Best friends who started sportswear brand want to 'compete with Nike'
Two best friends from Liverpool with a passion for sportswear created an internationally-recognised clothing brand represented by a number one UFC welterweight contender. Montirex founders Danny Yuen and Kieran Riddell-Austin were joined by brand ambassador Leon “Rocky” Edwards for the opening ceremony at their pop-up Liverpool ONE store in South John Street today.
The 3,000 square feet store will be open for a few months and stock Montirex men’s, women’s, juniors', and infants' fits for this autumn. There will be lines exclusive to the store and not available in any of its other concessions globally. In fact, 66% of all its stock will only be available in the Liverpool ONE shop.
As they prepared to cut the ribbon on their new shop Danny and Kieran, who are both still only in their 20s, spoke to the ECHO about their origins and aspirations. Danny said: "Before Montirex I was an engineer and Kieran used to work in IT, but we’ve been best mates since we were about 10. We always knew we wanted to do something more and we didn’t always want to do the nine to fives.
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"We’ve always had a passion for sportswear and it’s been something we’ve always worn - we’ve always shopped in JD and places. We got together, played around with a few ideas and came up with Montirex. It was apparent that there was nothing in the market doing sportswear on a more local level. So we came together, came up with the idea and came up with the name. We started off with three t-shirts - it was quite slow at first - and then we carried on restocking."
The friends say that things started to take off when they were approached by Footasylum. Kieran said: “We saw a massive uplift when we went into Footasylum and it was a great learning curve. We’d been spotted by them and they’d seen our designs everywhere. They approached us and asked if we wanted to go in the store. It massively helped us."
Talking about the new shop, Danny said: "Having the store is mad. Me and Kieran are in the thick of it every day and we don’t really have time to stop and think, so when we’ve come in here and seen what’s been put together by ourselves and the team - and our external partners - it’s unbelievable."
Regarding plans for the future, he added: "We have aspirations to become one of the biggest sports brands in the world. We want to be competing with the likes of Nike, Under Armour - not only at a national level, which we are already - but at an international level."
Montirex gave the ECHO an exclusive first-look at its first ever store just days before opening. Click here for a sneak-peek into the brand new shop.
Rob Deacon, Grosvenor’s asset management director at Liverpool ONE, said: “It is incredibly rewarding to be able to expand and enhance Montirex’s offering at Liverpool ONE.
"Given the brand’s Liverpudlian roots and the huge success they have enjoyed with us to date, the power of places in connecting brands with people cannot be underestimated and their debut standalone pop-up provides our customers with the invaluable variety, rarity and experience we seek from short-term activations.”