Too Strong is a throwback.
The two-man Tucson-based garment and bag manufacturer harks back to a different time, when clothing was made — and meant — to last. Fast-fashion didn’t exist.
For the past 2½ years, friends Rob Easter and Smith Darby have collaborated on ruggedly handsome bags and aprons made of denim and leather while doing research for their own line of durable, ethically made jeans.
Too Strong’s first batch of 101 slim-cut pairs arrived in January and has nearly sold out.
When Easter first proposed the idea of crafting men’s jeans to Darby, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“I called him up and said, ‘This is going to be really hard and I don’t know if we can make a living off it, but it’ll be fun,’” Easter, 27, recalled in a phone interview from the San Francisco area that serves as home base, though he regularly comes back to Tucson.
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The gamble seems to be paying off.
Production is already underway for a second batch of men’s jeans, and the duo are planning a lighter-weight straight-leg version as well as a women’s cut, a truly daunting task.
“There’s a billion different shapes of women, about six shapes of dude,” said Easter, whose primary day job is crafting organic whiskeys and bitters under his label, Workhorse Rye.
Easter — who attended Pusch Ridge Christian Academy and wore suits as a joke because of the school dress code — didn’t intend to get into the clothing industry when he relocated to San Francisco four years ago. But, as he looked around and started seeing well-made clothes, he began reading about mills and tailoring and became obsessed with the idea of jeans made of exceptional-quality denim and by workers who are treated and paid fairly.
The denim for the Beastsmith jean comes from Cone Denim Mills in North Carolina, the original supplier for Levi’s. It’s heavyweight selvage, which means the denim has its own self-bound edges and won’t fray. Tough stuff.
“It’s sort of work for the first week,” Darby, 32, says about breaking in the Beastsmith. “They’re not the most comfortable thing to wear.”
The payoff is a long-lasting piece of clothing that can be worn everywhere to everything, said Smith, whose own pair is paint-splattered. “I’ve painted a house in these, crashed a motorcycle multiple times in these. ... Your life starts to appear in the fabric — where your wallet is, where your smokes go, where your phone is.”
Quality and workmanship come at a price, though — $250 to be exact, which doesn’t sit well with some.
“People look at the jeans and say $250?” Easter said. “(But) these are not Walmart jeans with a big toss up margin. These are not designer jeans, these are not fancy. These are what people wore 50 to 100 years ago. It’s considered an investment you make to a lifestyle. Yeah, I want my things to not break. That is appealing to a certain demographic that is a lot of Tucson. … It’s all about people voting with their dollar.”
Too Strong sells its jeans online, but they’re only available in brick-and-mortar stores in three cities, including Tucson. Customers can buy a pair at Fed by Threads or by appointment at Too Strong’s downtown studio-home-storefront, where Darby mans six industrial sewing machines under the watchful brown eyes of his 3-year-old mixed-breed dog, Huxley.
For now, Too Strong is too small to manufacture jeans here. Instead, they’re constructed by a three-man tailor shop in Los Angeles. Darby sews everything else, from custom orders to the $160 denim aprons — employees at Time Market and Goodness wear them — that are the company’s bread and butter.
Easter says they have patterns for “smaller, more accessible” clothing like button-down shirts and T-shirts that they’ll make one of these days. He and Darby have long-term plans to manufacture everything in Arizona using cotton, leather and copper from right here in our state.
But that’s down the line. Maybe way down the line. First, Too Strong has to grow slowly and carefully.
“We know we’re not as special as we think we are,” Easter said with a laugh. “We have to be careful and not expand too fast. … We’re learning a lot. We’re not going to dive in too soon. We’ve come this far on our own. It’s been really hard. We’re not going to give up. It’s been too long.”
