Reigning Champ

Reigning Champ was founded in 2007 in Vancouver, Canada by Craig Atkinson as a Canadian-anchored athletic-and-essentials menswear brand specifically focused on what Atkinson described as 'heavyweight cotton athletics-and-essentials craft.' The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce premium cotton sweatshirts, hoodies, and athletic-derived basics using a single defining fabric — the brand's signature heavyweight loopback cotton terry — at a deliberate Canadian-mill-production standard that distinguished the brand from the global mass-market essentials category. The Reigning Champ vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic Heavyweight Cotton Crewneck (the brand's defining product since 2008), the Mid-weight Pullover Hoodie, the Cotton Slim Sweatpant, athletic-derived shorts and tees in the same Canadian-loopback-cotton fabric, the long-running Reigning Champ Athletics performance-fabric sub-line, and the brand's recurring use of natural-undyed cream, washed-charcoal, washed-navy, oxblood, military-olive, and the brand's recurring use of saturated red and electric-blue. The brand has done long-running collaborations with adidas (the Reigning Champ × adidas Athletic Pack, 2014-2019), Beams Plus, Sports Banger, and a wider Japanese-and-European athletic-essentials specialty network. The brand is independent and held by Atkinson. Reigning Champ operates flagship retail in Vancouver (the original Gastown store), Toronto (Queen West), Calgary, Montreal, plus international flagships in Tokyo (Aoyama, Daikanyama), New York (Soho), and Los Angeles (Fairfax Avenue), plus international wholesale through MR PORTER, SSENSE, Nordstrom, Holt Renfrew, the major US and European athletic-essentials specialty retailers, and the broader Japanese department-store network. The brand has been one of the defining post-2007 Canadian-anchored 'premium-athletic-essentials' brands.