For whatever reason, most guys hate to shop for clothes. Either we’re just not wired for it genetically, or maybe there’s some deep-rooted stigma that makes it impossible to enjoy perusing garment racks in public.
Fortunately, new companies like Trunk Club and Manpacks are making it easier for guys to take care of their clothing needs without ever having to set foot inside a store.
Trunk Club is an online service that’s almost like Zappos on steroids…with a personal shopper element. Once you sign up through their website, you get contacted by a personal stylist to find out more about what kind of clothes you like.
After the consultation, the stylist hand-picks a trunk-full of designer clothes for you, which gets shipped to your door. You try everything on, you keep what you like, then you send the rest back. What’s great about it is that it totally takes away the pressure of shopping in a store–but you still get the benefit of a professional opinion about your selections.
Manpacks offers a similarly convenient service, providing shipments of “essentials” like underwear, socks, shirts, condoms, and shaving cream. You can set up automated shipments so you can regularly replenish your supply, but you can also slow down or speed up an order if needed.
Some critics have questioned what it says about modern men that we need “underwear subscriptions.” Does it mean we’re lazy? Does it mean we can’t take care of or own basic hygiene? However you look at it, the stark reality is that most guys (1) hate shopping for underwear and socks, (2) are really terrible at it, and (3) usually don’t retire their holy socks and underwear until they reach a point that girlfriends, wives or mothers nearly have to stage an intervention.
It’s not because we’re lazy. It’s because for most of us, it’s just not the first thing on our minds. Manpacks is successful because it recognizes that fact.
Setting up automated re-ups allows us to spend less time thinking about these basic essentials and gives us more time to do things that are actually important to us. As it says on the Manpacks website, “…more time to slay dragons.”
The happy irony is that by allowing guys to spend less time in clothing stores and less time worrying about underwear replenishment, these services can make us better dressed and more engaged in our wardrobe than we would be otherwise.
Services like Trunk Club and Manpacks allow guys to be “curators” of their wardrobes–rather than falling victim to the usual grab-and-go, mercenary-like experience that shopping normally is for us.
It’s like when I first started building my NetFlix queue: I realized I no longer had to watch whatever crappy movie happened to be in stock at the video store–I could think strategically about what I wanted to watch and how I wanted to spend my time. I could be a new and better man! (In hindsight, my NetFlix queue was probably a little too aspirational–one too many Italian flicks and documentaries, but I digress…).
In the same way NetFlix has enriched the way we select movies, Trunk Club and Manpacks are raising the bar for how guys choose their clothes, while making the shopping experience easier.
Clothes shopping may never be a favorite pastime for guys. But it’s nice to see how new companies like Trunk Club and Manpacks are making it a little less traumatic for guys to dress well.
