The History of Our Company
Qxhna Titcomb
When we started the company I was still in middle school. Since then I’ve made it a priority to work wherever and whenever possible to be a part of Five Ultimate. While schoolwork and geography have kept me from being as involved as I would like, the spirit and teamwork I’ve experienced while working as a group of five siblings has both brought us together as a very close family and taught me valuable life skills. Whether it be working at a tournament booth, keeping track of inventory, helping my brothers to do accounting, or even picking jerseys from the warehouse to go to the printers, it is all done with
smiles and jokes as a learning experience with my family. While I won’t be working full-time for a while, you can bet you’ll see me playing and helping out at tournaments around the world!
December 2005
Five brothers and sisters sketch a business plan on a napkin…
January 2006
Zahlen, Xtehn, Vehro, Rohre, and Qxhna conceive the name Five Ultimate. Thank goodness we didn’t go with Huckitdeep Ultimate or any of the other lame names on the whiteboard.
January-February 2006
Zahlen and Xtehn start to churn out our very first product prototypes. Meanwhile, Vehro wraps up his studies, Rohre rolls through her first year at Dartmouth, and Qxhna attends middle school overseas.
February 2006
Five Ultimate LLC incorporates in Washington State. We’re official!
March 2006
FiveUltimate.com v1.0 goes live.
Rohre Titcomb
Through Five Ultimate I am able to give back to the Ultimate community, a community that has given me more than I could have imagined. SOTG, coaches, mentors, and teammates have all been formative components of my life–Ultimate was and is an essential part of who I am.
It is my hope that our support of youth ultimate enables young players around the world to discover ultimate and love it as I did. With our new Women’s Ultimate Initiative (it’s still in the works–stay tuned!), I hope that women’s ultimate can grow, elevating the level of play and having positive affects on women across the world.
Through ultimate I have found passion, friends, love, and now, Five Ultimate.
March 2006
We produce our first round of jerseys and fuzzy hats for High Tide Spring break tournament in Savannah, GA. What’s this new company called Five Ultimate?
May 2006
We attend our first tournament (UPA College Championships) in Columbus, OH. We rock our Jambox and people get pumped.
Xtehn Titcomb
When we founded Five Ultimate, my personal goals were to improve ultimate, work with my brothers and sisters, and build something sweet. Over the past 3 years, those same goals have motivated me day in and day out. However, the nature of the company has changed tremendously. While we used to be negotiating garage space with our parents, we are now paying rent on a 3,200 square foot building in the center of Seattle. We used to keep track of inventory on the outside of each cardboard box… now we are constantly updating our databases as we communicate with teams and individuals. We can field an ultimate team with our employees. We are achieving things that we could only dream of in 2006.
That said, the challenges are still forthcoming. We have more ideas than we have time for. The notion of “working smarter rather than working harder” is always evident, and the mistakes I make propel me to keep learning.
August 2006
Seattle-based club team Voodoo sports Five Ultimate in competition and gears start turning.
February 2007
We launch our revamped website v2.0, with a section devoted to customized team uniforms. Players start to notice…
August 2007
We weave a new fabric and produce our most advanced line of jerseys to date (Ambient Jerseys). Man, they’re smooth.
December 2007
We move HQ out of our garage and into a house near the University of Washington. Freedom, at last!
January 2008
We hire our 1st employee to help with orders, as we are swimming in orders for team jerseys and shorts.
February-March 2008
We merchandise an amazing fleet of college tournaments, bringing us to the point where we are no longer strangers in the world of college ultimate.
Vehro Titcomb
Working for Five has given me a creative and productive outlet in which I finally feel at home. Creative in that I am free to use my imagination to build something greater than myself. Productive because the betterment of the sport I love drives my dedication to hard work.
March 2008
We go all out at Paganello World Beach Ultimate Championships. Chicago Scandal wins big, and looks good (thanks to Five Ultimate).
April 2008
We move out of our rental house and into the Disco (we call our new office/warehouse the Disco, because going into the ‘office’ every day can get dull). Now just north of downtown Seattle, we’re ready to grow!
Zahlen Titcomb
Five Ultimate is fun to me. It is intensely challenging and consuming almost all the time, but there is little more rewarding than working with my siblings on something that we are all very passionate about.
Ultimate embodies some of the things that I value most in life, and so applying myself to my work to support and grow the sport is great because not only do i see progress, but i experience the momentum of things moving forward. I do believe we can change the world, even if only one step at a time, and I will continue to apply myself to our mission with a smile on my face!
July 2008
We merchandise the largest mixed tournament on earth. Teams travel from far away lands to attend Potlatch in Redmond, WA.
August 2008
We attend WUGC (Ultimate World Championships) in Vancouver, BC and reconnect with a bunch of our international contingents.
November 2008
We hire our 6th employee! We are getting stronger, and the Titcombs are now outnumbered.
December 2008
We launch a fresh new website with many glorious features. Look out ought nine, here we come!
January 2009
We launch our long awaited and much anticipated online store! YAY, hydro shorts for all!
