Is George Zimmer Back in Business?
George Zimmer, the colorful founder of The Men’s Wearhouse, is reportedly working on an e-commerce tuxedo rental startup. According to a report in Fortune, Zimmer has been seeking investors for Generation Tux since last summer.
In October, the San Francisco Business Times reported that Zimmer had announced his plans for a new company at Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce conference (Zimmer and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff are friends). Zimmer told the crowd he would announce the launch on Twitter soon, but no such announcement has been made so far.
Fortune says that Zimmer’s company, called zTux, Inc., has filed 13 trademarks and has a Series A fundraising goal of $22 million. Apparently Zimmer had hoped to launch last fall. Fortune pointed out that Zimmer had expressed interest in a similar startup called The Black Tux, but talks broke down when the two parties disagreed on their target markets—Zimmer was aiming at the lower end of the market and Black Tux was courting the higher end.
Zimmer stepped down as CEO of The Men’s Wearhouse in 2011 and was ousted from its board in 2013.
