Designers put glam in adaptive wear

While there are some major companies, including Tommy Hilfiger, Zappos and Target, who are in the adaptive apparel market, most fashion companies focus on the able-bodied, giving Connor’s Smart Adaptive Clothing and Goodwin’s Easy Access Underwear plenty of room to grow. Neither would provide sales figures, but both are looking at expanding their online company’s offerings.Smart Adaptive Clothing

After seeing her dad who loved getting dressed be reduced to sweats, Connor went on a search for better options that were attractive and easy to put on — but she couldn’t find anything that met that criteria.

“Why isn’t this out there?” she remembered asking herself.

Unable to find stylish adaptive wear, in 2017 she walked away from her job as a sales marketing manager at a medical device company and decided to create the pieces herself, despite her lack of design experience or even a strong interest in fashion.

It wasn’t Connor’s first business.

While an undergraduate at Temple University she started a home cleaning business to help pay her tuition and it became so successful she wasn’t sure whether to continue the business or get a corporate job when she graduated. She opted for the corporate position but her entrepreneurial success built her confidence.

“I never thought (Smart Adaptive Clothing) wasn’t going to work. I remember my first sale. A man bought a blouse for his wife who had Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease,” Connor said.Easy Access Underwear

When Goodwin first checked into the market for men’s underwear and found it totaled $11 billion in 2020 and is expected to increase to $16 billion by 2027, the former facilities manager shifted gears and decided to create better and sexier men’s underwear.

“I guess it was more like a challenge and I wanted to solve the problem,” Goodwin, who didn’t have a clothing design background, said he was like his father: both are artistic, like to tinker and are challenged by problems.

Goodwin’s solution was Easy Access Underwear which he unabashedly calls the “most user-friendly male boxer brief in the world.” It gives a user, he promised, a sense of confidence, functionality and style.

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