James: the gap I kept finding

Before PRO | ORA, James spent his career in fashion and manufacturing, working across the full lifecycle of a product: design, development, production, launch. He studied Natural Sciences at Bath, then spent several years on the manufacturing and distribution side of sport, most recently at Origin Global, before setting out on his own.

He is also a high level racquet sport athlete, playing squash and tennis at club first team level, and it was on court that the gap first became obvious. Men's performance wear was doing its job technically: it moved with you, it dried fast, it held up over years of use. But it rarely looked considered. Fabric choice felt like an afterthought, colour felt like an afterthought, and the design brief seemed to stop at function.

That gap, seen from inside the industry and from inside a sports bag, became the starting point for PRO | ORA.

You can read the fuller story of PRO | ORA, and what we build differently, on our Our Story page.