AskAndyAboutClothes.com is devoted to
what to wear, how to properly wear it,
and the history of why we wear what
we do.
About
Andy
My interest in
clothing came from my father who even in the middle of Kansas wanted to know
the latest fashion. Degrees in Sociology and Journalism from Kansas State
University were the foundation for a diverse professional career. Serving
corporate America, I developed a strong sense of how fashion influences
others.
I put my fashion
hobby to the test working part time at a Polo/Ralph Lauren store,
and filled an educational need by producing handouts for customers
on all aspects of men's clothing. I was consistently the
number one salesman, and I only worked part time!
I have written for
ModernMan.com, AMansLife.com, Men's Health, Greg Norman's website
Shark.com, and have been published in Money, Forbes, and GQ
Magazines, Classic Style Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
One of my travel
photographs was published by the Los Angeles Times, where you'll
also see an occasional letter to the editor!
I reside in Southern
California.
How this website
started.
As I meet more and
more of the members of the Ask Andy Forums and those of you kind
enough to own my book there seems to be a common question.
How did you ever
start the website? Here’s the answer!
I was connected to
modernman.com as their men’s fashion forum monitor. I tried to
get the owner to post more of my articles, and add some
advertising so that maybe I could get paid something! Those
requests were not acted upon. So I thought maybe I can do this
myself the way I’d like to do it.
I also had begun
writing my book, The Encyclopedia of Men’s Clothes.
One of my longtime
friends, Bob McConnell, (a tennis and golf buddy) worked
for IBM, and I approached him about doing a website. Bob said,
“Sure, it’s easy!” And we went out and bought some Front Page
software.
The next few weeks
were a real learning experience for a non-tech person (me!). But
Bob worked with me and got me through setting up some pages.
On either August
22, 2001 or November 2, 2001 (can't quite pin it
down!!) we were “on the air” and it looked great. I kept adding
to the site, and a week later I had received a total of 14 hits!
Most of those were me looking at the site.
For some reason
(maybe a real need for this kind of information) in a few weeks we
started getting noticed. In a couple of months Google had found
us.
I completed The
Encyclopedia of Men's Clothes, had it reproduced on a CD-Rom
and sold the first one on March 27, 2002.
Then I talked Bob
into putting up a Forum. He was a little hesitant. I’m not sure
he was too enthused, and it was a lot of technical work. Plus I
don’t think that he saw any value in a site on men’s fashions.
The Forum went up on
or before August 24th, 2002, and the hits started
increasing.
The big break came
with a story about the site and Forum in The New York Times,
September 29, 2004, and the hits shot up to 160,000. They dropped
a few days later, but leveled off and then began to climb to
250,000 hits a day! The May 2006 issue of Playboy Magazine
recommended this site and most recently we're getting over 300,000
hits a day.
Currently (June
2007) the site is averaging over 600,000 hits per day, over 15,000
visits daily, and almost 6 million page views monthly! The Forum
registered membership is over 12,000!
My vision for the
website was that men of all ages had not gotten the basics about
men’s clothing in the last couple of generations and they were
starting to realize that those basics were very important. From
my part-time job in men’s retailing I knew men wanted to know
which jacket buttons to button, what color socks to wear, how and
when to wear pocket squares, etc.
I though that I
could create a website where gentlemen could comfortably talk
about clothes without any embarrassment and ask questions about
sock color. Little did I know it would expand way beyond that!
Some of the discussions are out of my league, but the great thing
is I’m learning, too!
And I hope we just
keep getting better and better.
--
Andy Gilchrist
