Satisfy – the sports brand where trail running meets rodeo
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Brice Partouche doesn’t resemble the typical activewear label founder. Neither do the athletes who appear in the campaigns for Satisfy, his Parisian sportswear brand. When I meet him at Diamond Cross Ranch, some 30 minutes outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he is surveying the landscape wearing black trousers, a mint-green mohair cardigan and Cuban-heeled boots. To his left, a team of 10 athletes sponsored by the brand are distinctively dressed in hole-ridden band tees and tank tops. It’s Nirvana meets farmhand: their tiny black shorts reveal heavily-tattooed legs, their fingers laced with silver rings.
In December, Satisfy raised €11.3mn in series B funding led by 1686 Partners, the Luxembourg-based investment firm founded by Chanel heir David Wertheimer. Last year, revenues doubled, also to €11mn, with 40 per cent of sales coming from the US. Compared with Nike, worth $92bn, Satisfy is still small, but its influence is impressive. So distinctive – and prolific – is its cult-like aesthetic at running clubs, the brand is regularly memed online: one recently likened Satisfy wearers to Edward Scissorhands.
“Satisfy may not be the best-known brand out there but it has created a very loyal following building a whole culture around its brand,” says Neil Saunders, a retail analyst at GlobalData. “It’s on a growth trajectory but is some way from reaching its potential.” New hires will help: Antoine Auvinet, a former vice-president at Celine, has joined as chief executive; its new vice president of footwear, Jean-Marc Djian, held the role at The North Face. Currently, 30 per cent of Satisfy customers are women who shop the menswear. It will launch its first women’s collection – as well as The Rocker, its inaugural trail shoe – later this year.
Partouche has decamped to Wyoming with 20 of his team, plus 10 athletes, for a week of altitude training and team bonding. He got the idea after binge-watching Yellowstone. I have joined the group to put the pre-production Rockers to the test. We are scheduled to run across tricky terrain in the Teton mountains and Yellowstone National Park, and get an early look at fabrics (Satisfy develops all its proprietary fabrics in-house) and products launching next year.
Partouche insists urban runners have more in common with rodeos than one might first imagine. “Cowboys are athletes, their work is super-physical,” he says of his inspiration. Last year’s collection featured vintage Levi’s 501s reworked as bouldering pants, with added ripstop knee panels and stretch gussets. He’s also produced a running short digitally printed to look like stonewashed denim. “I’ve always been enamoured with all things Americana,” he continues. “I grew up watching cowboy movies and, as a European, we see those specific American references through a very romanticised lens.”
Jonty Brown, co-founder of Runlimited, a speciality running store in London, says Partouche’s aesthetic focus on such counterculture “strips away the sterile, corporate vibe usually associated with running”. Max Jolliffe, a Satisfy pro athlete and ultra runner, embodied this idea when he won a three-day 240-mile race in Moab in the gear last year. Wearing a MothTech top (Satisfy’s viral vest, which is pocked with tiny “moth” holes that, it says, aid ventilation) and a sweat-wicking bandana, he looked dressed for a gig rather than an ultra marathon.
Partouche says his clothing is designed to be “distraction free” – and it’s easy to forget you’re wearing it. Take Satisfy’s long-sleeved button-down PeaceShell, which is also a running shirt. I am initially sceptical about how I’ll get along with it when I embark on a trail run, but it proves so feather-light and easy that I end up wearing it both with my sports shorts and after training. It includes functional ice pockets on the back – a smart cooling solution for ultra marathons – and is UV-resistant and quick-dry. I also like the AuraLite tee, made from recycled polyester knitted into a perforated fabric, making it much softer than typical nylons, and less sweaty. The dual-layer shorts feel smooth without being compressive. And the merino-wool socks stopped my snow-drenched feet from freezing.
The Rocker shoes are a clever hybrid too. Trail shoes are usually very ugly. The Rocker is considerably more attractive than competitor shoes, with slick asymmetric lacing and an almond-shaped toe. On the trail, they give a smooth ride; I didn’t slip once on snow, ice, mud and rocks. The soles also felt more responsive and lightweight than most trail shoes on the road. My only gripe is that I wished they were waterproof. But they do dry out quickly.
Satisfy taps into a growing consumer group who socialise as they exercise: Strava’s Year In Sport 2024 report found that 58 per cent of people using the app made new friends through fitness groups last year. Many are increasingly seeking kit that can be worn both at the gym and in the workplace, and there’s been a growth in collaborations that have seen brands such as Grace Wales Bonner (with Adidas) and Aimé Leon Dore (with New Balance) leveraging sportswear as a fashion look. Hiking labels, including Klättermusen and Arc’teryx, have also begun offering city-ready solutions.
Satisfy’s offer is a cohesive attempt to bridge that gap. Saager Dilawri, founder of Vancouver menswear boutique Neighbour, says his customers buy the PeaceShell River button-down shirt – the one I tried in Wyoming – to wear as part of their everyday wardrobes. Satisfy has “a lot of street cred”, says GlobalData’s Saunders, thanks to its “focus on fabrics, and fashionable but functional silhouettes”. Brown, of Runlimited, agrees: “It’s one of the few brands that can move between a run club and a fashion week crowd and still feel authentic in both.” New in-store releases “tend to sell quickly”.
Typically, “sports brands are just about products for a purpose, it’s very transactional”, Partouche says. “But we’re storytellers.” Within five years, he aims to scale Satisfy’s revenue tenfold. This is Partouche’s big American dream.
Grace Cook travelled to Diamond Cross Ranch, Wyoming, as a guest of Satisfy
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