Founder Spotlight With Finnegan Shepard, Both& Apparel

Photo credit: Both& Apparel

Finnegan Shepard is the Founder of Both&, an apparel company on a mission to empower, outfit, and serve the nonbinary generation while providing gender joy to each customer. Finn spent over three years surveying 2,000+ people to create a fit system for the transmasculine, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming communities. Both &’s products are ethically and sustainably produced, and the brand offers a pay-it-forward program to help those who can’t afford their products. 

Our interview with Finn was pretty special because we had the opportunity to meet him in person. Finn happened to be in Palo Alto for a few days, so our entire family drove down and met him at a coffee shop. I, Marianna, chased our 20-month-old while Cat was able to sit down with Finn and learn how Both& got started, the amount of time and thoughtfulness that goes into the development of each product, Finn’s philosophy on accessibility, plus so much more.

Let’s jump right in!

What inspired Both& and how did you get started?

Finn: It comes down to a problem I had, and I was waiting on somebody else to solve it, and nobody did in the way that I wanted it solved. 

Before the idea of Both& came to me, I was in a space of great emptiness. I had thought I would be an academic and then left that path. Then I tried my first startup, but that wasn’t fitting. I had been engaged, but that had fallen apart. And I started medically transitioning.

During the first Covid lockdown, I was back in my parent’s basement recovering from top surgery. I didn’t know where I would live, what I would do, what my body would look like, or who I would be with. This is when the idea behind Both& began.  

Cat & Marianna: What were some of your first steps? What were some of the milestones?

Finn: Talking to as many people as possible so I didn’t start from a presumption that I knew the solution. I started with the things that I have struggled with. I hypothesized that this was a shared problem, so let me go out and validate that. 

At first, I knew around five trans masc people, so I talked to them and asked, “Who do you know?” And then we launched our Instagram, and at that point, the floodgates opened, and thousands of people took surveys and shared feedback.

Cat & Marianna: How many people did you survey?

Finn: Probably, at this point, over 3,000. Before we made any prototypes, it was over 2,000.

What is your creative process when considering new products, designs, or styles?   

Finn: It’s a unique process for fashion. There’s no way we would have the quality of our product at our price points without meeting the person who’s now my co-founder, Amiram Assouline. 

He has been in fashion for over 20 years and has an incredible reputation with vendors. Many factories won’t work with you if you need to change the literal fit pattern. I think that’s what many people who have tried to solve this issue run up against. Amiram, who is established and well-respected across vendors, will contact a factory and can ask for what he wants because he has established credibility in the industry.

We have a partnership that works where I source the problems, and Amiram’s industry experience helps with execution. 

I’m always talking with the community, and we have a survey that helps us determine what’s most important for us to design next. This is usually the primary source of inspiration.

For example, this is the year of denim. It was a top vote. People wanted denim pants, so we did that. Then they wanted shorts, so we did that. We haven’t launched this yet (Finn points to his denim jacket), but we’re collaborating with Daniel Sea on this jacket (who played Max on The L-word). 

Cat & Marianna: Sounds like a lot of thoughtfulness and care into getting it as right as possible out of the gate. 

Finn: Yeah. And then I think about the challenge there. How can we keep it as accessible as possible from a price point perspective without compromising on the ethics of sustainability or attention to detail? 

So much goes into sourcing fabrics and doing dozens of fittings and not settling for anything less than the highest workmanship and quality. But it's also really important to me that we can keep it as affordable as possible. 

Then, of course, I have investors saying, “Are you kidding me? Any brand with the same quality will sell their products for 4x the price. Why aren't you selling it for more?” And it’s because I want people to be able to have it. That's my personal philosophy, access, but it's always a tough nut for me to crack. 

Cat & Marianna: Are you raising money right now?

Finn: We raised a round last year; Angel pre-seed. Now I'm about to go out for the next round. We're on track to 5x this year. So probably late Summer or early Fall I'm going to have to go out and knock on some doors.

Can you think of one major challenge that you faced in starting Both& and how did you navigate that challenge? 

Finn: There are so many challenges. One that isn't discussed enough in entrepreneurship is the emotional labor and balance of keeping a group of people who are working for free, or working for a vision, aligned and incentivized. Making sure there is a sense of fairness when you can't use the simplicity of capital as a leverage point. Especially if you're bootstrapping or undercapitalized.

I didn't realize how much of a balance it can be to make sure that everyone feels listened to, and heard, and that it’s creative enough for them to want to keep going before the company has money. We talk about the stress of money but there's so much emotional labor. 

I have had so much help building this. It truly takes a village.

Cat & Marianna: I'm glad that you brought that up because that is very much a real thing. 

Finn:  Yeah and there's also a really uncomfortable overlap between the fact that trans, nonbinary, and queer people in general are undervalued in the marketplace and not paid a fair market wage. 

Then at the beginning of a startup, you can't pay people but you also want to create amazing opportunities for someone who gets in at the ground level. And if this gets as big as we get it can become life-changing. 

What is your long-term vision for Both&? 

Finn:  I'm absolutely a big believer in starting with a very niche market. But the long-term potential of Both& is a one-stop-shop for the nonbinary generation. There is an expansiveness across so many product categories; footwear, jewelry, and skincare. We started with apparel because that's the number one pain point people have listed but it does not stop there. 

We need to shift the world from thinking that nonbinary and trans consumers can be pushed into the same category as everyone else. We have different needs and desires as consumers and all of those needs and desires should be met.

If you could give one piece of advice for future LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs, what would that be?

Finn: Make friends with people who have very different skill sets, temperaments, and backgrounds. I'm a very curious person so I always have friends in a lot of different arenas. I was able to start Both& because I happened to have a friend who is an award-winning graphic designer, a friend who could be a CFO, a friend who is an amazing photographer, a friend with a background in fashion, etc. I didn't make those friendships with an eye to using their skills at some point. The truth is the LGBTQ+ community cannot inherently just waltz their way into having more access to capital but you can connect with people who have different skill sets from you.

Go out and make friends, listen to them, and be curious about different things. You don't know where that will lead, what business ideas that will spark, or what other doors that will open for you.

That's the other really surprising thing about business. My background is in academia, and I always thought business was this cold, clean, objective world of numbers. And the more I'm in it, the more I realize it's just people. 

What LGBTQ+ owned brands are your go-to’s? 

Finn: The ironic thing is that I'm not a very good consumer. I'm a real minimalist. Also, I honestly wear Both& all of the time. We started Both& with just the essential basics and that's what I like to wear. 

How are you celebrating Pride this year, if you celebrate? 

Finn: I have a complicated relationship with Pride. I feel like the word pride presupposes shame. There's a way in which it's taking back space or pushing against something. It served a wonderful historical purpose and it's great that many people will feel seen and reflected and celebrated in that but it doesn’t resonate with me. 

I am just me every day, every month of the year. I deserve to be respected, have dignity, feel empowered, and have products that are designed with my needs in mind. And so I’m resistant to the idea of imbuing it with more power, personally. While totally respect that for some people it's a really important event.

How are you taking care of yourself, especially during this moment in history (a record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills being passed and an increase in violence against our community)? 

Finn: On a base level I lead a very charmed, privileged existence. I'm based in New Mexico and my own rights haven't been infringed on there and I have enough socioeconomic privilege that I don't live in fear for my own existence. Also, I'm married to somebody with an EU passport so I could bail if I really had to. So first I want to acknowledge that level of privilege. 

I’m somebody who, for better or worse, is very myopically optimistic and focused on what's right in front of me. I've never been interested in being in politics or in large-scale stuff but I do know I can make a difference to the lives directly around me.

Our community is constantly inundated online with politics and everything that's going wrong. We need a space that’s not focused on that. Where we're not even entertaining questions of whether we deserve to be in bathrooms or deserve to have healthcare. 

We're going to start somewhere else. We’re going to celebrate joy, empowerment, and the diversity of this community. My politics are almost an apolitical stance of fuck that noise. Come over here, feel loved and seen, feel comfortable in your t-shirt, and let me know what I can design that would make your life better.

I think it's really important when making a difference in the world to know where you can have the biggest impact and what you're best at. And I'm best at feeling grounded and happy and embodied, and I just want to give that to as many other people as I can. 

Who is your favorite LGBTQ+ celebrity and why? 

Finn: Right now I'm really obsessed with Bella Ramsey because of how grounded they are and their kindness. 

What’s one random fun fact about yourself?

Finn: The one that I love to share is that I also run an etymology newsletter called Limns. I'm really obsessed with etymology and linguistics, and that's kind of what my academic background is. 

Every month I pick a different word, or sometimes people suggest words they're curious about, and I use its etymological roots to philosophically pontificate about the world. It's something that's totally for me, and fun, and the people who read it really like it. 

Check out Both&’s profile here.