Xenia Chen didn’t know she was going to be an entrepreneur. She just knew she had a problem, knew the traditional market didn’t solve her issue, and decided to solve it on her own. So she started Threads, a hosiery brand that offers up chic, warm, durable options for everyday life, through the cold Toronto winters spent hustling to work and attending fun holiday parties.
“Tights were a daily part of my work wardrobe when I was working on Bay Street, but it felt like such a pain point. I had tried so many different brands out there, but most of them were expensive, uncomfortable and just overall unimpressive,” Chen says. “This was very surprising to me given the fact that tights are such a wardrobe staple for women! When I started talking to my female coworkers, I realized they all felt the same frustration. That was the motivation for me to want to create something better: tights that lasted longer, fit better, and were priced fairly.”
Entrepreneurship was not initially on her radar but, in 2018, she took her own savings, no prior textile experience, and a firm belief in her idea, and she ran with it, and she was just 25 years old. Now, with over seven years in business under her belt, she’s really making an impact: Threads have been named the “Best Tights” by The Kit; featured on Dragons’ Den; and voted Best in Legwear by retailers every year since entering wholesale – not bad for a person who didn’t expect to be here.
“I actually never thought I’d be an entrepreneur. I studied commerce at Queen’s and started my career in finance in investment banking right out of school. But tights were part of my daily uniform, and I couldn’t shake how much I hated buying and wearing them,” she says. “At first, it was just a side project: I invested $10,000 of my own savings for the initial production run to see if people would be interested in a more modern take on tights. The data showed me there was a real opportunity, so I started building Threads in the evenings and weekends. Eventually, in 2019, I left my job in private equity to go all in on it.”
The key to Threads’ success, Chen says, is a sense of community. She asked real people – from her coworkers on Bay Street to, later, her consumers, about what they wanted from hosiery, and took that advice to heart. “Every product is designed based on the feedback and input from hundreds of real wearers. Our bestselling pair of tights, The Sheer Contour, for example, have a contoured waistband, longer leg lengths, and reinforced toes – these are all the little details that people told me they wished existed, and that actually make a big difference for the comfort of the wearer. We have people every week writing in telling us that these are the comfiest tights they’ve ever worn,” she says. “Beyond the product, inclusivity is a big part of our brand: We were the first hosiery company to market directly to men, which is a large part of our customer demographic today.”
At the end of the day, Chen feels like entrepreneurship is as its most effective when its solving a problem, and when the entrepreneur believes in the vision. “My biggest piece of advice would be to make sure you’re solving an actual problem or frustration,” Chen says. “Your idea is most likely to work as long as you are helping improve people’s lives in some way or another.”
