On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Vicky Pasche, CEO and Co-Founder of Dapper Boi, a size-inclusive, all-gender apparel brand that’s redefining fashion for every body type. We talk about building a purpose-driven brand, leveraging social media to create loyal customer relationships, lessons learned from navigating the challenges of fundraising in the fashion industry, how a Shark Tank rejection fueled the growth of a 7-figure brand, and so much more!
As co-founder and CEO of Dapper Boi, Vicky Pasche has overcome significant challenges in the fashion industry, transforming a personal mission into a size-inclusive, all-gender apparel brand celebrated for its innovation and purpose.
From its Kickstarter beginnings to national recognition on platforms like Shark Tank, CBS Morning News, and the OUT100 2023 list, Dapper Boi has become a seven-figure business driven by authenticity and confidence.
Vicky brings expertise in community-building through creative marketing and navigating investment challenges, while her co-founder and wife, Charisse Pasche, focuses on developing inclusivity and purpose in every product.
Together, they’ve crafted efficient pre-order strategies, expanded their Shopify-powered store, and built a loyal customer base inspired by shared values.
With a vision to redefine fashion for every body type, Vicky’s story reflects resilience, innovation, and a commitment to inspiring others to embrace bold steps toward creating purpose-driven brands in a competitive landscape.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you
left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts
. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, Future Chase here. I am just giving you a quick heads up that I had my mic settings a little weird during this next recording. We did our best to tame it down. But you'll still notice it's not as good a quality as we normally bring to the table. And just wanted to apologize. But we thought the content was amazing. And we still wanted to bring you this episode. Thank you so much. And I hope you enjoy the show.
Vicky Pasche
When you're thinking about investors, you don't take just any check. You have to be aligned with your mission and vision. And so now, because of all these lessons learned, we have the right people behind us.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct to consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results. I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business. Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming in the show, an amazing CEO and co-founder of Dapper Boi, Vicky Pasche. Welcome to the show.
Vicky Pasche
Thank you. So stoked to be here.
Chase Clymer
I'm excited to chat. So Dapper Boi, it's a size inclusive, all gender apparel line for every body type. Talk to me quickly though for the audience, if anyone's unfamiliar.
What are you guys selling in your store? What am I buying?
Vicky Pasche
Our whole mission is to inspire people to find confidence in being their authentic selves through clothing. The journey really started with myself back in 2015, shopping in the men's department, which is for a woman, socially unacceptable, awkward and all the things. But I realized that those clothes actually never fit my body at the same time. We started this brand without any fashion knowledge, just a need and a problem that I was trying to solve for me. I realized that we were helping so many other people that had the same problem as me. It wasn't about gender or body, you know, it was about body type and style preference. It's been exciting to see that along the years here, how many lives we've impacted just by being able to be their authentic selves through clothes. Incredible.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. Normally, my follow up question is, take me back in time where this idea come from. But you kind of already share. It's like you were shopping in the men's section and still not getting served for solving the problem that you needed solved, which is clothes that you could be comfortable in.
Chase Clymer
How long was that the impetus for it? Or were you thinking about it? How long did it take from the idea to really set and then you're like, well, we're going to do this thing?
Vicky Pasche
It's interesting because I used to work in casinos. I was the head of a marketing department. I wore suits every day. So actually, the real story of Dapperboy started with suits. Dapperboy. And so in the men's department, again, those clothes just never fit my body the right way as it should. And I just thought that's just how it was. And it was my body. That's the problem here. And it's just how I dress.
Then, we ended up in the interesting part of not having this background, trying to find manufacturers and not having the background to be able to speak the language. We got hung up on so many times. Then finally, it was one manufacturer that's like, I think you guys are onto something because there's a real difference between men's and women's clothing, even just functionality wise.
Women's clothing, the pockets still to this day, we're coming in 2025 here without having deep pockets, it shouldn't be a thing. So we've really looked at the differences between the two and really melded together the perfect pair of jeans is where we started. And so going back to my personal story, going to Old Navy for me for the first time shopping in the men's department, it was a whole experience.
The clothes didn't fit me. And again, at that point in time, it didn't matter. The confidence that I felt wearing those clothes because that was my style preference was everything. That's how I started really morphing as a human being when it came to confidence in general.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. You mentioned that you had the idea but then manufacturing it and kind of just learning how to do and create a business out of this. Suits were the first product or jeans were the first product?
Vicky Pasche
Yeah. So actually, sorry, I missed that part here. So suits were going to be the first product. But what happened was there were other companies that had a similar demographic. There were some lesbian-owned companies that came out at that time that were doing suits.
I didn't want to start with having a lot of competition for this new kind of idea. We went back to the drawing board and it was something that I wore every single day was jeans. That was the first product I ever tried on in the men's department at Old Navy for the very first time.
We started our line with jeans. We really turned into this everyday brand, from jeans to button-ups with hidden snaps to hide the dreaded chest gap that you get in both men's and women's button-up shirts to bomber jackets, swimwear. We're going to be launching activewear, really thinking through the everyday life of anybody.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. How long was the ideation phase from like, all right, we're going to do this to, I guess, maybe you get your first sample of these genes.
Vicky Pasche
Yeah. So the idea, we actually had it in 2014. It was 2015 that we launched our Kickstarter campaign. The time it took though for samples, and this is something now I have knowledge in, but it took us six months for the very first sample to get it right. of our very first Slim Strait jeans. That was a process because typically samples now can take me two to three weeks, but it took six months to get this perfect pair.
Chase Clymer
Was this before or after you had launched the Kickstarter?
Vicky Pasche
It was right before Kickstarter. This is literally we had two pairs of jeans for a Kickstarter campaign. We just had so many people try on like, hey, are you at 32? Are you at 36? And then my size. We were just having all of our friends try on the jeans, taking photos. We use those photos as our launch. We were just getting scrappy. It was everything. That's how we were starting to build our community because people were just like, I had that problem too. It was all the hand races like that's me, me too.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like the Kickstarter was a success.
Vicky Pasche
It was. Yeah. So our goal back then, it was $18,000 for our first production. We raised over $26,000 at that point in time, and we were excited and off to the races once that happened. But we learned quickly that you needed so much more capital than that because once we sold through it, we were like, okay, now what? How do we go from here?
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. So Kickstarter campaign, and then you do your first production run. How long are you building a website immediately after the Kickstarter? What's happening then?
Vicky Pasche
Yeah, so we started building our Shopify store and we had to think it through one year later, you know, we had sold out of the jeans and were we going to run another Kickstarter campaign? We didn't have any other capital to keep going.
We started our Shopify store and at that point we were like, okay, well, why don't we take a hybrid of this Kickstarter model and focus on pre-orders? So actually what we did was we started our site, we still had just a very few pairs of jeans left that we had on the site but we were also working on our button-up shirts at the same time.
Again, solving that problem with the hidden snaps, accounting for curves, because the problem for me, and imagine this here. When I wear a typical men's button-up shirt, I would button it down to about my chest, and then I would leave out the rest like it was a style. But it really was because I could not fit it over my booty.
I got hips, and so many other people had the same problem. We had this one color. Literally, it was a dark blue button-up shirt. We launched it and we sold $30,000 within 3 weeks. Imagine we had no sales for like a year. So that to us was like, okay, this is how we do it. So we continued to launch new products by doing pre-orders.
We would say, Hey, everybody, we would launch the sale at the beginning of the product life instead of at the end. Say you get a special intro price for getting in on the campaign. Now we're going to send the orders after 3 weeks to our manufacturer so we can produce it and then the product will be delivered in 6 to 12 weeks. That's how we did it. That's how we bootstrap this brand. As we just kept launching pre-order campaigns, we would request samples from manufacturers and new colors.
We had our staple products and we would say literally at that time, I had my friends doing iPhone videos, doing 90s R&B videos, and the newest button-up shirt, things like that. Getting excitement, creating community, and solving the problem in a very humorous, lighthearted way. People were just like, what are these guys doing? They wanted to get in at every campaign. So we had trained this customer group to get in and we were going to sell out.
Then we would place the order and it would continue that way. That's how we built this whole brand and launching all new product styles. We were really able to gather a lot of data on what worked and what didn't.
Chase Clymer
Hey, Shopify store owners. Have you ever wondered if your store is leaving money on the table? Imagine increasing sales without spending more money on ads. Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not.
I'd like to introduce you to StoreTester. StoreTester is a done-for-you conversion rate optimization service for Shopify merchants.
Could your store benefit from increased conversion rates, higher average order values, and improved revenue per visitor? StoreTester could be the perfect partner for you. From ideation to implementation, this full service A-B testing service takes all of the guesswork out of improving Shopify stores.
Stortester does all the work for you while offering month-to-month transparent fixed pricing. It gets even better. They believe in their service so much they're offering the first test for free for qualified merchants.
Let me repeat, the first test is free for qualified merchants. Curious to see if you qualify for a free test? Reach out today. Visit stortester.com to schedule an intro call.
That's www.S-T-O-R-E-T-E-S-T-E-R.com. Schedule an intro call today to see if you qualify for a free test.
Hey everybody, today's podcast is brought to you by Intelligems, the ultimate profit optimization tool for Shopify merchants. I'm telling you this, obviously, you know I own an agency. We use Intelligems when we're running split testing and CRO stuff for all of our clients.
Are you looking to maximize your profits? IntelliGems offers data-driven solutions to optimize your content, prices, discounts, and shipping rates. Join over 500 happy clients who have seen significant improvements.
With Intelligems, you gain control over your Ecommerce economics, boosting your profit per visitor by an astonishing 36%.
But that's not all. Intelligems users report a 54.62% increase in revenue per visitor and a remarkable rise in conversion rates.
How does Intelligems do it? Through a suite of tools that allows you to A-B test everything on your Shopify store, from landing pages to product prices and shipping rates.
Imagine testing new layouts, offers, even a new Shopify theme with ease.
We're testing a new landing page for our client on a new theme versus an old landing page on their old theme right now.
Intelligems empowers you to find the perfect price point for your products and optimize your shipping strategy.
But there's more. Boost your average order value with customized campaign offers and discover if your customers prefer free shipping or a lower list price.
With over $100 million in incremental profit generated, billion transactions ran through their software. They have over 400 million shoppers that have gone through their tests.
Intelligems is not a tool. It's a game changer for your business.
Are you ready to transform your Shopify store's profitability? Book a demo today at intelligems.io. Empower your brand to reach new heights.
Again, that's intelligems.io. Intelligems, giving superpowers to your customer acquisition, retention, and overall profitability.
Chase Clymer
Was there anything technical or using an app or were you just throwing up a product on your store and say, this is a pre-order product?
Vicky Pasche
That's it. We threw it up in the store. We would use email. And social media, we were using Facebook at the time like crazy. This is 2015, 2016, where we were just doing, there was a ton of video content. And at that point in time, I felt like we were just going viral. We were getting like hundreds of thousands of views and people relating to the problem we were solving and the product that we were offering.
Chase Clymer
So you weren't doing any paid traffic behind these campaigns? This was just all organic through your audience that you had built?
Vicky Pasche
I didn't know enough at that time. What I was doing was literally just boosted ads. So I'd say, okay, yeah, I'll put 100 bucks behind this. Whatever we were making profit-wise, I would add maybe a couple hundred more. But that was it at that time. And still, we started talking to outside teams and they were seeing that we were actually getting results on bootstrap kind of methods. Then we were starting to take off once we started hiring outside teams that knew what they were doing with the ads.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. It's funny, especially back in the early days of Facebook ads. I think when we started our agency, it was 2016. I know that between then and 2018, it was like the wild west and you could get some crazy, crazy results. I always like to ask this question now. Do you wish you spent more money back then?
Vicky Pasche
I mean, yeah. Of course. Totally. It was working for us but I didn't know enough. We've learned so much about business in general and profit and ROAS and things like that. And man, of course. I absolutely wish I did.
Chase Clymer
Oh yeah, I know. And it's always hindsight's 2020. doesn't matter really. You're still here and it's still doing great and it's still profitable.
So you guys are having these amazing product launches using pre-orders, which there's like a giant golden nugget for everyone listening here. That's a great way to introduce a new product or even get a brand off the ground. You don't necessarily have to go because isn't like most people don't realize Kickstarter takes a piece of the pie. But if you just do it on your own website and you get all that data, it's a little bit better.
Vicky Pasche
Right? At the same time, with Kickstarter, we had to offer gifts and there's like levels and you're like fulfilling those kind of things where pre-order, we kind of cut that middleman out and we were able to deliver a product and utilize whatever margins we could to continue investing to the point where we knew what products were working, that we would actually try to invest it in advance so people didn't have to wait so long.
But that wasn't always the case because we were always launching new colors and things like that. So it was a process for sure, especially as we were building our outside services teams too, and learning a lot along that way as well.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. How did Shark Tank come about, I guess? Did they reach out to you? Did you reach out to them?
Vicky Pasche
Yeah. Actually, this is kind of funny. I applied to the show when we launched our Kickstarter campaign.
Chase Clymer
Oh, I love that.
Vicky Pasche
Yeah. So I actually got a callback. We went through a couple of interviews, but we were so early. It was ridiculous. They were like, oh, keep in touch. And so years later, we filmed Shark Tank in late 2022 and aired in 23. But it was probably 2021 where I applied.
So it was interesting to hear that call back in 2022, that far along later. The process to actually film was intense. We weren't sure if we were going to film or not. That was a months-long process of talking to a lot of people at Shark Tank. But once we filmed, that was a crazy experience.
It's just like what you see on the show, this long hallway, which feels longer in person with the music and all the things. Then you see the sharks and it's so intimidating. But we actually had a long conversation with them. It was over an hour. It gets edited down to four or five minutes or whatever segment was there. But what an incredible process. No, spoiler alert, we didn't get a shark.
However, we had a ton of exposure and mainstream exposure in particular. We are an LGBTQ-owned brand. But our whole thing and our purpose, we want to become the next Levi's of all gender fashion. It's with purpose so that people don't feel like you have to shop in this queer section during Pride during the month of June. This is not about that. It's about bodies and style preference.
To have that kind of exposure on a mainstream show and for all those eyes to see it was such a game changer. The messages we received were amazing. Incredible.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, absolutely. People oftentimes, when they're guests on this show, they don't see the shark tank bump. But I'm assuming that definitely helped out a little bit as far as sales go.
Vicky Pasche
Absolutely. Yeah. We've maintained a lot of those customer relationships. I just looked at our repeat customer rates gone up from 51% consistently, it's now 56%. That's a good thing and not so great thing too because we're trying to acquire new customers at the same time. But our customers that we have are very loyal to Dapper Boi.
Absolutely. What's funny, Vicky, is we're having this conversation and I was thinking about it. I have seen your Shark Tank episode before. I didn't realize it until we started getting into this. I just remember a lot of the story and I knew where some of these questions are going to land. But it's always fun to talk about that.
Chase Clymer
To pivot a little bit now. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience?
Vicky Pasche
Yeah, I think it's navigating a world as a first-time founder, especially when it comes to fundraising, what that looks like. Because it's been a challenge. Less than 2% of all venture capital goes to women-owned businesses. Less than 2%. That's a crazy number. During the time of Shark Tank, it's kind of crazy our lives during this time.
Let me backtrack a little bit. So those pre-order campaigns only took us so far. Because when COVID hit and so many businesses were affected with the same thing, we were too with the delays. When you're relying on pre-order campaigns, and now the products can't be delivered, you're screwed. That's what happened to us. We were at the top of our game doing over a million dollars a year. And we were still just me, my wife, Cherise, the co-founder, and two part-time employees pulling these numbers.
Mind you, actually, the stat is that less than 2% of women-owned businesses are hitting over a million dollars a year, probably due to lack of funding, really. We were hitting these crazy numbers. But at the same time, these delays took place. We had no products to sell. We had to just hold on tight for months and months and months to the point where we actually sold our house. This was a big deal.
This is all during when we were filming for Shark Tank and now we're being filmed also in this documentary called Show Her The Money about the lack of funding for women founders. And it felt very vulnerable and our lives are being recorded.
It seemed like from every angle during the most vulnerable time of our lives. However, there were so many lessons in vulnerability and so many lessons learned when it comes to fundraising. Something that is important, I feel like to know, especially for first time founders anyway, is if you don't come from money, it can be very intimidating talking to investors. I was always thinking maybe they know more than me and I don't know this world and my confidence. It sucked to be honest when it came to having these conversations.
Developing real authentic connections with potential investors changed everything. This film changed everything. Show her the money. Meeting with the sharks changed everything because there's a different confidence shift when you can connect with people at an authentic level.
You want people on your team. When you're thinking about investors, you don't take just any check. You have to be aligned with your mission and vision. So now because of all these lessons learned, we have the right people behind us. And we're taking this thing all the way.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. That's very, very inspiring. Now, before I let you go, if I am listening to this and the product itself is resonating with me, where should I go? What should I do?
Vicky Pasche
Yeah. Check out our website, www.dapperboi.com and boys with an I. You definitely check out our Instagram. My wife and I actually have a little behind the scenes one called Meet the Pasches where we're doing everything behind the brand and family life and that too. But yeah, check out our website. Anybody can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I've learned so much and have so many mentors along the way. And that is my goal is to pay that forward.
So anybody, feel free to reach out anytime.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely, Vicky. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, sharing all those insights. Thanks again.
Vicky Pasche
Thank you so much.