Flat Hills Road

A few years ago I started in a new business venture. (For those who don’t know me outside of running, my “day job” is as a web programmer, building websites for a company I co-founded. Yes, I’m aware this site isn’t a great representation of our work, but when we’re busy our own sites come in last on the priority scale.) In that entrepreneurial role, I started reading weblogs of a few other start-ups, just to see what’s going on out there.

That was how I found Atayne (pronounced “Attain”), through the blog of its founder. They bill their products as “performance with a point of view,” and that point of view is that you can have quality, performance running gear made with renewable resources and non-toxic materials.

A shirt made from recycled bottles and coconut husks might not sound like such a great idea, but I have one now (thanks to my brother, who got me one for Christmas) and it’s actually awesome. It’s as comfortable (maybe more) as any other performance top I own (and I’ve had quite a few), and it looks pretty sharp, too.

Times are tough out there for struggling start-ups, but in the name of never letting a good crisis go to waste, I think that makes it all the more important that we put our consumer dollars behind companies with values that match our own. Like it or not, in the marketplace, money is speech, and it’s worthwhile to consider what our spending is saying. The great part about buying Atayne apparel is that not only is it ecologically responsible, you don’t have to compromise on price or quality to do it.

I don’t know the Atayne people, and they don’t know me. But I think they’re doing good work, and I think they deserve the support of the running community.