There are some sporting memories that never really leave us.
You may not remember the exact score, the date of the match or even who was sitting next to you when you watched it. But you remember the feeling. The excitement of watching a young Sachin Tendulkar walk out to bat. The anticipation before a big innings. The celebrations after a straight drive found the boundary. For millions of Indians, cricket was not simply a sport we watched; it became part of how we grew up.
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That is the power of nostalgia. And I believe it is becoming an increasingly interesting force in sportswear. Sportswear has traditionally been built around performance: speed, cushioning, stability, grip, technology and durability. These will always matter. But as sport becomes more intertwined with lifestyle, identity and culture, consumers are also looking for products that have something to say. They want products that perform, but they also want products that mean something.
This is where nostalgia can become powerful. It gives a brand an opportunity to take an emotion that already exists in the consumer’s mind and translate it into something tangible. For us at Ten x You, this thinking is particularly relevant because of the role Sachin Tendulkar has played in the genesis of the brand. When I first met Sachin in February 2024, the vision he articulated was much larger than creating another sportswear company. He wanted to help transform India from being a sports-loving nation into a sports-playing nation. The brand was meant to be built for regular people and everyday players, rather than only elite athletes.
That distinction has influenced everything we do.
When we began thinking about our Sachin-inspired shoe series, therefore, the obvious route would have been to create products carrying his name or signature. But that would have been the easy route. We wanted to do something more meaningful: take moments and memories from Sachin’s journey and interpret them through product design.
That is the thinking behind the series comprising NOX – The Debut Sneaker, Desert Storm and Straight Drive. Each product begins with a different memory. NOX takes us back to the beginning of Sachin’s international journey in November 1989. Desert Storm takes inspiration from one of the most iconic innings of his career. Straight Drive celebrates a shot that came to represent the elegance, balance and precision associated with his batting.
What makes these products interesting to me is that the nostalgia isn’t limited to a logo or a photograph. It is embedded in the details. The November ’89 references, the Test-inspired elements, the cricket-ball detailing, the visual cues from Sachin’s career and the storytelling around the Straight Drive are all ways of turning sporting history into product design.
In that sense, we are not simply selling a shoe. We are creating an object that allows someone to carry a memory forward. And that matters because nostalgia is rarely just about the past. It is about identity.
For someone who grew up watching Sachin, a shoe inspired by his career can evoke memories of childhood, family, friends and weekends spent watching cricket. For a younger consumer, it can have a different meaning: it can become a way of discovering the story of a player who shaped Indian cricket before they were old enough to watch him themselves.
This gives nostalgia the ability to cross generations. But there is an important caveat. Nostalgia can get someone to look at a product. It cannot make them come back to it if the product isn’t good.
This is something we have learned very clearly at Ten x You. In our early days, one of the most common reasons consumers gave us for purchasing was, “I bought this product because of Sachin.” We were obviously happy to hear that, but we also knew it could not be the foundation of the brand. The moment consumers started telling us, “I bought this because it is a very comfortable shoe,” and Sachin became the second reason, we knew we were moving in the right direction.
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That is an important distinction between celebrity association and product credibility. Sachin can be a powerful trust factor. But awareness and consideration ultimately have to come from the product itself.
This is also why we don’t look at Ten x You as a sneaker brand that happens to have a sporting association. We are a sports brand first. Our ambition is to create some of the most comfortable sports shoes in India, designed around Indian playing conditions and Indian consumers.
That product philosophy extends to how we develop our collections. We have been very deliberate about not simply picking products off the shelf, putting our logo on them and selling them. We have invested in design expertise, proprietary product development and manufacturing capabilities because we believe that the product has to stand on its own.
So, for us, the Sachin-inspired series represents the intersection of emotion and engineering. There is another reason I think nostalgia is becoming relevant to sportswear: the way people participate in sport is changing.
Sport is no longer restricted to the professional athlete or even the serious amateur. People run marathons, play weekend cricket, join community football groups, cycle with friends, play badminton after work or simply go for a walk. Our own brand philosophy, Never Stop Playing, comes from this idea that you don’t have to be the best in the world to feel on top of the world. You don’t need to be a professional tennis player to enjoy a game of tennis with your friends.
As sport becomes more accessible and more personal, the products associated with it can become more personal too. This is why I don’t think nostalgia in sportswear is about making products look retro. It is about making products feel relevant.
The most powerful nostalgic products don’t simply remind you of something that happened. They make you want to experience that feeling again. They take a moment from the past and give it a place in the present.
For a generation that grew up watching Sachin, that might mean putting on a pair of shoes and remembering the sound of a cricket ball hitting the middle of the bat. For someone younger, it might mean understanding why a particular shot, innings or moment mattered so much to their parents.
And perhaps that is the real opportunity for sportswear brands. The future of sportswear will certainly continue to be about better materials, better technology and better performance. But increasingly, it will also be about the stories we attach to those products.
Because when a product can deliver both comfort for the feet and meaning for the mind, it becomes more than something you wear.
It becomes something you remember. And perhaps that is the most powerful role nostalgia can play in sportswear: not taking us backwards but giving the past a new reason to move forward.
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