When New Yorkers Laura and Michael Dweck returned from their honeymoon, they had a standoff over storage space. “His underwear drawer wouldn’t close,” Laura remembers. “It was filled with underwear, some he hadn’t put on since college. I told him that anything he hadn’t worn in the past three months had to go.” And with that, 90 percent of the drawer went into the trash.
“I really hate shopping,” says Michael. “I told Laura, ‘I wish there was one place where I could pick some socks, pick some underwear, and click a button.’” Their “create-a-drawer” idea was enough to get them crunching the numbers. They didn’t want to leave their jobs—she as a swimwear designer, he a hospital administrator—until they were sure Basic Outfitters was viable. After working lots of nights and weekends, they decided to take the plunge. “Oh my god, that was a scary moment,” says Laura. “It was sink or swim.”
The most personal thing you can wear, the thing you put directly on your body, is the thing people least like to shop for. Our aha moment was that we could make the process so much better, so much easier.
Michael Dweck
Orders came in so fast that the members of New York’s WeWork 5th Ave could hardly keep up. Then came an email from a Forbes editor announcing they had been selected for the magazine’s 30 Under 30 series. “Even though we were exhausted after a full day of packing orders in the warehouse,” says Laura. “When the email came from Forbes, we started skipping down the aisles.” Not long afterward, a call came from a producer at Shark Tank. And perhaps best of all, customers asking them to expand their product line. “All couples have same complaint about a significant other’s drawer,” says Laura. “We started the company to help out men, but now the demand for a women’s drawer is off the charts.”
