The Growth of Grips Athletics: A Jiu Jitsu Brand Story

From the Jiu Jitsu Style archive: back in 2014 we caught up with Grips Athletics Sales Director Manuel Saterini to talk about how an Italian-designed gi brand, built out of Hong Kong, was making its way onto the BJJ market. More than a decade on, Grips is a fixture on the racks at major opens and in the gi bags of plenty of competitors — so we're reposting the original conversation, lightly refreshed, as a reminder of where the brand started.

Hi Manuel, can you tell us a little bit about how Grips started?

Grips was founded a couple of years ago by a group of Italian entrepreneurs in Hong Kong. From day one the main concept behind Grips was to empower our athletes — and we asked ourselves, very concretely, how we could do that. We decided we needed products with high technical functionality, characterised by extreme durability and class. Behind the project there's a deep passion for combat sports and a strong technical knowledge of fabrics and fit that comes from more than 20 years in the apparel business.

Grips has grown very quickly in a short space of time. Why do you think that is?

We believe the products are the key. We focus on quality, attention to detail, Italian design, and targeted research and development. We pay special attention to the fit of our gis, and understanding how Jiu Jitsu athletes actually train is our main source of inspiration. We listen to their suggestions, we study their needs, and we keep evolving the cuts and the fabrics around what we hear. Our customers fall in love with the products quickly and become part of what we call the Grips Family.

You've already got distribution channels in Asia, the USA and the UK, but we hear you'll also be launching in Brazil?

We could have started much slower, focusing on one region and steadily expanding from there. But since the brand's conception we felt that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu athletes everywhere — from Sao Paulo to Tokyo — deserve to at least try our gis. Brazil is the spiritual home of the art, and being on the mats there matters to us.

What are Grips' plans for the near future?

We believe Grips is already one of the leading combat sports brands in the market, but we want to keep building brand awareness and open our horizons toward the fitness and lifestyle market too. The BJJ line will keep growing and developing, but this year we've also decided to launch a new collection dedicated to cross training. Technical garments with great design, fantastic quality, and a fit that holds up on the mats and off them. The sky is the limit for us.

A decade on

Looking back from 2026, the timing was right. When this interview ran, the BJJ apparel scene was still small enough that one well-cut gi could put a brand on the map. Grips' bet — Italian design and durability, sold globally from the jump — landed in a market that was about to explode. The same period gave us the rise of brands like Shoyoroll, Scramble and Tatami, the spread of "lifestyle" rashguards beyond the mats, and instructional platforms like BJJ Fanatics changing how people learned. The athletes a brand sponsored started to matter as much as the cut of the gi: today's competitors are stitched all over Instagram and Flograppling reels, with the Ruotolo brothers, Mikey Musumeci, Gordon Ryan and Ffion Davies pushing the sport into the mainstream.

Grips, for its part, has stayed in the conversation — still on competitors' backs at IBJJF events, still designing for fit, still leaning on that Italian DNA. Not every BJJ brand from that era is still around. The ones that are tended to do what Manuel described above: listen to athletes, sweat the details, and build for people who actually train.

See you on the mats.

Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, September 2014. Refreshed for 2026.