No MBA in their right mind would have started Chubbies

No MBA in their right mind would have started Chubbies

Tiny men’s khaki shorts doesn’t conjure “massive TAM with accelerating tailwinds and considerable white space”

Normally, smart and enterprising folk look for these things.

This is generally referred to as the classic top-down approach.

We did the opposite.

Not necessarily intentionally. It was just what we did.

Yes, apparel is a massive market. And yes we did quick “research” to find that men’s shorts has a market size of multiple billions of dollars.

However, it starts to get smaller very quickly

— Men’s apparel is a fraction of women’s apparel

— Men’s bottoms is far smaller than men’s tops

— Shorts is a tiny portion of men’s Bottoms

— Shorts at or shorter than 5.5” is a ridiculously small portion of the shorts market

We focused on something we loved that didn’t exist, and therefore, we had a problem to solve.

We loved shorter shorts, could only find shorts we liked at thrift stores, and thought it would be fun to create a brand around a lifestyle of fun, inclusivity, levity, and the weekend.

Shorter shorts are more common today, but long cargo shorts of 11-inch inseam khaki shorts were truly the only shorts out there in 2011 (which is blowing my mind to think about).

We didn’t worry about the TAM, we just worried about making the product we wanted but couldn’t get.

The market was big enough, and, with the massively reduced friction associated with getting some kind of storefront up and running today, effectively ANY market is big enough.

Not saying don’t try to come up with the best idea you can, but don’t let some research report determine what you’re going to spend every day of your life working on.

The point is that any market is big enough, and you can find success creating a solid profitable business doing pretty much anything.

While it’s impossible to control whether or not we’ll reach some unknown level of monetary success, what we can control is WHO we work with and WHAT we do — and that’s arguably more important than any economic outcome that may or may not happen at some point in the future.

There is enough friction in life - don’t create more of it by worrying about whether the market size is big enough, or whether it has the structural dynamics to allow for hockey stick growth. Take that info into account, sure, but don’t start and end there.

If you love it, and can find one or two co-founders who you trust and respect who share the same views about what product and brand should exist (TLDR - it’s a looooooong road and you’ll need others to help you get through it), you’ll have a recipe for good things to happen.

Won’t happen over night.
Might take a decade.
Or decades.

Just because an MBA would never start that business doesn’t mean YOU shouldn’t start that business.
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