Ministry of Supply (clothing)

Ministry of Supply is a Boston-based high performance business wear men's and women's fashion brand launched in 2012 and founded by former Massachusetts Institute of Technology students using some of the same temperature regulating material as NASA astronauts in their clothing.[1]

Ministry of Supply
Private
IndustryFashion
FoundedBoston, Massachusetts, United States (2012 (2012))
Headquarters
Boston, Massachusetts
,
USA
Key people
  • Aman Advani Co-Founder,
  • Gihan Amarasiriwardena Co-Founder,
  • Geraldo Aldarondo, Founding Partner, Brand,
  • Kit Hickey Co-Founder,
  • Kevin Rustagi, Co-Founder
ProductsClothing and business attire
Websitewww.ministryofsupply.com

The company currently sells the majority of their clothing online and currently has brick and mortar retail locations in Washington D.C., San Francisco, New York, Santa Monica, Boston, and Chicago.[1]

History

Ministry of Supply was started with the intention of creating technologically advanced office apparel. As an anecdote, Gihan arrived to the team's first meeting with a hand sewn dress shirt - composed entirely of off-the-rack athletic fabrics. Similarly, Advani arrived with a sock of the same ilk - a dress sock, where he had replaced the sole with that of a running sock. Both represent the earliest known samples of "Performance Professional" clothing, an emerging category of apparel.

The team met as students at MIT, where they quickly realized they shared a vision for everyday clothing that could be as capable as their athletic gear. The group joined forces in 2012 and introduced their first performance dress shirt. The Apollo Kickstarter campaign set the record for most-funded fashion project at the time, and gave way to the full line of garments that continues to evolve for optimal comfort and capability.

After a year of product development and small-scale sales in the spring of 2012, the company decided to conduct a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of a synthetic knit-blend dress shirt with heat and moisture management, odor control, and offered a full range of motion.[2] The campaign raised over $400,000[3] and became the largest amount raised for a fashion product at the time on a Kickstarter project.

In June 2013, the company again went to Kickstarter for a campaign to raise funds to produce a high performance dress sock.[4][5] This campaign raised more than $200,000 for the start up company.

The Ministry of Supply display at the Boston Marathon Expo in April 2015.

In late September 2013, the company raised $1.1 million in seed round financing from VegasTechFund, SK Ventures, and Red Sox pitcher Craig Breslow.[6] The $50,000 investment from Breslow came after his fiancée bought one of the shirts as a birthday present and he wore the shirt while traveling on the road with the team.[7]

Since launch, the company has built an impressive offering of men's and women's performance clothing, utilizing modern, sharp silhouettes with deep engineering down to the fiber level - ultimately creating soft, stretchy, machine washable clothing suitable for any occasion. The team has won numerous design and engineering awards, including two Guinness World Records (Fastest Half Marathon in a Suit, Men + Women) and NASA's Innovation Award.

Design

The Ministry of Supply's goal is to use new materials, aerospace, robotic engineering, and thermal analysis to create a new category in the design of better-fitting men's business attire.[8] The company seeks limited beta testing through customer input and feedback with when designing their clothing. Early customers are integrated into the development and design process by inviting them to be part of the research into the final product.[9]

Company name

The company is named after the Ministry of Supply, a British government department that was formed in 1939 to coordinate the supply of equipment to all three branches of the armed forces during World War II.[10]

gollark: YES, SOME OFFENSE.
gollark: As I said, this is not very good code.]
gollark: Every rendered tile.
gollark: I suppose baidicoot thought "hmm, how might I find whether a player is on a tile I'm rendering". Now, you might think "hmm yes, the solution to this is just to maintain a map of coordinates to entities, or something like that". But no! The game ITERATES OVER ALL PLAYERS FOR EVERY SINGLE TILE.
gollark: Wow this is some very not good code.

References
  1. Castellanos, Sara (2014-06-04). "High-tech menswear startup Ministry of Supply to launch pop-up store on Newbury Street". Boston Business Journal. American City Business Journals. Retrieved 2014-08-26.
  2. Alspach, Kyle (2012-07-09). "Ministry of Supply breaks Kickstarter fashion record with $300K+ raised". Boston Business Journal. American City Business Journals. Retrieved 2014-09-02.
  3. "Ministry of Supply: The Future of Dress Shirts". Retrieved 2014-09-02.
  4. Robehmed, Natalie (2013-07-08). "I Wore These Socks For A Week And They Don't Smell". Forbes. Retrieved 2014-09-02.
  5. "ATLAS: Performance Professional Comes to Socks". Retrieved 2014-09-02.
  6. Empson, Rip (2013-09-26). "After Kickstarter Success, Ministry of Supply Lands $1.1M To Expand Its Tech-Savvy Men's Line". TechCrunch. AOL Inc. Retrieved 2014-09-02.
  7. Martin, Claire (2013-05-28). "Rolling Up Their Sleeves, as a Team". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2014-09-02.
  8. Luna, Taryn (2013-05-04). "MIT student start-ups have their eyes on fashion". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2014-08-28.
  9. Castellanos, Sara (2014-06-25). "MIT-born Ministry of Supply asks customers to help with design of new products". Boston Business Journal. American City Business Journals. Retrieved 2014-08-26.
  10. Kirsner, Scott (2012-07-29). "High-tech dress shirts being developed by Ministry of Supply". The Boston Globe. BOSTON GLOBE MEDIA PARTNERS, LLC. Retrieved 2014-09-02.
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