This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up friends, listeners, community. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School, here with a Throwback Thursday/Where Are They Now segment. We do these every Thursday, conveniently. And we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
Now last week was one of my favorite segments of these that we've done the whole year. It was with Jessica Brody. Jessica is a bestselling author who writes bestselling novels by day, and then very popular online courses, I guess by afternoon and evening. So she has done very, very well and seen a lot of growth since we first talked about her a couple of years ago. We've had all kinds of other stories as well, an Australian woman who draws houses, lots of different stuff.
You can always find those episodes for free at sidehustleschool.com on the episodes page. Well today, in our latest feature, we will hear from Kyle Bergman, who had a vision to create men's sweat pant overalls. Or as he called them, swoveralls. That's correct, this is not an April Fool's joke here on the 2nd of July, episode 1279. What has happened since?
Let's hear directly from Kyle and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Kyle Bergman. I am based in Brooklyn, New York. The name of my side hustle is The Great Fantastic. We make swoveralls and I was on episode 394.
Swoveralls are the glorious combination of sweat pants and overalls into one incredibly comfy masterpiece. At the beginning, I was just solving a personal problem. Wasn't even looking at a business opportunity. I just wanted a pair of sweat pant overalls and they didn't exist. There were some tertiary competitors who were offering four women in the jeggings department.
There was a BuzzFeed article in 2016 that showed like a pair of jeggings. They looked like denim overalls. They're made from a sweat pant material. I saw those and I said, wow, I would love a pair of something kind of like that. And looked online, couldn't find anything.
So I made swoveralls. Once I went online and discovered that there weren't any sweat pant overalls for men available, what I did find was a supplier in China through the Alibaba platform. At the time, I was a buyer at Birchbox and prior to being a buyer at Birchbox, I had been at Bloomingdale's and I knew based on my retail experience that if I went to this buyer and was serious about a larger order, they would send me a sample. And that's more or less exactly what happened. I received the sample and it was at that moment when I got them that I thought there might be something bigger here than just getting myself a pair.
Around the same time, I was starting business school at NYU. And one of my professors showed me a really cool tool that Google has called the keyword search planner where you can search the volume for any specific keyword over a given timeframe. And it was at that point when I had just the one sample that I realized around 500 people a month were also looking for sweat pan overalls online. And so I actually went back to the supplier. Initially, I will be honest with you, I was bluffing.
I had no intention at the beginning to buy any large quantity of sweat pan overalls. But then when I discovered that there was a demand for this, I went back and placed my first order and put them on Amazon through Amazon Fulfillment, their FBA platform. So initially, these were being sold just for men and just on Amazon, quickly expanded to women and shortly thereafter, also launched Swoveralls.com. The last time I was on the show, we were doing about $67,000. We had just ended our first year and we were profitable.
It was really exciting, small, yet profitable. Since then, a ton has happened. I was on Shark Tank. We surpassed the half a million dollar sales mark in total Swoveralls sold. So a little over two and a half years old.
And we are just about to launch a completely new product, Swoby Shorts, which is going to be the not so distant cousin or relative to the current product we offer Swoveralls, which is the pants version. This advice, I think, can be applied specifically to wanting to get into the apparel game, but it also can be more general. And I think it has to do with being okay with everything not being completely perfect. Shortly after being on the Side Hustle School podcast the first time, we launched a Kickstarter campaign. And that was for Swoveralls 2.0.
And we had improved the product and we're really excited to offer not only an improved product, but more colors and size options for customers. We are now on Swoveralls 9.0 or 9.1, or I've lost track. And if I had been waiting to make the perfect pair, I don't know if we would have even launched yet. And it's been two and a half years. So I don't want to say that we're not always striving towards perfection or we want our customers to experience or not experience the best product every time.
We're always looking to do that. But if things are good enough, we're constantly iterating. And a lot of times people, and it happens to me too, can get in their own heads about wanting to dot every I across every T before you take that leap. But especially for small businesses and people that truly believe in your story and what you're offering, they'll not only be forgiving, but they'll be supportive in helping improve the product. I think I can attribute some of the success that we've had to kind of having that mindset and that approach.
- Well, you heard it from him. Constant iteration is the way to win. Constantly tweaking, asking yourself what you can do better, starting with an idea that might seem like a crazy idea. I mean, this is kind of the definition. Whenever I think, you know, crazy idea, I think, okay, men's sweat pant overalls.
Is it sweat pant or sweat pants overalls? I'm not sure about the singular plural. I guess it doesn't matter because together they are swivels. That is the brand that Kyle has made. And what was it he mentioned about his new product?
It was a Swoopy Shorts. Okay, well, this is a half a million dollar business. Again, there's all kinds of stuff out there. There is something you can do. If Kyle can create a half million dollar business out of an idea to make men's sweat pants slash sweat pants overalls, there is something you can do.
So again, constant iteration is the way to go that. And of course, taking action. So I'm grateful to him for helping us out with this segment. We'll be doing these new segments for the rest of the year as well. They've been very popular.
So just let me know who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 1200 stories. 2020 is our year of interaction. If you have a question, if you'd like to update us about your side hustle, your Swoopy Shorts, whatever it is you're working on, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year along with updates from listeners as they grow their own projects. All right, today's notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1279.
That is for episode 1,279, 1,279. Thank you so much for listening. You are a rock star. Go out and change the world. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
