We are moving women’s movement forward by outfitting and inspiring women to take risks, lead in their communities, and seek their own adventures. For the last 30 years we have been dedicated to providing outdoor and athletic wear for women, whether we’re training for a race or just squeezing in time for a workout. We create and curate women’s clothing that’s well-crafted enough to last a lifetime and versatile enough to last the day.
When it comes to performance products, we have the inside line. We size up the best of what’s out there, very often making bets on small businesses run by women who are not only breaking the ceiling, but raising the roof and their voices too. They personally know what it takes to run hard, stand tall, climb high and go deep - and craft accordingly. To learn more, check us out at one of our 19 retail locations, or online at www.TitleNine.com
Founder Story In the spring of 1989, Missy Park, having quickly plowed through eight or nine jobs in four post-collegiate years, realized that no one in their right mind was going to give her the job of running a company. She also noticed that no one seemed to be too interested in athletic gear specifically built for women. With those two insights, Title Nine was born in a garage in Berkeley, CA.
In the beginning, there was just Missy in her house, merchandise in her garage, a phone on her living room table, and 13,000 very bad catalogs on their way to some understandably, unresponsive customers. There was cycling gear and running shorts. There were funny-looking tights. There were even basketballs, but no tops or tees, and there were very few orders. There was an inventory-destroying flood. And, there were a lot of excess basketballs. That first mailing generated a sum total of 56 orders, only 7 of which came from folks Missy didn’t know.
In the beginning, Title Nine was a small group of women runners, ruggers and athletes. We didn’t know a balance sheet from a balance beam, but we were a team, and together we learned the business from the bottom up. We were the very first to believe in the crazy idea that women wanted sports gear of our own, just a small group of passionate, athletic women in Berkeley working to build a business around the idea that we would change the world, if we could just get our workout in.
To this day, Title Nine remains the largest independently owned and operated retailer in the women’s fitness and adventure space. We are the only company owned and operated by a passionate and opinionated group of gals (and some very cool guys) who know a thing or two or 13 about sports gear and sports bras. As we have grown we have remained committed to the idea that Title Nine can be a petri dish for experimenting with ideas around women and work, images and media, ownership and accountability, risk and reward, conflict and collaboration, leadership and followership. These experiments are not always pretty, but they have pushed us to some of our worst and then ultimately our best places.
