This isn’t your mom’s Tupperware party.
The type of confab for which a bar was reserved Suburban Housewives of the 1960s Placing bulk orders for plastic containers is now selling a very different product – men’s underwear.
Instead of tables filled with utensils, the trunk show involves a troupe of hunky male models in no clothes.
While admiring friends, guests can also sip and snack while browsing the start-up men’s underwear brand’s products. alphax -The one party pitch Heidi Hapanowicz couldn’t resist.
“I was like, this sounds amazing, sign me up,” the personal brand photographer told The Post, recalling that she was approached as a potential host for the brand’s debut party in her Manhattan apartment .
alphax Co-founders Garrett Swann and Tom Speight came up with the idea of updating the classic shindig to connect directly with consumers and get product feedback in real time.
He enlisted the help of business owners or friends in his “zone of influence” or to host a party with about 30 people.
“Women bring their boyfriends, their spouses or friends and it’s so much fun,” Speight, who has executive roles at Calvin Klein, Kate Spade and 2(X)IST, told The Post.
Hapanowicz remembers her mother hosting Tupperware and ornament parties when she was a little girl, but shopping events in 2022 look a little different than the ones she grew up with.
“I had an apartment full of gay men walking around in their underwear, but it was great,” said Hapanowicz, 50. He said the party, in which sugar cookies were cut and decorated like half-naked men, “sounded much more racist than it actually was.”
“Quite clearly, [it was] As simple as if we were sharing Tupperware. Nobody thought anything about it.”
“It’s a great way for people to go, ‘Oh, I’m going to buy underwear for my husband at a party,'” Swann said, calling it a “win-win for everyone” because ALPHX doesn’t have that. A brick-and-mortar store.
Speight said that while researching men’s shopping habits, the two found that one of the driving factors when purchasing new underwear is starting a new relationship – after all, no one wants a new partner to see their “bad” undergarments.
“They’re going to wear hole-y crap until we upgrade it for them,” Megan Wex, a relationship coach in Huntington Bay and former ALPHX party attendee, told The Post.
The “intimate” gift is based on the age-old tradition of men buying lingerie for women, she said. Needless to mention, buying underwear is just “not on a person’s radar,” quipped Wex, 44, who called the products “the Porsche of underwear.”
The brand’s sales average about $1,000 for a two-hour party, but the data doesn’t take into account repeat customers and word-of-mouth recommendations after the few events held so far.
Stephanie Taylor, 31, a Brooklyn-based marketing consultant, brought her boyfriend along to the brand’s most recent pop-up, held at a Soho aesthetics clinic last month. The incident, he said, “removed the awkwardness of the underwear shopping experience.”
“It’s almost like being able to walk onto a QVC set and touch something, versus going online where my attention span is like five seconds,” she told The Post, adding that her boyfriend added three or four. Bought.
“I can see how those parties could certainly lead someone to convert quickly.”
First-time customer Julian Andrew, 33, who bought five pairs at the last ALPHX party in September, told The Post he was attracted to “the idea of a Tupperware party.”
They appreciated the opportunity to see and feel the product before purchasing, something that has been lost in the age of online shopping, where returns, especially for underwear, are a nuisance and customers tend to default to older brands. Inspires to.
Andrew, the owner of a talent management company, said, “I don’t think people care so much about pomp and circumstance like Calvin Klein, because they have a really nice pair of underwear that fits perfectly.”
“I don’t need Justin Bieber on a billboard selling underwear. I need to know that these will fit my thighs.
Shopping for and talking about underwear shouldn’t be so “taboo,” she said.
“I think a big part of it is the community aspect of it,” he added. “My friend who I haven’t seen in a long time, I got a chance to see him at an event and talk to him and I found out he also bought the same pair of underwear and talked to him about their fit.”
Francesca DeCapita, 43, whose partner of 11 years Matthew Guerrier, 34, wears ALPHX, said the event was “not sexual in any way” and compared it to a “networking event”.
While Hapanowicz said she is still friends with some of the people she met at the first party she threw years ago, she also added that “living room parties are more like shopping for underwear at the store.” are “exciting”.
“All they need is a charcuterie board, a few bottles of rosé and some underwear and they’re good to go,” Swann said.
