A rugby triumph in 2023 sparked something unexpected. When Croatia's sevens team earned promotion to the Rugby Europe Championship — the top tier of European sevens — a supporting partner produced professional-grade training shirts for tournaments in Makarska and Hamburg. The kits carried Croatian colours and Glagolitic script, and strangers kept stopping players to ask where they could buy one. Most of those asking had zero interest in rugby. That demand became GROM.
GROM — the Croatian word for thunder — was co-founded by national team player Filip Perica, and it sits at the intersection of performance gear and national identity. The logo uses the letter M in Glagolitic script, one of the oldest Slavic writing systems. The shirts keep things deliberately understated: a black-on-black silicone checkerboard print, HRVATSKA across the back in Glagolitic letters, and a pleter (traditional Croatian interlace) running down the spine. Perica's pitch is simple — minimal design, but every element means something.
The gap GROM fills is real. Croatian-themed merchandise has long leaned on loud flags and oversized graphics. Perica wanted durable, premium training apparel you could wear outside the gym, built to survive thousands of sessions while keeping centuries-old symbols in circulation. The brand's slogan, Nasljeđe se nosi — Wear Your Heritage — says it outright.
So far the customer base is mostly domestic, followed by the Croatian diaspora, with Germany, Ireland and Austria the strongest international markets and enquiries arriving from further afield. Everything sells through gromwear.hr. Interestingly, plenty of buyers aren't gym regulars at all — some say the collection nudged them to get more active in the first place.
Growth is already underway. Strong interest from women has pushed a dedicated women's collection into development, alongside everyday tees and tops for men that stretch the range beyond activewear. Perica's bigger ambition is for the symbols to travel: he hopes someone spotting a GROM shirt in Auckland, Sydney, Toronto or New York recognises the script and feels a link to Croatia, whether they were born there or their grandparents were.
For travellers, this is a genuinely better souvenir than the airport fridge magnet. If you're heading to Split, Zagreb or the coast, a piece of GROM is a wearable bit of Croatian history — and for anyone with Croatian roots planning a heritage trip, it's something you can keep training in long after the holiday ends.
