Unusual Men’s Fashion Item Romps Way to $100k

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

[Music]

Friends, listeners, community, welcome back to Side Hustle School, and happy Boxing Day for anyone who's listening in real time. If you're catching up after the holidays, welcome as well. I got an interesting story for you today about rompers. Now, if you're not familiar, a romper is a one-piece combination of shorts and a shirt, most typically worn by women and children. But hey, why not the guys?

Well, there might be a good reason why not, at least for some guys, but culture and counterculture is all about redefining what's popular. That's why today's story is about two guys who spot a viral Kickstarter campaign that raised a lot of money, something like $300,000. They looked at that and they said, you know what, we can do it better. We can at least make that product better. It is indeed an unusual men's fashion item.

We're gonna romp right into this story after saying thanks to our sponsor. [Music]

When Steve Jobs quoted Picasso saying, "Good artists produce, great artists steal," Wyatt Thompson took it to heart. It was the influence behind his side hustle, Romper Jack. Wyatt is a suburban 20-something who likes going to metal concerts and has a man crush on Elon Musk. In his free time, he organizes hackathons and startup weekends.

Wyatt also likes to start projects with friends, like he did with an app to connect local parents to tutors. Following Picasso's lead, Wyatt decided to make a side hustle out of something that already existed, rather than taking the time to invent something entirely new. He invited his friend Justin to join him in the search. They thought Kickstarter might be a good place to find out what was coming on the market, and it was. They found a campaign for men's rompers that was going viral.

The campaign had raised $300,000, but the product wouldn't be available for four months. Four months seemed like a long time to wait for rompers, and the two figured they could start selling them sooner than that. Until then, Wyatt didn't even know there was such a thing as men's rompers. In fact, he knew little about fashion in general. In spite of that, he still thought it was a great opportunity from a strategic perspective, because first of all, there was only one company selling this product for the market, yet there was clearly an established demand.

Second, the barrier to entry was low. No one can copyright the design of a romper because the outfit has been around for decades. And third, the Kickstarter campaign wouldn't deliver the product for four months, leaving a window for someone else to make it first. These three indicators led the two to believe it was a great market to test out a side hustle. Wyatt and Justin weren't thrown by their lack of knowledge or experience because they had a blueprint in front of them.

The Kickstarter campaign from the other guys, and Wyatt had the confidence in their ability to figure out what they didn't know. The first thing they didn't know was where to get men's rompers made. A Google search led them to a site called AliExpress, which is a global retail marketplace offering quality products at factory prices. It's pretty simple to become an AliExpress seller with your own brand, and sure enough, AliExpress sold men's rompers. Suddenly, Wyatt and Justin had rompers to sell, and they named them Rumper Jacks.

They used Shopify to set up an online store, and within 26 days of first finding that Kickstarter campaign, Wyatt and Justin were selling Rumper Jacks. And then within 10 minutes of making their site live on Shopify, a ding went off indicating a sale was made. Wyatt and Justin each assumed that it was the other one testing things out, and then they realized it was an actual sale. At first, they screamed for joy, and then they screamed in terror because their rompers hadn't yet arrived from AliExpress. That got sorted out, and within a few weeks, they began designing their own style of rompers in Photoshop and sending them out to manufacturers on Alibaba.

See, AliExpress sells existing products in small quantities, but Alibaba is a group of manufacturers and resellers who trade in larger orders. Over time, Wyatt and Justin spoke with her new customers and evolved the product and brand to fit them. They adjusted the language, photos, and features to attract the men they understood were buying Rumper Jacks. And the rompers went from being an outfit people wanted as a gimmick, to something a brave man can wear out on the town to stand out. Sales ramped up quickly.

Early on, Wyatt and Justin, and sometimes their friends, were doing fulfillment out of shared office spaces. Boxes were filled to the roof with rompers. They would package for hours, folding clothes, writing handwritten thank you notes, and sealing everything up. Rumper Jacks began just a few months ago in July 2017, and the company grossed $100,000 in sales from July through October. They now sell Rumper Jack in five countries and enjoy a growing number of brand partnerships.

Wyatt says the best part of the experience for him is seeing people wearing the product. And the worst part is shipping logistics. He feels terrible if an item is delayed and misses a wedding or birthday party. And here's a fun twist. This side hustle ended up advancing Wyatt's daytime career in strategy and product development.

He recently interviewed for a job, and he got the position by pointing to how he built an e-commerce website in a market that most people took as a joke. His advice to other side hustlers is to act quickly on opportunities that already have demand. Let someone else prove the concept, then do it better than them. Pretty soon, you can break away from mirroring your competitors and do your own thing without taking on too much risk. [Music]

All right, let's break this down a little.

It is an interesting approach to look at Kickstarter campaigns and find something in demand that also has a flaw of some kind. Now in this case, the flaw was more of a timing issue. It seemed like the product was great. They told a great story with it. People believed in it enough to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in that campaign, but the flaw was that it would take four months to deliver.

So Wyatt and Justin picked up on that and decided to create their own brand. The other interesting part is that there was only one other company doing this, and it's not always good to be first. Romper Jack benefited from the other guys getting proof of concept before they jumped in. So clearly there's room for at least two men's Romper brands, if not more. Let me know if you want to start one.

And also, if you'd like to get a free 21-day trial of Shopify, the same platform that Romper Jack used to get to $100,000 in sales in just a few months. You can check that out at Shopify.com/sidehustle. I hope you enjoyed this romp-worthy story. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to everything I mentioned, including Aliexpress and other places to go to manufacture your rompers or whatever you want to make are at sidehustleschool.com/360, that's 360.

Thank you for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]