The journey of Gihan Amarasiriwardena from a boy scout in Western Massachusetts to the visionary co-founder of Ministry of Supply is a compelling narrative of innovation and resilience. Gihan's early adventures in crafting camping gear laid the foundation for his future endeavors in revolutionizing apparel through science and technology. At MIT, alongside his co-founder Aman, he transformed a shared passion for improving everyday clothing into a groundbreaking business venture.
Ministry of Supply stands as a testament to this journey, embodying more than just fashion - it's about enhancing life experiences through clothing. Each product represents a solution to daily challenges, meticulously engineered for comfort, performance, and style. Whether it's enduring athletic feats or navigating the demands of family life, the brand assures a wardrobe that not only looks good but is built to withstand the extremes of everyday living. Gihan's personal narrative intertwines with his brand's philosophy, showcasing apparel that's rigorously life-tested and ready for any challenge.
Gihan Amarasiriwardena: Yeah, So, I grew up in western Massachusetts, went camping pretty much every month as a boy scout, and fell in love with outdoor and performance gear when I was twelve years old. I started making my own camping gear, like sleeping bags, rain jackets, and even racing shoes for cross country and track. I witnessed this change over the course of the 2000s, which was the shift from cotton-based apparel to performance fabrics like polyester and nylon.
This was when products like Under Armour Dry Fit were coming out, and it changed the industry. Back then, most clothes were made out of cotton. In the past 15 years, that's changed to performance fibers like polyester, nylon, improving machine washability, break resistance, etc. But these hadn't made it into everyday clothes yet, mostly just workout gear. So, I started making dress shirts out of running shirt materials. In a class called 'New Enterprises' at MIT, where I studied chemical engineering, I met my co-founder, Aman. He was working on a performance dress sock by combining gold-toe dress socks with Nike dri-fit socks.
Our friends were hacking code during the app boom, and some professors suggested we start an app company. But our professor saw our vision for this apparel concept and encouraged us. Then we launched a Kickstarter in 2012, which was when our brand really took off. Before that, we were selling our dress shirts at business school cafeterias. We raised $30,000 with the Apollo shirt, one of our flagships, made from a temperature-regulating material like in spacesuits. We ended up raising $430,000, becoming the most-funded fashion project at the time. And that's how our brand started off.
Gihan Amarasiriwardena:Totally. Yeah, it's interesting. When we started, Google pay-per-click was kind of the primary digital medium. But for the most part, we launched through Kickstarter, which was really key for us. It allowed us to tell our product story in a video format to a community that values technology and design. Our company was premised on taking performance materials and bringing them to work apparel, which was a novel concept at the time.
Kickstarter was really compelling for the first couple of years. We weren't very strong on social media, and it wasn't where we spent the most capital. But from 2014 to 2020, we opened up stores across the country, which ended up being about a third of our revenue at the peak. We discovered that the stores were one of our most effective mechanisms for customer acquisition, especially for products like our suits, which are high return but also have high average order values.
Recently, we've been diversifying. We've cut our marketing spend on paid social in half and shifted some of that spend to our direct mail strategy, especially with catalogs. We're also testing out TV ads, which we're finding to be as effective as paid social. We're focusing now on first-party data, particularly our welcome series for email, shifting our marketing strategy to drive email clicks and then cultivate through email. And interestingly, post-pandemic, there's a trend towards comfortable clothes, which aligns with our brand. We're also seeing some early success with marketing on LinkedIn, given that our core customer tends to be in fields like finance, tech, and healthcare.
Gihan Amarasiriwardena: Sure, yeah. I find our site a great way to tell our story, as we've spent a lot of time developing it. Our brand, emerging from MIT, focuses on several pillars for our product line. We're fundamentally about solving specific problems for our customers, taking an engineering approach to clothing, which isn't typically done. We start with the basics: identifying a problem, whether it's sweat stains or a wrinkled dress shirt during a work trip.
We use material science to solve these problems. Our brand has been built on inventing and creating materials, like our Apollo fabric, a temperature-regulating material acting like a thermal battery, and the Aero Zero, a self-ironing fabric made from 100% recycled polyester. Each product has its own story; they are designed to be timeless, classic pieces that solve a problem.
This approach of developing technology for our fabrics and using it across our products is crucial for us. Our branding is based on innovation and differentiation. We cater to 'solvers' – founders, C-level execs, business owners in finance, tech, healthcare – who lead busy lives. We aim to address their needs with our problem-solving products.
Another important aspect of our brand is the concept of a simple wardrobe. We create capsule wardrobes, essentially a 5x5 grid, like legos. Everything in our collection coordinates and matches, allowing customers to build out from one piece. This concept is resonating well and is a key part of our brand's positioning.
Gihan Amarasiriwardena: Yeah, it’s definitely a constant evolution. We’ve had our failures, certainly. At one point, we tried to be, for lack of better terms, a millennial D2C brand. We thought it wasn’t about the science or focusing on a specific customer; we thought we should go broad. But what we found is that the more we focus and align around this specific customer, their problem, and the product we solve for them, that’s the real trifecta. So, every time the market changes, like right now with everyone overstocked and liquidating inventory, we focus on how we're solving a problem for someone, even if we're selling a product at a discount.
It’s also about picking and choosing your battles. Early on, we were on Magento when Shopify was very small, and we spent a lot of money trying to invent the wheel again in-house. Now, we’re focusing on the product, the brand, and the site experience. There are so many great fundamental pieces built into platforms like Shopify. Leveraging these tools that are taking off and focusing our energy on building the brand and the business – that’s key for us.
Gihan Amarasiriwardena: Yeah, last year was tough. Anyone saying otherwise is probably not telling the full truth. There’s a lot going on in the industry, especially with knock-on effects from the supply chain. Brands have excess inventory, credit has been tightening, and we’re seeing traditional ad channels becoming less efficient. It’s a convergence of many effects. In contrast, 2021 and 2022 saw a post-pandemic boom in demand, which made it difficult to gauge.
You could be sloppy and still grow in those years, but now it’s different. ]We focused on doubling down on what makes our products scientifically better and tightened our product line, cutting our SKUs in half. We also shifted our supply chain strategy due to the delays. We tried to plan further ahead, but that backfired, leading us to make projections 18 months out, which put us in a tricky spot.
Now, we’re moving back to a more nimble supply chain. We’re working with factories that require larger order quantities, which offer better margins, perhaps due to different countries of origin or the volume. We’re repositioning towards more efficient inventory management as our primary focus. In fact, we’re aiming to triple the turns of our inventory.
Gihan Amarasiriwardena: I think one of the big things we learned early on was the power of selling your product as an entrepreneur. For two reasons. One, for the folks who you're talking to, like on video calls or in-person sales, you will figure out what messaging is resonating. You'll figure out this kind of tuning of what people are looking for and where they are trying to use it. It’s like selling vitamins versus painkillers; painkillers are easier to sell. It’s about what pain points you're trying to solve, right? And you can validate your own assumptions that way.
On the other hand, for the folks who don’t buy your product, it's only when you try to sell a product that you really get honest feedback on why someone will or won't buy something. And so we found that was just really important. The success of our first Kickstarter, for example, was because of that, because we sold almost 1000 shirts in person, through in-person events, etc. And it helped tune the messaging when we launched on Kickstarter. Every time we get into a tough point in this company’s history, we go back to that. We go back to regrounding ourselves. They say, for instance, Naval Ravikant said, "Learn to build, learn to sell. If you can do both, you'll be unstoppable."
And that's been something that, as someone who's a maker, who's an engineer by background, it took some time to build that comfort, but I can’t speak for that enough.
Chris Choi: Great, that’s really insightful advice. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
