The sustainable sportswear firm fighting throwaway culture

Lockr Space founder Akeem Kamara talks to Andy Martin about overcoming a stammer, catering to the ‘everyday athlete’ and watching the big brands play catch up

Karama began his entrepreneurial journey with five-a-side website Pitch Up (Lockr Space)

Two years ago, Akeem Bundu-Kamara bought a piece of sports kit on Amazon – a “base layer” top to keep him warm while playing football. It was cheap, but definitely not cheerful. It didn’t fit properly, it was never comfortable, and it didn’t smell good either. A complete waste of money – and liable to clog up the environment. “Everything about it was bad: it was designed to be thrown away,” says Kamara. Most of us would, in fact, just throw it away and move on. Kamara didn’t. His personal slogan is: “Do the opposite.” The result of him doing the opposite is Lockr Space, a new online platform dedicated to sustainable, quality sportswear.

Now 28, Kamara had a dramatic, you might say traumatic start in life. Born in London, he was packed off to Sierra Leone to spend a few years getting to know his grandparents – but then had to be evacuated out when first the UN and then finally British troops were called in to quell the civil war.

Safely back in England, he went to school in Croydon and took up football and quickly became a fanatic. The young Akeem and his best friend Joe would wake up at 6am every day to get to school by 7.30am so as to do an hour and a half’s football practice – and then more at lunchtime and after school.

Then, like Joe Biden and Samuel L Jackson, he developed a stammer. “I grew up with it, but mastered the technique for getting on top of it, speaking slowly and using filler words. Most people don’t even know I have a stammer.” Most of Samuel L Jackson’s filler words are profanities (“motherf****” is his favourite). In the entire time I was speaking with him, Akeem Kamara did not use a single swear word, so he clearly went down a different road. He speaks in a measured, unhurried way, without stumbling. But even then, of course, some other kids had to find fault. “You sound white,” they said.

“I was living a double life,” says Kamara. At home his west African mum would speak Creole. But he spoke English. “My mum liked the way I talked. She didn’t want me to be a stereotype.” So Kamara stuck to his guns and worked on speaking clearly and calmly. “I had to redefine myself,” he says. He feels as if he has won that battle too. “It’s changing – this idea that black people have to be a monolith. We can be anything.”

Back at school he flung himself into every sport going – football, rugby, tennis, the 100m. It was an all-boys Catholic school, with a strong emphasis on rugby. “I did my share,” says Kamara. “But I was short and skinny, so it was never going to be my strongest sport.” He preferred table tennis. He is now a lean 6ft and he still plays a lot of football.

Having done his GCSEs, Kamara went to high school in Tucson, Arizona, where his father was working. “It felt like the wild west after Croydon,” he says. He wasn’t playing football any more, he was doing “soccer”. But it was there that he took up serious longer-distance running, jogging right out of town and into the desert, dancing with cacti.

It’s changing – this idea that black people have to be a monolith. We can be anything

He returned to London to study maths, statistics and economics at Queen Mary College and initially interned as an actuary. “It’s a great career,” he says. “For some people. I found it really boring though. It was too linear and it wasn’t client-facing enough.” So he went to WorldPay and ended up strategy manager at FIS.

Meanwhile he had a side-hustle going – Pitch Up, started with two friends. They were all playing five-a-side football but often they would only have seven or eight people turning up. Pitch Up enabled players all over London to make sure they had the full complement for every game. “That was a great experience,” says Kamara. “It really gave me the taste for going entrepreneurial.”

Then that “worse piece of kit ever” from Amazon led him to create what could become the Amazon of sportswear. He says Lockr Space was also inspired – in a “do the opposite” way – by Sports Direct and JD Sports. “In the fashion industry, we have great platforms. In sportswear, we don’t. I knew there had to be an alternative.”

He resolved to create a space that would showcase products that were sustainable, made to last, and functional. Above all, with decent base layers. He didn’t want fashion accessories. This is all about serious sportswear for “the everyday athlete”, so the kit has to be right to do the job. “I carried out some surveys,” says Kamara. “I found there were lots of people who didn’t want to have to throw their kit away.” One semi-pro basketball player was having to hunt around on Instagram to find the right shoes.

Their online shop features 13 ‘green, ethical and functional’ brands (Lockr Space)

But there were a few niche companies dedicated to particular sports. The idea behind Lockr Space was that each sport – not just football, rugby, basketball, and running, but studio-based exercise like yoga too – should have its own “locker” in which to display its wares. Kamara started building the platform himself last July – “I’d had experience designing websites for friends and family, so I had the technical skills” – and joined forces with Holly (supplies) and Jamal (tech) to launch shortly before Christmas 2020. He has also had the support of the Barclays Black Founder Accelerator programme (he is one of just 25 in the initial cohort).

Lockr Space is “a new home for sportswear”, an all-embracing online sports emporium. Kamara says that “the great thing is that now you can get sportswear that is green, ethical and functional”. At present Lockr Space features 13 brands and is looking to extend its range further. I’m in the market for a pair of trainers that will enable me to float like a butterfly. Kamara recommends a brand I had never heard of before, Hylo, whose shoes are made from corn fibre and cotton. “They’re doing their own thing at the moment, but they potentially could join us in the future.”

Even the big brands like Adidas and Nike are moving steadily in the direction of sustainability. On the matter of pronunciation, I gather from Kamara that Nike is normally one syllable (like “bike”) in the UK – it’s typically two syllables (“Ni-key”) in the US. “The virtual platform enables us to pivot and learn,” says Kamara. “I knew whatever it was at the beginning, it was going to have to develop into something different.” The customer reviews I’ve seen on Trustpilot are all 5-star.

In the midst of lockdown, Akeem Kamara has been running 3-5km every day. With the snow falling, he has taken up “vertical running”, jogging up the stairs of his 23-storey building in east London. “I’m working up to doing it twice.” Whenever the pandemic allows, he is also up for having a shot at the Empire State Building in New York (90-something storeys). He may well wear out his Nike Astro Turf trainers at this rate – “I wear them for everything”. Fortunately, Lockr Space is now collaborating with GoodFit, a company that repurposes used sportswear, so he will never have to throw his old kit away again.