The story of Ciele Athletics is equal parts right place and right time plus a keen eye for what's happening and need in the running market. Ciele became one of the brands worn by all types of runners from road to trail to ultra runners to park runners. It was a running brand that made all other running brands elevate their branding efforts.

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Jeremy Bresnen founded Ciele Athletics Inc./Ciele Athlétique Inc. with Mike Giles in 2014 in the now-great running city of Montreal. I started running around 2012 and clearly remember seeing Ciele on the shelf at Salt Lake Running Company circa 2015.

I bought a hat almost instinctively and no doubt irresistibly.

I wasn't sure I wanted to even run in it yet becuase I loved it so much and didn't want to ruin it from the 100 degree July days. Eventually I bought a second Ciele hat - one for running and one for around town.

It was the first brand I wore while not running to signal to everyone that I was a runner. Ciele transcended any single type of running and permeated anywhere runners cared about performance and style - road, trail, and track from 5k to ultra distances.

They emerged with a cohort of brands still going today like Tracksmith, Oiselle, Janji, and SATISFY. This co-hort of early 2010s brands were all seeing something similar - people were not simply running - they were runners.

Jeremy Bresnen tells the story of Ciele while on a long walk with me from founding to today with thoughts on the future. From the days of hats-only to today where they create all sorts of running apparel and different styles of hats all built around performance first then style.

Presented by Kiprun.

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