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Now, the main event…

This weekend, more than 50,000 runners will line up for the Chicago Marathon—and Bandit Running will be there to capitalize with a pop-up inside Tribune Tower. Next month, the Brooklyn-based brand will open its first brick-and-mortar outpost in the city, located just off a popular running trail in the Bucktown neighborhood. It’s a calculated expansion: Chicago has become Bandit’s second-largest e-commerce market, behind only New York City, where co-founder and C.E.O. Nick West told me the brand has capitalized on an “amazing subculture” of running.

While the running category’s biggest players—On Running, Hoka, Nike, etcetera—have spent years appealing to the largest possible swath of consumers, smaller brands like Bandit have tried to claim market share by leaning into the buying power of local communities. There’s plenty of business to go around: Sales for running shoes and apparel in the U.S. have steadily grown over the past few years, and the global market for running apparel is valued at more than $90 billion, according to Mordor Intelligence, and on track to reach $130 billion by 2030. But, of course, it’s also an exceptionally saturated category, which demands differentiation to entice consumer interest. While Bandit leans into more explicit athletic gear, for example, brands like District Vision and Literary Sport have offered more fashion-forward performance items.

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To further distinguish themselves, Bandit and its peers have tried to lean into customer acquisition strategies that capitalize on running’s rise as a communal activity. Bandit’s innovation is a subscription model, where a $125 annual membership gives you 20 percent off Asics sneakers, discounts on recovery gear like Therabody and Eight Sleep, and even on hotels for race weekends. The recurring revenue model is also a bid to offset the inherent challenges of D.T.C. economics, and according to the brand, it’s helped: Bandit’s in-house research found that members spend almost five times more than nonmembers over the course of a year.

Investors also seem to think it’s a smart approach. In 2023, Bandit Running raised $14.25 million from investors including VCP Ventures—the firm co-founded by A-Rod and e-commerce serial entrepreneur Marc Lore.

With roughly 20 full-time corporate employees and store associates, Bandit operates on the lean side. Design, sourcing, and production is led by Ardith Singh, while Tim West, Nick’s brother, serves as creative director. When Tim founded the company in October 2020, they only sold running socks; it wasn’t until 2022, a year after Nick and Tim met Singh, that they launched their first full running apparel collection. (Previously, Singh was a D1 track and field athlete, a design director at Ann Inc., and S.V.P. of design at once-popular athleisure brand Bandier.)

The brand has since evolved from its male-focused origins: More than half of its apparel is now aimed at women, and top sellers include the women’s Stamina nova crop top, the women’s 5-inch Stamina compression short, and the men’s Super Beam 7-pocket half tight. Rather than employ the increasingly nebulous term “athleisure,” the Bandit founders describe their customer as a “real goal driven athlete.”

To target those die-hard runners, Bandit has done pop-ups at several of the biggest marathons: Berlin, New York, London, Boston, and now Chicago. They’ve also created buzz at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, where for the past two years they’ve partly covered travel expenses for some 50 athletes who wore all-black Bandit apparel with no logos. The outfits signaled that they were free agents (although insiders knew who’d provided them), which has helped runners secure sponsorships. Trevor Bassitt, for instance, is now sponsored by Adidas.

Still, the risk for indie brands is that the dominant players simply observe their innovations, adapt them, and put more marketing muscle behind them—leaving Bandit et al. to bear the cost of generating new ideas while others partake in the revenue they generate. Earlier this year, for instance, Nike released a $100 Dri-Fit running t-shirt that some thought was similar to Satisfy Running’s trademarked MothTech design (so called because it is riddled with holes placed in a way that makes it look moth-eaten). Satisfy noted in a press release that the Nike tee was “disappointing to see from a major corporation known to defend its own image and I.P. so fiercely.” Nike declined to comment.

The question is whether Bandit can build its own culture fast enough—the membership platform, the unsponsored athletes, the marathon activations—to attract its own loyal and sustainable cult following. There’s always the chance that Nike, Adidas, On Running, or Hoka could simply watch, learn, and deploy massive distribution to capture the aesthetic once Bandit has proven the market.

Artistic director Alexandre de Betak is opening his first London atelier during Frieze Art Week, with a light installation in his new studio space. [Inbox]

Rachel Tashjian has joined CNN as a senior style reporter. [CNN Press Room]

Uniqlo is returning to San Francisco after closing in 2021. That will bring the store’s footprint to four locations in NYC, two in Chicago—and a total of 11 overall in the U.S. for 2026. [Chain Store Age]

Tagwalk has 194 images tagged as “feathers” from the Spring/Summer 2026 fashion shows, an increase of 98 percent compared to Spring/Summer 2025. [Tagwalk]

Gap x Sandy Liang for women and kids launches this Friday. [Gap]

Correction: In yesterday’s issue, I mentioned that Ina Garten was holding an Hermès Birkin. It was a Kelly. Sorry to everyone involved!

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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