Posted on Wednesday May 08, 2019

Tuxy, the dynamic young company in Moncton that's revolutionizing sportswear

Numerous entrepreneurs in New Brunswick have been launching innovative products that are gaining attention for their quality and original design. We met recently with Derek Martin, president and CEO of Tuxy, a start-up whose onesie has been an online hit worldwide.

Crowdfunding: A fund-raising AND marketing campaign

Tuxy enjoyed great success with a recent crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter website. The company reached its $15,000 goal within a period of just 24 hours, and a total of 1,100 backers have helped it raise nearly $180,000 to date. According to Derek, it's the quality of his product that is earning his company its online reputation. It's not just a matter of launching a product and then sitting back and enjoying success, he explains. We've been working for almost two years on the design of our onesie. When someone on the Internet lets you charge $150 to $200 to their credit card for a product they aren't going to get for months, it's critical for us to live up to their expectations when it comes to quality.

Selling online to reach customers directly

Tuxy has opted for a business model where it conducts all sales exclusively on its digital platform without any physical points of sale. I spent 12 years working in retail, says Derek. When it came to Tuxy, we wanted to reach out to our customers directly. There's no intermediary, which means that we get to control the entire experience, from placing an order online through product delivery and after-sales service. It's a streamlined model that's helping us to grow quickly without depending on sales, popularity and buyers from retail distribution networks.

Customers across Canada and the U.S. and around the world

To date, Tuxy has sold its onesies to customers worldwide, but its current focus is on building its natural markets, Canada and the United States, while also investing in its European presence. The first year, we shipped our products around the world, even New Zealand but we quickly realized we were better off concentrating on our natural markets, which account for nearly 85% to 90% of our sales. Due to the popularity of our product and the company's fast growth, we encountered certain challenges, like stock shortages. Right now we're focusing our efforts more effectively in marketing and other areas. We're a small team, a lean business, but we've got big plans, and we want to do things right. We currently have storage facilities in Canada, the United States and Europe so we can better serve these various markets. And we're going to be selling our product everywhere in the near future while continuing to focus on providing each customer a positive experience.

The onesie life: Playing sports AND watching Netflix without having to change clothes

Derek and his friends are all athletes who play multiple sports and train several times a week. Their desire to create a new category of clothing that matched their lifestyle is clearly responding to a need. After doing a lot of interviews and brainstorming for many hours, we realized that people loved the idea of wearing a onesie for comfort at home but were reluctant to wear one out in public because of the look. We had to make our onesie really appealing. In futuristic movies, characters wear one-piece outfits all the time. The people creating these onscreen worlds probably figure that in the future, people are going to want their clothes to be simple, reliable and comfortable. The onesie is a new type of clothing that people can wear anywhere, whether to the gym, yoga, the pub to have a beer or even on the living room couch watching their favourite show.

Starting up a company in New Brunswick: An excellent choice

Several agencies in New Brunswick have played a significant role in Tuxy's launch and development. The help we got from Opportunities New Brunswick and Export Development Canada was really critical. They helped us strengthen our business plan by making our projections as refined and realistic as possible. Tuxy is truly proof that you can start up a vibrant company in Moncton knowing that the support is there on all levels. We're very proud of our roots, and no matter how big we get, this is always going to be our home base.

How do you follow up one trend-setting new product? With another one!

Tuxy's success is clearly the result of the popularity of its men's onesie, by far its best-seller. However, Tuxy now sells a full range of onesies for the entire family. We're seeing more and more young women getting their picture taken in our onesie at yoga or their meditation class. And on Instagram we've come across families with little kids and everyone's wearing a onesie! We've also recently launched a new product that's likely to get some attention: the Storm, a waterproof, comfortable onesie designed for cyclists and motorbikers that protects the wearer from the weather conditions. This is truly the raincoat of the future!

The entire business community in New Brunswick is excited and proud to see success stories like this helping to spread the word about our province. Best of luck to everyone at Tuxy. We can't wait to try on our new Storm Suits!