A Tuxy Onesie For Women And Children Too, Just In Time For Christmas
MONCTON – The creators of what’s perhaps the world’s first cool looking onesie have had a crazy year, and they don’t plan on slowing down in 2019.
Moncton’s Derek Martin and brothers Marcel LeBlanc and Mario LeBlanc are the creators of The Tuxy, a onesie that’s much more appropriate to wear outside your house. The Tuxy is designed to look like two separate pieces of clothing, like a tracksuit. It features a large side pocket with a phone compartment, custom hood and high neckline, zipper garage and lots of other pockets.
The founders launched a Kickstarter back in November 2017 to raise money for the first round of Tuxys, with the goal of earning enough to eventually open an online store. The campaign skyrocketed past its $15,000 goal, bringing in $185,000 and receiving preorders from 47 different countries. All of the Kickstarter preorders were shipped out by August.
“We finally were able to have an online store set up to be able to take orders and ship immediately,” says Martin, Tuxy’s CEO. “That was a big hurdle.”
Now that Tuxy finally has its full online store, Martin is now working on the business full-time.
“I’ve been pretty much focusing on growing the business and growing the brand. I launched the e-commerce store in August, which was a huge milestone for us,” he says. “The point I’ve been waiting for since we launched is to be able to say, ‘hey, buy now.’ “
Martin says the United States is currently the company’s biggest market, followed by Canada, then Europe.
“The U.S. is just way bigger,” he says. “There’s more consumer spending so it makes total sense to me that U.S. would be our biggest market.”
Along with setting up an online store, they also expanded their product line. Tuxy now offer onesies for women and children.
“It looks to be pretty much exactly the same, but there’s a lot of intricacies in the way it fits, the pockets and the paneling that makes it tailored to women,” says Martin. “But I wanted it to be true to the original design.”
For the kid versions, Tuxy wanted to create something special just in time for the holidays.
“In a way, I’m picking a fight with the traditional onesie. You don’t need to look awful Christmas morning. You can just be comfortable,” he says. “I always had the vision of waking up, mom and dad and both kiddos can all be in their Tuxy. I thought it would be the perfect add-on.”
Looking ahead into 2019, Martin says the main goal is to keep up with demand.
“We’re just building the brand. I think we got a lot of hype from last year from our launch. People remember us from that, but now I’m slowly establishing what it is to be Tuxy and who we are and what we’re about,” he says. “Expressing the story, bringing on our customers and making them a part of them part of a movement. I feel like we’re carving out a whole new market that just never existed before.”
He says people can also expect some new Tuxy products, but he’s tight-lipped on the details.
“I’m working on some pretty cool stuff that we’re really excited about that we’ll be launching,” says Martin. “This all started with an innovative idea to do something a little bit whacky and crazy, but with a specific purpose. I just want to keep doing that. We’re not interested in doing the same thing as everyone else.”