“The biggest hurdle to getting new customers and selling them on the whole custom experience is taking their measurements,” said Jacob Wood. “Having them trust themselves with a tape measure seemed daunting to a lot of guys so we teamed up with Body Labs and can now build a 3D model of you online and extract all your measurements. Our rate of customer returns and remakes has dramatically reduced.”
Along with the new way to get a perfect fit, Wood launched his second kickstarter campaign in June 2015 to add 13 new fabrics including four that are non-iron, which is a first for Woodies. In three days, they received more than $93,000, which is well over double what they brought in during their first kickstarter.
When we first introduced you to Woodies Clothing, the company got overwhelming evidence of a need for custom dress shirts when Wood started a campaign on Kickstarter in April 2014 to raise $10,000 in seed money. He thought he’d be lucky to get that amount within a week, but the money came rolling in within seven hours.
“The long term strategy is to become the king of dress shirts,” says Wood. “That’s what we’re starting with and what we want to master.”
Woodies offers top quality shirts on its website, which are manufactured in southeast Asia. The company feels a sense of responsibility in giving back to that area and has partnered with The Foundation for the Education of Rural Children (FERC) in Thailand. For every shirt you buy, a portion of the proceeds goes to help students in need.
Wood came up with the idea for his company while working as a buyer for Macy’s Department Store. “I was the men’s suit buyer for two years and then I was promoted to cargo shorts,” he says. Working with shorts wasn’t his thing, so he asked himself, “What do I love? What can I offer that’s better and different than anyone else?” His answer: dress shirts.
Customers have control of the cut, sizing and fabric of the specific shirt they want designed, and Wood says this business model makes more sense than the mass produced S, M, L shirts sold in department stores.
The ordering process allows for a choice of dress or casual fabric, customized collars and cuffs, plackets and pleats. The new 3D sizing works just by entering height, weight and average shirt size, but if a customer knows other measurements, like neck size and sleeve length, they can add those in as well.
“We’ll change our fabrics as the seasons change and as trends change,” says Wood. “We didn’t want to overwhelm customers with hundreds of fabrics. We do the investigative work to find an assortment of awesome fabrics and present customers with the best of the best.”
There are other companies selling dress shirts online, he admits, but he says Woodies’ advantage is in the price. “For an opening price point, theirs is $98 where ours is $68.
“I worked behind the scenes in retail,” he continues. “I understand how the system works and I recognized the need for improvement and innovation. I took a leap and started this company.”
We can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
