“Sports and fashion are two of my favorite means of self-expression. Both are beautiful, creative, challenging, and innovative.”

– Marina Paul

Marina Paul, a former Division 1 soccer player, combines her dual passions for sports and fashion to transform female athletic wear through her brand, SPRHRA. With a focus on creating elite sportswear that aligns with the specific needs of female athletes, Paul’s vision addresses a significant issue in the industry: the discomfort and dissatisfaction experienced by many women in sports uniforms. SPRHRA, driven by direct feedback from athletes, aims to enhance performance, comfort, and overall well-being. By leveraging innovative materials and emphasizing a design philosophy that incorporates high-performance, precision, swagger, and freedom, SPRHRA seeks to redefine the standards of female athletic gear.

In the following interview, Marina Paul shares insights into her journey from athlete to entrepreneur and discusses the challenges she faced, the inspiration behind SPRHRA, and how her experiences have shaped the brand’s mission. Her commitment to revolutionizing female sportswear and her innovative approach provide a glimpse into the future of athletic gear designed specifically for women.

SM: Can you share more about your journey from being a top Division 1 soccer player to founding SPRHRA? What inspired this transition?

MP: Looking back, my journey seems relatively linear. I’m solving a simple problem that I experienced as an athlete, and blending my personal love of fashion and sport. But, it was anything but that, while living with my parents, building SPRHRA on nights and weekends, then quitting my day job to commit 100% to SPRHRA.

High-level soccer and creating an apparel brand are similar. They require a ton of discipline, a ton of failure, a ton of willingness to get up from failure, and a ton of creativity and risk-taking. Most of all, they require a ton of self-belief.

I loved competing at such a high-level, because it taught me how to manage pressure. It taught me how pouring all of yourself into something could lead to a lot of pain, and in the end, could yield the greatest feeling you have ever felt. 

I graduated from Georgetown and joined a start-up consumer beverage company to learn about start-ups. I then joined management consulting to hone some professional skills and gain some stability. While I was in management consulting, I started writing my book, Becoming a Superhero, that would inspire the name, SPRHRA (Superhera). 

Writing this book helped me work through a lot of the extreme experiences I had in college, such as working through my eating disorder history and anxiety. It also helped me uncover what it was that we truly wanted in our clothing and in life, the Freedom to Perform. 

I started SPRHRA to create the best-fitting sportswear for female athletes, so they could feel the Freedom to Perform. Sports and fashion are two of my favorite means of self-expression. Both are beautiful, creative, challenging, and innovative. Fashion and sports tell a story, from a game or a single piece, to an entire season or a collection. The uniform you wear and the logo crest on your chest, represents you, your collective team, and the higher purpose you play for.

SM: What were some of the key challenges you faced as a female athlete regarding sportswear, and how did these challenges influence the creation of SPRHRA?

MP: During my playing career, I remember every preseason. We called it “Preseason Christmas.” This is when we received our new soccer gear for the year. We had so much hype building up to this day. It signaled the start of the season, and the energy we had leading up to it. We opened our gear, and tried it on, praying it would fit and make us feel good. We were lucky if 1 piece out of 15 fit well. Every season, we would be disappointed that the gear we battled in every day, let us down. It didn’t fit and made us feel inadequate about our bodies. This lack of fit impacted me on a deeper level, re-confirming the negative thoughts I had in my head, that I wasn’t good enough to play my sport. 

To sum it up, our biggest challenges were fit, followed by uncomfortable fabric, a look that didn’t feel like us, and the feeling of inadequacy. 

At SPRHRA, we prioritize fit, because if it doesn’t fit, we’re not gonna feel good. Then, we prioritize look and feel. We know as female athletes, that if it fits, looks good, and feels good, then we will play our best.

SM: SPRHRA is known for its use of Super Graphene Fabric. Can you explain the benefits of this material and why it was chosen for your sportswear line?

MP: Our Super Graphene has many incredible benefits, including being anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, UV-Protectant, bug repellant, speeding up blood flow to aid in muscle recovery, regulating temperature, being extremely resilient to pulls and stretches.

It’s literally made for sports and female athletes.

Graphene is an extremely thin and safe form of graphite. It also emits infrared rays that penetrate deeper into the skin and help expand your blood vessels. The expansion of blood vessels is what allows blood to travel faster to your kidneys, and helps you recover faster!

In high-stress environments, like sports where you can also be in your gear for hours on end, I love that Graphene is antibacterial and antifungal. Graphene helps reduce the growth of bacteria, which could help reduce the chances of infection caused by bacteria growth and stress! An extra bonus is I don’t smell nearly as bad because of the anti-bacterial qualities. 

Graphene is amazing for sweating because it dries twice faster than other performance fabrics, and can regulate your body temperature. It can help you cool off and release body heat, as your body heats up during sports or a workout. You also don’t need to be careful with Graphene — the element is 200x as strong as a diamond and can withstand high-intensity sports.

Lastly, and most importantly to the athlete community, where comfort is of most importance, our Super Graphene fabric is so dang comfy. Most of our athletes tell me they sleep in it before wearing it to practice.

SM: Your brand focuses on incorporating feedback from female athletes into the design process. How has this approach impacted the final product and the athletes who use it?

MP: I think of feedback like film sessions with your coach. You learn and talk through what you’re doing well, and mostly…. what you need to work on. I think of capturing feedback from female athletes in the same way. Every female athlete has a unique experience with clothing on their body, the position they play in their sport, and how they move. This is awesome. By testing entire teams — all different positions, backgrounds, and experiences, we get to understand how different athletes experience our clothing. 

By building a foundation on listening to athletes, and testing our innovative design ideas, we can build the best possible product for them. At the end of the day, this company is for them. 

SM: How does SPRHRA’s design philosophy of performance, precision, swagger, and freedom enhance the overall athletic experience for female athletes?

MP: These elements are taken from my sports experience. In order to be the best, you have to have peak performance. In order to have peak performance, you have to be precise in your training, recovery, and mindset. In order to believe in yourself and lead effectively, you have to have confidence in yourself. I call this your swagger. In order to play your best, consistently, you ultimately have to feel free on the outside and on the inside. I approach our design no differently. 

Our apparel has to be made with peak performance in mind. Our design aspects have to be intentional and precise. We have to make athletes look good and feel good. Most of all, our athletes have to believe and feel that our clothing makes them feel free to do their thing on the field or court, and not be worried about pulling their shorts down. 

SM: Sustainability is a key aspect of your brand. What steps is SPRHRA taking to ensure that its products are environmentally friendly and responsibly made?

MP: To me, sustainability means producing the highest quality with the least amount of waste. It also means building a business that consistently grows at a manageable rate.

The fashion industry is built to produce high volume at low margins, pumping out as much clothing as possible to as many people as possible. In the industry, more means better.

But, as an athlete, more is not necessarily better. Too much can lead to decreased performance, and it can take away or distract from the mission. 

I produce domestically in Los Angeles. I produce the minimum amount, and I aim to sell out that amount, time after time. I aim to provide my customers with the greatest experience and the best product, so they will consistently come back. I try to limit waste as much as possible. And, I’m realistic about trying not to overspend on things that are unnecessary.

I also am trying to make products that have a significantly longer life span, compared to other team uniforms and sportswear. This goes against the grain of traditional sportswear business, where prices are low and the expectation is to repurchase subpar quality, time after time.

SM: Can you discuss any significant milestones or achievements that SPRHRA has reached since its inception?

MP: We launched a Female Athlete Performance & Well-Being Study in partnership with the University of Notre Dame to understand how well-fitting, health-focused sportswear impacts body image, mental health, performance, and recovery. Using qualitative and quantitative data from female athletes is one way we plan on measuring the impact that sportswear has on female athletes, and how we are helping them get better. We hope this survey can help inform us on how to put female athletes, their performance, and their well-being first. Here is the study. 

We’ve obtained the Women’s Performance Apparel license to numerous Division 1 colleges. This means we are able to dress college female athletes in our sportswear, using the university logos on our clothing. 

We’ve partnered with Lids University, an organization under Fanatics, to sell Georgetown-branded apparel in the Georgetown University Bookstore.

We have tested our Volleyball and Basketball uniforms with the top college players in the Big Ten, Big East, and Mountainwest. 

We are dressing high schools and club sports teams across the country!

SM: In your book, Becoming a Superhero: Awaken Your Superpowers and Elevate the Lives of Others, you explore personal empowerment. How does this theme align with the mission of SPRHRA?

MP: Writing this book and interviewing some of the coolest, most successful women in the world, I learned that personal empowerment is an action. It’s the product of a ton of hardship, taking big risks, failing hard, being a servant leader, having the will to keep going, having a ton of fun, and achieving big wins. To empower yourself is to have faith in yourself, because you have lived all of these things. Building SPRHRA is exactly this. It’s about having the audacity to build a sportswear brand in a space with some of the most recognized brands in the world. It’s about forming deep connections with female athletes everywhere. It’s about helping female athletes feel freedom on the outside, to help them perform at their best. 

SM: What feedback have you received from athletes who use SPRHRA gear, and how has this feedback influenced further developments in your product line?

MP: The biggest feedback I hear is thank you — thank you for taking the time to consider what I need. They tell me they feel so much better in our gear, especially our Wavy Stretchy Shorts. They tell me these shorts specifically are the only thing they wear. 

SM: Looking forward, what are your goals for SPRHRA, and how do you envision the future of female athletic gear evolving in the coming years?

MP: Here are my goals:

• My goal is to create the best-fitting core products in every sport. 
• My goal is to dress a team or athletes for the USA for the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games.
• My goal is to be the go-to sportswear brand for female athletes. 
• My goal is to open an all-female athlete hub, where all female athletes can come train, test and create products, use recovery tools, and hang out!
• My goal is to also be a leader in research when it comes to female athletes’ physical health.

“Building SPRHRA is exactly this. It’s about having the audacity to build a sportswear brand in a space with some of the most recognized brands in the world.”

– Marina Paul

Links

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Book

Share Your Insights

We’d love to hear your thoughts on Marina Paul’s vision for female athletic wear!

1. What aspects of SPRHRA’s approach to sportswear resonate most with you?
2. How do you think better sportswear could impact female athletes’ performance and well-being?
3. What features do you believe are essential for the future of female athletic gear?

Share your comments below and join the conversation!

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