This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Underwear side hustle turns into $500,000 a month business. That's right, a multi-million dollar company. And despite having no background in fashion, two women set out to make underwear for different sizes and body shapes. When their project hits, they go all in. It now brings in, as noted, half a million dollars a month.
It employs 15 people. But remember, it all started as a side hustle. Welcome, friends, and welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Excited to bring you the podcast every single day.
This is episode 3,203. And in fact, this year I'm bringing you some remixes of a few of our best stories over the years from those early years, 2017, 2018 in particular. If you weren't listening back then, these stories are completely new. If you do happen to have an incredible, absolutely fantastic memory, well, each one is being rerecorded. We also include some new updates in some cases.
So basically, everything is fresh and new. And we're gonna hear today how this underwear side hustle grows from an early Kickstarter campaign to that multi-million dollar company, hiring lots of people, doing lots of big things. Pretty cool how you can follow a passion and sometimes it just totally blows up. So let's hear about it. The detailed story is coming right up.
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Fran Dunaway is the CEO and co-founder of Tomboy X. The company makes underwear, swimwear and loungewear that isn't for everybody, but is for anybody. Love that branding, love that tagline. They're focused on fit and quality, offering every style and sizes XS to 4X. And they've gone from zero employees two years ago to 15 at the time of our original recording.
Before they started what was supposed to be a side project, Fran and her co-founder Naomi, who is also her wife, weren't experts in fashion. Both of them had careers they enjoyed, but they also had this burning desire to make beautiful button-up shirts for women. They wanted to make a shirt with fine quality fabric, fun details and fit for a woman's body. And they chose the name Tomboy X because they thought it was cute. To compensate for their lack of background in the fashion industry, Fran and Naomi did a lot of research.
They wanted to see what made a lifestyle brand truly stick with a dedicated fan base, as opposed to all the ones that came and went. They discovered something important. The lifestyle brands with staying power started by focusing on one hero product and building from there. That doesn't mean they don't expand in ad products, but it does mean they build the core business around that one single hero product. A Kickstarter project for Tomboy X shirts outraised its $75,000 goal.
And they also learned something important through the process. The hero product for Tomboy X was boxer briefs for women. They actually got more requests for that than anything else. So they were into shirts, but then they noticed so many women were requesting boxer briefs. And so with this brief front in mind, they set out to make the softest, longest lasting waistband out there.
They were determined to create one that you didn't even notice you were wearing because it's so comfortable, doesn't leave a mark and doesn't cut off your circulation. They sent off for samples from suppliers and soon had a broad selection. Well, mostly a selection of waistbands that didn't work. One was close, but not perfect. So they asked to work with the supplier to make some tweaks.
With the perfect waistband formula, they then focused on finding quality fabrics for the underwear and working on a design that had seams in all the right places and legs that don't ride up. They then went out to visit factories. That's right, they didn't just log on to Alibaba. They wanted partners who were in it for the longterm and who shared their values. They finally found one in Vancouver, British Columbia that had experience making boxer briefs for men.
Once that was in the works, they started making more kinds of underwear, including a bikini cut and other variations. Now, not every side hustle grows quickly. Of course, some of them take years, that's totally fine, but this one did grow quickly. In fact, growth was extremely rapid. In the early days, Fran would manage the Facebook ads in real time.
Every day she'd set a revenue goal and then turn it off when she hit it. Nice work if you can get it, right? Then two years in, they did a major rebranding. Since then, they perfected the formula for spending on ads and bringing in new customers, especially through Facebook, but also through podcast ad buys and other mediums. They have a team that does nothing but work on this.
Instagram has been especially important for engagement and they now communicate daily with more than 230,000 followers. It was 75,000 in the original episode, so they have continued to grow. And if any of this sounds intimidating, remember this is now a company. It wasn't their goal to turn the side project into a multi-million dollar operation. They just found their hero product and they also made their customers their heroes.
Images on that Instagram account and their website tell the stories of the target market they started with. Not everybody, but anybody. They've clearly struck the right tone with the right products and the right audience. [Music]
We like to feature a wide range of stories on the show if you've been listening for a while, you've probably heard lots of stories from people who make $1,000 a month and they're happy about that because this is extra money. It's going to pay off debt or go into their savings account or allow them to take a vacation they couldn't otherwise take or just do something fun.
And I love those kinds of stories. I also love stories of side hustles that grow into multi-million dollar businesses. So it really is all about your goals. And for us, it's just about highlighting the wide range of outcomes that can occur when you follow a passion or follow a skill or perhaps marry that passion and that skill with something that is helpful and useful to others. Just like the brand Tomboy X and Fran and Naomi have done.
So big congratulations to them. Looks like they are still going strong. You can check out tomboyx.com or tomboyx on all social and listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope you take from these stories a point of motivation or inspiration to go and do something for yourself, something that matters to you. I'll be cheering you on and nudging you along each day with a new episode.
The complete archives are available for download and streaming completely free, sidehustleschool.com. And of course, new episodes drop every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
