Ten Thousand
Ten Thousand
Performance Apparel
SVP Brand, Creative Director
Dominick was the SVP of Brand and Creative Director of TEN THOUSAND, a premium training apparel brand based in NYC. He was the executive owner of brand vision, creative strategy, and storytelling across product, campaigns, digital, retail, and community in a founder-led, high-growth DTC environment.
A product company that needed to become a brand.
Ten Thousand had built a devoted following on the strength of the product itself — training shorts engineered to a standard the category had not seen. Growth, though, was running on performance marketing and word of mouth. The brand was known for what it made, not for what it believed.
Becoming a brand meant building a world and holding it everywhere the customer touched us: performance ads, the site, the emails, the social feeds, and the physical collateral — hangtags, packaging, the box that shows up at the door. Every one of those had to feel like the same company with the same standard.
Because I was an athlete who lived in the product, and a former designer of menswear, that world extended upstream. I worked inside product line planning, design, and wear testing, so the story and the garment were built to the same standard rather than one being written after the other.
The work is the story
This customer does not want to be sold an aspiration. They want proof of effort. Every asset had to be earned on the training floor, not staged in a studio.
Community is the media channel
The strongest distribution was not paid. It was athletes, coaches, and members who already lived the standard and would carry it forward if the work was honest.
Consistency compounds
A recognizable system — type, color, photography, tone — makes every subsequent piece work harder. The discipline was worth more than any single campaign.
Product is the proof
No amount of storytelling survives a product that underdelivers. The brand could only claim a standard the garment already met, so the creative stayed tethered to what engineering could defend.
Build the brand for people who
DO HARD THINGS.
One standard, expressed everywhere: film that documents real training rather than performing it, product storytelling that leads with rigorus testing, a visual system that holds from a paid social frame to a physical catalog, and community activations that puts the brand in the gym, track, trail or ocean with the athletes it serves.
Campaigns & Films
Five content franchises built to run year after year: Feats of Strength, Do Hard Things, FIT, Stoic Grit, and Signs of Strength. Each one documents real athletes at work, and each one keeps the brand in the conversation between product drops.
Brand Photography
A photographic standard that reads as documentary rather than catalog: available light, real gyms and streets, athletes mid-effort. One shoot fed the campaign, the site, email, paid, social, and retail.
Design
Site, email, social, paid and packaging built on one design system, so the brand holds together whether a customer meets it on a product page, a story ad, or the box it ships in.
Product
Storytelling that leads with the engineering — fabric, fit, and construction explained the way the people who build it would explain it.
Partnerships
Athlete and brand partnerships selected for credibility and reach, structured so the brand earned its place rather than rented it.
Events & Community
Paid media keeps getting more expensive and less trusted. People now take their cues from the people they train alongside, so a brand's strongest marketing is a community that wears the product because they believe in it.
At Ten Thousand we built that community one athlete at a time. Our BTY (Better Than Yesterday) event series brought the brand to life over three days in NYC and Miami for athletes who wanted to learn, grow, and be better than yesterday. Experts in fitness, mindset, and health and wellness gave talks alongside workout sessions, recovery sessions, and contrast therapy. Athletes left with tools to change their lives.
Hyrox, one of the fastest-growing sports competitions in the world, became our proving ground. Our Comp Team of 50 athletes raced at every major US event in custom city-specific gear such as TRAIN NYC, which made Ten Thousand one of the most visible brands on the course.
Brand Identity
The system underneath all of it — type, color, mark, tone, and the rules that let a growing team make new work without diluting the brand.
Business Impact
The brand work was measured the same way the business was. Figures reflect the period of tenure.