I found this photo in my camera roll recently.

It’s from one of the earlier days of CORYX.

There’s nothing particularly special about the photo itself. I’m sitting in front of a small booth, surrounded by clothes, equipment and whatever we could fit into the space.

But looking at it now feels strange.

Because I remember exactly what CORYX felt like at that point.

It was still mostly an idea.

I had a picture in my head of what I wanted it to become, but the reality in front of me was much smaller.

A few products.

A booth.

A logo.

And a lot of belief that somehow this could turn into something bigger.

I had no idea how.

In the beginning, I was just trying to make something people would care about.

I’ve always been interested in fitness, sport, design and the culture around all of it.

But I didn’t want to create another brand that just put a logo on clothes.

I wanted to build something that had a world around it.

At the time, I couldn’t explain exactly what that meant.

I just knew how I wanted people to feel when they came across CORYX.

Like they had discovered something early.

Like they belonged to something that was still being built.

Like there was more coming.

So I started.

Not with a perfect strategy or some huge launch.

Just by making things and putting them out into the world.

And then watching what happened.

The first few people mattered more than they probably realised.

When someone bought something in those early days, I noticed.

You remember the first orders.

You remember seeing someone wearing something you designed.

You remember somebody coming up to a booth and already knowing the name.

Those moments sound small now.

At the time, they meant everything.

Because every time somebody chose CORYX, the idea became a little more real.

It went from something I believed in to something other people were beginning to believe in too.

Then those people told other people.

Someone wore a shirt to the gym.

Someone brought a friend to an event.

Someone followed the page.

Someone messaged us.

Someone came back and bought something else.

And slowly, without there being one big moment where everything changed, CORYX started becoming bigger than the thing I had originally created.

Somewhere along the way, the clothes became the beginning rather than the destination.

The interesting thing is that I still love seeing people wearing CORYX.

Probably more now than when we started.

Because I know what sits behind it.

I know where it started.

I know how many conversations, ideas, late nights, events, mistakes and small wins happened between that photograph and where we are today.

And the more people we met, the more the idea evolved.

We started doing more events.

Meeting more people.

Working with athletes, trainers, creatives and businesses.

Building new ideas around fitness and sport.

Trying things that had nothing to do with simply selling another shirt.

And that’s when I realised that what I actually wanted to build was never just a clothing company.

The clothing was simply the first way people could become part of it.

There have been a lot of moments where I’ve wondered what this could become.

That question still hasn’t gone away.

If anything, it has gotten bigger.

The difference now is that I can look around and see that other people are part of the answer.

People I didn’t know when I started this.

People who came to an event.

People who bought something.

People who collaborated with us.

People who simply kept following along.

That part means more to me than almost anything else.

Because there’s something very different about watching an idea that once existed only in your head begin to exist in other people’s lives.

And I think that's why this photograph stayed with me.

It reminds me that none of this appeared overnight.

It was built slowly.

Person by person.

Moment by moment.

And we’re still building it.

I don’t really want to write a paragraph here pretending we’ve reached some destination.

We haven’t.

There is still so much I want to do with CORYX.

Some of it is already being built.

Some of it is still an idea sitting in my notes.

And some of it probably hasn’t occurred to me yet.

That’s the exciting part.

When I look at this photo now, I don’t only think about how far things have come.

I think about how early this might still be.

Maybe a few years from now I’ll find another photo from today and feel exactly the same way.

I hope so.

To everyone who has been part of the journey so far, thank you.

And if you’ve been watching from the outside, maybe you’re still early too.

Take a piece of the journey with you.