Fashion Forward: Creating the Ideal Men's Shirt

Name: Zachary Prell
Age: 35
Title: Founder and CEO
MBA:   Columbia 2005

It might be a case study taught in B-school some day: A successful venture captalist at Polaris-Zachary Prell-leaves behind the fast-moving world of startups to launch his own business.because of a wardrobe malfunction."I'm a fairly slim guy and the shirts I wore always flared out at the sides, and didn't transition well from work to evening," says Prell, who discovered that many of his coworkers had the same sartorial gripes. His solution? Zachary Prell Inc., a company that makes high-end shirts tailor-made for athletically built urban professionals-"a greatly underserved market" in a land of overweight people.

Prell approached the simple shirt with a discriminating eye, designing a wider cuff to accommodate larger watches; a shorter tail so the shirt looks great untucked; and a spread collar that works with or without a tie. All for $165 and up. "I have a new appreciation for making a product," says Prell, who used his connections at ColumbiaBusinessSchool to fill in his  knowledge gaps. "You can't fudge it. I didn't have the skill set to start a shirt business, but I surrounded myself with the right people." And a product that fits like a dream.