If you run a no-gi academy and your students keep asking where to buy team apparel, you have two paths. Send them to a national brand store and earn nothing. Or stand up your own academy shop with your name on every piece. Bear Grips Pro Shops gives you a branded storefront with no inventory, no minimum, and a margin on every sale. Here is how it compares to pointing your team at a third-party shop like 10th Planet HQ.
A third-party brand store sells the brand, not you. When your students wear that gear, they advertise the parent brand. The revenue stays at the brand. Your role in their training, their belt journey, their tournament wins gets diluted into a generic logo on a generic tee.
A direct academy shop flips that. Your logo. Your colors. Your academy name across the back of every hoodie that walks into open mat. When a visiting white belt sees a row of branded gear in the lobby, the message is clear: this place has identity. That identity converts trial classes into long-term members at a noticeably higher rate.
On top of the branding, the margin goes back into your academy. A $45 hoodie sold through Bear Grips Pro Shops at the VIP base price of $36.88 leaves you $8 or more per sale, with no inventory risk. Across 60 active students, two hoodie sales per student per year, that is roughly $960 in pure margin sitting in your business account.
The free plan starts you with three live products and a branded shop URL. You upload your logo, pick three styles, and share the link. Done. Students order directly. Each piece prints in the US and ships free to their home in about a week.
The Self-Service VIP plan at $59 a month opens up to 200 live products and drops your base price by $4 to $11 per item. The Done-For-You VIP plan at $109 a month gives you a personal shop advisor, monthly logo refreshes across 15 trending products, professional mockups on every color variant, and a fully laid-out shop ready to sell every month.
For most no-gi academies starting out, the free plan proves the concept. Once you see $200 in margin in your first month, the upgrade pays for itself in product depth and lower base costs.
Bear Grips Pro Shops: Custom Apparel for Your Team. No Minimums. Free Shipping.The product mix that moves in a no-gi academy lobby:
A five-product launch covers about 90% of the demand in a typical no-gi academy of 40 to 80 students.
Bear Grips Pro Shops is a custom apparel platform. We do not produce rashguards, spats, grappling shorts cut from sublimated panels, or competition gi material. If your academy needs full sublimated grappling kits, that is a different supplier category.
What we do exceptionally well: the lifestyle and casual layer that surrounds the mat. Walkout shirts. Hoodies that students wear to the tournament venue before they change into their fight gear. Hats. Sweatpants. The pieces that build your brand identity outside the four walls of the academy.
This honest scope is why we recommend Bear Grips for the casual and lifestyle layer of your no-gi program rather than as your one-stop competition supplier. Most academies pair us with a separate kit maker and run both alongside each other.
| Factor | 10th Planet HQ Store | Bear Grips Pro Shops |
|---|---|---|
| Branding | 10th Planet brand on every piece | Your academy logo and name |
| Margin to you | None (or affiliate cut) | $8 to $20 per item, set by you |
| Minimum order | Single retail orders | Single orders, no minimum |
| Product catalog | Limited drops | 63 products across tees, hoodies, hats, joggers |
| Inventory risk | None for you | None for you |
| Shop setup time | Not your shop | 15 minutes on the free plan |
The right answer depends on your goal. If you want to wear another brand, point students to 10th Planet HQ. If you want to build your own academy brand and earn from it, run your own shop.
Stop pointing students at a brand store that pays you nothing. Launch a free academy shop with your name on every piece in under fifteen minutes.
Start FreeNo. Bear Grips Pro Shops is an independent custom apparel platform for gyms, academies, and fitness businesses. We are not affiliated with 10th Planet or any other grappling brand. We give academy owners a branded storefront on their own name.
Yes. The free plan includes three live products, a branded shop URL, and an affiliate link. You can validate demand from your students before upgrading to VIP for the larger catalog and lower base prices.
That works. Some affiliate-style relationships expect students to order through HQ for branded gear. You can still run your own Bear Grips Pro Shops store alongside it for everything HQ does not sell: hoodies, hats, joggers, sweatshirts, training tees, walkout shirts.
No. Bear Grips Pro Shops covers the casual and lifestyle layer: tees, hoodies, sweatshirts, hats, joggers, sweatpants, and shorts. Rashguards, spats, and competition gis require a different supplier with sublimation and cut-and-sew capability.
Bear Grips Pro Shops