1. Identify Gaps in the Market: In E-Commerce, Dan believes successful brands offer a level of standard for their products and services that can’t be found anywhere else.
2. Focus on Customer Retention: Dan maintains that customer retention is critical for growing and sustaining an E-Commerce business (this is especially true for brands selling luxury custom goods and services).
3. Value High-Touch Service: Many E-Commerce leaders are focused on automation and scalability. Dan believes this doesn’t always fit a luxury brand’s business model and advocates high-touch service for customers.
4. Lean into Your Passion: Being an entrepreneur is hard and demanding. Dan stresses doing something you're passionate about, because it’s going to take a lot of time and work before your business gains momentum.
5. Tell A Story: The most successful brands have a good story behind them. Dan believes that brand storytelling is powerful and helps to attract attention, market products and services, and grow a customer base.
After landing a post-college job at an NYC tailor, Dan Trepanier was named ‘best dressed man’ by Esquire Magazine and decided to start his own fashion blog. Soon, men from all over the world were seeking Dan for custom suits and styling tips. You’ll want to read how Dan channeled his passion for tailored menswear and founded Articles of Style.
Meet Dan Trepanier, Founder of Articles of Style!
Articles of Style is a full-service online tailor shop that specializes in bespoke fittings (from home) and personal wardrobe development. Over the past 15 years, the brand has helped thousands of men (and women) dress for success by designing one-of-a-kind wardrobe packages just for them - to elevate their personal brands and make their lives more efficient (and stylish).
Growing up on his family’s farm in Southern Ontario, Canada, Dan was a basketball high school standout. He was heavily recruited by US universities and eventually accepted a scholarship to play at Columbia. There, his dreams of playing in the NBA started to fade, giving way to a new passion – fashion. Career wise, Dan focused on finance, eventually landing a summer internship on Wall Street going into his senior year. Sitting in an office everyday doubled as an opportunity for sartorial expression. “I was the intern that was overdressing, wearing three-piece suits with pins,” he remembers. Then 2008 happened putting the financial market into a tailspin.
As Dan was reconsidering his path once again, “a very well dressed” colleague suggested that he go into fashion and introduced him to the tailor who made custom suits for Wall Street. He soon found himself at that tailor’s shop where he spent a day getting measured, fitted, and asking every imaginable question about the business. “I bought four suits,” he recalls. “But when I came back to pick them up, I only had enough for the first deposit. So, I ended up working for him under the table to pay off the rest.”
Wearing his new attire, Dan entered a style contest hosted by Esquire Magazine – and won. “This gave me a little traction and I started a blog, Articles of Style, and was one of the first menswear bloggers at the time,” he notes. He posted his thoughts about men’s style along with everything he was learning about fabric and fit during a typical day at work. Blog readership quickly grew and soon men from around the world were flying to New York City to meet with Dan and have a custom suit made.
When balancing his job and blogging became unsustainable, Dan saw an opportunity to bridge the gap, using an online platform to provide the same expertise and services as shopping in-person. Custom made suits were already being sold online, but as Dan soon learned, the process and final product fell far short of expectations. “I tested every business in the space at the time, and the experience was hugely disappointing. It was a cheap garment, poorly constructed, and the fit was all wrong,” he remarks.
Dan concluded that a key step was missing – the ‘try on’ garment. Instead of plugging measurements and making a suit, measurements are taken to make a test suit that is sent to the buyer. “We then look at pictures of the guy wearing it in combination with his feedback and preferences – this interim is crucial so we can make all the necessary adjustments,” he explains. “This allows us to crank up the quality of the final garment because we know it’s going to be right. We use the best fabrics in the world, because we know the process is dialed in.” In 2015, Articles of Style fully transitioned from a blog to an online tailor shop.
The core team at Articles of Style is small, yet robust with each member utilizing their specific talents and expertise to full potential. The remote structure with key members on both the East and West coasts allows for a flexible schedule to best accommodate the needs and availability of their clients.
In a moment when E-Commerce leaders are pushing ‘automation’ and ‘scalability,’ Dan believes it’s the ‘one-to-one’ approach to customer experience that sets Articles of Style apart from other online menswear brands. “We always look to the in-person experience, we aim to operate like an in-person tailor shop,” he explains, stressing that selling “a high-end product requires high-level, high-touch service.” Meetings, or ‘appointments’ are done over Zoom where Dan oversees fittings with clients, discussing their tastes and preferences.
Guiding clients through the process of buying a custom-made suit, Dan realized that fashion is a challenging topic for many. “After talking with so many guys, the bigger problem that I learned is that their closet is a mess. They’ve collected a lot of stuff over the years, but none of it works together…. It’s a point of stress,” he reveals.
Articles of Style began marketing the idea of a capsule collection. Using the same bespoke service that comes with a tailored garment, Dan works with clients to curate a foundation wardrobe that accommodates their lifestyle beyond work and black-tie events. Dan says that shifting focus from a single suit to filling a closet “has been a big moment for us in branding and something we are now known for.”
“It was a ‘pantless’ world,” Dan says while discussing the challenges Articles of Style faced during the height of Covid. Watching other high-end menswear brands fade and fold, Dan took the time to focus on infrastructure and improve business operations. Eventually, came a return to a ‘new normal.’ In a post-Covid world, people’s approach to work and life forever changed and so did how they dress. Remote working and hybrid schedules are the standard now. Dan explains how this affected clients as an “experience of creating a ‘new me’. They figured out what their schedule and lifestyle was going to look like, but still wanted to elevate their style game.”
To dress for going from a business meeting to a date, the bar, or a ball game, Articles of Style’s online shop now lists more casual items such as sweaters, polos, and t-shirts. “We’re helping guys find a more fluid way to break up a suit or wear a sport coat casually,” Dan notes.
Tracing back to Dan’s feature in Esquire Magazine, press has been a major factor in Article of Style’s rise as a top menswear brand. Additionally, Dan credits customer retention as a key driver in the brand’s growth. “We have a very high repeat rate. Once a guy goes through the fitting process and gets the first garment, he loves it. And now his fit is saved so it’s very easy for him to shop with us,” Dan says while emphasizing “retention is the name of the game.”
LTV (Lifetime Value) metrics skyrocketed when the capsule collection was introduced. Customers went from buying 1 to 3 suits every 6 months to buying an entire seasonal wardrobe. “The average order went from $2,000 to 10,000,” Dan notes.
At Articles of Style, first impressions aren’t just about ‘the fit.’ The brand heavily invests time, money, and energy into making sure that first delivery meets all expectations. Made to technical precision by a team that includes a tailor and retailers, the ‘try on’ suit is courtesy to the customer. Dan elaborates on why getting it right on the first go is crucial, “In custom clothing, you don’t want 1,000 customers who only buy one garment. You’d rather have 500 customers who you can make a wardrobe package for every season.”
Dan says his clients have a ‘Back-to-School’ mentality of wanting to update their closets at the end of summer. “In August, you’re casual and on vacation. Then September rolls around and the weather changes – that seems to be a time of year when people shop more.” For the most part, however, standard business is steady year-round.
Significant business spikes occurred when Articles of Style began featuring real customers instead of professional models. In fact, the brand saw an overwhelming response when it posted a call for models on social media this past season. After narrowing the field down to 20, Dan met with each person to design their capsule. “It’s twice a year, Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. It’s a lot of work and there’s a timeline to get everything done for the photoshoot,” he adds.
Looking ahead, Dan wants to continue to strengthen the brand’s organic marketing strategies with a focus on storytelling. “I come at this from a storytelling background. So, I think in a way, we could be a strong media company that is also shoppable.” Articles of Style started out as a blog after all – merging editorial with E-Commerce makes perfect sense. “We’re at a point where the clothing business is running well and we can get back to telling really good stories through the clothing,” he finishes. Additionally, improving efficiency and looking into paid ads are a priority moving forward.
Asked about his advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, Dan mentions commitment, grind, and persistence as core traits, noting that it takes years of working day in, day out before a business sees any traction. “Make sure it’s something that you’re willing to invest your time, energy, and passion into, because it’s not going to go well for years. Get ready for that,” he warns.
What excites Dan most about E-Commerce? The reach – we have customers all over the world. And the opportunity - one-on-one, high-level service online is vastly missing. And I still see huge room to improve in that area.
Can’t-live-without-tool? Content tools – a camera and in some cases, social media. But for us, the ‘try on’ garment – it’s our secret sauce. If we couldn’t make a scrap garment and review it and make adjustments, it would just be styling that separates us. But that functional process of one-on-one fitting is what defines and separates us.
Key hiring trait? Attention to detail is at the top of the list. Our business is so intricate and there are so many details with just one order. Just from the fitting perspective, there are 60 to 70 points of measuring a garment – you must get all of those right. There are even more elements of design – fabric lining, lapels, width, buckles, buttons. In custom products, there’s a ton of small details that you just can’t get wrong. It’s not unusual for me to send an email to my team with 30 bullets, each with questions. And if I don’t get a response to each question, we are going to have a problem. You must be very thorough with a high attention to detail in this business.
Favorite thought leader in the E-Commerce space? I don’t have a favorite in E-Commerce, but in the fashion world, I look at Brunello Cucinelli who is doing something very novel and respectable. He bought his village, owns the production, makes the best garments in the world, and treats his employees very well. He’s a big advocate for humanitarian capitalism – taking care of the land, his people, using natural materials. He’s the opposite of fast fashion, philosophically, and very much a leader in that space. Whereas E-Commerce feels very wide open and there hasn’t been a lot of innovation. It’s TBD at least in the luxury, high service online space. And that’s what I would like to own. The product is there, but as far as the service, it’s hard to find.
#1 challenge as a leader? For me, it’s balancing the business and the creative. I’m both the CEO and Creative Director, which are at odds. The Creative Director wants to spend money, do amazing photoshoots, go on location, get the celebrity model. Then the CEO must watch the bottom line and make sure things make sense. There’s an internal competition between how good we can make the content and marketing the product and what’s realistic right now.
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