What We're Building Next (And Why It's Taking This Long)
We could have launched faster. We chose not to.
The fitness industry moves fast. New products launch constantly. New brands announce new supplements, new accessories, and new clothing lines on tight timelines driven by what's achievable rather than what's right.
We've watched that pattern closely. We've also watched what happens to the products that come out of it, the quality issues, the quietly reformulated ingredients, the certifications that don't quite mean what they imply.
DEVOTED was built around a different question: what's the standard, and does this actually meet it?
What the Standard Actually Looks Like
When we built The Steel Shaker, the question was simple. What is the best possible material for a vessel that something goes into your body from, multiple times a day, every day? The answer ruled out plastic entirely. That meant a more expensive product to manufacture, a harder sourcing problem, and a longer development timeline.
We made those tradeoffs because the alternative was building something that looked good while being made from the material we'd spent months explaining the problems with. That's not a standard. That's a marketing exercise.
The same logic applies to everything we build next.
The creatine question:
We sell creatine to customers who are already thinking carefully about what goes into their body. Putting it in a plastic tub with a plastic scoop would have been indefensible given everything we've published in this journal. So we didn't. The development timeline on the packaging alone took longer than most brands spend on their entire product launch.
The clothing question:
The research on PFAS in activewear, microplastic shedding during exercise, and chemical absorption through sweat-soaked skin has been building throughout this journal. We've been building toward something that addresses it. We're not ready to say everything yet. But the standard is the same one we apply to everything else: would we put this against our own body without a second thought?
Why it takes this long:
Every material decision requires sourcing verification. Every supplier requires independent testing. Every claim we make in this journal requires us to have already solved the problem in the product before we publish the post about it. We don't write about problems we haven't already addressed in what we make.
That takes longer. It's worth it.
Watch This Space
The next chapter of DEVOTED is closer than it's ever been. If you've read this far in this journal, you'll want to be the first to know when it arrives.
