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It wasn't about being first, but we were. It wasn't about creating innovations. But we did.
8th degree Tae Kwon Do black belt Grandmaster Soo Se Cho began the Macho company in 1980 after recognizing a need for greater safety in martial arts training and competition. Armed with nearly 30 years of martial arts training and teaching experience from Korea to Turkey to the U.S., Master Cho passionately designed Macho’s original line of martial arts sparring gear, enlisting his own Tae Kwon Do students to try out his inventions, advances and improvements.
The first pieces of Macho Martial Arts sparring gear were created from scratch, by hand. The hand-dipped experiments were done in a cut-off oil drum in a borrowed building.
In less than a year, we were having a hard time keeping up with orders. By March of 1981, we moved from the borrowed building to a 7200 sq. ft. building. And much to our surprise, we needed more room just six months later. We had no idea we’d be one day manufacturing hundreds of thousands of pieces of gear annually in a 70,000 square foot facility.
