Todd Snyder hits the spot.

Todd Snyder has nice clothes, that hit a sweet spot of marketing and appeal to a particular aspirational masculinity that doesn’t want to be too self-conscious about it and maybe is afraid to be too stuffy, too basic, but also won’t go out on a limb.

At least that was my immediate impression when they first advertised to me a couple months ago. According to the article I got it right, so they must know what they’re doing.

I bought a few of his things for the first time recently because they had a big end-of-winter sale, I think mostly for when I want to look inconspicuously “regular” but with a slightly more upscale undertone that fits my age/situation within being pretentious or weird. Not corporate, not “country club” but not pretense of lumbar yard either. According to the article, that is exactly what they were going for.

That always seemed a much desired yet neglected market gap to me, even before I was old enough or middle class enough to want to participate in it personally. It seemed to be the missing rack at Nordstrom.

So when I first paid more attention to his brand a couple months ago I immediately clicked on what he was after and realized the stuff I had been seeing for a decade was his. Back in 2000 or so when I met Billy Reid as a struggling guy in Houston with his own boutique, I had thought this was what he was going after. But it wound up being a bit too rugged, working-class, and Texas to quite catch on that way.

I don’t know why others left Todd Snyder the opportunity. Is fashion really that sleepy for entrepreneurship, with all the innovation at the fashion bleeding edge but not in the market segmentation analysis?