TALKING TO: OPPOSUITS
STRONG SUIT
Since 2012, Opposuits has been adding a certain something to the party industry with its awesome and crazy suits. A decade later and the supplier is going from strength to strength and expanding its offering to become a lifestyle brand. Progressive Party caught up with cofounder and director Jelle van der Zwet as the company celebrates its tenth anniversary.
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n 2010, while backpacking in Vietnam, Jelle van der Zwet decided he wanted an orange suit for the upcoming World Cup. Being in a mecca of tailoring, Jelle and his two friends, Jasper Castelein and Guus Bakker, ended up with three crazy suits, which garnered the attention of tourists around the town. The suits were the beginnings of the three friends setting up Opposuits. Jelle explains: “That’s how it started basically. Right away I had those thoughts of ‘wow’ – I think everyone knew that you could get a crazy suit made in Asia, but nobody had turned that into a business model, where you made those suits with standard sizes, etc.” Two years later, as Jelle was finishing
his Master’s degree and in the process of becoming a chartered surveyor, the trio decided to get 2,000 orange suits made in China for the European Championships. Jelle continues: “We sold those suits in two to three weeks and it went viral in Holland. We got in all the newspapers and TV shows and before the tournament started, we had sold all 2,000.” By the next year, Jelle had quit his job and started to work on Opposuits fulltime and the others followed soon after. What followed was several key
Above: Guus, Jelle and Jasper attribute their success to just being ‘three normal guys’.
milestones, which saw the business partners learning along the way and the company growing both in Europe and the US. Jelle begins: “We then went to Spring Fair in early 2013 and that’s when we had a great response from all kinds of party retailers. We didn’t even have packaging at this point. One of my business partners on the creative side designed a box package in a pizza place after the show. So it shows we weren’t really prepared, we didn’t know how it all worked, but you just learn as you go.” Learning and gaining experience along the way is one of the keys to the success of the business. Jelle tells us: “None of us had worked in fashion or fancy dress, but I think that gave us an advantage. We were approaching things in a totally different way to what the market, or the industry was doing. We looked at it from a completely different angle. “We had this one idea and we were selling directly to the public, doing our own fulfilment, getting help from our
CELEBRATING A DECADE Opposuits celebrated its tenth anniversary with a party for friends and family, which began at 2pm and didn’t finish until 3.30 the following morning. Jelle says: “The three of us come from this small town and small community and everyone has helped us a lot. When we went viral with those 2,000 orange suits, we had 30 friends that went to all of the Holland friendly games. They went to the stadium and outside we got snapped by the photographers. So there were a lot of people who were involved in the launch ten years ago and they were all invited.” Right: The founders’ friends and family were key to their successful launch. 30 of them toured the pre-European Championship in the orange suits to promote the new business.
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