Two Entrepreneurs Capitalize on the NIL Ruling and Bring in Millions

Shanadi and his cofounder, Luke McGurrin, launched their first brand in 2013 when they were students at the University of Florida. They called it Greek House and did custom apparel for fraternities and sororities.

After graduating from college and eventually quitting their full-time jobs to go all-in on Greek House, the friends and business partners introduced two more brands in 2017 and 2020: College Thread, which creates custom merch for college organizations, and Threadly, which focuses on custom merch for businesses and non-profits.

In July 2021, in response to the new NIL legislation, Shanadi and McGurrin created a fourth brand specifically for athletes, Athlete’s Thread.

“We had always considered working with student-athletes, but we were legally not allowed to do it,” said Shanadi, who says they were prepared to jump on the opportunity. “We were following closely leading up to the ruling. We knew it was coming down the pipe.”

They were also equipped with nearly a decade of experience in the licensed custom apparel industry at that point, had established relationships with college campuses from running Greek House and College Thread, and had already built the technology necessary to manage and scale an apparel brand.

Despite being their newest brand, Athlete’s Thread, which makes merchandise co-branded with the college and the athlete, is already their most lucrative. In 2022, its first full year, Shanadi said the brand did six figures in sales. In 2023, it did seven figures. He expects to be an eight-figure business by the end of 2024.

The student-athletes are profiting, as well. Athlete’s Thread allows any college athlete to essentially launch a personal merch store for free. After they sign up on the platform, the Athlete’s Thread team builds out their catalog. If athletes hit certain sales goals, they get the option to work with the designers directly and design their own merch.

The athletes get paid out in two categories — royalties and affiliate commissions — and Shanadi says that the brand has paid out more than $500,000 just to student-athletes. By the end of 2024, he expects that number to be north of $1.5 million.

“We certainly work with the primary sports and the stars, but our focus is to support every athlete and build an equitable merchandise program for every college athlete,” he noted. As of March 2024, Athlete’s Thread is licensed with 150 colleges and has about 14,000 student-athletes on its platform.

Identifying opportunities and what type of business he’d build in 2024

Shanadi and McGurrin recognized the opportunity in the NIL space well before the official ruling.

“I went to the University of Florida where sports are very prevalent and football is very big, so I was friends with some of the guys on the team and definitely knew that this was a pain point for them and also an opportunity for them,” said Shanadi, who stays current in his industry by reading the news and talking to former and current athletes.

“Staying on the cusp of what’s happening in your industry and reading about it also ensures that you have a genuine curiosity about whatever industry you’re looking at going into. I’d say that that’s a really key quality of any good entrepreneur: genuine curiosity.”

Capitalizing on the NIL ruling has come with its challenges, particularly navigating the ever-changing state laws and university guidelines around what student-athletes can and can’t do.

“Once it happened, it’s kind of been the wild, wild west. Each state has its own set of laws, each college has its own set of policies, and every single month now it seems like the NCAA has a new lawsuit that’s being pursued,” he said, adding that staying up to date feels like less of a chore when you’re intrigued by and enjoy the space you’re working in. “I feel lucky that I get to do this every day — interface with athletics and get to watch March Madness and call it work.”

If he lost everything and had to start a business from scratch in 2024, he’d think about other industries that are underserved with regard to tech.

“I’d look for an industry that would essentially let me leverage existing tech, and find a very big market where tech is not serving that market base,” he said. To narrow it further, he’d ask himself four questions: “What am I passionate about? What is a big market? What is the problem? How am I going to solve it?”

That would lead him to where he is: the sports industry.

Specifically in the NIL space, “I don’t think there’s enough of an emphasis on Division 2 and Division 3 athletes, and women’s sports as a whole is highly underserved,” he said, adding: “This is what entrepreneurship is about: It’s taking risks and finding creative opportunities where you can go solve a problem in a different or a better way than the current solutions exist.”