Men’s Girdles, ShapeWear and SupportWear – A Message from the folks at Manshape

I recently received this email from the folks at Manshape, a company offering a men’s slimming tank and support briefs for the last 25 years, and I thought I’d share it with you because it contains some pretty interesting information. Also, they’ll be sending me one of their Supportanks to review in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for an undershirt review on another men’s slimming tank top!

Hi Tug – I came across your website this evening.   I’ve been in the business of manufacturing men’s shapewear for 25 years.   I started my business in 1984 when my uncle could no longer find his favorite support underpants made any longer.   My background is skiwear so I’ve worked with stretch fabrics since the early 1970′s.    My website is www.manshape.com

I began marketing my garments at men’s trade shows in New York in 1985.   Everyone laughed at them thinking men’s girdles were silly.   But I landed Norm Thompson catalog as an account and they ran ads in Skymall and we sold alot of underwear.   Then some bozo at Skymall thought it was “indecent” to market any underwear in their catalog & refused to let us advertise in there.   Seemed like men squished into those airline seats were very open to the idea of compression underwear.

Since it’s up until now been such a specialty item, it’s not been lucrative to spend alot of dollars on advertising in national publications.   Few men had strong enough egos & identities to be willing to wear a “girdle”.  So we could advertise to 1 million but it wasn’t a popular enough category to sell enough to pay for the ads.   But it seems like the tide is changing now and I’m seeing some new kids on the block claiming to have come up with a new idea.    Garments like Equmen cost more than twice what ours does and are imports.   Ours are made in the U.S.A. so buying them not only supports the wearers abs & back, it also supports the U.S. economy & keeps our workers employed.    Our garments are unique since they use a proprietary woven stretch fabric with 35% Lycra (more than double anyone else) + 24% nylon at the core & the yarn is wrapped in pure cotton so the wearer feels as though he’s got a cotton t shirt on.   Being a woven fabric means the garment never stretches out like a knit which loses elasticity over time.    Some wearers get nearly a decade of use out of our garments.   We don’t build in “obsolescence” which works against us since they don’t have to replace them as often.   But we’re all for quality and good value.  Our garments also sell for 25-50% less than the newer garments I’m seeing out there.

And some garments are claiming to be wicking garments which is great for active sports when you’re wearing a fleece shirt on top.  But it’s no good when you’re wearing a cotton dress or regular shirt.   Cotton is hydrophilic which means it soaks up water.   Wicking fabrics are hydrophobic meaning “hates water”.   So if you put a cotton dress shirt over a wicking undershirt, your dress shirt is going to soak up the water from the wicking shirt since the wicking fiber is looking to transfer the moisture somewhere.

We have horses & use anti sweat sheets on them in the winter.   After 30 minutes, the outer surface of the anti sweats are covered with beads of water.   Were we to put a cotton sheet on top of the anti sweat, it would be full of moisture.   That is exactly what will happen with a cotton shirt over a wicking underlayer.

We’ve had many happy wearers for more than 2 decades.   Please contact me freely about more information about our garments.
This has been my life since 1984 and I don’t want to be under the radar while newer corporate types take the credit for what I’ve been paying dues on for 25 years.

Best Regards,
Duffy

Tags: compression undershirt, manshape, Mens Shapewear, mens slimming tank top, mens slimming undershirt, Shapewear, support underwear

Category: Undershirt News