Pivoting to the Forgotten Men of Fashion

Forgotten Men of Fashion? Really? Aren’t there thousands of menswear companies? How could they possibly have forgotten anyone? To answer this question, let me start way back with a few business stories about what I might call “slap in the face” experiences, or “transitional moments” or better yet, the stylish term used by today’s entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, “pivots.” And how these pivot moments eventually led to forming our online, direct-to-consumer men’s wear company Ya Joe.

As I wrote, this story started years ago after I graduated with a degree in Psychology from the University of Washington. My first pivot moment came while transitioning from school into the world of business at the Emporium-Capwell Department Store on Market Street in San Francisco. At the time I didn’t know a thing about retail or men’s wear and I didn’t even know how to iron a shirt!

After a year of subsistence living in San Francisco, I vacationed to my home town of Seattle and applied for a job at the Bon Marche’ (now Macy’s). Soon after, at the ripe age of 25 I was promoted to be a Young Men’s buyer, regularly traveling to New York on buying trips. Three years later I left the Bon and went to work for a wholesale young men’s shirt maker as its merchandiser. I stayed for 6 years and then I had the bright idea to start my own men’s sweater and shirt business. Let’s get this straight, with a degree in Psychology, I had no idea what was actually involved in starting and running a business. Naïve? I guess! I think you have to be a bit naïve or you would never consider starting an apparel business.  Starting an apparel business was my next major career pivot.

That first menswear company I started was called DeSar (The Sun). Nice name but bad label. After a year of floundering trying to produce men’s sweaters, I met Rick Hemmerling, who had just graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in graphic design. He wanted to make t-shirts and I said “How about joining me to make men’s shirts?” Rick liked the name Ex Officio and so did I. DeSar was out and ExOfficio was in. We raised a bit of cash from a friend and off we went to India using TWA air miles I’d been saving.

Fortunately, my wholesale apparel experience had introduced me to a factory connection in India. During that trip to India, Rick and I put together what we thought was a first rate line of men’s cotton shirts. Our next stop was men’s wear’s largest trade show, “MAGIC.”

Now comes our first eye opening experience at ExOfficio! After viewing our line of shirts, one of the buyers I knew said “Nice line, but I have a dozen companies doing virtually the same thing as you. Who could I justify throwing out just to put you in?” Eye opener? I’d call it more like our first “slap in the face”! We had absolutely no reason for being. We instantly knew the buyer was right and the feeling wasn’t good.

For the next year we barely survived by selling “private label” shirts to a chain of young men’s stores named Jeans West. We’d sell Jeans West a quarter million shirts and make between 05 and 10 cents a shirt. Needless to say we weren’t exactly rolling in cash. Then, one day a buddy who used to be a buyer at Eddie Bauer introduced us to a guy who wanted us to “knock off” a fly fishing shirt. When Rick and I saw the shirt I remember saying “Is this the best that the fly fishing market has to offer?” Let’s make fly fishing shirts! And, so we did. This single idea became our company’s most important pivot.

Would making fly fishing, outdoor shirts finally give ExOfficio its much sought after reason for being? Although ExOfficio’s pivot to fly fishing and the Outdoor industry was game saving, it wasn’t going to be our last! We quickly realized guys who were doing outdoor activities around the world often needed dual purpose clothes that were functional and also looked good while doing other things. While presenting our clothing line at the outdoor industry’s trade show called Outdoor Retailer, we had an appointment with a former LL Bean buyer I knew who was starting a travel wear catalog called Travel Smith. After he left, Rick and I simultaneously agreed that ExOfficio was really about “adventure travel” clothing and we decided right then and there that’s how we would market our brand. There it was, our second major pivot.

Here comes our next slap in the face! When we told the buyer for our largest account, the outdoor store REI, that we were going to market ExOfficio as adventure travel clothing, he said, “What’s that?” Our realization was that when you are the first to create a new clothing category, it isn’t always readily accepted! But fortunately, we persevered. Since we began designing for adventure travel, no one ever said to us again that we looked the same as so and so. Now, other lines began to copy ExOfficio’s look and feel. We finally had a real “reason for being.”

One day we were showing the same REI buyer a new sun protective shirt we created utilizing a sun protective technology first developed in Australia and a similar technology Rick discovered in China. The shirt Rick designed had amazing UPF protective properties. At the time, REI was carrying a sun protective shirt that was not even close to being the same quality of our shirt. Rick and I just assumed the REI buyer would buy our sun protective shirt over the competition’s. Now here comes our next slap in the face; the REI buyer told us that although our shirt was clearly a better garment, the other company was doing a great job of marketing their shirt and he would continue buying it over ours. This moment provided the realization that in order for ExOfficio to grow, we had to transition from being a product driven company into a lifestyle and marketing driven company. After researching about who our customer was and what they did, this pivot was the next foundational step eventually leading to a successful sale of ExOfficio.

The Emergence of Ya Joe!                                                                                     
A year later, I decided to retire and soon after began teaching a class on workplace politics through the University of Washington’s Department of Psychology. While teaching, I observed that some of my male students were somewhat fashionable and some absolutely not fashionable at all. Since the UW is a research institution, many students have analytical minds and because fashion is felt, they don’t always “feel their fashion.” I wondered if there was a way to make men’s fashion less about feeling and more analytic. I decided there actually were three things about fashion that were distinctly analytical. Is it comfortable? Is it easy to care for? Is it functional? I wondered if there was a category of men’s wear that could be developed around these three things and decided to make men’s apparel one more time.

Using these core characteristics of comfort, ease of care and functionality, Ya Joe (named for the everyday guy) was formed as an online only company, designing and manufacturing its own men’s clothing. Our original idea was to make clothes for what we thought was an underserved market, analytical tech guys who didn’t necessarily have a “feel” for fashion, but had a sense that in the business world their appearance may be something to consider. During this process we found that younger tech guys, no matter how we presented it to them, just didn’t respond well to fashion. What we did find out was that when slightly older guys wore our clothes, they loved them and came back for more.

Internally, we referred to these guys as the “Forgotten Men of Fashion.” It turned out that Ya Joe’s real customer was a bit older - 35-60, still had a fashion sense, but felt as though they had been forgotten by designers presenting newer, tighter fits that they no longer could or wanted to wear.

Ergo, Ya Joe has made its first major transitional pivot to the Forgotten Men of Fashion.

Besides myself, Ya Joe has a small but talented team of three. Including me, there is Co-founder and Creative Director Aaron Hicks and Content and Graphic Design Manager Eliam Puente. Our tag line is Ya Joe “that’s me!” We want every guy to associate with Ya Joe and to know they aren’t forgotten!

Is Ya Joe finished pivoting? Not even close, I think recognizing when to pivot towards the unmet needs of our customers and when not to, is what creates the challenge and the naïve adventure we go through while finding our true “reason for being!”