Ash & Anvil

Steven Mazer is 5'6". His co-founder Eric is 5'8". For years, they both faced the same frustrating problem: clothes never fit. Everything was too long in the body and sleeves. Collars were oversized. They'd watch as retailers catered to almost every demographic—big and tall men, plus-size women, petite women—but nobody made clothes for shorter guys. Then one day, Steven did the math. Approximately 40 million adults in the US are 5'8" or shorter, representing roughly a third of all men. That's a third of the male population with nowhere to shop. "Without having any good options out there and knowing that what's out there now doesn't fit us, we decided to be the ones to go and make clothes for shorter guys," Steven explained.

Steven and Eric met through Venture for America, a program modeled after Teach for America that places entrepreneurial talent in emerging cities. Both worked at Social Proof, a digital advertising startup in Detroit, where they learned the startup playbook firsthand. When they decided to launch Ash & Anvil, they started lean—just the two of them. They designed their flagship product: the "everyday shirt," a casual button-down engineered for shorter frames, untucked and meant to pair with jeans, chinos, or shorts.

Before committing their careers full-time, they needed proof of concept. The founders launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in 2015, pre-selling their first shirt design. Their goal was humble: raise $10,000. "If we raise $10,000, we know we can submit an order and get this thing off the ground. There's enough traction," Steven said. They were aiming for validation, not riches.

The market responded far better than expected. The campaign raised $26,000—2.6x their goal—in pre-orders. "Fortunately, guys love their clothes," Steven noted. They launched their online store in November 2015 and immediately faced a high-class problem: explosive demand. Their first production run of 1,000 units sold out in just five weeks. In the first year, selling for only five weeks, they generated approximately $50,000 in revenue. The blue gingham version of their everyday shirt became the bestseller.

Demand outpaced supply so aggressively that customers couldn't even get their preferred colors and sizes. "We're just now getting our next batch in a couple of weeks," Steven said in the interview, having been sold out for months despite only taking pre-orders. Yet even during the inventory drought, they maintained a 25% repeat purchase rate—one in four customers came back for more.

The brothers learned to forecast demand carefully. Their second production run ordered 1,250 shirts for one batch and 3,500 for another—based on customer data, pre-order signals, and marketing projections. They kept the team scrappy (just two founders), outsourcing manufacturing, fulfillment, and packaging to Detroit-area partners. Unit economics looked solid: cost of goods sold ran $20–$25 per shirt at low volumes, with $69 retail pricing yielding roughly 50–55% gross margins after fulfillment and packaging.

The biggest lesson: "Everything takes longer than you think," Steven reflected. They built in inventory buffers for production delays and unexpected demand surges. By the time of the interview, they were approaching 1,000 unique customers with an average reorder rate of 1.1–1.5 shirts per customer.

Founded in 2015 with a $30,000 grant from Venture for America (not an investment, but prize money from a pitch competition), Ash & Anvil was entirely self-funded. Steven was just 25 years old, single, and living with his co-founder to minimize overhead. Their vision extended far beyond a single shirt: they wanted to build "the first major retailer for shorter guys," offering a full wardrobe eventually. For 2016, they planned to hire their first 1–2 employees, focusing on marketing and customer service. The founders were already studying category leaders—Andy Dunn at Bonobos, Michael Preden at Everlane, Brian Spalley at Trunk Club—to understand how to scale a modern e-commerce apparel brand. With a passionate customer base, proven product-market fit, and a multi-billion-dollar addressable market, Ash & Anvil had planted the seeds for something much larger.