How Goat USA is bringing lifestyle apparel to NFL fandom

About 10 years ago, Goat USA was three friends selling T-shirts from a folding table at youth sports tournaments on Long Island. This football season, the brand that grew up on local sidelines is on NFL ones, with co-branded collections for the New York Giants and the New York Jets.

For the brand co-founder Dylan McLaughlin, sports fandom has always been about more than the athlete on the field. "The first thing we learned was that the customer wasn't just the kid on the field, it was the whole family around them," he told FashionUnited.

The Giants collection, launched in September through the NFL's local collaboration program, was the brand's first collaboration with an NFL team. It pairs Goat USA's signature graphic tees and hoodies with the Giants logo. The collection is sold at goatusa.com and in Goat USA stores, as well as at the Giants team store at MetLife Stadium on game days.

"Goat USA was built on showing up for the communities and teams people care about most, so partnering with a franchise with this much history and this passionate a fan base is exactly the kind of collaboration we set out to do," McLaughlin said in the launch announcement.

Nilay Shah, SVP of marketing and brand strategy at the New York Giants, said in the same release: "Goat USA brings a fresh, authentic point of view and unique ability to connect with generations of Giants fans."

McLaughlin said the brand is approaching football fans differently from traditional licensees. "We're coming at fandom from a different angle," he said. "We're not trying to make something that only works inside a stadium or on game day. We're taking the way people already wear Goat USA in their everyday lives and bringing their team into that. That's where we think a lifestyle brand can add something different to traditional fan apparel."

That means designing across generations. "It comes back to the same idea: we're not designing for one specific fan," he said. "What connects those people isn't their age. It's what the team means to them."

The NFL deals follow the brand's first MLB collaboration, a Yankees collection in July, as well as work with the Mets. "The Yankees, the Mets, and now the Jets and Giants are close to home for us but as big as it gets, and this is just the start of a licensing & collaboration capsules," McLaughlin said.

The same filter applies to partnerships more broadly. "We look for communities people are genuinely passionate about, whether that's as small as a school district or as big as the Yankees," he said. "We want to connect Goat USA with what people already care about in a way that feels authentic to us and to that community, not just put our logo next to another logo because it's recognizable."

From sidelines to 1,000 doors

Goat USA was founded in 2016 in a Long Island basement by Rich Alfaro, TJ Cristina and McLaughlin. Today the brand attends hundreds of events a year, is carried in more than 1,000 wholesale doors and runs nine standalone stores across the US, according to the brand.

Wholesale started with Dick's Sporting Goods in 2019 and has extended to retailers including Scheels, Von Maur, Bloomingdale's, Dillard's and Pure Hockey, as well as independent stores. "For us, it's always been about finding the right doors, not simply adding more of them," McLaughlin said.

The next decade

Looking ahead, Goat USA plans to grow retail, licensing and storytelling at the same time. "We're continuing to expand our retail footprint; licensing is growing well beyond the Yankees, Mets, Jets and Giants; and we're investing in how we tell the Goat USA story to a much larger audience," he said.

The brand is focused on media and content. "We're a clothing brand first, and that's deliberate," he said. "There's a huge opportunity now to bring that same personality and connection into media, content and digital storytelling."