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 basis 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 even though 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 though 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 was 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
