A FATHER-DAUGHTER JOURNEY.

The answer came from my dad. Running had always been a quiet thread running through our family — morning jogs on holiday, trail runs in the mountains, and back in Brazil, my parents running together through the streets of São Paulo. So when I was searching for a new outlet, my father suggested we take on something together: the Stockholm Half Marathon.

I trained from scratch. Our first run together that year wasn't even 1km, and I ended up flat on the grass, grasping for air. That's where it started.

Fast forward a year, and we lined up together on race day. But caught up in the excitement of the crowd, I took off — and lost my dad. When I realized he was gone, I turned and ran back against the current of runners to find him, but had to give up and let the race carry me forward. I crossed the finish line 10 minutes ahead of him.

If I could go from lying on the grass after less than a kilometer to beating my own dad in a half marathon that same year, I believed anyone could find that in themselves too. That's the moment running stopped being something I did and became something I believed in — the same thrill I used to chase in the saddle, I realized I could find on the road too.

That race is where our shared love of running and racing truly began. Since then, we've chased that feeling across nearly 20 countries and counting. What started as a challenge we took on together turned into a father-daughter brand.

Back to my racing — as my dad and I raced across the world together, one competition changed everything and sparked the beginning of Nordic Tigon. A 5th-place finish at the Kuala Lumpur Marathon in 2024 opened the door to something bigger: an invitation to train with a camp of Kenyan elite runners in Taiwan. One month after that race, I quit my full-time job with the Swedish Government in Singapore and started developing our first products.

While I was learning to run faster myself, I was also learning what gear the best runners in the world — Kenyan elite runners — actually demand. I built every product around their feedback, then tested it in real time on the roads, on myself and on them.

The next step was realizing we needed full control over our production. So I moved to China, enrolled at a local university, and lived with a local Chinese family to immerse myself in their culture, while visiting factories all across the country and testing the gear in races throughout the year, on myself and the elite athletes I trained alongside. For over a year, my days looked something like this: five hours of Mandarin classes at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, so I could speak directly with our factories. Visiting factories all over China until I found the ones we truly believed in — each specializing in their own product range. And racing marathons across China and Taiwan, testing every product on myself and on elite athletes, until launch day.

We officially launched Nordic Tigon at the weekend of the Singapore Standard Chartered Half Marathon in December 2025 — one year, almost to the day, after that turning point in Kuala Lumpur.

Through all of it, my dad Martin has been there for every mile — early mornings, hard days, my biggest supporter and my role model. That bond became Nordic Tigon: a running performance brand built by athletes, for athletes. The name fuses our Chinese zodiac signs, Tiger and Dragon — Tigon — standing for strength and resilience, built to move. Honoring the roots of where it all started.

Because we're runners ourselves, we know exactly what's still missing out there. Every piece we make comes from the road, not a boardroom.