Our Story

I started my apparel production company in 2012 when I was a junior in college. At the time, I was only certain of two things: that I wanted to run my own business rather than becoming a small cog in corporate America and that I wanted to make things - things which would be loved and used by the people that bought them. I didn't want to make junk and I certainly didn't want to sell someone else's junk. This goal was slowly put on the backburner as my business partners and I got lost into the weeds of making products for other people's brands, the more expedient way to pay the bills on our small factory. Separated from the end users of our products and constantly hampered by the threat of overseas competitors, our quality of life as a custom maker slowly degraded. Meanwhile my love for the sport of Jiu Jitsu, was slowly lost as long hours at the office left little time for the mats. Finally, one day I made the best decision of my life and fired almost all of my clients, closed my old company, and like a phoenix, our new company rose from the ashes determined to one day make products we were proud of and sell them directly to the end users who would enjoy them. In service of this goal, we have now started multiple direct-to-consumer brands - Rolling Otter Wear is our most recent one, but it's the one I'm most excited about. 

As a custom clothing manufacturer, we made a lot of products for sports, including rashguards for Jiu Jitsu and MMA. While our direct-to-consumer brand is new, we bring an expert level of manufacturing ability to making a quality product here in the US, not shopping the work out overseas. We are dedicated to making a product whose quality is unparalleled, customer service unrivaled, and our ethos will always be that of doing the hard work ourselves.

Over our years as a custom manufacturer, we've seen countless brands go broke trying to make their products cheaper and cheaper so they can afford to bid on the high cost of monopolized social media advertising. We're going to play a different game and rely completely on word-of-mouth marketing. We're going to reward customers generously for telling their friends about us, because we will not be spending our customers money paying for importing products from overseas and a barrage of ads. You can earn 1 free Rolling Otter rashguard for yourself for every friend you tell about us, simply by signing up for our referral program and sending out a referral link: Referral Page

I began training in Jiu Jitsu in 2003 at the age of 13. These days, I roll 4-6 times a week at multiple gyms and I love visiting new gyms whenever I can. My home gym is the Jiu Jitsu Company in Old City Philadelphia under the phenomenal Josh Vogel. With over 10 years of cumulative Jiu Jitsu training, I understand what is required to make a truly great rashguard and I'm passionate about making a product that my customers will love. 

Why the name "Rolling Otter?" An otter may not be the first animal to come to mind when you think of Jiu Jitsu, but we believe the otter is the perfect mascot for our brand. It lacks the cliched apex predator metaphor, but it's still an animal that means business. They're crafty, playful, inventive, sociable, but still fierce when it matters. Everything a great Jiu Jitsu player should be.

-David at Rolling Otter Wear. 

Our Founder, David Whitehurst, rolling in his home gym: the Jiu Jitsu Co. in Old City, Philadelphia

 

Interested in seeing some of our company's other projects? 

We also run an outdoor gear company called: High Tail Designs and a yoga mat company called Metta Mats