Lee Moffie realized pretty early that although he was a good hockey player — good enough to be team captain on the University of Michigan men’s varsity team and play two years in the minor leagues of the NHL — he wasn’t quite good enough.
So he hung up his skates and embarked on another journey, one that led him to create State & Liberty, an athletically skewed menswear chain that now operates 41 stores and has sales in excess of $100 million.
“I wasn’t a good enough hockey player to make a long-term living that way,” said Moffie, now 35. “But I was always into clothes. Growing up my fashion claim to fame was that I was the first guy wearing Lululemon back in college.” Although he took a lot of ribbing from the other players on his team for wearing what was known as a women’s brand, “I was really blown away with the fabrics and the fit and how everything looked. That was kind of the spark.”
Lee Moffie
Carl Faraon
But the true catalyst came when he had an internship at an office in between his first and second years playing hockey professionally. “I absolutely hated it,” he recalled. “I was in an office with no windows, and I was wearing one of those performance shirts and there was a client coming into town. We were grabbing dinner, and my boss at the time asked me to not wear that dress shirt because he thought it looked like [so bad].”
That was the a-ha moment for him. “Why can’t someone pull this all together with the fabrics, the fit and a nice professional look?” he asked himself.
With not a shred of fashion background, Moffie set out to solve that problem. “There were a couple companies at the time that were starting to make dress shirts out of this performance fabric, which was stretchy and moisture wicking and lightweight and wrinkle-free — all those great properties,” he said. But none of them fit his athletic build, which was broader in the shoulders and narrow at the waist. “I didn’t want a lot of excess fabric hanging off the body. I wanted a nice, tapered look,” he said.
Together with one of his college buddies, they scraped together $7,000 and created State & Liberty, named after two of the streets on the University of Michigan campus. That was in 2015. The company started with just a few styles of dress shirts designed for guys searching for a more-athletic fit.
Dress shirts remain one of the hallmarks of the State & Liberty business.
Carl Faraon
“I had zero experience in fashion, none whatsoever,” he said. “I don’t even know how we got product in the first five years, because I feel like I’m just now getting good at it. It’s all been trial by fire and learning on the fly.”
While dress shirts remain the core product for State & Liberty, over the years it has expanded into a variety of products ranging from suits and dress pants to chinos, jeans, casual shirts, sweaters, outerwear and accessories — all centered around an athletic fit.
“Our business is fueled by dress shirts and suits — we can have a big and great business just with those two product categories,” he said. “They make up the bulk of our business. But then other products like the tech chinos and the polos, our overcoats and outerwear are becoming great categories for us.”
State & Liberty has expanded into a variety of menswear categories over the past decade.
Carl Faraon
Although marketed to an “affluent young professional,” Moffie said over the last decade he has seen that State & Liberty attracts men from 12 to 80 years old. While the athletic fit continues to represent the bulk of the business, the line offers a range of fit options. It also offers made-to-measure suits and shirts to ensure it can service a wide range of men.
“What’s been great about having our brick-and-mortar locations is we capture a much wider range of customers,” he said. “I’m shocked at the amount of prom business that we do. I certainly wasn’t buying a $600 suit for my prom or my homecoming back in high school. But we really cover a wide range of age demographics, and we have customers that primarily were only buying dress shirts from Burberry that can come down to our price, and it’s a very similar quality. Or a younger professional that maybe starts with a Brooks Brothers or Charles Tyrwhitt, and then graduates on to us. We’ve really found that the stores specifically have widened our age group as far as who we can fit.”
Dress shirts retail for around $105, suits run from $595 to $795 on average, chinos are $125 and a double-breasted knit overcoat is $525.
Initially available online, the brand opened its first physical store in 2017 and now operates units across the U.S. in cities ranging from its hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich., to Boston; New York; Houston; Greenwich, Conn.; Fort Lauderdale, and many others.
Moffie said State & Liberty has opened 10 stores in the last eight months, which he characterized as “a good pace for us. I don’t think we need to go too much more aggressive than that.”
Inside State & Liberty’s store in Bellevue, Wash.
Courtesy of State & Liberty
Looking ahead to 2026, he said the company will remain “opportunistic. We don’t have a board of directors or investors that are calling on us to hit a quota on store openings. Our growth is very organic, so if the opportunities are there, and we have the right internal leadership to take on these new businesses, we’ll do it. If that ends up being six next year or 12, we’ll be happy.”
The company prefers to open its stores on high-traffic streets or outdoor lifestyle centers.
He said State & Liberty has a “very tiny wholesale business,” and is not looking to grow that channel. “One of the best parts about our business is the experience that you get in our stores, and we love controlling it from start to finish,” he said. “If someone has an issue with our product, they don’t need to call the wholesaler. They call us, we can take care of it. And as far as introducing customers to our product and brand, we’re the ones that do it. So we’ve loved the direct consumer model.”
State & Liberty prides itself on providing superior customer service in its stores, he said. “I think on our worst days, we’re providing a better in-store experience than anybody out there,” he said. “The way we look at it, if you’re coming into one of our businesses, you’re coming into our home. We’re going to greet you, we’re going to tell you what we do, we’re going to show you around the store. We’re going to offer you a drink. There’s going to be sports on the TV. You’re really going to have that old school experience that we believe has long been forgotten in retail, and it really is our mission to bring that back.”
State & Liberty opts for street locations whenever possible.
Courtesy of State & Liberty
State & Liberty’s success can also be attributed in part to the athletes who have embraced the brand. The company counts more than 500 NHL, 350 NFL and more than 1,000 collegiate athletes as customers. They include George Springer of the Toronto Blue Jays, Christian McCaffery of the San Francisco 49ers, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, golfer Wyndham Clark and a slew of others.
“We’re very lucky that we don’t spend any money on these athlete endorsements,” Moffie said. “These guys love our products, our brand. They appreciate what we do. We’ve built great relationships with them. We just send them products and they’re happy to post.”
Looking ahead to the next 10 years, Moffie said State & Liberty plans to keep executing on its game plan, which has proven successful so far. And while expanding to 140 stores might be a bit aggressive, “we have a really good playbook and I feel like we’re just getting good at making product so we can continue to get better.”
There are a couple of categories he hopes to expand into going forward including shoes, swim shorts and sunglasses. “We’re going to test the waters with everything and see if something sticks,” he said. “But we want to be careful to not lose our focus as a suiting, dress shirt and tailored clothing company.”
