Mina

Hey there, let me introduce you to Mina, my lovely wife and one of our co founders. I like to think of Mina as a super hero who would have a public life as a lawyer and a more secretive one as a training freak. Her super power being to support me every day, trust me this can be very challenging.

I am writing down these words during the Corona virus crisis and we are confined in our house. This is a very hard situation for many and our heart goes to all the victims and less fortunate of us. During these difficult times Mina has been training day and night as the amount of work got lighter for her: meditation in the morning, yoga at noon and some HIIT if possible at night. Our daughter keeps bothering her but she kind of got acquainted with seeing her mom jump all over the place, she even started copycatting her.

Before the crisis Mina had to travel a lot for her work and we spent endless hours picking the right hotel that would offer fitness accommodations or that would be close to a gym. And when those destinations where a bit out of this world, she would train in her bed room at body weight.

Mina is what I call we call at Jadduu a #truefitnomad.

This is mina doing squats in the corridor of her hotel in Portugal. Told you she is a freak :)

Hassan

This is my buddy Hassan, we’ve known each other from high-school. Hassan graduated from Oxford England before returning to live in Morocco. He is a true fit nomad but a particular one ; he doesn’t leave much the city he leaves in. Don’t mention it to him but I believe he is scared of flying. Nonetheless between his actual work in the real estate industry and all his sports activities, he joined Mina and I to launch Jadduu.

Hassan is passionate of outdoor sports and he brought a good expertise in that field when we were working on our activewear collections and our accessoires.

He's got the looks right :)

Reda 

At last, me, Reda, I have just been in love with sports since my early ages. I would do anything as long as I could sweat it out. After graduating in Canada in Business, I have had quite a life as an entrepreneur with some good outcomes and some more difficult times. I launched a daily newspaper, produced musicians, made website for companies, launched a software review website in the US and Canada, opened restaurants, opened a fitness gym…but one thing remained common during all these years, I was eager to train no matter where I was.

My schedule got very busy and my windows of opportunity to train shrunk to almost nothing. I had to find out a solution ; I decided to either skate board or bike to get to the office and other meetings I had during the day. The only issue is that I often arrived all sweaty and people would make pity of me when they saw me arriving in that shape.

Just forget in what shape I got when I hit a High Intensity Interval Training in between meeting, I could barely present myself in front of someone.

This is me almost dying after a HIIT session in a small hotel in Barcelona

Mina had another issue on the other hand, when travelling for 3 days she’d always pack her training gear, but now she had to carry a bigger luggage as her fitness equipment was cumbersome and she needed one outfit for each day.

And Hassan, well he was Hassan, that hot Malibu tanned type of guy who got style ! And we all know we like comfort and technical gear, but if at the same time we could have some game, that’d be just the best of the two worlds. So Hassan not only brought his experience of outdoor sports but also put his nose on the designs and I have to admit that we could never have done something so cool without him.

I have told you the Why, now let me tell the how.

It was my birthday and I received a pair of sneakers of a brand I have never heard of. Well I am sure that all of you know about it but what can I say, I am a moron.

That brand was AllBirds. At first it was just another good looking pair of sneakers. I throw them in my closet for another day to wear. Two months later I totally forgot about that pair of shoes, I had to travel last minute and couldn’t stop by the house for more then 10 min just to pick my passports so I asked Mina to pack me a backpack for a couple of days and guess what ? She stuffs in the Allbirds. I am the kinda of guy who likes his routine, when travelling I would always take my pair of Nike with me, it is dark, light, I can wear them for meetings and train with it.

I got to admit I was a bit disappointed when I opened my backpack to train and discovered the Allbirds, I was like what the F***, without other options I decided to try them on and went for a run.  It took me 30 secondes to understand that the Allbirds were Allspecials. And this is the day I discovered the Merino Wool (Allbirds are made of Merino wool), the backbone of Jadduu's activewear. A super light fabric that would regulate your body temperature, let your pores breath seamlessly, would dry in a blink of an eye and would not wrinkle. 

So now I had the Why and the How. It was time to launch our baby, Jadduu, which is believe it or not the actual nickname of our daughter Jade.

FYI :)

Jade is a plant, also known as lucky plant, it is a succulent plant with small pink or white flowers that is native to the KwaZulu-Natal province and Eastern Cape of South Africa and Mozambique, and is common as a houseplant worldwide.

Jade is also a stone of purity or purification. And because jade is regarded as a stone that protects and supports loving heart energy, jade also symbolizes gentleness and nourishment. For some users of jade, the stone may have the feeling of an ancient sage that is so centered that merely being in its presence creates a feeling of being elevated and nurtured. 

Isn't it great :) ?

Building our prototype collection

We had to figure out how to produce our collection and none of us had never done that. 

First of all we read everything possible on the Merino wool. From the start we wanted to be a company that cares about the environnement and the workers in the production chain, if we couldn't manage to control the whole process and reflect our core values we decided we wouldn't launch our project.

It was time for me to grab a backpack and to go on a tour. I flew all around the planet to understand better that Merino wool, I only wore Merino wool made clothing to test it during my trip. 

Well I am up there on the top left corner :). I visited so many fairs and travelled so many countries to follow the steps of the Merino wool and to find a supplier that would produce our collections while fitting our standards. 

It took me more then 6 months to secure the fabric and find the right supplier. We now had to design the collection. 

As you must have guessed, neither of us has any talent in drawings even though Hassan had the right sens of what we wanted but he could just not lay it down on paper. 

We tried to find designers here and there but couldn't find the right person for the project.

The epiphany

It was at sunrise, in a yoga retreat in the mountains that I finally met the "One", a designer fond of sports, someone that not only understood us but had the skills to design the perfect collection as we had imagined it for so long now. 

Well just kidding, we find Josh after I posted a job on Upwork, the freelancers platform.

But this where the magic happened, in fact Josh loved to train like us and often had to move from town to town to accomplish his work. He would suffer the same issues we had during his trips.

We decided to try him out and see what he would come up with. Before seeing anything, his involvement in the project was astonishing and we had no doubt in the success of our collaboration. 

He came up with a flawless collection, well at least to our eyes :)

Since that day he joined the family and he is now one of the main architect of our company. 

Meet Josh ! It may not have happened without him

Not the good looking smiling dude who looks like a character from Desperate Housewives, he is in the back talking on the phone probably with one of our providers.

If you are interested in the guy in the foreground, here is his digits +336******** :)

And this how we built our first collection, the collection we will be launching soon.