From Product Fit to Brand Identity: The Changing Athleisure Experience

From everyday comfort to the joy of joining a game, athleisure connects with customers through more than appearance. Ten x You’s Isa Rahman explores the choices and experiences that give a product a place in someone’s life.

Everyone has a version of the favourite T-shirt. The one that feels right the moment it goes on. Or the pair of trainers that accompanies almost every plan, from a morning walk to an evening with friends. There is something personal about these choices. They fit our bodies, suit our routines and reflect a little of who we are.

Athleisure brings those qualities together. With clothing and footwear that move easily between activity and leisure, the category speaks to a wide range of people: students, working professionals, parents, regular players and those making space for an occasional game.

For a brand, that creates an opportunity to become part of everyday life. It also makes understanding the customer especially important. The same T-shirt might be chosen for its fabric, its fit, its design or the story it carries. Isa Rahman, Head of Product, Growth and CX – D2C at Ten x You, sees these connections through a familiar experience: getting together to play.

In a conversation for exchange4media’s CX interview series, he recalls childhood games that revolved around enjoyment, friendship and the pleasure of learning along the way. The memories are vivid - the banter, the laughter and the wish to keep playing until it was time to head home.

That feeling informs how he thinks about the business. If Ten x You were a person, Rahman imagines it as the enthusiastic friend who gets a plan going. Someone who brings people together and makes a game feel like a good way to spend the evening.

The image gives the brand’s philosophy, ‘Never Stop Playing’, an everyday expression. It welcomes the person who loves sport as well as the person rediscovering it. Bengaluru-headquartered Ten x You was co-founded by Karthik Gurumurthy, Karan Arora and Sachin Tendulkar, with backing from Whiteboard Capital and Peak XV. Its ambition centres on making sport more accessible through products designed for Indian feet and experiences that encourage participation.

For Isa Rahman, the relationship begins with understanding how people want to shop.

From different consumers’ perspectives and choices, he further described his mother sending him a picture of an advertisement and asking him to buy the product. It is a simple example of a customer who appreciates assistance. Millennials, he observes, often explore technical information, compare products and consider value carefully. Among Gen Z customers, identity, culture and authenticity can play a meaningful role. These preferences call for different kinds of interaction. Detailed information gives one shopper confidence. Personal guidance helps another. A design story creates a connection for someone else.

Customer experience involves recognising those preferences and making the journey feel natural. Then the product has its own moment to speak.

Asked what a customer should notice soon after wearing it, Rahman says, “I think it’s comfort.” He describes attention to Indian feet and body types as central to the brand’s development process. In apparel, he highlights fabric choices, bonded neck construction and repositioned seams as details intended to support wearing comfort.

For the customer, the significance is immediate: how the garment feels against the skin, how it moves and how comfortably it accompanies an active day. Rahman’s own favourite T-shirt shows how another layer of connection can emerge.

He recalls a graphic design that combined references to a cricket pitch, football ground, tennis court and running track. It brought his interest in printed T-shirts together with the brand’s sporting character and became something he enjoyed wearing himself. A garment can hold that kind of meaning. Its design can remind someone of an interest, a memory or a community they feel part of. Function and self-expression meet in a single purchase.

The customer’s experience also helps shape future products.

Rahman says the team proactively reaches out to buyers to understand how the products feel and perform. These conversations can extend across customer support, design, production and senior leadership. Isa Rahman also further pays attention to the experience of receiving an order. He describes postcards, collectibles, product stories and curated additions, alongside community benefits, as ways to continue the relationship. Their purpose is to create a relevant connection around the product. A thoughtful detail gives the customer something to remember after the package has been opened.

Sachin Tendulkar’s association adds a familiar story. Rahman explains the brand name through Tendulkar’s number 10: together with “You”, it makes eleven -a team. The customer becomes part of that idea.

Technology supports the service around these experiences. Rahman says AI agents are already involved in handling customer queries. He also sees possibilities for more personalised product guidance informed by preferences and fit requirements. Yet his longer-term ambition returns to something wonderfully ordinary: people going out to play again.

He hopes customers will associate discovering the brand with making room for games and enjoying that time in their lives.

For a sports and athleisure business, that is a meaningful relationship to pursue. A product becomes personal through the experiences it, in fact, accompanies the walk that starts a day, the friends who gather for a match, the favourite T-shirt worn whenever there is a game planned.

Those are the moments that give something in the wardrobe a story of its own.