Rhoback’s Crazy Quilt: a Lesson in Sewing and Social Media

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the i.Lab so far this summer, it’s that there’s no one right way to start a company—just as there’s no one right way to paint a painting or make an earth-shaking scientific discovery. Showing up is a good start, but beyond that, there are as many ways to do it as there are types of genius.

There are, however, patterns you start to see in the effectual process: threads different people seize, tie together with their particular strands of genius, and use to weave something strong. Rhoback’s story is a brilliant example of founders leveraging what they had—in this case, a famous Instagram account and the ability to make big asks for the sake of building great partnerships—to create a new clothing brand.

This week, I got to talk to Matt and Kristina Loftus (who are themselves literally partnered as husband and wife, in addition to being business partners with two other founders) about how Rhoback came into being, where they see it going, and what they’re learning in the process.

The Rhoback story starts, actually, with a good-natured prank that turned into a famous Instagram account. Around two years ago at the Virginia Gold Cup races, Matt and a group of friends ran off with a buddy’s pair of bright orange pants, and started sending each other pictures of themselves wearing the pants in various places. They started the Instagram account @brotherhoodofthetravelingpants—which is still running strong—and it quickly started to gain a following.

From there they made their first big ask: would clothing companies send them pants to feature on their account, while they had the fun of wearing them and shooting the photos? After sending the request to several big companies—all of whom got back to them—they accepted an offer to partner with Vineyard Vines for the summer, and essentially became their main marketing campaign, snapping pics of their friend group out having adventures in Vineyard Vines clothes.

At the end of the summer, they had two things: an Instagram account with 10,000 loyal followers, and also a glimpse of a gap in the market. As they were out jumping off cliffs, running on beaches and playing in the water in this traditional clothing never meant for activity, they noticed that there was no activewear equivalent for those who strongly identified with that style. As Matt put it, there was “no activewear brand that speaks our language.”

They dreamed up Rhoback (a name compounded from the name of the Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, which “craves activity”) as a solution to that problem.

Now, as the two Darden students have started to reach out to designers and manufacturers, they’re realizing the need to grow their areas of expertise to have a knowledge of every step of their production process. So this weekend, they attended sewing lessons at Les Fabriques, a sewing shop downtown.

“Why don’t we just learn it?” Matt said they asked themselves, and noted they were better able to brainstorm solutions in their design process when they were most familiar with what was required.

While they wait for their first product—a shirt, currently in the works—to become a reality, they’ll continue to play to their marketing strengths through social media, and keep up that fan base.

“Social media is super powerful and it’s only going to get more powerful,” Kristina said, explaining that if you don’t keep up, you lose followers and relevance, but that the rewards were great for those who knew how to capitalize on this form of outreach.

And even if you’re not a traditional male, their accounts are great to follow—between nice-looking gentlemen doing fun things, and puppies being generally adorable in scenic locations (@bunkertheridgeback), I’d say they’re probably killing it on keeping those who do the shopping interested in what they’ll create.