A Brazilian company specializing in martial arts, KVRA, has incorporated Polygiene’s Stays Fresh treatment into a gi for the martial art of jiu-jitsu. Gis are made of thick fabric, absorb a lot of sweat and tend to take two or three days to dry in the air after a wash. Stays Fresh slows the spread of bacteria and therefore the pungency of the odor they produce, so a gi treated with it needs less washing. This in turn enables practitioners of jiu-jitsu to train with fewer gis and, perhaps, invest in better ones. KVRA introduced a Polygiene-treated pilot collection, called Ashes of Creation, on May 17. If orders suffice, it will comprise approximately 5,000 gis per year, with potential expansion of the Polygiene treatment into other collections for mixed martial arts (MMA) and Crossfit. KVRA hopes that the innovation will help it expand beyond Brazil, where it was founded in 2013 – and where the Gracie family famously created its jiu-jitsu variant, familiarly known as BJJ. KVRA has a Brazilian e-commerce operation, two directly managed stores in São Paulo, five Brazilian franchises and about 320 resellers in Brazil, Chile, Japan, Germany, Paraguay, South Korea and Italy.

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