Pals' Love of Vintage Shorts Becomes Online Success
Four friends ditched their jobs to create and sell a fashion obsession.
— -- Chubbies began with four Stanford graduates in San Francisco, California, who loved wearing vintage shorts and wanted to start their own business.
In 2011, the friends -- Kyle Hency, Preston Rutherford, Tom Montgomery and Rainer Castillo -- ditched their jobs, packed up 20 pairs of shorts that they'd made themselves and headed to Lake Tahoe for vacation.
They spent their vacation, paddle-boarding and playing horseshoes, all while wearing the shorts. Their shorts style turned more than a few heads, they said.
"People would come up to us -- people we had never met before -- people just saying, 'What in world are these shorts?'" Rutherford said.
The four friends soon sold the shorts they'd brought to Lake Tahoe to their friends -- and in several days, their online business had been born.
They named the shorts Chubbies Shorts -- Chubbies for short -- because of the elastic waistband. They said the shorts were a throwback to the kind of bottoms and swim trunks your father wore while having a drink or grilling on the beach. The elastic band was never too snug on the waistline.
Since then, the brand has gotten even bigger attention from the Wall Street Journal as well as Forbes. The company receives photos from all over the US, from Texas and Minnesota to Kentucky and Colorado, with customers wearing their signature US flag shorts.
"The military's a big component for us," Montgomery said. "They've been supportive from Day 1."
The shorts, which come in a variety of styles, are all made in America. The cotton is grown in Georgia and the shorts are then sewn and dyed across 19 factories in California. The company has also since expanded to swim trunks and shirts.
"From Day 1, a conversation for us was, 'What can we do that's good with this company?' And one of the big things for us was saying, 'We can create American jobs here in America,'" Castillo said.