Oxfit Sports started in 1998 as a 5,445 sq ft apparel and sportswear unit in Sialkot, founded by Muhammad. Twenty-eight years later we still ship from the same city, the same family-owned business — now operating from a 16,335 sq ft factory (three times the original size), making boxing, MMA, martial-arts, and fitness gear for buyers in 25+ countries. This is the long version of how we got here.
Our story — from a 5,445 sq ft start to 25 countries
The city that came first (1880s onwards)
To explain Oxfit you have to start with Sialkot itself. The city has been making sports goods since the 1880s and is today the world’s largest single-city cluster for hand-stitched sports goods. The workshops survived partition in 1947, both World Wars, and seven decades of economic cycles. This is the supply chain Oxfit was born into: not a startup in a new industry, but a new business in a 130-year-old craft cluster.
By the time Oxfit was founded, three things were already true about Sialkot that don’t apply anywhere else. Every component supplier (leather, foam, thread, eyelets, packaging) sits within a 4 km radius of the factories. The workforce learnt their stitching from fathers and grandfathers who learnt from theirs. And by the late 1990s the industry had committed publicly to monitored, age-verified stitching centres with international oversight. Oxfit started on that foundation.
1998 — Founded by Muhammad
Muhammad opened Oxfit Sports in a 5,445 sq ft unit in 1998. The first product lines weren’t boxing gloves or fight gear — they were apparel, sportswear, and fitness wear: training vests, gym shirts, fitness tops, shorts. Apparel was the right place to start: shorter learning curve, less expensive equipment, faster cash cycle than the long-lead-time fight-gear orders Sialkot is famous for.
Within the first couple of years, a buyer in the United States placed Oxfit’s first significant order. That relationship became the company’s foundation customer — and we are still supplying them today, more than a quarter of a century later. That continuity matters more than the dollar value: it means we’ve watched one buyer’s ordering patterns evolve across decades of market cycles, which informs how we advise every new wholesale buyer who comes through the door.
2001 — Expansion into combat sports
Three years in, an established Swedish sports brand approached Oxfit with a different brief: they wanted to consolidate their European fight-gear supply with a Sialkot manufacturer who could handle apparel and combat-sports gear from the same factory. The collaboration meant retooling for boxing gloves, MMA gloves, hand wraps, focus pads, head guards, and martial-arts uniforms — a different production discipline from apparel.
This is the year Oxfit became what most buyers know us as now: a full-range fight-gear and fitness manufacturer rather than an apparel-only workshop. The Swedish collaboration also brought European-spec quality processes — pre-shipment inspections, batch documentation, AQL-grade quality control — practices that became standard for every Oxfit order afterwards, not just the European ones.
2004 — Tripling the factory
By 2004 the 5,445 sq ft unit was the limiting factor. We moved into a 16,335 sq ft factory — three times the original space. The new building allowed separate zones for leather cutting, foam stack assembly, hand-stitching, and finishing/QC, all under one roof. It also let us build proper drying racks for the 6-to-24-hour foam-cure cycle premium boxing gloves require — small detail, big quality impact.
This is still the building we work in today. The 16,335 sq ft footprint, plus the workforce we’ve grown into it, sets our practical capacity: 80–150 finished pairs per day depending on customisation depth.
2009 — Second generation joins
In 2009 the founder’s next generation joined the business. The handover wasn’t dramatic — Sialkot family businesses transition gradually, with the next generation usually starting on the factory floor and moving into operations and sales over years. Today both generations are actively involved in the business.
2026 — Where we are now
Twenty-eight years in:
- 125 to 150 craftspeople work in the factory, depending on the order book and season.
- 25+ countries receive shipments regularly — including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, UAE, New Zealand, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, Sweden, and Norway.
- Our founding US customer is still active — the relationship is in its third decade.
- 24-hour reply on every quote — a service standard we commit to publicly so buyers can hold us to it.
- MOQ from 50 pieces per material/size combination — small enough for first-time buyers and brand startups, big enough for FCL container orders.
Inside the 16,335 sq ft factory
Our factory at Nar-Gate Street, Jinah Park, Colony No. 2, Sialkot-51310 has four working zones:
- Leather and pattern-cutting zone (front of building) — clicker press for steel-die cutting of cowhide and buffalo panels; laser-cutter for synthetic sheet stock; cut-panel sorting trays.
- Foam-stack and assembly area — IMF (injection-moulded foam) and layered foam stacks; drying racks holding 200–300 stacks at a time; inner-lining sock assembly.
- Hand-stitching hall (the largest zone) — rows of kharad benches where two-needle saddle-stitching joins panels at roughly 6 stitches per minute. Premium gloves see 50 minutes of attentive stitching per pair.
- QC, branding, and packaging (back of building) — visual inspection, weight calibration to ±5 g of nominal, embroidery / debossing / sublimation stations, poly-bag, hangtag, and carton packing for FCL / LCL / air freight.
If you want a deeper look at what happens inside the building, our 14-stage factory walkthrough covers the production process end to end.
What we make
Four broad product families, each available wholesale and as OEM / private label with custom branding:
- Boxing equipment — boxing gloves (training, sparring, professional, competition), punch bags, focus pads, hand wraps, head guards, groin guards, mouth guards, speed bags.
- MMA equipment — MMA gloves (training, sparring, grappling, competition), MMA shorts, rash guards, shin guards, BJJ gis.
- Martial arts uniforms — Karate gi, Taekwondo dobok, Judo gi, BJJ gi, Sambo kurtkas, ranking belts.
- Fitness apparel and accessories — gym vests, t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, tracksuits, gym shorts, weightlifting belts, lifting straps, knee and ankle supports, wrist wraps.
The 1998 apparel line is still very much part of what we do — we never stopped making it, we just added fight gear on top of it.
How we work with wholesale buyers
Three buyer paths, depending on what you need:
- Stock / catalogue orders — pick our existing products, specify size split and quantity, get a quote within 24 hours.
- Private label — our existing product designs produced with your logo, hangtag, and carton branding. Free digital mockup before sample stage. Sample in 7–14 days, bulk in 25–45 days.
- Full OEM — products built to your spec: custom patterns, custom materials, custom packaging. Free design mockup; sample fee charged but deductible from the bulk order. Larger lead time on first run; subsequent reorders are faster.
Default payment terms are 30% T/T deposit, 70% balance before shipment. Repeat buyers may qualify for Net 30 or LC at sight after the first successful order.
Why buyers choose Oxfit
Four things wholesale buyers tell us they value most:
- You talk to the people who actually make the goods. No middleman trading-company layer. Quotes are reviewed by our operations team; production samples are inspected before they ship.
- MOQ from 50 pieces. Most Chinese factories quote 500+ pieces minimum. Sialkot’s clustered supply chain lets us cost-effectively run 50-piece batches — which means brand startups, gym chains, and pilot programs can order without committing to a year’s worth of stock.
- Genuine hand-stitching. The majority of stitching on our premium boxing gloves is hand-saddle-stitched on kharad benches. The seams hold up under bag work in ways machine stitching does not.
- 28 years of unbroken operation. Sialkot has many sports-goods exporters; Oxfit is one of the longer-running ones. Continuity matters because the institutional knowledge — fabric supplier relationships, freight-forwarder reliability ratings, customs-broker networks — exists in our team rather than in someone’s head who left last year.
What we believe
Three operating principles we’ve held since 1998:
- Stitching by hand outlasts machine stitching. A hand-saddle-stitched seam is mechanically stronger than a single-thread machine seam at the same gauge. The trade-off is time and labour cost. We’ve chosen quality every time, because returns from defective fight gear cost both sides more than the labour saved.
- Same family, same factory. Visits to the floor are welcome. Audits are welcome. The factory is not a virtual showroom hiding a trader.
- 24 hours, always. Every quote gets a written reply within 24 hours, including weekends and Pakistani public holidays. If you don’t hear back within 24 hours, the quote was lost in the inbox — please follow up.
Get in touch
Wholesale enquiries: our quote request form (24-hour reply).
WhatsApp / phone: +92-332-4556666 — direct to the customer-service team.
Email: info@oxfitsports.com.
Factory address (visits welcome by appointment):
Oxfit Sports
Nar-Gate Street, Jinah Park, Colony No. 2
Sialkot-51310, Punjab, Pakistan
Related reading: All buyer resources, How boxing gloves are made — factory walkthrough, Sialkot Sports Goods Industry — public data.