The story
Wajdan Gul is a Pakistani marketer who holds an MBA in marketing and worked in digital marketing before moving to Dubai with his wife, Anam Khalid, in 2015. There they saw that gym goers mostly wore Nike or Adidas, while fitness communities abroad had specialist brands of their own. The couple first tried to become distributors for international gymwear labels, but none replied, so they started Squatwolf in 2016 with no fashion background. Factories across Asia rejected them for months until one in China agreed, and they put AED 250,000 of their savings into a first collection that mostly sold out before it arrived. When COVID closed gyms, they targeted countries where gyms were still open, switched on global ads and woke up to orders from 60 countries. In 2023 ASCA Capital agreed to invest up to $30 million. Squatwolf now sells in more than 120 countries, runs a large Riyadh warehouse and opened its first Dubai Mall store in 2024.
By the numbers
Their company
UAERetailSquatwolf
Dubai gymwear brand selling premium performance clothing online and in GCC stores
