A tall, fit guy is starting a clothes company for other tall, fit guys

For most of his life, Delawarean Matt Mahoney has heard the same question, over and over: “How tall are you?”
For the record, he’s 6-foot-7.
Mahoney, 33, recently moved his office to 1313 Innovation, where he’s working on launching his company called William Mahoney Tall & Fit.
As a tall person, he’s always struggled to find clothes that fit properly — big & tall stores get the tall part right, but Mahoney’s not a hefty guy.

After a few years of spontaneous moves around the East Coast working a variety of jobs — managing five-star hotels, bartending, mortgage brokering, waiting tables — Mahoney packed up once again for Los Angeles to pursue his dream of creating a clothing line for tall and fit men.
The City of Angels, he found, is a pricey place to live.
“I saved every single dollar, I didn’t eat out, drink — I did nothing for about a year and a half,” he said.
Well, not nothing.
He rode his motorcycle up and down the coast to learn about textiles and attend fashion seminars and business meetings.
Mahoney eventually went to the MAGIC fashion expo, and when he shared his business idea with a woman who ran menswear divisions, she pulled him aside, gave him her number and advised him to skip the expo and continue with his own plans. She’d end up being a mentor and guide to Mahoney.
So he started with jeans. He began figuring out how to make patterns and where to buy fabrics.
“I’d go to the shadiest areas of L.A.,” he said, adding that it was initially intimidating to go to fabric shops and manufacturers. “It was kind of like walking into a gym for the first time. You definitely feel dumb. The weights are the fabrics and thread counts, and you have to pick it up as quickly as you possibly can.”
He learned that shirts were a lot easier to tackle than pants, so he switched his focus from jeans. Mahoney got a business license and began going to events and textile sales all over the country. That’s when, two years ago, he decided to come home to Delaware and launch his company, William Mahoney Tall & Fit.
In those two years, Mahoney has been hard at work to create not only a fashion line but a brand with staying power. He’s now at 1313 Innovation putting the business aspect — and most importantly, the website — together.
Though Mahoney is from Delaware, he said he’s felt a bit like an outsider since coming back. And he knew returning to Delaware was an odd choice.
“Delaware isn’t really a high-fashion state,” he said. “There’s no shopping district, no smallish fashion district, no small designers around town.”
Still, Mahoney was attracted by the area’s cost of living and knowledge of a network of people interested in helping small businesses. He bolstered his marketing strategy through courses at the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship and went to networking events at 1313 Innovation. He also consulted with the Delaware Small Business Development Center and SCORE Delaware for guidance.
His business model is online-only, and he expects to officially launch the website, which will carry three styles each of shirts and jeans, by Dec. 21.
The company is a global enterprise — the fabrics are from Italy, and the clothes are made in China. He also hopes, ultimately, to have a global market, particularly in northern European countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden, where the average male height is 6-foot-1 (he said it’s 5-foot-11 in the United States).
“The idea of seeing a guy wearing a shirt that finally fits him is the best feeling in the world,” Mahoney said. “It’s really the coolest part of it all.”