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TBT: These "Sweatpant Overalls" Produce Joy and Extra Pockets
Welcome to Throwback Thursday / "Where are they now?" where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
So far in these features we've had a New York City musician with a blog teaching jazz that becomes a multiple six-figure business and an Australian woman who draws houses.
Today, in our latest feature, we'll hear from Kyle Bergman, who had a vision to create men's sweatpant overalls, or as he called them, "Swoveralls." What's happened since? Let's hear directly from him.
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 or offerings for women in the jeggings department. There was a BuzzFeed article in 2016 that showed a pair that looked like denim overalls but were made from a sweat material. I saw those and I said, "Wow, I would love a pair of something kind of like that." 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 that I had been at Bloomingdale's. I knew based on my retail experience that if I went to this supplier 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 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 sweatpant overalls online. So I went back to the supplier. Initially, I will be honest with you, I was bluffing—I had no intention to buy any large quantity of sweat pant overalls. But when I discovered there was demand for this, I placed my first order and put them on Amazon through FBA. Initially these were being sold just for men, just on Amazon. I quickly expanded to women, and shortly thereafter 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 hit—I should say surpassed—the half million dollar sales mark in total Swoveralls sold. A little over two and a half years old, and we are just about to launch a completely new product.
This advice can be applied specifically to getting into the apparel game, but also more generally. It has to do with being okay with everything not being completely perfect. Very early on, shortly after being on the Side Hustle School podcast the first time, we launched a Kickstarter campaign for Swoveralls 2.0—we had improved the product and were excited to offer more colors and size options. We are now on Swoveralls 9.0—or 9.1—I've lost track. And if I had been waiting to make the perfect pair, I don't know that we would have even launched yet, and it's been two and a half years.
I don't want to say we're not always striving towards perfection—we always want our customers to experience the best product every time. But if things are good enough, we're constantly iterating. A lot of times people can get in their own heads about wanting to dot every I and cross every T before taking that leap. But especially for small businesses, the people who truly believe in your story and what you're offering will not only be forgiving, but supportive in helping improve the product. I think I can attribute some of the success we've had to having that mindset and approach.
Constant iteration is the way to win. Thanks for leading the way, Kyle!
