ABQ trans entrepreneur launched clothing line to meet a need

The “sweet spot” for starting a business is the moment when you can see a trend just on the horizon, but it’s not mainstream yet and “it still sounds a little crazy.”

Finnegan Shepard believes he found that perfect balance when he started Both&, an online market that sells clothing to transgender and nonbinary customers.

The initial idea came from his own difficulties as a trans man finding clothes that fit, especially after body-changing surgery. Following an extensive interview process, Shepard could see the potential market was going to explode.

“In my early 20s, I knew two trans people,” he says. “By the time I was 26 and teaching at UNM, half my class was identifying as non-binary. I did tons of interviews. I think 99.4% identified as never being able to find clothing that fits.”

With only $5,000 in savings and zero experience in business or fashion, Shepard jumped head-first into the possibilities.

He started Both& in summer 2020 and runs it out of his Albuquerque home. His London-based co-founder helps with clothing design, and a team in New York “handles the technical fittings and the sourcing and the manufacturing.” Also, Shepard relies on an avid customer base and social media audience, who have helped him figure out what trans people need and how they want it to look.

Shepard, with a master’s degree in philosophy, has taught English and writes a monthly blog on etymology, examining words and their history. Entrepreneurship was never on his radar.

But, Shepard says, he’s driven by the impact his company is having and the knowledge that he’s producing a rare commodity in the trans world.

“When I look at my life, what I’m doing feels profoundly meaningful, and I feel blessed to be me,” he says.

Please elaborate on the market for your products.  

“I initially wanted to figure out two things. One, is this a problem other people have, and it was, yes. And two, in terms of solution, do we struggle with similar enough things that it could be solved from a design perspective. That also was very clear because when I talked to people, it was the same issues. For pants that fit me at the hips, they’re always too long. Shirts will cling to my hips, but then be too broad at my shoulders. We knew if you’re assigned female at birth, even if you have surgery or take hormones, your bone structure never changes. This is the same as other groups in the fashion world — the same as the plus-size clothing market, the same as maternity wear, the same as baby’s clothing. You just need different patterns and proportions for different body sizes.”

What’s a surprising thing you’ve learned about starting a company? 

“I think it’s been surprising simultaneously how much bigger this is than I had initially thought and also how much work it was. The first idea seemed really simple: just create T-shirts and get them to these people that you’ve spoken to who could benefit from it. Just a fun thing to explore. And then it took on a life of its own. How much it’s given me has been surprising and also how much it has taken from me. People are not lying when they say founding a company is an extraordinary act of sheer willpower, and you just wake up every day and keep trudging up the mountain.”

What’s the company’s current status? 

“We’re in the final sprint of raising our seed round now. We have customers in Saudi Arabia and customers in South Africa, in Japan. It’s very expensive to get product to them right now. Within the U.S., we have customers in every state, but the most orders shipped are to California. When I’m in L.A., I see people wearing Both& all over the place.”

What’s your vision for Both&? 

“Right off the bat, there’s other verticals that have come up as areas that need to be innovative. Footwear is one, jewelry is one, skin care is one. Those are all physical goods, but then I like to say that I think we need to innovate both the product and platform for this community. The entire infrastructure of the shopping experience has been built with the cisgender consumer in mind. So whether that’s a retail outlet that has men’s and women’s divided dressing rooms, or whether that’s an online shopping site and how you navigate product and sizing charts and who the models are and how garments fit. For me, a lot of the work wasn’t just about product but also about how … do you build an end-to-end user experience where consumers who don’t fit into the infrastructure the way the world’s been built now actually feel seen and reflected in the brand.”

What were you like as a kid? 

“Enormously positive. I am almost like a thought experiment of a trans person and what your life would look like in a post-transphobic world. I have utterly accepting and loving parents and always have. I never really experienced discrimination. I’ve done a lot of traveling around the world. I think I’ve been to 60 countries or something. I got Type 1 diabetes when I was 15, so I’m definitely aware of my mortality and my body. That, too, has been a great teacher in its own way. The best compliment I’ve gotten, and I’ve gotten it a number of times, is people who witness me in my life say, ‘Finn, you know how to live.’ What more could you aim for?”

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? 

“I had learned Greek, but then I was thinking, ‘If I want to get a Ph.D. in classics, I need to know Latin.’ And I found this place called the Latin/Greek Institute that does a summerlong program. It was the equivalent of a degree in Latin from college, like a four-year course, but in six weeks. No one in the program had time. It was 20 hours a day. We didn’t do laundry. It was just Latin, Latin, Latin. It was insane. It worked, and at the end of the summer, I knew Latin.”

Do you have advice for someone thinking of starting a business? 

“I would say you definitely have to work the imposter syndrome of it. You deserve to be there just as much as anyone else. And there are increasingly more organizations and resources that are trying to … get minority entrepreneurs access to incubators and funding and other co-founders and things like that. Realize that it’s a lot of work, but that you deserve to do that work just as much as anyone else. I think, importantly, as part of that, is to really know we’re all making it up as we go along. I think I really thought that other people knew what they were doing … but literally, no one knows what they’re doing.”