I Miss the old "Starter" Brand

[sebbie]

The "Starter" brand I think was originally independent, but then got purchased by Nike to be a budget brand for the company selling a variety of athletic wear items, including compression tees and shorts, but also on occasion, budget athletic shoes.

The major contract they had was with Wal Mart. The interesting thing was that Wal Mart sold Starter branded Compression gear while not directly competing with Nike at the Athletic stores. The interesting thing was that prices for the Starter Branded goods were maybe 50 % or less of what the Nike branded version sold for. In the period the Starter Tees and Compression shorts sold for maybe $6.88 ea at Wal Mart--cheap enough so I quickly accumulated a lot of them.

I have a Compression short from the same period branded Nike in the same SM size. The Starter and the Nike are both simple designs without all the seams and cut pieces I see in recent compression gear designs. The Nike compression short is black. The material is different, however, and the Starter version is perhaps actually the tighter fitting of the two.

Sadly, the Starter brand I think is no more. At least its been a long time since I have seen any of this brand at Wal Mart. A lot of guys had their first experience in wearing compression tees and shorts and learning how a guy's body reacts in such a situation when the Starter brand was readily available in Wal Mart.

These must be 20 years old or more and they still are in perfect condition and fit super tight as in like new.

Jockey did the same thing Nike did with the starter brand by marketing a line of underwear under the "Life" brand from Bikinis and thongs to boxer shorts. Then they went to labeling them Jockey Life, but the assortment of styles was reduced. Then to just barely to not at all.

In researching this some more, I see Starter branded compression shorts are available on the Wal Mart Web site but generally not in store. The same site also has Jockey branded briefs, bikinis and thongs but generally not in store.