SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. - Andre Williams is a Parkland High School graduate, class of 2010, who spent four years as a running back in the NFL.
He's played for the New York Giants, Los Angeles Chargers and Houston Roughnecks. But he also wants another part of the American dream, one that goes beyond playing professional football.
That's being an entrepreneur.
“At the time, I built a fragrance lab in my townhouse,” said Williams, of leaning into his creative side. He made perfumes, candles and soaps as a hobby when he first joined the NFL.
In 2015, Eamon Walsh, a shoemaker, asked if he’d be interested in creating a pair of shoes, when he played for the New York Giants.
Williams went through the process, but said one takeaway was that he needed a product that wasn’t just cool, but marketable as well.
“What is my problem? In terms of clothing?” he asked himself. “I can't wear jeans, because nobody is making a fit for my body type. An athletic body type.
“I kept ripping my pants,” he said. “I was just like, 'This is ridiculous.' You know, those things are discouraging."
The sneaker experience ignited his current passion — a niche denim company for athletes. Walsh said it was an area most companies were not exploring.
So he took his signing bonus from the Giants and used it to buy fabric.
“That was the first, biggest gamble that I ever took financially,” he said.
One of his clothing lines, AW Selvidge, focuses on classic jeans that can accommodate muscular body types.
The other, DKShin, has a more contemporary aesthetic, with softer fabric, moto-style stitching and black leather patches at the knee.
From football to fashion
As a running back, Williams was responsible for carrying the ball on the majority of running plays — a position that required speed, strength, power and balance to make it through opposing linemen.
"There are two types of running backs," said Williams. "I was a bruiser."
When his football career ended, he said he needed a new focus for that competitive drive.
"I had to figure out how to take that energy and redirect it into something,” he said, “that could give me the same kind of adrenaline rush as playing sports.”
Now, he’s using the skills he honed on the field to dress people. And he said making a sale gives him the feeling of a win.
“It starts to build on itself, this excitement.”
Returning home
In the summer of 2020, the pandemic brought Williams back home to Allentown. He’d been playing for the Houston Roughnecks before the season was halted by COVID-19 shutdowns.
“I was in a hotel in Houston. I'm sick with coronavirus. And so I was quarantining in this hotel,” he said. “Once it was over, I was like, alright, it's time to come home and go find some kind of family and go sit this thing out.”
He sold his home in New Jersey and moved back to the Lehigh Valley to spend time with his dad.
The following year, he decided to open a local clothing store.
“This is home base. I don't have more support anywhere else in the country besides here,” said Williams.
The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley offered him a pandemic deal on rent, and Rising Tide, a community lending fund, gave him a loan to remodel the space.
Rising Tide has made nearly $11 million in loans to 248 businesses in five counties over its 21-year history. Among the projects the fund has supported, 175 have been women-owned businesses, and 110 were minority-owned.
“This Lehigh Valley area, which is the space between Philly in New York,” Williams said, “it's stuck between two metropolises. Because there are a lot of people coming into this area, that area is growing. I thought it would be a good place to start."
Colin McEvoy, director of communications for the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, said Williams' motivation doesn't surprise him.
"The Lehigh Valley has a long history of innovation and entrepreneurship," he said, "from the Bethlehem Moravians' building the first waterworks in the American colonies to Joel Spira inventing the electronic dimmer switch."
He said the area is an excellent place for entrepreneurs and startups looking to grow and succeed, "thanks to the region's central Northeast location, world-class educational institutions, incubators and co-working spaces, and wide variety of resources and organizations supporting entrepreneurs."
For Williams, starting a business in the Lehigh Valley was personal. He said when he moved here at the age of 16, he didn’t know anyone. But the sports culture allowed him to make the area his home.
“They play some damn good sports over here,” said Williams. “That is what helped me join the family."
It’s also a place to build a legacy.
“The people that are from here, they stick around," he said.
A worldwide journey
Williams worked with a factory in China in 2016 to produce his jeans.
“China gets a bad rap,” said Williams. “But it's a very unfounded one. There's a lot of premium manufacturing going on in China.”
The fabric actually come from the Kaihara, Kuroki and Kurabo mills in Japan.
“If you want to compete with the best people out there making jeans, you got to get the best fabric,” said Williams. “You're going to Japan.”
Selvedge denim takes longer to make than regular denim because of the shuttle loom process, which only exists in Japan. But that means the fabric is also more durable.
“The fabric itself to it changes over time, it contours to your body. So it grows with you,” he said.
For his women’s line, which he started in 2022, his development team flew out to the U.K. to fit the women’s English volleyball team.
And he said also wants to create a "Made in USA" line soon.
“I also have some double black selvedge fabric,” he said. “I'm going to cut that out in L.A.”
An evolving business model
In October of this year, Williams closed his Saucon Valley storefront, which focused on men's clothing. One of the growing pains for his business, he said, was realizing that women shop a lot more than men.
"They shop for themselves, they shop for their husbands and they shop for their kids," he said. "If you don't have product to bring in ladies, you're cutting yourself off."
Currently, the jeans can be found on his website, DonandSwagger.com, where they retail from $200 to $250 dollars.
What the future holds
“When I start telling people all the things that I want to do in life,” said Williams, “they think I'm a crazy person, and maybe I am a little crazy.
“But, hey, it takes a little crazy to actually keep your head down and move forward in this environment,” he said.
Right now, Williams is a traveling salesman, and has ideas to expand his clothing line. And he said he plans to open a store at the King of Prussia Mall this spring.
“It's really just the beginning for me.”