Fashion Buyer Creates Quirky Comfort Craze

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Fashion buyer creates quirky comfort craze. This is a fun one. We're going to look at the story of Swoveralls. Swoveralls are a combination sweatpants and overalls. We first featured this story long ago in episode 394. Here we are in episode 3042 with an update, a remix. And once

a week this year, we're bringing you some remixes of our best stories from those early years. If you were not listening back in 2018 or 2017 even, these stories are completely new. And if you were listening, well, you get a little bit of a remixed version. Maybe you have an incredible memory. I don't. So it's been fun for me to go back to these stories. This is the story of Kyle

Bergman and his Swoveralls, a fashion item, a fashion line, which is still around today and still selling. It started from a viral Buzzfeed article, which you're going to hear about, but he was able to go on and create a brand that appeals to lots of people. Very fun project, very fun story in the fashion industry. I'm going to bring it to you after this quick shout out to our sponsor. Kyle Bergman was known around the Bloomingdale's fashion buying offices. That was

his day job for his quirky style, often wearing Hawaiian shirts on casual Fridays when everyone else stuck to button downs and jeans. When a colleague sent him a Buzzfeed article about a new fashion trend, sweatpants combined with overalls, Kyle was intrigued. There was just one problem. The article only showed women's versions and he wanted a pair for himself. After spending a night searching online, Kyle found nothing for men. His last resort was Alibaba,

where he discovered a factory drawing of male sweat pant overalls. The catch? He'd need to order at least 300. 300 units. Well, the idea stayed in the back of his mind for eight months until he started his MBA at NYU and decided to take action. He reached out to Mandy, the Chinese supplier,

about getting a sample. Initially quoted $150, Kyle negotiated down to $111 just by asking. When the prototype arrived, he was impressed by the quality and premium feel. Encouraged, he worked with Mandy to make the design more masculine, adding thicker straps, a more substantial bib, and jogging pants cuffs. He provided sizing based on his own measurements as a typical large and six weeks later received a finished product he was ready to market. For distribution, Kyle

chose Amazon's fulfillment program. This allowed him to ship directly to Amazon warehouses where they would handle storage, orders, shipping, customer service, and returns for a $5 commission per unit plus a 15% fee. To use this system, he needed to establish an official business, so he founded the great fantastic, inspired by a phrase his mother used, and named his product Swoveralls. After registering as an LLC, Kyle placed an order for 500 units at $16 each, a discount he negotiated by increasing the quantity from 300. Combined with other startup costs, his initial investment came to around $25,000. Following advice from his MBA lecturer that it's

harder to raise prices after lunch, Kyle set his retail price at $85. After factoring in manufacturing and Amazon costs, this gave him a healthy 56% profit margin while remaining competitive in the market. Kyle created playful tongue-in-cheek branding inspired by Chubby Swim Shorts, which he applied across Facebook and Instagram. He reached out to his Lacrosse network for product models and manually compiled a launch mailing list of 700 contacts who might be interested. This personal approach paid off, generating thousands in initial sales.

The big breakthrough came when a connection from his Lacrosse network got Swoveralls featured in Thrillist. The article ended up getting picked up by local news media and blogs worldwide. Fortunately, by then, Kyle had set up a Shopify website to capture all the traffic. And through this combination of networking, distinctive branding, and leveraging his personal contacts, Kyle generated over $65,000 in sales in his first year, resulting in $24,000 in profit. That was just then. He's still going. He planned next to make Swoveralls customizable,

allowing buyers to add their own images or patterns to the fabric, starting with a pizza emoji. Because as he sees it, the Swoveralls are perfect pizza eating clothes. All right. As I said, Kyle is still going strong. Go check out swoveralls.com. It's just

like it sounds. You can get $25 cash back. There's not even a promo code for me. You just go check it out for yourself. He's a cool guy. And the thing that I really liked about this story,

well, there's a lot of things I liked about it. But in the initial episode, I think I talked about how he didn't have an email list, but he knew 700 people. And so he basically made his own email list based off of his contacts. And so maybe you don't know 700 people that you think of, you know, that might be good for your product or service, but everybody knows somebody and whatever it is you're creating, there probably are some people who can help you get closer to your end users or your ultimate customers or clients. So think about that. And I hope this is a good

point of inspiration for you today. I hope it gets you thinking there's something out there you can make as well. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I make this podcast for you so that you will take action. And I hope you'll do that. Do one

thing today to get closer to a goal you believe in. And of course, I'll be back tomorrow. A new episode every single day, seven days a week, always free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.

From the Onward Project