Different Stripes
Going against the grain in the clothing industry paid off for these entrepreneurs.
"Why don't they make corduroy pants that go the other
way?" Chris Lindland's ques-tion was more an effort to fit
in with his girlfriend's design colleagues than a business
idea. But last year, Lindland, 33, of San Francisco, started taking
the idea seriously. In January, he and partner Enrique Landa, 27,
produced their first pair of horizontally striped corduroy pants.
"They looked totally normal," says Lindland. So the two
invested $8,000 in pants and an e-commerce site, and three weeks
later, the pants were on The New York Times style page.
Cordarounds.com (the pants are only available online)
now sells about 20 pairs of pants a day. Last summer, the partners
introduced Summerounds, horizontally striped seersucker pants,
which Lindland expects will help boost the company's first-year
revenue to between $150,000 and $250,000.
Men's pants and jackets and women's skirts and jackets
are now available, and the line will soon include other apparel.
"It's an idea Seinfeld's Kramer might have come
up with," says Lindland. "But he probably wouldn't be
able to get it off the ground."
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