This week, Emirates Woman speaks to Wajdan and Anam, the founder of a performance wear brand, SQUATWOLF, a brand based in Dubai.

Welcome to the Emirates Woman weekly series ‘How I got my job as…’ where we speak to some incredible entrepreneurs and businesswomen, both based in the UAE and globally, to find out about their career paths that led them to where they are now, what their daily routines look like, the advice they’d give to those starting out, and the hurdles they’ve had to overcome.

In 2016, Wajdan and Anam Khalid took their savings, set up shop in their Dubai apartment, and bet on a simple idea: that a world-class performance wear brand could come from the Middle East. Nearly a decade later, SQUATWOLF has grown from a two-person side project into a globally recognised name in athleisure, the founders insist, on one non-negotiable principle – performance first, always.

What is your educational background?
Wajdan: We’re both originally from Karachi, Pakistan, and completed our higher education at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST). I achieved an MBA in Marketing.
Anam Khalid: For me, it was an MBA in Human Resource Management (HRM)

What was your favourite subject at school?
Wajdan: Definitely Marketing
Anam: Mine was Human Resources

What was your first job?
Anam: HR specialist at leading consumer goods company Philip Morris International.
Wajdan: Head of Marketing at Disrupt.com. Both experiences gave us a strong foundation and helped shape how we think about building teams, brands, and businesses today.

What inspired you to enter the world of gymwear?
Anam: We’ve always been passionate about fitness, and one thing kept bothering us every time we trained: most of the gymwear available in the region came from international brands that weren’t really built for the realities of training in the Middle East.
When you’re working out in 45-degree heat, your needs are very different. Yet there weren’t many brands creating products specifically for people who live, train and perform in this environment.
Wajdan: We saw a genuine gap in the market and felt there was an opportunity to build something better. What started as conversations between the two of us quickly grew into a business idea. In May 2016, we took our savings, set up shop from our apartment in Dubai, and launched SQUATWOLF.

What are the key elements of your role?
Anam: I lead Product, Brand, Supply Chain, and People & Culture while also helping shape the long-term strategy of the business.
Wajdan: I focus on driving commercial growth across E-commerce, Retail and Wholesale, alongside Finance, Operations and the long-term strategic direction of the company.
Anam: At the end of the day, we’re both heavily involved in building the future of the business and making sure we’re moving in the right direction.

Can you talk us through your daily routine?
Anam: No two days are exactly the same, but we try to protect our mornings for focused work before the meetings begin. That’s usually when we’re doing our best thinking and tackling the most important priorities.
From around 10am onwards, the day becomes much more collaborative. We’re typically in meetings with teams across the business, reviewing projects, solving problems and making decisions together. Later in the afternoon, we’re often speaking with partners, investors, suppliers, factories and other stakeholders.
Wajdan: Mondays are all about alignment and setting priorities for the week ahead, while Tuesdays are focused on trade and commercial performance. Wednesdays and Thursdays are where we spend more time on strategic work and execution. Thursdays often double as content shoot days for our founder channels. By Friday, we’re wrapping up loose ends, reviewing progress and setting ourselves up for the week ahead.

What advice do you have for anyone looking to follow in your footsteps?
Wajdan: One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that as a founder, you’re never done telling the story. People often assume that once they’ve shared their vision, everyone understands it. The reality is that your job is to keep reinforcing that message at every opportunity. Whether you’re speaking to your team, a partner, an investor or a customer, you’re constantly communicating what you’re building and why it matters.
Anam: Some founders worry about repeating themselves, but we’ve found the opposite is true. Repetition creates alignment. It strengthens culture. It helps people stay focused on a shared goal.

What are the core pillars that define SQUATWOLF?
Anam: Progress. This pushes us to keep improving. Being born in Dubai, a city built on ambition, innovation and constant evolution, has had a huge influence on our mindset. We’re always looking for ways to improve our products, our customer experience and the impact we have on our community.
Performance is the foundation of everything we do. Every product is designed with the athlete in mind, focusing on functionality, comfort, durability and helping people perform at their best.
Finally, the Pack is what truly brings SQUATWOLF to life. We believe fitness is stronger when it’s shared. Building a sense of belonging and community is at the heart of everything we do, both online and offline.

Tell us a little about SQUATWOLF. How did you come up with the idea, and what do you want people to take away from the brand?
Wajdan: SQUATWOLF started with a simple belief: why couldn’t a world-class performance wear brand come out of Dubai?
At the time, we couldn’t point to a fitness apparel brand from the region that had successfully established itself on the global stage. We wanted to challenge that idea and prove that innovation, quality and ambition aren’t limited to traditional fashion capitals.
Today, we want people to see SQUATWOLF as more than just activewear. We want it to be a brand people can genuinely rely on, whether they’re training every day, preparing for a competition, or simply taking the first step in their fitness journey.
Anam: Beyond the products, we hope people see what’s possible. SQUATWOLF started in a small apartment with two founders, a vision and a lot of belief. As two Muslim expats who started from scratch and built a globally recognised brand from the Middle East, we hope our story reminds people that where you come from doesn’t define how far you can go.

What do you think makes SQUATWOLF unique in the athleisure space?
Anam: What has always set us apart is our obsession with performance. Every product starts with one question: will this genuinely help someone train better? Of course, style matters and people want to look and feel good when they work out, but performance has always come first for us.
Wajdan: We spend a lot of time listening to our community because they’re the ones putting our products through their paces every day. Being built in Dubai has also given us a unique perspective. We’re proudly regional in our roots, but from day one we’ve built the business with a global mindset.

What are your favourite products from the brand, and why?
Wajdan: The Mirage Shorts perfectly represent what SQUATWOLF stands for. They’re lightweight, comfortable, highly functional and versatile enough for almost any type of training. They’ve become one of my personal go-to products.
Anam: I think the Ultimate Leggings are a perfect balance of performance and comfort. They move with you, feel supportive and help you feel confident while training. They’re a staple in my workout wardrobe and one of the products I’m most proud of.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? And the worst?
Anam: The best advice was “Go big in retail. The Middle East is one of the strongest retail markets in the world.” At the time, we were primarily focused on e-commerce, but that advice encouraged us to think bigger about physical retail and its role in the customer experience.
Wajdan: The worst advice is probably to bring in senior executives from large global companies because they’ll unlock your next phase of growth. What we’ve learned is that scaling a startup requires a very specific mindset. Experience is valuable, but success at a large corporation doesn’t automatically translate to success in a fast-moving, entrepreneurial environment.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?
Anam: One of our biggest lessons came early on. Our first collection performed far better than we expected. On paper, that sounds like a dream scenario, but suddenly we found ourselves facing a major challenge. Demand was growing quickly, inventory was running out and we didn’t have enough cash available to place new orders.
We were looking at healthy sales figures, yet the bank account told a very different story because so much of our money was tied up in stock, production and operations.
Wajdan: It was the moment we learnt a lesson every entrepreneur eventually comes face-to-face with: revenue, profit and cash flow are three completely different things. Looking back, it was one of the toughest periods we’ve experienced, but it forced us to become better operators and taught us lessons that continue to shape the business today.

What are your goals and vision for the future?
Anam: Our vision is to continue building SQUATWOLF into a truly global performance wear brand that proudly started in Dubai. Over the next few years, we’ll continue expanding our retail footprint across the GCC, including growing our presence in cities such as Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, while accelerating growth in key international markets.
Wajdan: We are passionate about staying true to the values that got us here. We want to keep creating products that genuinely help people perform better, continue building a strong global community, and make SQUATWOLF more accessible to customers wherever they are. The dream has always been bigger than simply selling apparel. We’re building a global brand from the Middle East, and we’re only just getting started.

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