Meet Alton Craig of Competitor Source

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alton Craig.

Alton, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Competitor Source was created to provide information about the sport of bodybuilding. There are nine division within the IFBB professional league.

However, most only know of maybe two. These nine divisions are essentially nine DIFFERENT body types. This is amazing to me because through Middle school all the way up to college I struggle to identify with any of my peers.

Over the past ten years, I knew fitness would be in some way shape or form apart of my career. Fitness was instilled in me at very young age. I never played any sports in grade school, I was a late bloomer that discovered wrestling in the 12th grade where I wrestled at 145lbs.

It was there where I discovered the love for the human body. It fascinated me that there were new levels I could take my body and mind to with just some Will and Determination. I never had the physical traits to play any other sport, but wrestling was PERFECT! Whether that be dropping literally POUNDS OF WATER in hours or mentally being able to break barriers and train in 100+ degree weather dressed in full sweats for 2 1/2 hrs voluntarily! That sport had more to do with mental toughness, consistency and the effort your willing to put into it not your skill level and how blessed physically you were.

This lead me down the path of the AMAZING Sport of Bodybuilding! If I could drop weight so efficiently in high school how much could I improve my body physically by gaining muscle!?

This platform called Competitor Source
https://www.instagram.com/competitorsource/, is design to highlight all divisions in the sport and give updated news about show results, athletes on prep, relevant businesses, new event dates, and upcoming shows.

It was recently evolved into apparel as well to speak about things that we all go through in within the industry. You don’t have to be a professional bodybuilder to understand what the phrases mean or even need to be huge to fit the clothes.

If you love food, then seeing a shirt that says “Food is Bae” or “Feed Me Carbs” would make sense. Another option would be someone who gets cranky when they haven’t eaten or are low on carbs for the day, which is

“WARNING LOW CARB DAY”. This is something everyone can get and is helping to bridge the gab from someone just wanting to learn more about the sport to someone who’s a professional.

We started in 2017 and were fortunate last year to have our images and clothing seen by over 1 million people VIA Instagram and Facebook. We currently have over 100 professional bodybuilders all over the world that follow our account, including some of the best in the world who won Mr. Olympia in 2018.

Examples are all current Mr. Olympia 2018 Champions in their division, Shanique Grant, Whitney Jones (She lives in Gilbert, AZ) , and Brandon Hendrickson,

This helps us see that we are actually providing value to not only the sport but people all over the world. We are unbelievably humbled and just want to simply do our part to help the sport.

I want to thank you for taking your time to read this. It means a lot and I am honored to be a part of your magazine!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I wouldn’t say smooth but we launched at the end of 2017. We have two websites competitorsource.com (rarely used)

However, we found that 99% of our traffic comes through social media, so we focus mostly on social media. We evolved and added the apparel because we realized there’s an entire industry that is not being spoken to.

The bodybuilding community has the hardest time finding clothes that fit. I’m referring to body types that have smaller waist but have larger legs (Quads and Glutes). This is a common issue but has not been addressed well.

So we design apparel that not only speaks to our audience but actually fits there body type. We found that doing this brought more traffic to our site and social media accounts locally and globally.

Competitorsourceapparel.com (Primary Website now)

We’d love to hear more about your business.
The work will always be about providing information of the sport that most people don’t know about and that most companies don’t care to tell about. Most companies only focus on the popular divisions like bodybuilding, men’s physique, and bikini.

However, like we discussed, there are a total of nine divisions. We want to impact as many people as we can to share the light about this amazing sport. This sport is global but is still kept in the shadows. It’s not even able to show on ESPN three. 🙁

If more people know about all the different athletes and the body types aka (division) we could touch millions more.

We’re most proud to be touching over a million people. In 2017, it was under 300k impressions. 2018 was an eye opener to what the possibilities were if we continued and pushed harder.

The apparel portion pays the bills but isn’t why the majority of people follow us or why it’s grown this much over the two years. The apparel is more so the icing on the cake that makes it that much better!

What is your favorite childhood memory?
I’m a country boy from South Carolina! I loved playing in the woods and playing basketball with all my cousins and dad in our back yard.

Pricing:

• Popular Tank Tops are $20 – $25
• Workout Leggings are $30 – $45
• Joggers are on sale for $40 until September

Contact Info:

• Website: competitorsourceapparel.com
• Email: info@competitorsource.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/competitorsource/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CompetitorSource/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/CompetitorSourc

Image Credit:
Alton Craig

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.