"Kyle Hency started Chubbies in 2011 with three Stanford friends as a fun, weekend‑and‑beer‑vibe shorts brand. The irreverent direct-to-consumer clothing brand—one popular item was a tear-away pair of shorts with a speedo-style bathing suit underneath—"was objectively maybe a bad idea," Hency says, half joking. Nevertheless, the company caught fire—revenue went from $1 million to $8 million. And when Chubbies was acquired by Solo Stove in 2021, it marked a rare retail exit just as the direct-to-consumer boom began to collapse."
""Every single brand now has to manage revenue all the way down to profits, because those profits are the only way they can fund their business," he says. "The lenders have gone out of business. The VCs aren't backing brands as much as they were before. If you look up how much VC investments into consumer deals have gone down since before that period, some numbers show over 90% reduction.""
"Despite its ultimate success (Hency says Chubbies now does $100 million or more in sales under its new owner), Chubbies almost ran out of cash three times, and at one point managed with negative $2 million cash for 18 months. Managing inventory became critical, and Hency says he struggled with the software tools available at the time."
Kyle Hency founded Chubbies in 2011 as a casual, irreverent direct-to-consumer shorts brand that grew from $1 million to $8 million in revenue and was acquired by Solo Stove in 2021. The company later achieved over $100 million in sales under new ownership but faced severe cash constraints, including operating with negative $2 million for 18 months. Those cash crises made inventory management essential and exposed shortcomings in available software tools. In 2024 Hency co-founded Good Day to provide inventory solutions for apparel brands. Good Day raised $7 million in seed funding from multiple investors to pursue that goal.
Read at Fortune
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