Why short-shorts brand Chubbies just launched a resale site

Chubbies, the brand whose flagship product is shorts with a mere 5.5-inch inseam, has never taken itself too seriously. In 2012, just a year after the brand launched, it published an online open letter to Michael Jeffries, the then-CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch (and now accused sex trafficker).

The letter urged the retailer, which helped popularize cargo shorts with a roughly foot-long inseam, to stop selling them “cold turkey.” It stated that “the pockets in cargo shorts were only meant to hold a man’s shame,” and “cargo shorts are the only form of contraception that is 100% effective.”

Chubbies, which was acquired by Solo Brands in 2021 for an estimated $130 million, is even whimsical with its return policy, printing this message on the stitched cardboard hang tag of its lined swim trunks: “If this tag is removed, we assume you wore these shorts and therefore, they’re no longer returnable cuz that’s just nasty.”

Not returnable, it turns out, but resellable.

With the resale-as-a-service company Treet, Chubbies recently launched a resale website, Afterparty. Its landing page, which as this was published featured images primarily of men sporting trunks poolside and at the beach, includes used bathing suits for sale.

So what—besides Chubbies’ much-promoted elastic waistbands and stretch fabrics—gives?

Inseams like old times: Rainer Castillo, Chubbies’s president and co-founder, told Retail Brew that while he didn’t personally “feel comfortable” selling “something that has been against the naked body in that capacity” as new, used Chubbies swim trunks have done a brisk business on resale marketplaces including eBay.

“The first-sale integrity of cleanliness that I expect out of our goods is not something that I feel an obligation to maintain when it is secondhand. You know what you’re getting,” Castillo said. “If you are comfortable with a deep wash and wearing something when it costs $18, I’m okay with that being part of the offer.”

As with used swimwear, Castillo said his attitude about resale has evolved. The brand began discussions with Treet a few years ago, as part of a “consumer-facing sustainability message,” Castillo said, alluding to the popular argument for resale that it helps keep unwanted clothing out of landfills.

But when it came to launching a resale marketplace, the environmental benefit “wasn’t what got me over the edge,” Castillo said.

One thing that did get the brand over the edge was something decidedly more counterintuitive: the relationship Chubbies, which started as a DTC brand, has with retailers that sell its new products.

“As we’ve expanded as a brand and we’ve gone more widely into retail, one of the things we’ve been doing is weaning ourselves off of major promotionality,” Castillo said. While deep discounting on a brand’s e-commerce site is a tried-and-true way to acquire new customers, that risks making stores appear to be overcharging, so Chubbies stopped doing that to “be good partners with our retailers,” he said.

Branded resale programs can have the same customer-acquisition juice as deep discounts by giving shoppers an “opportunity for accessibility to a different price point,” Castillo said.

A 2025 report by McKinsey in partnership with Business of Fashion found that 84% of US resale shoppers do so to discover new brands. And once they purchased a brand’s products secondhand, 58% subsequently purchased new items from those same brands.

Earth mover: Jake Disraeli, co-founder and CEO of Treet, told Retail Brew he’s always been driven by the sustainability of secondhand goods, namely ensuring “every item created lives its longest life possible.”

And while circularity still warms the cockles of his heart, Disraeli now foregrounds other benefits when he’s pitching resale programs.

“Sustainability-focused programs that don’t earn revenue or can’t attach themselves to other strategic goals for the business, they do not get prioritized,” he said. “And if they do, they’re the first to go when the going gets tough, and the going always gets tough with apparel.”

So if you’re a brand meeting with Disraeli, don’t expect him to arrive in a Sierra Club T-shirt with leaves in his beard.

“We changed how we talk about Treet and how we show up in the marketplace to be about driving retention, loyalty and [customer lifetime value],” Disraeli said.

As is standard for peer-to-peer branded resale programs, Chubbies offers more store credit than cash to sellers. Specifically, if you sell an item for $100, you can either get $110 store credit or $80 in cash, with that $20 fee going to Treet, the brand explains in its FAQ section.

Rather than losing resale shoppers to places like eBay or Poshmark, Chubbies is “retaining these customers” and, with the store-credit-over-cash incentive, bringing “them back to shop new,” Disraeli said.

“It’s really a community loyalty play for Chubbies.”