Hey everyone,

We are truly blown away by your response to our return announcement. We had high hopes that you all would respond positively, but we could never have imagined this. Big thanks to all of you for supporting the announcement and sharing your excitement.

We firmly believe that maintaining a close connection with all of you is paramount for any venture we want to explore, so I wanted to start up a really transparent written content series called Small Talk to lay out some of our thoughts on how we imagine moving forward.

As always, this is meant for discussion and feedback, so we look forward to hearing your thoughts and adjusting accordingly.

Focus Areas

We have identified several key areas that will be our priority focus to ensure the success and sustainability of the brand. It will take us time to get each of these areas right, and I am sure there will be countless learnings along the way, but we are excited to dive in and communicate as transparently as possible with you. Our current focus will be towards the following:

• Community building
• Merchandise
• Content production
• More to come!

Community Building

We will be engaging with our community by remaining active on our social media channels and Discord server, hosting community game nights, and attending HCS events. We hope that by re-embedding ourselves back into the community, we will keep a close pulse on what you all are looking for from us. We are kicking off our first community building initiative at the Str8 Booth at HCS Arlington! If you are attending the event, we would love for you to swing by and play some Halo with us.

Merchandise

So many of you responded to our announcement and asked us when Str8 Rippin merchandise would return. Merchandise has been a cornerstone for the Str8 Rippin brand in the past, and we can’t wait to do it better than ever before. In previous years, we did our best to create Str8 Rippin branded products for you, but we weren’t quite hitting the level that we wanted. Despite that, you all still rallied around the Str8 Shop, and orders were placed from more than 15 countries.

This time, we are inviting various new partners to help bolster our merchandise capabilities and help us achieve a higher quality, offer better customer service, and create many more products than before.

Let’s face it, the ideas we have for Str8 will require significant resources, and it is imperative that we begin generating revenue through means like merchandise sales to help us make the investment into the future of the team. Your support for our merchandise goes such a long way in helping us deliver on all the rest of what we have planned, so we can’t thank you enough for the interest you are showing the Str8 Shop.

Content Production

While you all are mostly familiar with Str8 Rippin through our history of competing in Halo Esports, we consider content production and live broadcasting one of our major core competencies and a unique value proposition that we can offer.

We believe that the most meaningful way we will be able to give back to Halo is through the creation of our own content, streams, and events. While we are glad there continue to be high quality HCS competitions throughout the year for you to watch, we understand the need to fill some of the gaps in the calendar with more chances to watch your favorite teams and players compete and get to know them better than you may have otherwise.

We will be investing in our production and streaming infrastructure to bring to life our own original events and ways we can further amplify the HCS events. More on this in the coming weeks.

More to Come!

While we are extremely excited and eager to bring Str8 Rippin back and immediately dive into all of the various areas we could activate, we recognize the importance of taking measured steps and not biting off more than we can chew too early. For now, we are focused on establishing a strong foundation and creating a sustainable future. As we grow and further solidify our position, we will expand our scope – we know you are eager to see the Str8 Rippin banner back on the mainstage, and we can’t wait for that day to come.

Stay tuned for updates and announcements, and we will see you very soon.

-Small ✌️