According to Chris Lindland, CEO of San Francisco-based online retailer Betabrand, the modern worker needs clothing that fits an active lifestyle.
"When folks dressed like Don Draper, your clothing only needed to perform well in the boardroom and the bar. Today's worker is far more active," Lindland said to Business Insider. "Business travelers consider our dress pant sweatpants and yoga pants a Godsend. They allow you to dress up while dressing down."
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Betabrand first captured the Internet's attention with Cordarounds, horizontal corduroys that are "67% less likely to cause friction fires in your groin," according to its product description.
Betabrand then released the Executive Hoodie in 2012, just in time for the Facebook IPO. The pinstripe hoodie is a blend of business and casual that's quite obviously aimed toward nerdy Mark Zuckerberg types. Now Betabrand designs, manufactures, and releases five new products a week.
The brand's crowdfunding service, Thinktank, has also led to more than 75 new products since launching in September. Outside designers can submit sketches to the site, and if they get enough votes, Betabrand will create a prototype. The company then puts successful prototypes into production and awards the designers a 10% commission on each unit sold.
"Crowd-funding simply allows us to better understand what customers really want. It allows us to be far more experimental, and work with all kinds of designers," Lindland said. "Men continue to crowd-fund anything that injects performance fabrics into workwear. Casual workwear / active workwear is a category our customers can't get enough of."
The site is very tongue-in-cheek, and its goal is to appeal to an Internet-centric audience.
"Our aim is to create fashion forwardable products. The designs, photos, & product descriptions must be interesting enough to forward on to friends," Lindland said. "We're trying to brighten people's inboxes with something funny every couple days ... Humor's proven very necessary to get people to escape work for a moment and click over to our site."
Lindland shared some of the most popular products you can buy on Betabrand right now.