Most startups spend years and marketing budget building a brand from nothing. Vettex Sports, an Atlanta athletic gear company, used a partnership with its oldest distributor, Markwort Sporting Goods, to skip that step and build under a name that already had history. Today the company’s gear sits in more than 60 college and high school programs, including Georgia Tech Athletics.
The shortcut ran through a network of Georgia Tech ties that starts in a 2019 classroom and ends at a 1931 sporting goods manufacturer run by three generations of Yellow Jackets. Mike Pullen, the founder and CEO, framed the deal as letting his team pour energy into products rather than name recognition from zero. Pullen is also currently a medical student, and the dual track, biomedical engineering and medicine, is the lens he says shapes every product decision.
From a Materials Course to a Named Brand
The idea for Vettex Sports started in a Georgia Tech classroom in 2019, when biomedical engineering students Mike Pullen and Mat Quon built a grip-enhancing arm sleeve for a course called Materials Science and Engineering of Sports, taught by materials researcher Jud Ready. The sleeve was designed to help football players hold onto the ball while still protecting their arms from turf burns. At the time, Pullen said in the university’s own profile of his path, he had no plan to start a company. Encouraged by Ready, the project moved beyond the classroom and into CREATE-X, a Georgia Tech program that helps students launch startups through its Startup Launch accelerator. That program, in turn, introduced the team to the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Georgia Tech’s statewide startup accelerator, which Pullen called a “really valuable support system” as the company grew.
The first outside money followed in 2021, in a round supported largely through Georgia Tech alumni funding, including an investment from GTF Ventures. An Atlanta startup news outlet featured the company in 2020 while it was still called LZRD Tech. By 2025, the founders had decided to rebrand to support an expansion beyond football into baseball and basketball. They looked inside their own distribution network and found Markwort, which had owned the Vettex name since 2008.
The 2025 rebrand to Vettex Sports reframed the company’s mission as bringing science-backed innovation to athletes across all sports worldwide, according to the company’s own timeline from 2019 founding to today’s roster. The company says it now supplies its products to more than 40 FBS football programs, hundreds of high schools, and tens of thousands of athletes across the country. That footprint came without the years of marketing spend most athletic gear companies need to build a brand from zero.
Three Generations of Yellow Jackets
Markwort Sporting Goods is a family-owned business run by three generations of Georgia Tech graduates, according to the full June 22 interview with Vettex CEO Mike Pullen. Markwort had owned the Vettex name for years, building the brand mostly around mouthguards. The Markwort Sporting Goods company, founded in 1931, also manufactures Game Face, Heart-Gard, C-Flap and the Markwort brand. Markwort became LZRD Tech’s oldest distributor before the two companies decided to formalize the partnership into a shared brand.
When we partnered with them, building under the Vettex name made a lot of sense: we got to stand on a brand with real history in the space, and they got a partner ready to bring new products and a modern, tech-forward flare to it. There’s also something fitting about the Georgia Tech connection given where we got our start. It lets us pour our energy into the product and the athlete instead of building name recognition from zero.
Pullen, Vettex Sports’ founder and CEO, told Hypepotamus the Georgia Tech connection made the partnership feel fitting, since both sides of the deal traced back to the same school. Markwort had owned the Vettex name since 2008, when it bought the Vettex Mouthguards product line, and the 2008 announcement of the Markwort-Vettex deal noted that production would stay in the United States, an unusual detail in a category that has moved heavily overseas. The most recognizable Markwort product in the Vettex line was the Double Guard Model 25, a one-piece mouthguard with a pronounced exterior lip protector worn by some professional and collegiate players.
The 60-Program Roster and the Patent Behind It
Vettex Sports now counts partnerships with more than 60 university and high school programs, including Georgia Tech Athletics. The company’s products are also used by professional athletes, though Vettex has not publicly named them. The expansion runs across football, baseball, and basketball.
The product line splits into grip gear, cooling gear, and dry gear that pulls trapped sweat away from the body. In April 2024 the startup received a patent for its grip-enhancing textile, the same family of materials that started as a class project in Jud Ready’s course. Newest additions include baseball training equipment and a mouthguard designed to work with braces. The baseball and basketball lines opened the door to non-football athletes without diluting the football-first engineering that built the brand. Pullen frames the move into new sports as a chance to test the same materials science against different performance demands.
Pullen says product decisions at Vettex run through a strict filter that begins with the athlete and a real problem worth solving. The filter, applied to every new SKU, weighs customer requests, gaps in the market, and where the team can build something genuinely better than just adding another product. The discipline, Pullen told Hypepotamus, is meant to keep the lineup tight.
“We’d rather do a few things exceptionally well than flood the lineup, so a lot of ideas get cut,” Pullen said. The ideas that survive are the ones where the team is confident they can make a meaningful difference for the athlete wearing the product. Vettex’s own about page describes the company as engineering equipment for football, baseball, and basketball athletes, with flagship products including the Grip Sleeve, the Compression Grip Shirt, and the original DoubleGuard lip protector mouthguard. The Grip Sleeve and Compression Grip Shirt are NCAA and NFHS legal and sold through the company’s website and team bulk orders.
A CEO in Two Classrooms
The CEO who oversees that filter is a 2020 Georgia Tech graduate who is also currently a medical student. Pullen splits his time between running Vettex Sports and the demands of medical school, a dual track that started in biomedical engineering. He entered CREATE-X as a student with no plan to be a founder, according to the same university account. Pullen has said the medical training gives him a different lens on product than most founders in the athletic gear space have. Studying how the body moves, performs, and recovers shapes how he thinks about each new product. The discipline of medicine, he said, keeps him “rigorous” about the claims the company makes.
As I go further in medicine, I see Vettex evolving toward gear that’s not just about performance on the field but about supporting the athlete’s body in a smarter, more informed way. The discipline of medicine also keeps me rigorous: I want our claims to be real and our products to be backed by an understanding of how they actually affect the athlete.
As Pullen advances in medicine, he sees Vettex evolving toward gear that supports the athlete’s body in a smarter, more informed way, beyond raw on-field performance. That direction would push the company into recovery and protection products alongside its performance line. Vettex’s newest products already lean in that direction, including baseball training equipment and a braces-compatible mouthguard that addresses the dental side of athletic performance. The intersection of sport and science, Pullen said, is where Vettex sets itself apart.
The ATDC continues to support the company through investor materials review and introductions to industry partners, work that continues years after the CREATE-X program ended. Pullen described CREATE-X and ATDC as “always there to help you,” a long-term support system rather than a one-time accelerator stint. The Georgia Tech commercialization ecosystem is where Pullen expects Vettex to keep finding mentors and partners as the product line grows.
The Filter Decides the Future
The next test of Vettex’s product filter is baseball, where the company has rolled out a new line of training equipment alongside its grip and dry gear. A braces-compatible mouthguard extends the same materials science into a population traditional mouthguards have not served well. The company says its flagship products are NCAA and NFHS legal, a regulatory box most athletic gear startups have to clear before they can sell to high school programs. Pullen says the path forward stays narrow by design, even as the addressable market keeps expanding.
- Founded in 2019 as LZRD Tech in a Georgia Tech classroom
- First outside funding in 2021, supported largely by GTF Ventures and Georgia Tech alumni funding
- Rebrand completed in 2025 as Vettex Sports
The product filter Pullen described is the guardrail that keeps Vettex out of the SKU sprawl that drags many young athletic gear companies into commodity competition. Pullen told Hypepotamus the company would rather do a few things exceptionally well than flood the lineup, and a lot of ideas get cut at the planning stage. Vettex’s baseball and braces-compatible launches are the first public check on whether that filter holds.
