Olympic star Allyson Felix headed to Paris fist week of July 2024 – not to compete on the track as she did for the last 20+ years, but to launch the Olympic Village’s inaugural nursery to support parent athletes, in partnership with Pampers.
The most decorated Olympian in track and field athlete in Olympic history (with 11 medals), Felix traveled to Paris with her family of four, and she has an interesting entrepreneurial story.
Her company, Saysh, founded in 2021, just weeks before her Olympic performance in Tokyo, was the result of a very public fallout with her long-term sponsor, Nike, based on the sporting giant’s unfavourable policies regarding pay and maternity protections.
In a 2019 News York Times Op-ed, Felix had publicly criticised the company for slashing her contract by 70% after becoming a mother, and refusing to protect her earnings if she couldn’t perform against expectations in the months following childbirth.
Even though Nike subsequently reacted positively by guaranteeing fair treatment for their female athletes, it proved a little too late for Felix who, already frustrated that prototypes for modern athletic shoes were designed with men in mind, did something very few professional athletes would dare to do: she started a competitor by launching her own winning footwear brand, Saysh – athletic shoes tailored by women, for women.
Alongside her brother and co-Founder, Wes Felix, Los Angeles-based Saysh was created as a women-centric footwear and lifestyle brand. Within 40 days of the website’s launch, the company had sold out of its $150 sneakers and had a 25,000-person waitlist.
With Saysh currently a multi-million dollar brand, Felix succeeded in showing the world of sport and business that from adversity comes opportunity, and with the right level of self-belief, women are absolutely able to secure their own futures.
However, it wasn’t always plain sailing even for the famous sportswoman, especially in terms of scaling financing hurdles as a woman of colour during a pitch process.
She says:
Being the only female in the room, the only person who looks like you doin what are often very uncomfortable spaces, has been really hard. I had heard about how hard it is to raise capital, but coping with rejection, trying to come up and show up, again and again, it’s hard.”
Felix found a solution in what she referred to as “looking to the sisterhood.” When her company closed a series A with $8 million (June 2022), it was thanks to a round led by specialist consumer fund IRIS Ventures, a woman-led fund that closely aligns with Saysh’s woman-centric ethos.
In conclusion, Felix has often shared that the courage to start her own business partly came from a realisation that society conditions young girls, athletes, and businesswomen to think from a place of caution above collaboration – which motivated her to create change.
- Numeris Média is officially accredited media to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games