The statistic that drives the Undropped Kit is simple and damning. 64% of UK girls drop out of sport before the age of 16. The consequences run well beyond physical fitness. Girls active during adolescence are 20% less likely to develop breast cancer in later life. There is a direct documented connection between exercising as a teenager and mental health in adulthood. And one of the most significant barriers stopping girls from participating is not attitude, aptitude, or opportunity. It is a piece of clothing.
What the Research Found
ASICS commissioned research across 14 to 16-year-old girls in the UK to understand the relationship between PE kit and participation. The results were specific rather than vague. Only 12% of UK girls are completely satisfied with their current school PE kit. 70% said they would be more likely to participate in PE if their kit made them feel more comfortable. 63% believe it is time for a full kit redesign.
The barriers cited are not abstract. Lack of choice over what to wear. Uncomfortable fabrics. Shapeless designs that fit no body well. Inadequate warmth for outdoor conditions. Period concerns, cited as the primary barrier by 47% of girls aged 11 to 13 and 52% of girls aged 14 to 15. Sweat absorption and visibility issues. These are the specific, solvable reasons girls were sitting out of PE lessons.
Who Built It and How
ASICS, working with Inclusive Sportswear and mental health charity Mind, ran focus groups and design sessions directly with teenage girls across the UK. The process was not a brand consultation exercise followed by a brief to a product team. The girls’ input shaped the design at every stage. Burnley High School in Lancashire was selected as the primary testing site because Sport England had identified it as one of the UK regions with the lowest PE participation rates. Testing the kit where the problem was most acute gave the prototype its most demanding real-world conditions.
The Undropped Kit addresses each identified barrier systematically. For weather: a jacket with a detachable inner liner, padded panels for warmth retention, water-repellent fabric, and a packable hood. For comfort: softer, darker, sweat-wicking materials that prevent visibility of sweat marks. For periods: design choices that reduce visibility anxiety, the single largest barrier among girls aged 11 to 15. For body diversity: cuts designed to suit different body shapes rather than a single standardised silhouette. For personal style: enough design variation to allow girls to feel like themselves rather than identical to every other student in the class.
The Activation Layer
Katie Piper, activist and mother of two daughters, publicly supported the initiative, drawing on her own experience of feeling uncomfortable in a PE kit and choosing to opt out of sport as a teenager. Her involvement was not a celebrity endorsement of a product. She does not promote a product that is not on sale. She advocates for the policy argument the kit represents: that the standard UK school PE kit has been contributing to a documented public health problem, and that the problem is fixable.
ASICS is formally supporting Inclusive Sportswear’s community platform, which gives parents and school staff access to free expert training, toolkits, and guidance developed with the Youth Sport Trust for creating more inclusive PE environments. The platform turns the Undropped Kit from a single school test into a scalable national resource.
Lucy Greenhalgh, Head of UK Marketing at ASICS, described the brief’s underlying motivation: “There is a direct connection between exercising in your teenage years and your mental state in adulthood, and it is key for establishing lifelong exercise habits. With this new Undropped Kit concept, we hope to show how reimagining the nation’s PE kits could help to change attitudes and behaviours and keep girls in sport.”
The Commercial Question
The Undropped Kit is currently a concept rather than a commercial product. ASICS has not announced a retail rollout or a date for the kit to become available for purchase by schools. The initiative exists as a prototype, a policy argument, and a campaign platform simultaneously.
That position is consistent with how ASICS has been building its Move Your Mind brand platform across the UK. Each major execution makes a specific, researched claim about the relationship between movement and mental health, delivers a tangible proof point rather than a claim alone, and then extends the argument through a mechanism that outlasts the campaign itself. The Desk Break gave companies a formal structure for employee movement. The Dramatic Transformations campaign gave social media a template for reframing exercise goals. The Undropped Kit gives a parliamentary and school policy conversation a physical object to focus on.
Gareth Presch, CEO of World Health Innovation Summit, described the campaign’s significance in exactly those terms: “The Undropped Kit is potentially the most important thing to happen in PE in the UK in decades. A 64% dropout rate means we’ve been failing girls for a generation.”
Campaign Name: The Undropped Kit
Agency Name: Golin (PR and earned media) / Design partners: Inclusive Sportswear / Charity partner: Mind / Tested with: Youth Sport Trust
Brand Name: ASICS
Location: United Kingdom (tested at Burnley High School, Lancashire; national rollout via Inclusive Sportswear platform)
