Taking 80’s short shorts and creating an entire brand around them, Chubbies designs and markets very unique and vintage styles of shorts, keeping the inseams shorter than 7 inches. A Fraternity brother’s dream, Chubbies embodies the entirety of Greek life across America. Whether they are running not so traditional ads via social media, or ranting about the latest cultural development, founders Kyle Hency, Rainer Castillo, Preston Rutherford, and Tom Montgomery like to run their company differently from other fashion retailers, and ultimately, this business model has worked extremely well for them.
All graduates from Stanford University Kyle Hency, Rainer Castillo, Preston Rutherford, and Tom Montgomery it felt like most natural thing in the world to start a company revolving around retro-inspired shorts. During their college career, they all had similar tastes in styles, all wearing these retro short shorts they found in thrift stores around the Stanford area. Using this tradition as inspiration, they decided to start a fashion company. The entire endeavor started when the four when to a fourth of July party beach party at Lake Tahoe. They decided to make several test pairs, about 20. They wore them to the party, and passed out a few pairs. The shorts were a hit, but not because they were anything special, but because of the culture the founders brought with them.
“That was immediately where we saw how impactful the shorts were and also how polarizing the shorts were,” Montgomery says. Reactions ranged from “‘Good lord, those shorts are the greatest things I’ve ever seen,’ to ‘Get off of my beach, men’s legs belong under layers of fabric,'” Montgomery told Business Insider.
After the success of the fourth of July party, the four went back to their Stanford Apartments and immediately started selling the shorts on a newly created website. They had the perfect concept down, but they wanted to find easy and cheap ways to market. They decided to fully embody the fraternity culture by recruiting fellow “Frat Bros” around the country, offering students free merchandise in return for social media advertising, via posting on Facebook and Instagram.
Regardless of their unconventional business methods, the company is worth millions, and in the process of buying out companies copying their business model.
Huh, never saw this coming. This a really unique business idea that actually fills a pretty specific and empty niche. I really like their marketing and advertising ideas. They can reach their target audience without spending lots of money on making ads that people might just ignore. And the people they gave the shorts away to probably came back and bought more. Very smart!
This is genius!! it seems that many millennials are turning to more “throwback” or retro style choices. Chubbies got ahead of the curve with their campaign to liberate American thighs from the oppression of pants. It’s really interesting looking at their marketing technique. Sending large amounts of free product in exchange for a shout out on social media. I think this risk exemplifies the culture of Chubbies and entrepreneurship, taking radical steps to distinguish themselves from the rest of the clothing industry.
This is such a great idea for such a specific problem. The retro style is definitely coming back into style nowadays. The concept of freeing your thighs from pants is hilarious yet very relate able. The use of social media is a new way of branching out because social media is a relatively new way to start a business and the rick/investment you have to make to trust that it will catch is intense. However the payoff of not having to spend a bunch of money on ads is genius. I will definitely be looking into this company. Great article!
As a girl, I never realized that guys wanted to wear short shorts too. Honestly, I am not a fan of super short shorts on guys, but I can appreciate a good business model when I see one. I love the name, Chubbies, because it fully encompasses the vibe of the company: awkward and funny. This is a great niche product!