It’s rare for something as demanding as a business proposal between friends to make it out of the group chat. It’s even rarer to then launch that enterprise and amass $40 million in revenue in under five years. But for Bart Szaniewski, Ejay O’Donnell, and Grant Eastey, the founders of the fatherhood-focused clothing brand Dad Gang, the proof isn’t just in the numbers, but in the community they’ve built.
When I met virtually with the trio on an especially blustery September day, Eastey joined the call from his home office in the sunny San Fernando Valley, and in the other frame, Szianewski and O’Donnell sat next to one another on a sofa at their newly acquired space on Steele Street in Tacoma.
“We’ve been working from home for the last four and a half years now just building the brand,” Szianewski said. “Now we have a creative space; we’ve got an office.”
The trio, who were recently featured online with People magazine, are all Washington-raised, their roots planted in the South Sound region. O’Donnell has spent the last 39 years in Tacoma, is the founder of Tacoma Run Club, and is the original founder of @TacomaWA on Instagram (which is now run by Foster’s Creative). Szaniewski, whose father worked on local fishing vessels, spent most of his childhood in Auburn. Eastey’s family has owned and operated an auto shop on Martin Luther King Way since 1935.
Eastey and Szaniewski first met while attending Washington State University in the early aughts, but it wasn’t until 2012 that the trio was officially introduced to one another via a business deal between O’Donnell and Szaniewski.
Today, they’ve seen each other through almost every iteration of life, from fresh college grads and early career men to fathers, and, now, successful business owners.
The phrase “dad gang” traces back to a group chat where the trio occasionally leaned on one another for support during the early throes of fatherhood. When plans would understandably be derailed due to bouts of back-to-school flu or a suddenly urgent parental responsibility, someone would throw a “no worries, dad gang” into the chat. Eventually, the phrase just stuck.
“We all got to see each other change,” Szianewski said. “It’s a big part of the brand that once you become a dad, you morph into a different person. There are more responsibilities. You have a much greater purpose in life that you’re now striving for. … Through those conversations, hardships, seeking advice, and just looking for some love from your friends, I think we were able to start using the term ‘dad gang,’ and then we put it on a hat and started this journey.”
While the idea of putting the brand’s moniker on hats couldn’t be boiled down to an exact moment, the trio, who all have an interest in streetwear, decided they had made ”dad gang” enough of a running saying in their small circle that they wanted to wear it more proudly.
After trialing a few samples, each founder pitched $250 for an order of 100 hats, set up an e-commerce platform on Shopify, and launched @dadgang.co on Instagram in May 2022. At press time, the page had amassed 380,000 followers.
The brand’s early posts leaned into their personal experiences with fatherhood and strayed away from the stereotypically corny joke stuff often seen associated with dad merch (think “Grill Master” aprons or “#1 Dad” mugs).
Through word of mouth and support from friends and family, the first order of 100 hats flew off the brand’s proverbial shelves in fewer than 36 hours. They then ordered 300 hats, and those sold out in less than six days. The trio knew they had struck a chord.
Soon after, they were stocking and shipping hundreds of hats from inside their garages and living rooms — all while retaining their full-time jobs.
Between 2023 and 2026, the three left their day jobs and naturally fell into their roles. Szianewski’s previous gig was in direct-to-consumer marketing, and today he handles content and marketing for the brand. O’Donnell’s background is in design, production, and supply, which now supports his role of handling most backend system-related work. Eastey, whose career was in storytelling and acting, now runs point for the brand’s retail sales division.
When O’Donnell’s home took on the function and feel of a shipping facility over the course of Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2022, the group decided to enlist the help of a third-party logistics provider in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they still base operations today.
“It was a big step for the brand to trust somebody else to hold our inventory and ship on our behalf,” O’Donnell said. “It ultimately ended up being the best decision we made because they’ve (the 3PL) been able to grow with us as well. It’s allowed us to focus on what we’re really good at, which is designing hats, telling stories, and building the community.”
In 2023, Dad Gang began gently expanding into California boutique retail stores like PurposeBuilt and Prime Hat Store. By 2025, the brand had caught the eyes of larger retailers such as Pro Image Sports, where Dad Gang merch can now be found in about 70% of its locations across the nation, Scheels, and Lids.
The team is currently reporting a whopping $40 million in total revenue. It maintains slim margins by keeping its team to just the founders and a handful of outsourced contractors that handle customer service, public relations, and shipping. Additionally, they don’t do traditional paid advertising, relying mostly on social media and word-of-mouth to do the heavy lifting.
The growth isn’t stopping there. In the last year, Dad Gang has begun to offer tees and hoodies, too. The decision to expand their product line didn’t come easily: the co-founders knew they had to ensure it was something customers were asking for and would continue to purchase.
“We were really focused on getting the trucker hats … and people were responding really well to our one product, so we wanted to just keep embracing that and see how long and wide we could take it,” Eastey said. “We kept the SKU count (on the hats) pretty low that first year or so … Then we got enough people online within our Facebook group wanting shirts and at that point, we were like, ‘OK, these dads want it. Let’s make it happen.’ And since we all had worked in apparel at some point, we knew what we were comfortable testing.”
Customer support has inspired the expansion to go even wider: Its lineup now also includes children’s clothing, Kid Gang, and a golf line, Golfin’ Dad.
It’s safe to say that healthy online spaces for men to share their most vulnerable moments have severely lacked in recent years. Dad Gang wants to fill that void.
Through the business’s Facebook page, Dad Gang VIP, the founders welcome feedback on products, colorways, and even ideas for new products. But, more meaningfully, the online space has served as an outlet for its almost 15,000 members to share their fatherhood experiences, good and bad.
Some topics include kids hitting important milestones, fertility journeys, job promotions, layoffs, and more.
“(The Facebook group) was designed not to sell hats but to just connect and look for advice,” Szianewski said. “It turned into dads posting themselves with their kids or posting their most vulnerable moments.”
Recently, a father opened up about his sobriety journey and his personal goals for fatherhood.
“He just wanted to tell somebody. Imagine walking into a room and everyone just pats you on the back,” Szianewski continued. “His post was flooded with comments of dads supporting him, dads sharing similar struggles. That’s what really does it for us. Yes, another hat order can come in — that’s cool. But if a dad can share and say ‘I’m eight months sober and proud of it’ and another 100 dads come to support them — that’s so much more powerful than what any hat or product can do,” he continued.
The Facebook page has sparked several in-person meet-ups. Dad Gang members have met — and continue to meet — for coffee, workouts, and more.
“We won’t ever use the word community as a sales or marketing tactic; I think that happens a lot,” Szianewski said. “For us, it’s real. We believe if our community didn’t exist, neither would the brand.”