2025 Founder Reflection 📝

RUNLY NEWSLETTER #138
Tues Dec 30th 2025

It’s the end of the year. A big year, full of ups and downs.

I wanted to use this final founder update of the year to reflect on a few moments that genuinely shaped 2025 for us.

Because if this year gave me only one thing, it’s content for this newsletter 😅

Okay, community, trust, relationships, a few new grey hairs… all that stuff too.

But still. Content.

The year of events (and being humbled weekly)

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with events.

It’s 95% love, 5% “why do I do this to myself”.

The love part is obvious.

It’s the atmosphere. The nervous energy. The start lines. The finish lines.

It’s that sip of warm coffee at 6.15am while you’re standing in your activation watching runners shuffle past with that “I’m about to do something hard” look on their face.

It’s the conversations.

The ones that start with, “I’ve been following you guys for ages”, and end with me feeling like I’ve known you for ten years.

The hate part?

Bump-ins. Bump-outs. Logistics. Storage. Maintenance.

The part where you’re carrying wet, muddy gear 200m to the car in sideways rain, questioning all your life decisions.

And this year… we did a lot of it.

Someone replied to one of my IG stories and said 'I'm convinced it only rains when you're at an event'.

Gold Coast. Sydney. Melbourne. Grassroots events in between. And one “disaster” that I’ll never forget.

So let’s go there.

Gold Coast Marathon: our first interstate expo 

Gold Coast was one of those weeks where you have 73 things that could go wrong… and somehow you still convince yourself it’ll be smooth.

It was our first indoor expo. Our first time shipping everything up. Our first time being so far away from home that if you forget scissors, you don’t just “bring them tomorrow”.

And despite all the stress, all the planning, and all the “please let the pallets arrive” anxiety…

Walking in and seeing Runly’s name on the booth… I had to pinch myself.

Little Melbourne brand. Amongst the global giants.

It’s a proud feeling.

And then you meet runners all day, for three straight days, and your feet are cooked and your voice is gone, and you get back to the hotel and think…

“I’m exhausted. But I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.”

That week was also the beginning of something else. In all honesty, we made a lot of errors. I booked probably one of the worst spots on the expo floor, we used a setup that was extremely tedious, and I tried to do everything myself.

But they were all invaluable lessons.

Sydney Marathon: World Major

Sydney was… I don’t even know how to describe it without sounding dramatic.

It felt bigger. More meaningful.

The first Sydney Mara as a Major.

The expo was basically Disney World for runners.

Big brands doing huge activations. People flying in from everywhere. A global energy.

And then there’s me, with a small team, screwing together frame parts like I’m building IKEA furniture in hell.

But that’s the point, isn’t it.

We don’t have a crew of ten people in matching shirts swooping in to build things in 45 minutes.

We do it the hard way.

And weirdly, I’m proud of that.

Because it’s us.

Sydney also reinforced something I’ve been thinking about more and more:

We don’t do these events to “make money”.

That might sound insane, because we literally sell running gear.

But the real ROI, if you want to think about it that way, is the trust.

The conversations. The feedback. The “hey Robbie” moments.

You can’t buy that.

And when someone tells you they’ve turned down a bigger brand because they want to support the one that actually shows up… that hits you right in the feels.

Sydney was pure magic.

Melbourne Marathon: hometown energy

Melbourne is different.

It’s the festival vibe.

It’s the feeling that the marathon starts days before the race, because the whole city is humming.

It’s the MCG finish line moment.

And it’s also personal, because it’s home.

But I’ll be honest… Melbourne also brought up a lot for me.

I’ve been dealing with this chronic knee injury for what feels like forever.

18 months of being injured is a long time to watch from the sidelines.

Every event, I’m surrounded by thousands of people having the exact finish line moment that I miss.

And it’s painful. Not just physically, but mentally.

I want that moment again.

And when my surgeon tells me “you probably won’t run again”, I understand the words…

But I don’t accept the story.

Whether it’s next year, or in ten years, I’m still chasing that start line. Even if it’s a 5k.

Melbourne this year was also our biggest event yet.

More people. More chats. More product. More staff. More activation.

And the socks.

Over 1,000 pairs of Limited Edition Melbourne Socks given away across three days.

Absolute madness.

Pure chaos.

I loved it.

The 2XU Wellness Run disaster

If you’ve read newsletter #136, you already know this one.

But it deserves a place in the year recap because honestly…

It’s the perfect Runly story.

We had a new marquee. Bigger. Heavier. Twice the size.

We bump-in the day before. Everything set. Stock on display. Tables covered. Ready to go.

I’m winding down at home, about to sleep.

And I see an email:

“Call me asap mate”

You just know.

I call him.

“Mate… security called me. Your activation has been ravaged by a freak gust of wind.”

Ravaged.

Not “a little messy”.

Not “you might need to adjust a wall”.

Ravaged.

So I drive over at 11pm. Walls stripped off. Displays bent like modern art. Stock on the floor. Rain coming in sideways.

And I’m standing there thinking: “We’re trading in 8 hours. What now?”

And then the next morning… I pull in early and there’s someone in the marquee.

My old man.

Sitting there with towels, tools, fixing displays, like it’s just another Tuesday.

We got something going. Fixed a few things. Had to chuck things out. But we traded. It wasn’t perfect, but it happened.

And that weekend reminded me of something that might sound small, but isn’t:

Quitting is rarely about the big moments.

It’s about the moment at 11pm in sideways rain when everything looks cooked, and you decide whether you’re the person who packs it in… or the person who figures it out.

4th birthday: four years in, still feels surreal

This year Runly turned four.

Four years since nine people bought our first vest.

Four years since I thought, “okay… maybe there’s something here.”

In those four years we’ve gone from:

- A tiny first launch
- To selling thousands and thousands of vests
- To expanding into new products
- To events across the country
- To this newsletter being a weekly ritual I genuinely look forward to

And I know it sounds cheesy, but I still get that same feeling when I see someone wearing Runly in the wild.

Like… you chose our thing.

That’s crazy to me.

A few other moments that defined the year

A couple of things that stood out beyond the big events:

1) We kept showing up.
Not perfectly. Not with everything figured out. But consistently.

2) The community got louder.
More familiar faces at events. More “been reading for ages”. More DMs. More tagged photos. More stories.

3) The product range kept growing.
Vests are our heart, always will be. But socks, caps, accessories… they’ve become part of the Runly uniform for a lot of runners, which is awesome to see.

4) The brand became more “real”.
Not in a glossy, corporate way. In a “we’ve earned our stripes” way.

What I’m taking into 2026

A few simple things.

- Events are hard, and they’re worth it.
- Community is the real moat.
- “Done” is better than perfect (even when your displays look like they’ve been in a wind      tunnel).
- And this brand grows because you guys keep choosing to be part of it.

I don’t take that lightly.

If you bought something this year, stopped by at an event, replied to one of these emails, tagged us, or just quietly followed along…

Thank you. Genuinely.

See you in 2026.

Run well,
Robbie