How Jason Daniel Turned LSKD From A 13-Year-Old Dream To A $400M Empire

When I’m catching up with him, it’s the morning after his return from a business trip to China, where he’d been visiting suppliers, developing product, and of course, squeezing in a gym session or two, which, due to the cooler weather in China, gave him the chance to test out their new range of men’s pants. Speaking to Jason, it’s evident and expected that sport and fitness have always been central to his identity.

Raised in Logan, where the company is still based today, Jason grew up riding BMX, doing surf lifesaving, playing soccer, and racing motocross. The brand’s genesis traces back to 1999, when a 13-year-old Jason was at the Nerang BMX track on the Gold Coast, attempting a jump he couldn’t quite clear. “They called me the loose kid,” he recalls. The name stuck, and with it, an idea came.

What started as designing tees and hats and selling them at motocross events on weekends as a 15-year-old became a full-time career by 2010, when Jason made the call to step away from his dream of becoming a professional athlete. He was 23 and moved the operation of LKI out of his mum’s house into his first proper office.

Jason at a motocross competition in 2003

For the next several years, LKI sold wholesale to retailers across Australia and New Zealand, including City Beach. But the business plateaued at around $3 million in revenue for five years, which Jason attributes to a few things: spreading too thin across too many product categories – sportswear, streetwear, motocross gloves, even life jackets – and, as he’s candid enough to admit, his own leadership. “It was me. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I had a lot to learn on my leadership journey.”

In 2018, the same year his first child was born, and prompted by a deep dive into self-development books like Find Your Why and Good to Great, Jason began asking harder questions about what the brand was actually for and what his goal was. Looking back, he says, “I loved it, but I was not doing it for the money. For me, it was a passion to be part of something.”

The answer, when it came, felt obvious: build something from the ground up with a real purpose and create a culture people genuinely wanted to be part of.

LKI became LSKD. The brand shifted to direct-to-consumer, refined its product offering, and focused on the functional fitness community Jason had come to love. The following year, they launched their best-selling Rep Legging, developed using proprietary fabric. It proved to be a turning point for the business.

Today, LSKD has 31 stores – on track for 41 by the end of the year – a team of 700, offices in San Diego and Austin, and an estimated evaluation of $400 million. On the team is a roster of athletes and ambassadors ranging from Olympians like Bree Rizzo (née Masters) to former NRL player Jordan Kahu. Celebrities including Zac Efron, Hailey Bieber and Emily Ratajkowski have also been spotted in the brand, though Jason says that while it’s “a bonus,” it has never been the goal. “Our focus has always been more on athletes and local community athletes,” he says. “How can we play a part in their journey?”

Through it all, the brand has stayed firmly planted in its roots, based out of the same suburb where Jason grew up. The office sits just around the corner from his old school. Towards the end of our conversation, he shows me a photo the US team sent him of an LSKD van in Austin, wrapped with the words Born in Logan. It’s a fitting encapsulation of the brand and Jason’s values.

“We try to celebrate where we came from,” he says. “Put Logan on the map globally and enjoy the journey.”