How Predator Customs Began

By soldiers, for soldiers.

Our story. The highs and the lows.

It started with a farewell.
I am the founder and managing director of Predator Customs, and I was a Fallschirmjäger myself. The brand comes out of the infantry, and it started with farewell gifts for comrades. Each one was built around the man who was leaving. One of them got a bottle of his favorite rum with a label that existed exactly once: “Botucal” became “Botucharlie”. I had taught myself the design work and never took money for it. My first attempt to turn it into a business failed anyway. I could design. I couldn’t sell yet.
Sudan 2023. A deployment without a shirt.
In 2023 my unit was at the center of the evacuation operation in Sudan. In the Bundeswehr a deployment comes with a deployment shirt. But an evacuation comes without warning, and nobody orders shirts in advance. So I designed them myself and sold them inside the regiment at cost. The response was bigger than anything before. In November 2023 the next evacuation operation followed, a month on standby in Cyprus, and shirts again. This time as hoodies too, and more of them.
We earned the name.
Then the requests came in from other units. One needed a crest, the next a flag, the third a shirt. We delivered and charged nothing. In 2023 and 2024 that added up to countless crests, flags and shirts for all kinds of units, every piece a one-off, all of it free. We wanted a name in the ranks before we named a price. That is where the “Customs” in Predator Customs comes from. We still design crests and motifs for units today.
End of service.
Back then everything sold through print-on-demand. A contractor only prints once somebody orders. It costs no budget, and the result looked like it: not the quality you want to hand to a comrade. In May 2024 my service ended, and the project stopped with it.
Anyone who has handed in the uniform knows what comes next. For years the service sets the pace, the mission and the people to your left and right. Then all of it is gone. My job search went nowhere, and civilian life would not fit. For a good year nothing happened here.
June 2025. Second attempt, new rules.
Shortly after my daughter was born I made the call: the project comes back, this time as Predator Customs and this time without shortcuts. No more shirts from print-on-demand. Every one is screen printed by hand in Germany with water-based ink. The ink goes into the fiber and does not crack. No motif comes out of AI, every one is drawn by hand. And the parcel is packed so that you notice when you open it: nobody pushed a button here.
The first shirt didn’t sell.
Quality costs money, and it costs it up front. Whoever orders a print run pays for it before the first piece is sold. The Predator Shirt, our opener, sold only moderately. The money was spent and came back too slowly. At a point like that you quit or you double down. We doubled down with “Viel Feind, viel Ehr”, an older motif that is still one of our most requested. Then came “Gott hasst Feiglinge”, God hates cowards. The line is carved into a stone outside my old company. From there it went uphill.
German tradition doesn’t need to borrow.
The market for military shirts runs on American templates. We think the German infantry has enough history of its own. And special forces already have enough shirts. So with us every branch gets its own. The Jäger came first, a branch hardly anyone has on the list. Their shirt was made together with a Jäger. Fallschirmjäger, Gebirgsjäger and Panzergrenadiere followed, whose line goes back to the dragoons of 1620. Behind every motif is a story that can be documented. And because a branch is not seasonal stock, the German Infantry collection stays in the range for good.
One of you.
Predator Customs has grown since then. Where we come from has not changed. We have been out there ourselves when the liquid sunshine comes down. The rain gets in at the collar first, after an hour nothing is dry, and from then on it stops mattering. The day gets small: the man in front, the distance to him, how long until the halt. Add the nights without sleep and the people you get through them with.
More of that stays than you would think. Years later you still pack the rucksack heavy against the back and so that nothing rattles. You are five minutes early. And when it rains, you go anyway.
You hand in the uniform one day. What the service made of you stays. That is what we are here for.