Ep 529: Chub Rub to 2M+ Units Sold – The Lean Growth Story of Thigh Society

0:00Problem, solution. We are not about brand. We're about making sure that our potential customer understands what we offer as a solution to her pain point right away. It takes a long time to build a brand. There's a lot of sexy stories out there that the media loves, overnight successes, but the reality is most businesses take a decade plus to hit their tipping point. We're leaning heavily into content from creators, founder content, which always resonates. I was met with that sort of resistance, even from a lot of my male manufacturing partners who were like, are women going to buy long leg underwear?

0:37And I just kept saying, yeah, they are. They are. And over 2 million pairs sold, you know, they are.

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1:47Marnie Rabinovitch:Marnie, welcome to the D2C podcast. Great to see you again after our Ecom North retreat that we did up at Whistler in late 2024. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Nice to see you again too. This podcast is a, it's a theme near and dear to my heart. I absolutely hate chafing. It's got to be one of the worst things in the known universe. I love that you started this podcast with that because it's how I start all of my conversations of do your thighs get chub rub? Do your thighs get? Do you get a rash? And most of the time people look at me right away and they're like, that's a strange way to open a conversation.

2:22But yes, they're keen to talk about it. So I'm looking forward to talking about that today. And I'm sorry that you suffer from it. I have a solution for you, actually.

2:29Marnie Rabinovitch:Yeah, well, we're heading into chafing season here. So walk us through your hero's journey starting Thigh Society. Sounds good. I'll try to condense 15 years into a one or two minute story so your listeners don't get bored. And yes, that's right, 15 years. So it was 2008. I was working in a government job. My second career by that point in my life, actually, and was working at downtown Toronto, for your listeners that know Bay and Wellesley. And it was one of the first warm days of summer. And I had thrown on a dress, like I love wearing dresses. And that morning, didn't think twice, threw on my dress and went to work.

3:06But when I went for a walk at lunch, because the weather was warm, I suddenly felt my bare legs rubbing together and that all too familiar burning sensation between my thighs. And I thought, oh crap, you know, I forgot to put on my trusty black Nike bike shorts that I hadn't put on truthfully since the summer before, because, you know, the weather wasn't conducive to going bare legged. I hadn't traveled anywhere warm. And so I thought, shoot, what am I going to do? I can't continue this walk. So I actually raced to the nearest shopper's drug mart pharmacy, um, grabbed some baby powder, which was my like best solution at the time, waddled back to my office like a duck and ran to the bathroom to throw baby powder on my legs, which made a huge mess for anyone who's been there, done that, got everywhere.

3:52And I literally shook my fist in the air and thought there has to be a better way. So I really spent the next two months of my summer researching, looking for a long leg underwear for women. That's all I wanted. I didn't want to start a business. I literally just wanted a pair of underwear that was lightweight, weight, seamless, breathable, cooling, and invisible under my clothes. And I wanted something that wasn't shapewear because at that time, the only long leg underwear option for women was shapewear. And so I started canvassing friends over the summer and literally anybody I met at friends' parties, out and about, I would just talk to people and ask, are your thighs rubbing?

4:32Do you have a solution? And honestly, most people would show me their skirts and show me shapewear and like, you know, curse the fact that they had to squeeze into tight, hot, not breathable shapewear. Some women had been cutting their pantyhose or cutting leggings. And then one day I actually went to the Bay, which one day we'll look back and remember fondly the Bay because the Bay, yeah, dire straits right now.

4:57Marnie Rabinovitch:Yep. And I, I want, I took myself to the big flagship location at Queen Street West and I went to the men's underwear section because women, like I said, women's underwear, women's long underwear wasn't a thing. I mean, if you wanted quote unquote boy shorts, you could find those at Victoria's Secret or, you know, uh, any lingerie shop, but those were never long enough to cover the area of my thighs that needed the fabric coverage and the protection. And so I walked to the men's underwear section and I'll never forget a representative from another men's underwear brand was there. At first I thought she was a salesperson for the Bay, but turns out she was from the label.

5:35And she comes over and she sort of taps me on the shoulder and she's like, hey honey, are you here shopping for your boyfriend or for yourself? And I was like, wait a minute, what? Like I'm not the only woman you've seen shopping for men's long leg underwear. She's like, no. She's like, I have women all the time. She's like, I'm the rep and I'm here just making sure our shelves are stocked properly. But I always see women shopping for themselves because you got the chub rub. I'm like, yes. So I had this realization in that moment that there was certainly, I knew there was more than me who needed this product.

6:05I thought, you know, there's got to be a better way even from men's long underwear because, you know, you guys have had boxer briefs forever and there are many different fabrications, right? Many different leg lengths, but men's long underwear has more fabric in the crotch area than women need. And I didn't want that extra bulk. And I should say that by this point in time, I also had tried every single cream and gel and powder on the market. I mean, behind me, there's a pink box. You can't see, I don't know if your listeners do YouTube or whatnot, but that's filled as is the box below it with like hundreds of dollars worth of products that are, you know, the body glides and all of these so-called chafing gels.

6:45And I guess I'm just a sweaty human being because those only lasted on me for about 10 minutes. And I always had to awkwardly reapply them and I had to carry them in my purse and it all got very annoying. Long story short is, uh, pun intended, I guess, after two months of research and, uh, being frustrated with walking into a lot of small brick and mortar, you know, lingerie shops looking for this, this product that wasn't very complicated, but that I couldn't find anywhere, a non-shape wear, long underwear solution for women. I decided that I had to invent it myself. So I actually quit my job twice to start the iSociety.

7:24And this first time was in the summer of 2008, where it took about six months off to educate myself on all things retail, e-commerce, intimate apparel, fabric. I mean, my prior career was in consulting, training, recruiting, human resource strategy. I had corporate jobs. I was not someone who had been familiar with the intimate apparel business, but I really believed there was a need for this product and I could not find anything. I couldn't find anything on the internet. I mean, this was pre, you know, Amazon existed at this time, but it was like very early days. I mean, the concept of people shopping for underwear on the internet was still a foreign concept in 2008.

8:07And at that time, for what it's worth, Shopify was just a payment gateway. So I'm still looking for someone at Shopify to give me the real stats, but I can say with confidence, I think we were one of the first 500 or 1 ,000 businesses using Shopify, even as a payment gateway. So I taught myself, was learning about e-commerce, taught myself how to code, how to program, hired a developer as well, though, because I wasn't that good, and basically took$8 ,000 of my own savings to start this company. So I just alluded to the technical side of things, but I connected with some local fashion entrepreneur groups, found myself connected to some local manufacturers.

8:53And I always like to say that it pays to talk to people. I know in early days of starting a business, when you have an idea, people are really shy about talking about it with others because they're afraid that somebody might copy them. But the reality is it's a lot of work to start a business. Most people aren't really interested. They don't have the time to copy you, right? They're not actually going to take that initiative. So in my case, I was talking to people about it. And I'm glad I did because someone I used to work out with at my gym, turns out he was the production manager for Nike Canada.

9:24And he was very well connected to local fabric manufacturers. And at that time, a lot of them were looking to work with startups and have very low minimum order quantities, which was a good thing because I was just starting out and didn't know anything. And so I spent the basically from August of 2008 until December perfecting a prototype, continuing to work on the website with my developer. And then ultimately around March, 2009, I actually took another full-time job because I had been, I had not been working since August. And you realize very quickly when you're starting a company that it takes a long time to get everything up and running.

10:01And it takes a long time to monetize. And I, at that point in my life, had been used to living a certain way. We had just bought a house, you know, I had expenses, I wasn't really ready to give up all of that. So I also recommend for people to not quit their day jobs when you have an idea, because it is possible to do both at the same time. So I went back to work in March of 2009 at the University of Toronto as a career coach to help MBA students transition their careers into consulting or finance, marketing, whatever they wanted, and launched the business in July of that year. So July 2009. And then I stayed working in that job until August 2016, when I - Wild.

10:44Yes, a long time. Another career. Another career. Another career. You can always change careers in your life, but the business had gotten to a to a compelling point, um, in 2016 where I felt, and I also was turning 40. Uh, so it's never too late. You're never too old to start a business. And I thought, if not now, when, right. And I was, I was just ready. I was ready for a change by that point. I had also looked at other possible corporate careers. And every time I had a job offer in hand, it was, am I going to have time

11:12Marnie Rabinovitch:to work on thigh society? Well, you know, and the answer was always no. So right place, right time is always key. But yes, like maybe we'll stop there. Yeah, super, super interesting. How big did you get it during that second career period where you were like, how you got it to the point where it became compelling and obvious that you needed to go full time with it? How during that, whatever that was, like a almost 10 year period or more years, how did progress go during that time when you were working full time? So that's a great question. When I quit my job, we were somewhere around half a million dollars Canadian in revenue.

11:49And I had grown the business to about $350 ,000 organically. I had stayed away from any paid marketing to that point in time. Again, this was 2016. So the way I'd grown the business till that point was very organically by literally sending product to bloggers. Influencer wasn't even a term back then. And then I was introduced to someone who was familiar with Facebook ads and was able to see, you know, the power of meta, which is now known as meta, but the power of putting a bit of money into marketing spend. Plus, we had really good product market fit. I mean, this was a product at the time, we were the category creators of size inclusive slip shorts.

12:29So I, you know, when I started this brand, actually in 2008, 2009, when I was looking for this product, because I didn't want to start an intimate apparel company, the only brands that were making a short that I wanted were plus size and they were UK based brands. And I know I'm segwaying for a second, but I really resented that because I did not identify as a plus size woman. I had struggled with dieting and, you know, trying to lose weight my whole life and really resented, you know, yet again, diet culture rearing its ugly head, telling me that I had to lose weight just to get rid of my thigh rub.

13:05And I knew that even if I had been a size, when I had been a size six versus a size 12, my thighs always rub together. Even if there was an, you know, a centimeter of rubbing, I would get a thigh rash. So I really, you know, when I started the company, I knew I wanted to be size inclusive. And I, I didn't, you know, I didn't appreciate that there was just these plus size companies making these cotton bloomers that quite frankly, weren't even going to solve the problem because they weren't moisture wicking. Cotton absorbs moisture. It keeps it on your skin. And I knew that that wasn't a way to solve thigh rash.

13:34Marnie Rabinovitch:Or the other option is shapewear, which is overtly trying to squeeze you into something that's not comfortable. It's trying to kill you. It's trying to kill you. It's trying to kill you. And also what it does for when you're wearing it. I don't know if you've ever tried on shapewear. Never. I haven't. I hope you never have to. Yeah. What it does, unfortunately, is it keeps us focused inward on what it feels like. It makes us feel, you know, uncomfortable, tight. And that distracts us from having conversations with people, being present in the moment, you know, living our best lives. And I'm not anti-shapewear.

14:07I think there's a time and place we can all appreciate shapewear if it makes us feel comfortable. You know, I say you do you. If someone wants to wear shapewear, go for it. I wanted an alternative to wear underneath my loose flowing maxi dresses that was going to give me, you know, very light shaping, a little bit of smoothing, but really was super comfortable. I mean, and our shorties are so comfortable you can sleep in them, but you can also wear them under a bodycon dress. if you want to feel confident. But digressing from there, you had asked me about meta. We were still, these were, we were sort of, I think at that point we had missed like the real heyday of meta ads, but of Facebook ads, Facebook wasn't known as meta then, but we still had enough runway.

14:46And I was starting to see very clearly that there was opportunity with putting a little bit of paid spend and seeing some results that way. So yeah, that was -

14:54Marnie Rabinovitch:And you're still single or up until this point, you're single skew. This is just, you have created the product that solves this problem. Yeah. I mean, I like to say that, so we have five products and each of them has a different use case, but all of them do the same thing. So all of our fabrications are made by us now. We've grown a lot in 2016. We moved overseas, but as a separate story of, you know, we were producing in Canada right up until, sorry, I stand corrected. Our first production run from overseas was in 2019. So we were producing in Canada straight up until 2019 for 10 years. And our products all solve for chub rub.

15:34They are all a solution to thigh sweat, butt sweat, crotch sweat, all the sweaty unmentionables that we love talking about, as well as for modesty. If you're someone like a teacher bending down in a skirt or dress all day around young kids for total comfort, for hot flashes, for perimenopause, for hot sleepers, for people who have skin sensitivity, whether they have surgeries and scarring in their abdominal area, whether it's a C-section or, you know, endometriosis, people with lipedema, nurses, anyone wearing scrubs love our products because anything with a dropped inseam where you can get that little bit of rubbing in between the top of your thighs.

16:16So they're really just, you know, a no brainer solution. You know, women, the same way men wear long leg underwear to prevent thigh chafe or rubbing through your jeans. Women need this product too. They just need, we just, you know, we want to go bare legged in our skirts and dresses, but for those of us who can't and for whom creams and gels don't work, Thigh Society are the absolute lightest, best, best fitting, moisture wicking, cooling underwear on the market.

16:42Marnie Rabinovitch:I remember when Marky Mark wore boy trunks, like the boy version in 1990 or something like that. And that was like the first time that you could, even as a guy, move away from briefs to something that may be protected against chafing. Totally. It's an idea whose time has come. Amen. And you mentioned all these different use cases and all these different avatars, customer avatars. I'm curious, is that something that you translated through to your meta ads, for instance? Were you calling out to these different avatars in your ads? Yeah, we've been trying that in the last few years, I would say. And our customers were the ones that brought these use cases to the forefront for us.

17:18Because when I started the brand, I was singularly focused on anti-chafe. So as time went on, it became obvious that there were so many other reasons why people would use these. And we have, yes, we have definitely tested these in our ads. I think we are ranked number one for sweaty butt. There's less delicate ways to say it if you go on Reddit. You know, you can find a lot of different ways. Swass. Swass, swass, yeah. Swamp ass. Swamp crotch. Swamp crotch. We do it all. Yeah. Swamp crotch. We do sweaty crotch now. We try to be a little more delicate with our terms, but there's no reason to be delicate.

17:54This is a real thing. I mean, we're all about, you know, de-stigmatizing these totally normal skin conditions, right? Like nobody thinks twice about swapping some deodorant under their armpits in the morning to prevent sweat and body odor. So why would we have any shame about a totally normal skin condition? So yeah, we have been, we have been using, we've been using a combination, I guess, of, of ads creative and landing pages to test different use cases. But you know what? Our homepage consistently outperforms any of those so far. So we've got - Oh, so you're interesting. Yeah. I think it's interesting because the woman coming to our site or the man or the non-binary person coming to our site looking for a solution to this is sort of deciding to choose a product based on the level of sheerness that they're comfortable with.

18:39So if they're primarily wanting to wear these underneath clothing and they want the lightest weight, you know, clothing for summer, they'll go with our cooling. And at the other end of the spectrum, we have our original and cargo shorties, which offer all of the same features of a bike short, but they're lighter than a bike short. And you don't have to wear underwear with them, which is a big deal because for most of my girlies out there that wear bike shorts, like I used to underneath skirts and dresses, I was already pissed that I had to wear the shorts as a layer. I had to also wear underwear with them.

19:12So these eliminate the need for the multiple layering and they're still super lightweight and they'll cool you down and they're wicking and they're seamless and they're breathable and they're, you know, all the things you ever wanted in a base layer.

19:24Marnie Rabinovitch:It's, it's super interesting. Cause it's like, it's a product, it's a new product. It's a new category of product, but at the same time, it doesn't require that much education compared to maybe some other products. Cause people sort of intuitively get it. Yes. People do intuitively get it if they know what Chubrub is or if they know what Gyshape is. And I feel like what's been really interesting in the last 15 years is seeing the conversation around chafe come into the mainstream, even things about, you know, swaths, you know, and swamp crotch and all that, because even people who don't have thigh chafe, which again has nothing to do with weight, because I've met people who are size 22 who are like, I don't get thigh chafe.

20:00And women who are size two who are like, oh, my God, thigh chafe's the bane of my existence in the summer. It's been really interesting to see it come more into the mainstream. So I'm all about, I mean, we have seen competitors copy us. everyone's everyone's a copycat is what I like to say but imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery you know I we know that we make the best shorts on the market because that's all we do I mean to your point earlier you know we have stayed in our lane we have you know over the years I had been told by a lot of people to expand the product line you know are you going to make matching tank tops are you going to make matching panties and I'm and I was like you know what we've barely scratched the surface with getting our name out there for being really great at what we do.

20:43We have spent, you know, years perfecting these products and perfecting the fit and the feel of these products because we know that the woman wearing this or the person wearing this wants to feel like they're wearing nothing. And so we want to be really good at what we do and we want to be a household name for anti-chase slip shorts for women. And that's, you know, that's what's led us here today. Sure, we have, you know, it's a lot of opportunity for product extensions and expansion, but it was always my goal that we, you know, be known for what we do best.

21:14Marnie Rabinovitch:And so what's working at top of funnel the best right now? Is it still meta? It is still meta. It is still meta. And, you know, we were leaning heavily into content from creators, founder content, which always resonates. There's, I apologize to people that I meet now at events because they're like, oh my God, I just opened my phone and there you were because one of our ads is doing really, really well with me in it. But it's so interesting just to digress for a second, you know, in 2008, 2009, even right up until 2015, like the concept of founder videos and founder content and filming yourself packing orders, you know, and, uh, you know, walking to the post office.

21:56I mean, I wish, I wish I could time travel back and, you know, feature, you know, take even pictures of when I had stock in my home office, when I had stock in my corporate office. Like I was bringing, I stopped my, my old colleagues at U of T, you remember that I had boxes of thigh society in my office, hidden behind, uh, hidden behind the door. And I would pack orders at lunch and walk to the Canada post office here on, on Spadina and ship things. You know, there's, there's so much rich content that I was never able to capture as a founder in those early stages, which I know people love, right?