Pant Club was a dream for about 3 plus years until August 2017 when I decided to take on the task of developing a mens pants company.  I consider myself a designer of digital and physical products. Designing products was always a challenge but not as much of a challenge as producing TV shows. So anytime I want to develop a product I view it in the manner of television production. Producing a TV show is like putting together a puzzle, you build that puzzle one step at a time.  Yet, even with 5 years of designing clothes in the fashion industry there was so much I did not know about launching a denim brand and online shopping site. Building a retail site, a payment gateway, designing denim, denim manufacturing  and trademarking etc, were processes that were beyond my scope of knowledge. The one thing that fired me up was the denim landscape was changing and big department and chains stores like Gap, Jcrew and JCpennys were losing there market share and closing down.  There was an opportunity to tap into a shifting market and move into the new mens box service industry.  This is what I did to launch Pant Club.com

Pant Club Logo

After 5 years of designing mens jackets and shirts I took over a year and half break after a vendor did not pay me. In August 2017 I entered back into the industry with a new idea and big dreams of launching Pant Club. I had originally wanted to launch a subscription pant service and was going to call “Need Pants?” When I tried to register the name online it was taken.  After some research both online and in our local municipal I found Pant Club.com to be available. 

In the beginning the only thing I knew about how I wanted to design the site was for it to be simple.  A simple logo was also was also a goal. Spending too much time on designing the logo would slow me down and over thinking it could have been the death of Pant Club.  After going through about 4 or 5 fonts I settled on this font and the color yellow because it stood out. The words Pant Club next to the denim is my first graphic created with the words. The idea was for text to be simple yet stylish and not over shadow the garments.

PantClub.com  is always a work in progress. It took over 11 months to complete.

Pant Club is unique in that we only sell a small selection of pants. The idea is to make the shopping experience less tedious and fast. One of a kind benefits were also something that I strive for. I knew from the very beginning that Pant Club.com was going to be an unproven concept so everything accomplished had to be special.

Pant Club’s motto is simple. Yet to get to this simplicity it took hundreds of hours of rewrites. As of July 2018 a two versions of the motto were still being tweaked.  The guy in the orange and the guy with the white hat feature two of the versions I like. Over the course of a year, every word must have been rewritten thousands of times. I remember after 10 months of working on the site I felt as if it was finished.  After three days I realized I hated it and started all over again with a new site design. The site may always be a work in progress. The idea with a site is to push through the blah to get to the badass.

Denim Details

Before Pant Club I used to design mens long sleeve shirts, vests, jackets and other speciality products.  This was something I really enjoyed even though it was a ton of work. My experience with denim came along when someone invited me to partake in a mens fashion show.  My first denim brand was called Wilmington. The name derived from the manufactures street. Those first samples put the idea in my head and thought it would be cool & easy to make a denim line. All the technical aspects never crossed my mind. Lucky I hired some really good denim folks to guide through the technical development process.

Every thing we did had to be made in the US. Citys denim is an American brand designed and manufactured in the US. My denim of choice is selvedge.  We used selvedge denim from the American mill Cone. This denim is revered but do to market change the mill closed down at the end of 2017.

Denim is a product just like your car, so details do count. To stand out and break away from tradition our thread of choice is royal blue. This was a whim of an idea, I knew this would definitely separate Citys brand from others.  The cut of the jean is slim, yet  designed to not be tight. Problems developed trying to convey this message to the pattern maker. After about 5 different variations and samples we went back to the original pattern and used it’s original design with a few modifications. It turned out that the original pattern worked best in this situation. It’s good to try and experiment but if that does not work going back to the original design may be best. I often try to make fast decision when the decision I make will not affect the product over all. This way we’re still moving forward. When making this denim I was cautious and hoped at times that my decisions were right.

Citys Label

The brand we offer is Citys and is developed in house. It took a long time to develop the graphic elements to create the jeans. I don’t really remember how the Citys name came to me. All I remember is trying to decide between the word City and Citys.  The embroidered pant label is a good example of being original.  The label does no change the style or look of the denim, it just adds a little flare to something very traditional. Subtle flare is what I’ve been trying to achieve. Labels are the only materials from the denim line that were made in China. I really needed a special product
and this was the only company that I knew could make this label under a certain price. Making products over seas takes time and focused clarification.

Box

We wanted to deliver a special product to our customers. The best way to do that was create our own shipping box. The shipping box was a fun project to undertake. This was a custom box made for Pant Club. The box was made in Los Angeles by Smurfit Kappa a box manufacturing company. They helped me figure out the boxes dimensions and I created all the graphic elements for the box.

What’s really strange is that when I was finally finished building the site and receiving the denim shipment I thought it’s finally done, I’m finished! Then I realized it’s all just starting over again. Now we have to plan our marketing strategy, find customers etc..