Enterprising Longhorns See Big Business in Little Hands

School spirit inspired Alex Bourdeau, BBA ’09, and Woody Apfel, BBA ’11, to launch line of college-themed baby apparel

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Samantha Bourdeau, daughter of Alex Bourdeau, models the Longhorn mittens. Since founding their company, Bourdeau and Woody Apfel have fulfilled thousands of orders of FanMitts.

After their first children were born, Alex Bourdeau, BBA ’09, and Woody Apfel, BBA ’11, saw a business opportunity to spread a little Longhorn love. Bourdeau and Apfel, who met as McCombs students, discovered each had amassed a collection of baby mittens used to prevent newborns from scratching their faces. But no one was selling what they really wanted: UT Austin-themed mittens featuring the Hook ’em Horns sign.

Fast-forward two years and the company, Day1Fans, has fulfilled nearly 3,000 orders of officially licensed FanMitts, which often include multiple pairs of mittens per order. In addition to the Longhorns, they sell baby mittens for 19 other college sports teams, including the Texas A&M University Aggies, the University of Oklahoma Sooners, the University of Houston Cougars, and the Baylor University Bears.

“Those numbers continue to trend up pretty aggressively,” Apfel says. “Our month-over-month growth has continued to increase, both due to the addition of new schools and to improvements in our marketing and our targeting.”

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Alex Bourdeau and Woody Apfel saw an opportunity to sell college-sports-themed baby apparel. “It took us about a year, maybe more, to bring the idea to a mitten that we were ready to sell, that met all of the quality levels that we had in mind,” Bourdeau says. Understanding the collegiate licensing process was one of the most challenging aspects of the business, Apfel says. Now, he and Bourdeau say they want to be a resource for other McCombs alumni who aspire to start businesses.

Bourdeau and Apfel, Dallas-Fort Worth-area residents who work full time in the technology industry, sell the mittens exclusively through their website, day1fans.com, generating customers mainly through social media marketing. Bourdeau’s daughters, Samantha and Alison, and Apfel’s daughters, Penny and Marty, have all modeled the mittens on the site and on Instagram.

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Marty Apfel, daughter of Woody Apfel, is ready for game day. In addition to the Longhorns, FanMitts sell baby mittens for the Texas A&M Aggies, the University of Oklahoma Sooners, and many others.

Apfel says understanding the collegiate licensing process was one of the most challenging aspects of the business — from reaching out to the schools to dealing with different stakeholders, to navigating protocols. Now that they have mastered the process, they want to be a resource for McCombs alumni who aspire to start a business.

“If we can inspire one person who is thinking about it,” Bourdeau says, “we would consider that a success.”
— Alice Popovici

This story appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of McCombs magazine.

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