two decades, we’ve used 3sixteen as a conduit to explore interests that help inform our design process. Running a brand that cares about craft and quality means that we meet like-minded people often who hold similar approaches to their work. As we’ve brought some of these passions into the fold and communicated about them using the brand as a springboard, it’s been really special to see people who have supported us over the years get involved and feel a closer to connection to the brand.
We opened a temporary café called Wilson’s in our NY flagship last fall to explore what it’d be like to provide a coffee experience our way, and this year we started hosting quarterly record nights to give friends of the brand a place to eat, drink and enjoy analog music together. Our shop parties over the years have also been a way to highlight friendships with people whose work we admire in the beverage space. Our longest standing relationship is with Homage Brewing in LA, who we’ve had the honor of releasing several collaborative beers with and, for our 20th anniversary, a natural wine. I think the common throughline to all of these gatherings is hospitality: even when it comes to shopping in our flagship stores, our team understands that customers coming to visit us should receive an experience that is far beyond just trying on and buying clothes. The music that’s playing, the neighborhood food recommendations, the can’t miss museum exhibitions currently showing - all of these touchpoints of service are key towards helping customers understand how we operate as a brand.
Circling back to running. It all began for me just over two years ago when I trained for and finished my first 10k. Prior to then, I had never been able to run more than 2 miles and because of that I was feeling pretty accomplished. I then decided to join a local weekly run in Flushing, Queens that was hosted by World’s Fair Run Crew (my personal goal was to be able to run 3-4 miles without stopping before I started running with others). Although the bulk of my training has been and continues to be solo, having a weekly check-in with people who share interests has been really helpful in keeping me engaged and committed. And as the crew founders got to know me better and found out that I was part of a clothing brand with a downtown Manhattan flagship, the idea to bring our weekly run to Nolita was born. We started off with a low-key gathering and were pleasantly surprised to find that alongside our Queens regulars, a few friends and 3sixteen customers joined us too.
That gave us the confirmation we needed to aim higher and put together Summer Series. From June through August of last year, we hosted monthly runs out of the Nolita flagship and each one was more well attended than the last. I tapped into existing relationships with Oakley and Saucony to arrange giveaways and product demos for our attendees, and people generally had a great time. At this point, though, we were simply a menswear brand hosting runs without any further connection to the community at large.
This year, we didn’t do a whole lot different in terms of mechanics (i.e. get together, run a few miles, crush some drinks) but a lot more people started to come through - I guess word was spreading. Someone in the
comment section called us an “amoeba.” We partnered with Huckberry and Hoka for our July run and were pleasantly surprised to find out that the field marketing rep for Hoka, Josh Bentley, was already a 3s fan. Small world. And we linked up with Saucony for our final run to demo their new offerings. But the biggest difference between last year’s Summer Series and this year’s was the fact that people were showing up in 3sixteen running gear.
Ok this is where you ask - what business does a menswear brand have with making active clothing? Back in late 2022 I was a guest on the fashion podcast
and one of the co-hosts, James, asked me “what is the deal with the menswear to running pipeline” which allowed me to share my story of how I got into it. The conversation eventually pivoted towards talking about how most running gear on the market is pretty bad - all function, no form, wretched colors, obnoxious graphics - and that observation ended up resonating with a lot of people. For the next week or two I got a bunch of DM’s from people who listened to the podcast who either 1) offered up suggestions on brands I already knew about or 2) agreed wholeheartedly with me. Of course there are a few good brands out there who are making things that I am into - the list is short and you probably know which ones they are - but the idea that the vast majority is really bad told us that there is room for more.That winter, we started developing a pair of unlined shorts that could be used for running or working out but could also be worn casually (this was really important to us, that the shorts would be able to do double duty). Once we arrived at a product we were happy with, we produced a small run of samples and gave them out to our internal team and to some World’s Fair runners in 2023 and asked for feedback on them. From there, it only made sense to try and build out a small capsule to accompany the shorts - some hiking/trail stuff, some running stuff, but all multifunctional and all able to be worn outside of active endeavors. We launched that capsule this past spring and while it wasn’t an immediate runaway hit, we were encouraged to see people take a chance on it. And in the months following, people have continued to pick pieces up to where we’re nearly sold out of most styles.
So while we do often integrate passions into work at 3sixteen, I still try not to take these opportunities for granted. Being small and self-funded allows us to explore new things without having to answer to a board of directors who wonder why we’re making a whole new category that is completely outside of what we already do (and do well). I recognize that not everyone has this opportunity. But we’re also realists and this is at the end of the day still a business; we put a pretty large amount of emphasis on a part of our offering that we made very little of and therefore stood to profit very little on. If the collection flopped, we would’ve proceeded with a lot more caution and who knows, we might’ve even deaded it a season or two down the line. (Real talk we actually waited a few months before submitting our FW24 active collection production order to make sure that the first one was received well). From a sheerly selfish perspective I’m really glad it’s working, because it serves as a nice showcase that we are more than just product designers and manufacturers. While I think everything looks great and functions as intended, the reality is that there are lots of other options on the market and most of it is cheaper. A big reason why people bought active stuff from us is because we made it and they trust us. My hope is that when people look at the overall rollout and how our community involvement these past two years fit into it, that the capsule makes sense and that it feels intentional coming from our brand.
Thus far I’ve only written about how running has integrated with 3sixteen and how it pushed us to stretch ourselves creatively and try new things; what running has done for me personally is a whole other topic of conversation. I’ve chatted about how the active collection came to fruition with people face to face but it’s been nice to write about it here as well. My hope is that it sheds a bit more light on how and why we did it, and the role that community played in helping it take root. This fall, we are planning our first unsanctioned race in NYC and also have some active collaborations in the pipeline for 2025. And naturally, Summer Series will return next June. Designing functional product that serves people well is really fulfilling, but using it as a reason to bring people together and show hospitality to customers new and old is pretty great too.
It always seemed like such a natural extension of the brand and every event y’all did seemed so joyous and fun. Need to get up there next summer for sure. So curious to see how the collection grows and changes in the future