Interview with Matt Bird, Founder At Subscription-Based Menswear Service: The Shirt Society

The Shirt Society is a subscription-based menswear service. Our members sign up, choose how frequently they want their drops (every 30, 60 or 90 days), select their first shirt, and we do the rest. We’re our members’ secret weapon, helping them reclaim their time so they can get on with the more important things in life.

We stock collared shirts, as well as two curated casualwear collections: polo shirts and t-shirts. Our members know us for our outstanding quality, and we’re always in conversation with them to find out what products they’d like us to add next!
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
At my previous menswear business, We are Gntlmen, we had a lot of customers saying the same thing: “we love the shirts, but we don’t like shopping for them!” That gave me the idea for The Shirt Society – the perfect solution for guys that want to look sharp but aren’t keen on physical store shopping or spending ages scrolling online.

I scribbled the logo down whilst in a bar with my girlfriend – it means TSS in morse code. Once we got the ball rolling it snowballed pretty quickly and we were lucky enough to find an investor who’s totally onboard with the concept.
 

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

 
The biggest advice I can give is to keep on talking to your customers. So many businesses fail because they focus on what they want to be, rather than what the customer wants or where the gap in the market is. At The Shirt Society, we make sure we keep on talking to our customers and stay flexible with what we offer – for example we introduced casualwear following the switch to home-working following the pandemic.

Other than that, I’d have to say hire right. Getting a great team around you is so important, especially when you first start out in business. I looked for people who were highly skilled, but also really believe in the business. And someone who can have a laugh is important too!
 

What can we hope to see from TSS in the future?

 
In early February we drop our latest product ranges which we’re super excited about – we’ve tweaked the fit so they are even more comfortable than before.

As a business, we’re really keen to be as sustainable as possible; we encourage men to think about whether they need their next drop and there’s an easy ‘skip’ function to reduce clothes waste. But we’d love to close the loop further and offer our members an easy way to recycle clothes they no longer wear.

We’re also set to work with several exciting brands across lots of sectors including retail, hospitality and tech, to offer our members exclusive discounts.

Watch this space!