For a young Jamaican couple, what started out as a means of earning extra money to help them through university – selling jeans to students – has become a hard habit to break, selling clothes, that is.

Eleven years, marriage, children and two branches of the Male Ego stores later, Michele and Donovan McCarty are trying to come to grips with their meteoric rise.

Today, Michele McCarty is the pretty female face of the controversially named Male Ego stores, which exist to clothe men.

Michele was in her second year as an economics and accounting management student at the University of the West Indies, Mona and Donovan McCarty was in his third year of management studies when they met.

The two became good friends, though romance was far from their minds, Michele admits. Donovan had always had an eye for fashion, while Michele likes to sell things.

Neither can say how it happened, but they were both seized with the idea that they could make some money by selling jeans to students on campus.

“We noticed that university students wore jeans all the time, but there was a shortage of good quality jeans,” relates Michele. “We asked ourselves why don’t we source good quality jeans for them and sell it at good price?”

The stores were selling the same jeans at one-and-a-half times what the couple was asking and the students did not hesitate to grab their jeans, mostly Levis, which were popular at the time.

Michele had a daughter from a previous marriage and had to juggle family life, study and earning. But the experience would prove beneficial. “In any event, I was used to helping to earn for my family from I was 13 years old,” she discloses.

When she became separated from her husband, she threw herself into selling the jeans, which Donovan would source from his trips to New York or Florida. They added neckties, selling them to the men working at the National Commercial Bank branch on the university campus.

“We became intrigued with the idea of dressing men. We had been aware for some time that men didn’t dress well. I started to read up magazines like G-Q and to learn from it,” says Michele.

“At the same time, we also noticed that there were lots of stores catering to women, but only a handful to men, and this was right across the island. The women were way ahead of the men in that department. The stores were not taking care of the men.”

After graduation from UWI, they continued to buy and sell jeans to students, having developed a loyal customer base there.

By now, Cupid had shot his arrow straight to Donovan’s and Michele’s hearts and they tied the knot on May 1, 2003. Their son, Xavier, came in short order and that forced Michele to be home for a while.

In bed one night, they were discussing the business of selling when the idea of opening a store hit. Neither would say who said it first. And, to no one’s surprise, it would be a store for men.

“We decided we would go all out to dress the man,” says Michele. “Men were still not putting themselves together and you could still count on one hand, the number of stores catering to men. Our core concept was that if we do it at a good price, we would have a good customer base.”

The plan was to use the store to advise men how to dress for different occasions. “We wouldn’t do the normal, we would go the extra mile to finish the man,” she says. “When we are through dressing our men, people would look at them twice. They should turn heads and be complimented.”

Finding a suitable location for the store was no easy task, but finally they got a store in the Portmore Pines Plaza and made a downpayment.

In the month of their third anniversary – May 2006 – the couple opened their first store.

But as fate would have it, no sooner had they signed the lease than they heard of a store that was available in the Southdale Plaza in Kingston. Michele and Donovan thought hard about it and decided they could not let the opportunity pass. Now they had two stores.

“It was hard trying to get two stores up at once, but we did it,” Michele says. “It involved a lot of stress.”

The couple toyed with many names before coming up with Male Ego, Donovan discloses. “We wanted something that would make a man feel good about himself. Several of our female friends thought it was too chauvinistic and didn’t like it. But we thought ego was something big for men and they would like it.”

Donovan recalls with amusement how some people thought the name had something to do with sex shops. Others enquired if they were selling vitamins.

“But many people liked the name and found our banner intriguing. Ian Boyne, the veteran journalist, stopped by to see what the store was about,” notes Donovan, who is a licensed small aircraft pilot awaiting a job.

Michele runs the stores and Donovan continues to do the buying in New Jersey and Florida. “She is the bright one,” he concedes playfully. He helps out at the store when a staff member is off.

“Our customers like to be ahead of the crowd. So we don’t do bulk buying,” Donovan explains. “We don’t want our customers to find themselves out at a function with many people in the same shirt. They have to be a cut above the rest.”

Adds Michele: “Ours is a personalised dressing service. We delight in dressing all men, and especially the big men who might have difficulty putting themselves together.”

It’s early days yet, but the men are coming, says Michele. And they love the stuff. Male Ego specialises in the popular brand names for men.

Levis are still among them but the long list now includes Calvin Klein; Givenchy; Old Navy; Nautica; Perry Ellis; Ralph Lauren; Yves Saint Laurent; Liz Claiborne; Giorgio Armani; Hugo Boss; PCUK; Gap; and Banana Republic.

Who says university doesn’t prepare one for the real world?