Latest news with #UltimateLeggings
Malaysian Reserve
6 days ago
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
Adanola Announces Investment from STORY3 Capital Partners to Accelerate Global Growth
LONDON, Aug. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Adanola, the U.K. based cult womenswear brand redefining the active lifestyle wardrobe, is pleased to announce a significant minority investment from STORY3 Capital Partners, the Los Angeles based private equity firm focused on growth and long-term value creation within the consumer sector. This strategic partnership marks an important milestone in Adanola's continued expansion, enabling the brand to strengthen its position as a global leader in the activewear space. Founded in 2015 by Hyrum Cook, Adanola emerged from a singular vision, to create the everyday uniform for modern women; elevated, versatile activewear that transitions effortlessly between function and aesthetic. Its rise has been powered by cultfavourite products like the Ultimate Leggings (with over 1.5 million pairs sold), alongside high-profile supporters including Kendall Jenner, Kaia Gerber, Veneda Carter and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. In June 2024, Adanola appointed Niran Chana as CEO. Previously, Niran served as Chief Commercial Officer at Gymshark where he played a key role in scaling the business, having joined in 2015. Niran was brought into Adanola to drive growth and lead overall strategy and execution. 'Adanola's ascent has been fuelled by staying disciplined as a women's product-first, active lifestyle brand. Across all areas of the company, we've curated the partners that support the vision of the brand. We're thrilled to announce the investment from STORY3 which values Adanola at approximately $530 million. STORY3's deep experience for building consumer brands will be crucial as we continue to build sustainable, profitable growth across key markets and reinforce Adanola's position as a leader in the consumer sector. I'm incredibly proud of what the Adanola team has achieved to-date, and we're poised and ready for our next chapter' – Niran Chana, Adanola CEO. Peter Comisar, Founder and Managing Partner of STORY3 and former Goldman Sachs Partner, stated, 'Adanola has garnered uniquely strong and authentic relationships with consumers, and we believe the business is in the early stages of powerful global growth. We are honoured to serve as a trusted partner to Hyrum and Niran given our long track record of supporting founders and entrepreneurial executive teams.' Samir Shah, STORY3 Partner, added, 'With decades of experience around the consumer landscape, STORY3 believes in the convergence of consumer brands, digital media, and technology to succeed in today's disrupted world and supports its investments to excel in each of those facets to create enduring value. We see extraordinary opportunities to support the Adanola team as it leverages its loyal customer base and revered products to continue to expand in its home U.K. market and within key growth markets including the U.S.' Adanola's DTC model is complemented by a highly curated wholesale network, including the Selfridges Group, David Jones, Ounass, Equinox, and Soho House. The brand maintains an accessible price point for its customer, whilst partnering with premium platforms to reinforce its elevated brand position. Looking ahead, Adanola will continue to prioritise digital channels whilst selectively growing its retail presence with long-term plans for its own-brand stores. The partnership with STORY3 sets the stage for Adanola's next chapter, accelerating international growth whilst staying true to the brand's DNA: refined product design and brand-first partnerships. About Adanola Adanola is a contemporary active lifestyle brand creating versatile activewear and wardrobe essentials for style, comfort and movement. Driven by a commitment to creating the ultimate everyday uniform, Adanola designs with real life in mind, offering adaptable, elevated pieces that easily transition between fitness and daily routines. Each collection is built to support modern, on-the-go lives with a focus on wearability and performance that empowers individuals to embrace their unique identities. Worn by a global community and championed by cultural figures including Kendall Jenner, Kaia Gerber, Veneda Carter, Tina Kunakey and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Adanola continues to grow as a brand that reflects the pace, style and priorities of the modern consumer. About STORY3 Capital STORY3 is a leading alternative investment manager that employs a flexible investment strategy and pairs deep industry expertise, operating support, and unique transactional experience to support value creation for its partners. Paramount to its investment lens is a focus on companies at the nexus of consumer, commerce and content, where STORY3 believes its capital, skillset, and relationships can substantially impact value creation. For more information, please visit
Mint
19-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
Blissclub's Minu Margeret is building an inclusive apparel brand for every woman
It's on an unusually warm Friday afternoon in May that I make my way to the head office of women's apparel company Blissclub in Bengaluru's HSR Layout. The office is staffed with Gen Z and young millennials and kitted with a table tennis table. The founder and CEO of the brand, Minu Margeret, looks ready to step out for a spot of badminton in her black shorts and green T-shirt. It's pure coincidence that I am meeting Margeret, 35, a few days after the D2C company, founded in 2020, successfully raised ₹45 crore in its Pre-Series B round funding. According to multiple reports online, the round had existing investors Elevation Capital and Eight Roads Ventures participating along with debt funding from Alteria Capital. This infusion of funds comes after a shaky period in 2023-24 that saw more than a dozen employees being laid off in January. It is timely and Margeret doesn't hide her enthusiasm. 'These funds will help us take some bets on new launches. It'll help us look at expanding our offline stores as well," she says. Some of the most recent developments include Blissclub signing actor Karisma Kapoor as its brand ambassador and the launch of two new product categories: the luxury travel edit comprising jackets, tanks, pullovers and straight pants, and its AirMelt™ collection of tees, joggers, shorts, co-ord sets and zippered jackets, in a proprietary fabric. With a market valuation of ₹600crore —the company did not divulge its current annual earnings—Blissclub is a leading name among homegrown activewear brands such as HRX, Aastey, Silvertraq and Cava Athleisure. Being a size-inclusive brand, products such as the 'Ultimate Leggings" and 'Ultimate Flare Pants" have developed a cult-like following. 'When I decided to launch the branch, I wasn't looking to build performance wear for athletes. I was building a brand for every woman who is constantly juggling multiple things at the same time," says Margeret. Starting off as a D2C activewear brand in the initial years, the brand has expanded into citywear, swimwear, travel and innerwear categories as well. Additionally, from being an internet-first brand, Blissclub today has 15 brick-and-mortar stores in India. As a women's only activewear brand, a key factor that has helped Blissclub establish its foothold quickly is listening closely to the feedback from its customers, or 'Bliss Queens", as Margeret prefers to call them. This has translated into products with thoughtful features. 'We had women asking us to design activewear for Indian bodies that are not as lean or tall as our Western counterparts. We also had women asking us to make clothes that were built not just for Bengaluru's pleasant climate but also for Chennai or Mumbai's humidity and the dry heat of Delhi," shares Margeret about insights gleaned from early interactions. With its offerings priced between ₹799-2,999, the brand's inclusivity comes through in its sizes that range from XS to 4XL—Margaret's own feminist perspective reflects in the four pockets that the brand's pants have. 'We launched the Ultimate leggings with four deep pockets because well, women carry wallets and have bills to pay." Interestingly, fashion was a subject that Margeret was unfamiliar with before launching her company. A graduate from Christ College and a management accountant, Margeret was a typical finance professional who wet her feet in Goldman Sachs and Wipro before she headed to the International School of Business, Hyderabad, for her MBA in 2016. 'I had no idea what words like inseam and outseam meant and I always thought that it was robots or machines that stitched clothes," she jokes. After ISB, Margeret spent the next three years at Unilever, AB InBev and PhonePe. That was also the time when she played club-level Ultimate Frisbee for a Bengain 2018-19 that she began toying with the idea of entrepreneurship. 'Everyone around me at the time was either starting up or thinking about starting up and I'd always wanted to start something on my own." While scouting for potential business ideas, she didn't have to look too far. As an active frisbee player and a regular gym goer, finding quality performance wear in India had always been a problem. 'I'd mostly end up buying my activewear while travelling outside India. And so one of the initial problem statements I listed was the lack of quality functional and technical apparel for women in the Indian market," she recalls. In December 2019, Margeret quit her job as brand manager at PhonePe and spent the next 10 months in R&D. This involved talking to women—'I wanted to know if other women felt the same way about wanting quality functional clothes"—and industry insiders to suss out if there was potential to build something in the women's activewear space. She remembers visiting factories across the country to learn all she could about fabrics and apparel manufacturing. Finally, when it came to launching the brand online, Margaret chose to kick off things by focusing on only one product: black leggings. She did that with a bootstrapped investment of ₹15 lakh, zero marketing budget and a small team of four-five employees. The company today has over 80 employees. 'Our idea while making the leggings was to make them the best available in the market. We wanted them to be so good, they'd become every woman's favourite pair," says Margeret. A number of iterations had to be done to get the fabric right. 'A key insight we had at the time (on fabric) was that Indian women love the feel of cotton, but since cotton doesn't have the performance of synthetic, the question we worked with was how could we build high-quality synthetics that feel like cotton?" Margeret says. The team worked backwards getting the fabric right before making the product. She adds, 'Fabric is the nucleus of everything we build because once you get the fabric right, everything is an offshoot of that." While Blissclub's product offerings may have expanded in the last five years, its philosophy of balancing functionality with comfort has resulted in the in-house tech division, BlissLabs, engineering its own fabrics like CloudSoft, AirMelt™, BareButter™ and RibSupreme™. 'We have an internal team of fabric engineers who are constantly working away to create new materials. This team works closely with our partner fabric mills to build prototypes which are then tested over months and quarters. The entire process from choosing the raw material to the final product takes us two years," Margeret explains. Blissclub's first product, the Ultimate Black leggings, launched online in 2020 during peak-covid. The proof that they'd cracked the formula was evident when they sold out in three weeks. 'We had a lot of women post about us organically. That is when I realised that if you build something different, people will care about it enough to buy it," Margeret muses. Around the time that Blissclub launched, fashion trends across the globe were changing too. In 2020, with lockdown in effect everywhere, concepts like remote work and work from home became a reality. These trends in turn gave the athleisure industry a fillip as everyone switched to comfortable clothing. Co-ord sets, tracksuits, sweat shirts, leggings, joggers and tees became outfits of the day. The activewear industry was at an inflection point and that, Margeret reveals, gave her another compelling reason to enter it. 'I like how athleisure has become normalised as everyday wear," says Margeret about the trend that has continued to remain popular post-covid. A report by management consulting firm IMARC Group validates this: The Indian athleisure market is expected to grow from $13,156 million in 2024 to $21,250 million by 2033 at a CAGR of 5.5%. A Malayali, Margeret's childhood up till class IX was spent in Bahrain where her father worked as a banker. The job was transferable, which meant that Margeret and her sister had to switch around 8-9 schools. In retrospect, she believes that this constant shifting of schools and adjusting to changes taught her to adapt to uncomfortable situations quickly. Today, these are qualities that come in handy when she has to take tough decisions. 'One thing I've learnt in this job is that once you are a CEO, you'll always end up getting the most abysmal problems to solve, simply by virtue of your position. While the decent-enough problems get solved along the way by the other team members, what gets filtered to you are the tricky ones. I've come to accept it as part and parcel of the job." Sports, she says has played a role in shaping her attitude to leading from the front. 'Sports builds a lot of humility in you, it shows you that you cannot be your best everyday. There will be days where you are going to be good and days where you will mess up. Sports teaches you how to not let things affect you." Margeret is married to Vidit Aatrey, co-founder and CEO of online marketplace, Meesho. How does the equation of having a startup founder as life partner play out at home? Do they seek each other's advice? 'We've both got a high degree of empathy for each other's journeys because we know what it takes," she says. While conversations at home post work tend to be wide-ranging, the current 'startup" that's keeping both the co-founders busy is their little daughter, Ira, jokes Margeret. 'Everything revolves around her now." QUICK 3 An item of clothing you'll always pack: Black leggings Your favourite way to destress: Swimming A recent series you enjoyed: 'The Last of Us'
Graziadaily
10-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- Graziadaily
I Own Tons Of High-End Leggings But I Always Come Back To This Viral Amazon Pair
If there's one thing I've learned after years of living in leggings, it's that not all leggings are created equal. Too sheer, too tight, lose shape after one wash - the list of disappointments goes on. Like many, I've spent what feels like a lifetime hunting for that perfect pair: soft, flattering, opaque, and durable, but I also don't want to remortgage my house to afford a collection I can have on rotation. After trying many of the big names and loving some (Adanola's Ultimate Leggings are definitely getting a shout out here), but being disappointed by others, I've found myself consistently reaching for what I now consider my everyday MVP... Sinophant's high-waisted leggings, available from Amazon. Perhaps Amazon's worst-kept secret, they have over 70,000 rave reviews and are the number one best-seller in the leggings category. These budget-friendly leggings are almost cult followed, and for good reason. They're ultra-dark, buttery soft, high-waisted, and never roll down or stretch out, even after multiple washes and tumble dryer cycles. They move with you, feeling like a second skin, whether you're hitting the gym, lounging at home, or building an outfit around them. I've recommended them to everyone I know - I should be on commission, to be honest. In possibly the best news a leggings lover will hear all week, they're now on offer for under £8 in the Amazon Prime Day Sale, which ends on 11th July. They're available in a variety of colours, too, should the mood take you. Shop my favourite everyday leggings below. 1. SINOPHANT High Waisted Leggings Usually £10, my favourite leggings are even cheaper for Amazon Prime Day. With the sale ending tomorrow (11th July), now's the perfect time to snap up a pair (or three). I'm a size 14, and the S-M fits me perfectly. 2. SINOPHANT High Waisted Leggings Three Pack Price: $16.42 (was £21.99) The pack of three is also discounted, with 25% off for Prime Day. Image credit: @jademoscrop/Grazia / madikinsley / @ Jade Moscrop is the commercial content editor for Grazia, specialising in lifestyle topics. When she isn't writing about beauty products, gym leggings and homeware items, she can usually be found on a hot girl walk, buying houseplants or doing what her husband has lovingly dubbed 'mosh-dancing' at a gig.
