Too Many Tacky T-shirt Brands

Sure, Tapout was sold for several hundred million dollars to Authentic Brands Group in 2010.  Sure, it's VERY inexpensive to start and operate a small combat sports apparel brand without any business acumen (or artistic talent).  And sure, you're entitled to take the entrepreneurial plunge because you're an American and it's your God-given right to do so.  And because you're an American you're probably unemployed anyway so why not start a business now?!  However, much like sticking your thumb up your ass, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a ravenous capitalist about to hang a shiny new diploma on my wall that reads, "Masters in Entrepreneurship" from one of the top graduate programs in the country so I love anything and anyone who makes money, but if there's one thing I know it's sheer ridiculousness (and run-on sentences, apparently).  But much like a run-on sentence, it would seem that aspiring entrepreneurs in the combat sports industry just don't know when to stop.

In the past 2 years the combat sports industry has seen more new apparel companies than can actually be counted.  We're probably looking at a couple/few hundred new brands in just 24 months and it's becoming hard to tell one from the next.  It seems that every dude out there has a combat sports apparel brand now and even my mother was testing brand names on me yesterday (side note: her ground and pound is unstoppable).  Do we really need another tacky T-shirt brand in the fight game?  Another hundred brands?  When does it stop?

Fortunately, there are some proven economic theories that will (hopefully soon) be reaffirmed as the over-saturated combat sports apparel market finds balance and the lesser brands and entrepreneurs fall by the wayside.  I don't wish them harm, but I don't mourn their loss.  Nor will I miss their bedazzled, fake-tattooed, desperately loud, I-suck-at-life-and-have-no-fashion-sense T-shirts that are, more often than not, worn by fat fanboys or Tony "Beach Muscles" Bagadonuts.  Perhaps those brands can retire to the Ed Hardy Assisted Living Center to eat strained pees and complain about loud music until they die and join the man whose style they've all bastardized.  I don't care where they go, just as long as they're out of sight.  My poor eyes can't take anymore tribal designs.