Today we’d like to introduce you to Leo Tropeano.
Leo, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I moved to NYC after graduating from college and immediately knew I had to upgrade my wardrobe. My jeans were in particularly bad shape so I started there, but I was blown away that I couldn’t find any jeans that looked good AND were comfortable—all the slimmer fits were too suffocating and I quickly realized that when it came to jeans, I’d have to sacrifice either comfort or style. I started asking friends and colleagues their thoughts and learned this was a widespread problem for guys, so I set out to fix it.
I had zero experience or knowledge in the fashion space, so I started meeting with different experts in the industry to learn everything I could about making clothes. After a few years of networking, learning and iterating our design, I felt I perfected the men’s jean. In November 2016 I launched our current line of flexible jeans with sweatpants-like comfort and it’s been a crazy ride ever since!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. One of the sayings I had early one was, “everything will go wrong,” haha. We’ve had inventory held hostage by warehouses, website crashes on the biggest shopping days of the year, full production runs of jeans that were unsellable, etc etc. The irony of it though is that all of these failures led to the biggest breakthroughs. So as aggravating as they are, we wouldn’t be anywhere without them.
Please tell us about Mugsy JEANS.
We make the best men’s jeans in the world—Mugsys are stylish and literally as comfortable as sweatpants. You can’t beat it.
Plus we make Mugsy a fun and awesome experience—That’s why we serve whiskey to our customers when they come to the Mugsy Lounge and make every interaction with Mugsy feel like you’re hanging with a good friend.
That’s what we’re known for, but overall our vision is to give guys total confidence in the way they look and feel. We have a lot of cool stuff in the works beyond our jeans that’s gonna be game-changers for guys everywhere!
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
This is a tough one. I can’t say I have one favorite memory, but my overall favorite memories were from summer weekends at the Jersey Shore—Soccer on the beach, body surfing in the ocean, mischief with my cousins and big-ass Italian meals with the whole extended fam… it was glorious haha.
Pricing:
- Our pants are $98 across the board!
Contact Info:
- Address: 1118 W Fulton Market, Ste 200 Chicago, IL 60607
- Website: MUGSYJEANS.COM
- Email: TEAM@MUGSYJEANS.COM
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mugsyjeans/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mugsyjeans?ref=br_tf
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mugsyjeans
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