High grade came to life when we realised that there was no street wear/casual brand that stood out to us for being known for top quality standards as well as the style, when most people think of street wear the typical brands come to mind (Nike, Adidas, puma etc.) but a long with those brands coming to mind the typical thought on someone in street wear follows – Why have they left the house looking like that, do they not care about their appearance?

This is what we wanted to change,  we wanted to be able to go out in a tracksuit and not only be comfortable but to not have people looking and thinking is this just another [thug] who is passing me on the street?

Not only is high grade aiming to take away the stigma already associated with known street wear but to also up the game in terms of quality of the clothing. For years I have been buying various brands in this category and have always found that when it comes to quality it doesn’t match up to the price I paid and would need replacing sooner rather than later.

One thing we have made sure of through every process is the quality. Much like with most new projects this wasn’t done overnight, there were a lot of designs and samples that were simply just not up to standard. This step of the process has probably been the most difficult for us because if it wasn’t perfect we knew that it wouldn’t be good enough. Talking to designers and manufacturers from all over the world and getting samples showed us we had two ways of going about this – either go easy and cheap to get substandard items which may sell easily for a low cost or to work hard at it and bring a new product to market intended to up the levels in the street wear category.

Although we are trying to up the game in terms of look and quality we had the clear idea that we didn’t want to be a brand which would burn a hole in your pocket just to make you look good – using this as a starting point when thinking of the pricing we have compared ourselves with our competitors and made sure that you won’t be getting better quality than what high grade offers you for the price, the market has consistently been growing and with this growth comes companies upping the prices because they know people will buy it – this was not the attitude we wanted to take, with high grade you get what you pay for – Top quality, style and comfort.