Do What You Love: Sam Prentice Talks About Founding Bar Jak

Hi! My name is Sam Prentice, the creator and founder of Bar Jak!

The Bar Jak was started in my garage back in 2019. Tucked away in a quiet corner of the southwest of England, I set to work designing the Bar Jak that you see today. Before I tell you the story of Bar Jak let me tell you a bit about me.

I’ve always been an active, creative person. Being a carpenter by trade, wood has always been my go-to material. Prior to creating Bar Jak, I launched another garage venture — a furniture brand. I enjoyed creating and then seeing my work in peoples' homes. But something was missing. I didn’t feel a true connection to the pieces I was making.

Exercise and sport have always been a large part of my life. I played competitive rugby and enjoyed weight training. Following an ACL injury, my competitive team sporting days were over. I missed it and the satisfaction that competing gave me. This lead me to seek a new challenge, and I found CrossFit. For me, CrossFit was the start of really enjoying the barbell in the gym and would be the spark for creating the Bar Jak.

Following the first Bar Jak prototypes in 2019, I quickly realized that I was onto a good idea. After many rounds of testing, once we had successfully registered Bar Jak with the IPO, we were ready to launch and in March 2020 we were up and running!

Fast forward to the present day (after lots of hard work and many late nights!) we are proud to say that we have over 1,000 Jaks across the globe — in 27 countries and counting! We have had an amazing journey to date and our recent partnership with On Repeat Sports is such a great step. We’re very excited to see what’s next!