How These New Brunswick Entrepreneurs are Making the Onesie Cool
MONCTON – Three men from the Moncton area say they’ve created the perfect loungewear for down times and those days off from CrossFit or training for a triathlon – The Tuxy.
The Tuxy is a onesie, except much more appropriate to wear outside your house. It’s specially 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. It also comes with a roll-up utility bag to keep the Tuxy dry when travelling
It’s the brainchild of Marcel LeBlanc, his brother Mario LeBlanc and Derek Martin, who are long-time friends who do CrossFit together.
“We always wanted to do something together and when we came back together and bonded over CrossFit, we were like, ‘let’s try to take something off that’s related to CrossFit,'” says Marcel. “We didn’t want to be too hard-core or take ourselves too seriously.”
So they decided to play on one of the reasons why many people choose to workout– so they can eat whatever the hell they want and not suffer severe consequences.
“Everybody goes to the gym so they can eat pizza on the weekend or that they can live the rest of their lives however they want to,” says Marcel. “We wanted to do the joking side of training. We wanted to focus on that ‘cheat day’ that every hard-core trainer or triathlete or any kind of athlete has. It was all about that lazy day that you just Netflix and Chill, etcetera.'”
After brainstorming and doing some market research on what would be the perfect piece of clothing to chill out in, they landed on the onesie but redesigned.
“It turns out people would love a onesie, as long as it didn’t look like a onesie,” says Marcel. “It has to look cool and it has to be super comfortable.”
Retailing at around $189, the Marcel says the Tuxy is geared towards anybody who works hard at what they do and is looking for something cozy to lounge in.
“It’s for in between the things that you do. It doesn’t matter what you’re into. Whether it’s the gym, hiking, camping, snowmobiling, snowboarding, or just working your ass off at your job or running your business,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what your hustle or your adventure is, but all have that time where we change gears, slow down, pour ourselves a beer or a glass and order in. That’s where Tuxy comes in.”
On Nov. 15 the Tuxy team launched a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of raising $15,000 to fund their first order and see if people would be interested in buying such a product online. They exceeded their goal within 24 hours and raised more than $40,000 to date.
With the Kickstarter campaign going until December 20, they’re hoping to expand their reach and get more people onboard. Much of the support has been from family, friends, and others in the startup and business community.
“That’s a lot of the momentum we’ve had,” says Marcel. Now we are more so reaching out towards the general people that don’t know what this is and who we’re trying to target now.”
Given that the first order went over well with customers, Marcel said the plan is to sell Tuxy exclusively through an online store.
“The idea is to keep selling them online because we want to keep control of our brand. We think we have the potential to build a pretty solid brand,” he says. “We want to keep being fun, not too serious, it is a onesie, after all. We want to keep control of what we’re saying and what our brand and what this thing represents.”
Right now, the Tuxy is designed for men in mind, but they are currently sized down to extra small for the women interested in purchasing. If the original Tuxy is successful, they plan to ultimately come out with a design specifically for women as well as more colour options and collaborations with other brands.
“We have huge visions for what this could become presuming the market reaction is consistent with what we hope,” says Marcel. “When you think of a onesie that doesn’t look like a onesie and you have opportunities to get creative, the sky’s the limit for us.”