“When I got laid off during the recession I looked around for other jobs but couldn’t find anything,” said Todd Curran, owner of SAVAGEultimate.
“When I got laid off during the recession I looked around for other jobs but couldn’t find anything,” said Todd Curran, owner of SAVAGEultimate. “So I brought out my screen printing press that I had in my closet in my guest room and I was like ‘let’s try this out’.”
Curran started by making a tuxedo t-shirt for a friend who he played ultimate frisbee with. He was excited to make some money from it, a few months later he found the niche of ultimate frisbee and that’s where SAVAGEultimate began.
“Six years later, we’re now going after other sports and having a very good time,” said Curran. SAVAGEultimate is now a niche sports apparel company serving alternative sports like ultimate frisbee, kickball, disc golf and quidditch with customizable products.
For example, the company is working with US Quidditch, quidditch’s governing body, to create “snitch shorts”. These shorts have velcro sown into the back and a detachable snitch tail.
The business recently moved its headquarters to Richmond from Charleston, SC, where it was based for five years. SAVAGEultimate followed Curran to Richmond this year.
“Once we started looking into it from a business aspect, the support for entrepreneurs in Richmond is a really great thing that we’re looking for,” said Curran. “Just around the community you’ll see a lot of ‘buy local’, this community is driven to buy local and to support Richmond businesses.”
Curran expressed how much he was impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit of Richmond mentioning not only Richmond-based clothing brands Shockoe Denim and Haberdash but also how impressed he is with Richmond’s widely spread donut culture.
SAVAGEultimate already works with both Richmond Ultimate and Richmond Spikeball. Curran said that they hope to work with as many sports teams in the Richmond area as possible. He hopes that Richmond’s penchant for outdoor activities will help the business expand.
“Richmond is a great outdoors town,” said Curran. “And that’s kind of the next step with our company is to go out to the outdoor apparel part. Because its such a great outdoor town, there are a lot of events that happen here that need t-shirts, that need outdoor apparel.”
SAVAGEultimate hopes to get their athletic and outdoor apparel in stores soon. Though they make their own designs, what the company ultimately brings is something different and specific to their customers.
“There’s kind of a middle ground that no one really attacked,” said Curran. “There’s a Nike who makes apparel and then you go to a screen printer who says ‘here’s my catalog of 5,000 items, choose what you want. What we wanted to do was to create an apparel company that’s also customizable to our customers.”
