Andy & Evan:two laid-off financeguys built akids' clothing brand
Andy Perl and Evan Hakalir both worked at hedge funds until the 2008 crash took their jobs. They started a men's custom shirt business to stay busy, then noticed Andy's toddler son had nowhere good to shop, pivoted into boys' clothing, and invented a button-down with a snap at the bottom called the Shirtzie.
Andy & Evan is what two people do when the plan falls apart. Andy Perl and Evan Hakalir both worked in finance, at hedge funds, until the 2008 crash arrived and took their jobs along with a lot of other people's. Out of work and not the type to sit still, they started a business doing the thing they at least understood as customers: well-made men's shirts, custom.
The custom-shirt business was fine. It was not the thing. The thing showed up the way the best ideas do, by accident, when Andy went looking for clothes for his own little boy and could not find anything good.
They were not trying to build a children's brand. They were trying to find good clothes for one specific toddler, and discovered every other parent had the same problem.
Andy's son, Ely, was the accidental founder. Shopping for him, Andy kept running into the same wall: the boys' section was an afterthought, full of clothes that were either stiff and grown-up or cheap and cartoonish, with almost nothing that was both well-made and genuinely practical for a busy parent. So they designed a line for Ely, and the toddler effectively became the brand's first model.
The breakthrough product was the Shirtzie, a proper button-down shirt with a snap closure at the bottom, so it stays neatly tucked and a parent can still handle a diaper change without taking the whole outfit off. Parents loved it because it was the rare kids' garment designed by people thinking about both how it looks and how it actually works at 7am. The void Andy hit in the store turned out to be the whole business.
As Andy put it, the insight was almost that simple: he was in the market shopping for his little guy, and the boys' market was simply underserved. Girls' clothing got the design attention and the budgets. Boys got leftovers. Andy & Evan built a brand on the unglamorous half of the kids' aisle, the one everyone else had ignored.
It grew the way a real brand grows. The two founders, later joined by Jonathan Perl, turned the Shirtzie into a full line of boys' and then kids' clothing, fashion-forward but built for actual use, and pushed it out through their own site and into national retail. Evan, who became the company's CEO, kept the same thesis the whole way: make the kind of sturdy, thoughtfully designed clothing the boys' market never had.
From a men's shirt side project to a national kids' brand.
The shirt, grown up
The boys' buttondown, the grown-up version of the Shirtzie that started it all: a real shirt, cut and finished like a small adult's, made to survive a kid's day. It is the whole idea in one garment, the durable, good-looking, parent-tested boys' clothing that Andy could not find when he went shopping for his son.
The founding story is clean, the years since less so. A practical, founder-designed boys' line is a real thing to defend in a category that runs on cartoon characters and on the buying calendars of giant stores. Andy & Evan grew into national wholesale, sold through its own site and through chains like Nordstrom, Saks and Neiman Marcus, and that reach came with the usual cost of the model: you make to a retailer's order and forecast, not to your own.
So the brand made a bet a purist might not. Rather than lean only on the original parent-tested thesis, it licensed character IP, partnering with Paramount Consumer Products on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection in 2023 and a SpongeBob collection in 2024. The licensed work sells, and it is also the kind of move that can blur a brand built on the opposite idea. The honest read is that the practical-clothing thesis and the licensed-character business now have to coexist, and keeping the first one legible while the second one pays is the actual work of the second decade.
Andy & Evan, in five moments
The arc
- 2008Andy Perl and Evan Hakalir both lose their hedge-fund jobs in the financial crash and start a men's custom shirt business.
- The wallAndy goes shopping for his toddler son Ely and finds the boys' clothing market almost entirely underserved.
- 2009They pivot to kids and found Andy & Evan, inventing the Shirtzie, a button-down with a snap closure at the bottom.
- The lineJoined by Jonathan Perl, they grow the Shirtzie into a full boys' and kids' line sold direct and in national retail.
- TodayEvan Hakalir is CEO of a national kids' brand, still built on the same idea: durable, thoughtfully made clothing for the half of the aisle everyone ignored.
What is durable here is not the layoffs or the licensing deals, it is the original read: that the boys' side of the kids' aisle was an afterthought, and that a parent at 7am cares more about how a garment works than how it photographs. Two people who lost their finance jobs noticed that gap by accident, built for one real toddler, and have spent every year since defending a practical idea inside a business that constantly tempts you to chase the trend instead. The brand stays interesting only as long as the first instinct keeps outvoting the easy one.
Stories of brands built to last on Shopify
We profile the operators behind the brands we admire, how they started, what they got right, and what made them durable. Reported like a feature, not a pitch.
Read more stories