Women, just like men, carry a phone, wallet and keys with them everywhere, but their pockets aren't big enough to fit these essentials. A 2018 piece by The Pudding, a digital publication, found that on average, women’s jean pockets are 48 percent shorter and 6.5 percent narrower than men’s pockets. Women are disproportionately affected by the small pocket problem, but Radian Jeans are ready to heal this fashion industry pain point.
Husband and wife duo, Ahmed Malik and Wardah Inam, founded Radian Jeans in 2018. Inam has founded her own startup, Overjet. With a background in financial consulting and garment manufacturing, Malik noticed the lack of innovation inside the fashion industry and the opportunities within product refinement and marketing.
To Malik, this lack of innovation comes from the fashion industry’s reliance on “fast fashion.” The term fast fashion comes from big brands churning out cheap products quickly from catwalk to store front in order to stay on top of the latest trends. One problem with fast fashion is that “it wasn’t listening to what customers are saying and what they want” says Malik. The impact of fast fashion on the world,however, from the environment to human rights, is exceptionally negative.
Rubicon reported in 2018 that 11 million tons of clothing, full of harmful chemicals and dyes, make their way to landfills every year. Garment workers who make these items are underpaid and forced to work with these harmful substances such as lead.
“We believe in well-made products that will last longer to minimize impact on the environment,” says Malik “we actively resist fast fashion, which creates inexpensive and low quality clothing that causes social and environmental damage.” Fast fashion is harmful to the environment, humans, and the industry itself as it remains stagnant in its innovation.
At first, it doesn’t seem like a pair of jeans can revolutionize the fashion industry, but Radian Jeans claims to be different. Their pants target a huge pain point; small pockets in women’s jeans. Every pair of Radian jeans has two large front pockets, big enough to fit an IPhone six, which means the pockets are at least six inches long.
So they added two deep front pockets, is that really innovative? Well, their jeans actually have pockets inside of pockets. There is a dedicated phone pocket behind the front pocket, that can fit a full size smart phone with a case. On the left side, is a smaller four inch pocket where you can store a credit card or smart wallet. Then there are the back pockets, which contain a flap made out of stretchy fabric that you can tuck your phone in to and it won’t fall out. “You can do cartwheels, and it won’t fall out,” Malik says.
Along with rethinking the pockets on women’s pants, Radian uses high tech fabric to add features to the jeans such as temperature regulation, four way stretch, and stain repellant. Their Indigo and Light Blue jeans, for example, are made out of CoolMax AllSeason Technology which gives the jeans the ability to wick moisture and temperature regulation, “so it not only helps you cool down when you get hot, but also blocks heat,” says Malik. Every pair of jeans comes with deep pockets and 4-way stretch. Their white jeans, created with nanotechnology-based fabric treatment, cause the pants to be stain repellent.
Radian Jeans stands out for two reasons: design and focus on quality checks. “We’re running smaller batches, which means there’s extra attention on the quality checking,” Malik says. “We're doing 100% quality checks, which is not the industry standard. Usually you have a certain percentage that's checked, maybe 10 to 20%, depending on the standards you’re following and they're based on random inspection. For us, it's 100% inspection at various stages of production, which really helps us nail the quality.”
The price of women's jeans in the U.S. range from $9.99 at H&M to $5,500 at Gucci. Radian Jeans are currently available for preorder for $69 dollars. According to an article by Time Magazine, jeans cost $34 dollars per pair on average, and only 10 percent of women spend over $100 dollars.
On December 28th, 2018, Radian Jeans started a 60 day Kickstarter campaign that raised $245,677 dollars of their $15,000 dollar goal.
Radian Jeans was accepted into the 2019 MassChallenge Accelerator Program. After the program, Radian Jeans is “hoping to be in a position to go beyond presale,” Malik says.
