Tired of constantly buying “premium” boxers that did not provide the support or comfort that Tyler McCombs was looking for, he and his wife Dayna set out to create some truly life-changing underwear.
They had a goal to create underwear that was built to support you all day, didn’t chafe or ride up as you went through your day, used the newest technologies, and built with environmentally sustainable fabrics.
After working for over a year with world class apparel designers and garment manufacturers the first Devon + Lang men’s boxers (under the original brand name of OKE Apparel) arrived August 2019.
And in early November, the brand opened its first brick-and-mortar retail storefront at Calgary’s CF Chinook Centre in 1,400 square feet of space, located near popular brands Pandora, Nike and Sephora.
“We sell a lot online via e-commerce and it is probably the majority of our sales, and we actually have a warehouse right in Calgary. And then we also wholesale our products to about 90 retailers across Canada. So these are more like smaller mom and pop shops and stuff,” said Tyler, the company’s CEO.
The brand, named after Tyler’s daughter and grandfather, focuses on quality, durability, and comfort, with a significant shift towards women’s underwear, now constituting 65% of their business. The women’s line, launched in late 2021, has surpassed expectations in popularity.
“This is our first year doing brick and mortar. We had done lmarkets beforehand. So we were doing the Calgary Stampede and Spruce Meadows Christmas Market and Millarville. We do a lot of the holiday markets as well. We’ve historically mainly done those, but this is going to be our first year doing the retail store.
“I think there’s a few reasons why we wanted to do a retail store. One of the first ones is we love the city, we love Chinook mall, we had an opportunity to get our brand into a new space and find a new audience of customers that don’t go to the markets or go online as much, who still love to shop in person. And when we had the opportunity to do a storefront in Chinook mall, the third busiest mall in Canada, I think we really felt there was there was no way we could say no to the opportunity. It creates legitimacy to the brand as well versus just being online. I think people can see it in person and go, ‘Oh, this is a real thing. This is more than just something I saw online. I actually see this as a real space. And I’m interested in checking out what this brand has to offer through that retail connection’.”
Tyler said it is “absolutely within the cards” to open more locations eventually.
“The goal with this is this is a test operation for us. This is our first chance to kind of see how customers connect with our brand in a retail environment. And if it goes well, then I see the sky’s the limit when it comes down to where we could be opening up.”
First Calgary then possible to other parts of Canada.
Devon is their daughter’s name and Lang is his grandfather’s last name.
“And so the idea behind the name was we wanted to look at apparel from a generational standpoint, what made it great in the past, which just was quality and durability, and then we can move that apparel into the next generation of where we want to see it become. So that’s using sustainable fabrics, using the new technologies, and finding ways that we can make it truly comfortable and long lasting. That’s kind of the idea behind the name, at least,” he said.
“Underwear really has become a big thing. I think especially with the pandemic, it kind of helped people realize how important being comfortable is, and the kind of underwear we sell, I think, is a little bit unique. When we started the company, we just were a men’s underwear company . . . And then as time went on, we launched our women’s underwear, because my wife kept taking my boxers to sleep in at night. She’s like, ‘these are great, but I don’t actually need the whole pouch that’s in here’. So we started making our own women’s underwear, and the women’s underwear has become now 65% of our business. We are selling more women than men’s underwear, which is really surprising, at least it was very surprising to me to see, but it’s our women’s boxers, it’s our women’s boy shorts, it’s our women’s, more comfort focused underwear that has really been taking off for us.
“They also really like the fact they can do matching his and hers prints. We’ve got matching his prints and hers prints, you can kind of get together, and I think that sort of couples idea for underwear, and then just a comfort focused underwear has really been a great way for us to grow our company. There’s lots of sexy women’s lingerie stores out there, which are definitely still doing well, but I think a lot of women now are going ‘I want underwear that I can just wear and just feel good in. If I’m working from home, I’m going out and about just some nice, comfortable underwear’. And we’ve been able to provide that product for these women who are then also going and seeing, ‘hey, we got this amazing men’s underwear too. I’m going to buy this for my partner or husband or adult son. And that’s been a really great way for us to kind of grow and expand the brand in both ways.
“It’s going to be coming up to coming up to three years now, we’ve been doing the women’s underwear and we thought it was going to be just an add on. We saw the majority of our customers were women buying for their boyfriends or husband . . . I could not anticipate how popular the women’s underwear line has become for us. It’s really cool to see that that aspect of the brand really take off.”
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Looking forward to seeing a Devon + Lang location in Edmonton, at Southgate or West Edmonton Mall.