California Apparel News

Fashion gurus can quibble about whether the athleisure trend has run its course. But for two entrepreneurs from Orange County, Calif., athleisure packs a lot of momentum.

Danny Kurtzman and Ryan Mark believe the athleisure customer’s quest for style and comfort will be best realized through their new jeans line Alday Denim, which bridges the territory between work and loungewear.

The bottoms feel like sweatpants, but they look like premium denim, said Kurtzman, who is also the co-owner of 3Point Distribution, the parent company of action-sports brand Ezekiel.

Mark is the director of marketing for Ezekiel, which is sold at retailers including Nordstrom, Tilly’s and Revolve. “The basic idea was that a lot of guys want to be comfortable and look good, but we can’t wear joggers to work,” Mark said of the tapered sweatpants.

After working for years in wholesale, Kurtzman and Mark chose to introduce their new independent brand through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, which met its $15,000 funding goal on the first day, Kurtzman said. By press time, the fund-raising project had raised more than $36,000 and is scheduled to wrap up on Nov. 10. The two entrepreneurs hope to deliver 500 pairs of jeans by April 2019.

Kurtzman and Mark mounted a Kickstarter campaign because they’re pitching Alday to those Silicon Valley types who value that kind of funding, not Ezekiel’s core customer of skateboarders and action-sports fans.

The two said the majority of people supporting the campaign were people they did not previously know and were not part of the Orange County action-sports scene.

Part of their pitch is that they’ll succeed where other Kickstarter campaigns have failed. They said Alday Denim won’t fumble when it comes to manufacturing because their operating partner will be 3Point Distribution, which will be in charge of making the pants and has been managing the manufacturing for action-sports brands for more than 15 years.

Eighty percent of 3Point Distribution’s revenue comes from making private-label goods. Kurtzman declined to state the company’s revenues.

3Point Distribution started in the 1950s when Kurtzman’s grandfather, Mervin Kurtzman, manufactured men’s suits in Los Angeles under the American Fashion nameplate.

Around the turn of the century, the company’s name changed when it started focusing on action-sports clothing and managing manufacturing operations rather than owning factories.

The idea of mixing athleisure and denim is not new. Italian premium-brand Diesel started selling its Jogg Jeans in 2011 and continues to sell the bottoms, which mix softness with distressed-denim looks.

Ezekiel has mixed athleisure styles and denim looks. It sells a hybrid jean that looks like denim but feels like fleece.

Alday uses a similar fabric, but it is a premium version, which is like fleece. It is an open-knit fabric made of 68 percent cotton, 33 percent polyester and 2 percent spandex.

Like a sweatpant, the waistband and the body of the pants are stretchy. But the five-pocket jeans have the minimal styling and the tapered legs of a premium-denim pant.

For the first season, the pants will come in black and gray and retail for $98. They will be sold on the direct-to-consumer site aldaydenim.com. Eventually the brand might produce pop-up shops.