Business opportunities can arise from the most unexpected places, or they can happen simply from wanting to put a new twist on an old idea.

When Kirsten Wardman and her husband Jordy couldn't find Bermuda shorts that were both comfortable and compatible with their active lifestyle, they began a search for an alternative that would eventually lead to them launching their own clothing company, Bermuda Styles.

"It all happened because we always had trouble finding shorts we liked," says Mrs. Wardman, managing director of the company. "What he needed was a durable short that he could be active in all day, and that would also be elegant enough to wear to dinner in a restaurant."

"I had always worn Bermuda shorts when I lived in the States," Mr. Wardman adds, referring to the years he spent working in Montana after attending high school and university in Maine. The couple have an interesting background that contrasts sharply with their new entrepreneurial endeavour, both being former Forestry students who decided to become 'smokejumpers', that is, firefighters who are airlifted and literally dropped into areas inaccessible to fire trucks to tackle forest fires.

"We were smokejumpers for about ten years with the US Forest Service and were parachuted into woods in the back country of Montana responding to fires," says Mrs. Wardman, who estimates that there are only around 300 smokejumpers in the entire United States. "We'd be dropped in with about 130 pounds of gear, deal with the fires and then hike out of the area when we were done. We worked hard all through the summer, but had the winters off."

"We used to travel in the winters and that's when the idea for our shorts first came about," says Mr. Wardman. "I wanted shorts in a fabric that you could wear for anything, to be able to swim in them, walk out of the woods after a hike, take off my backpack and go straight into town and still look decent."

After returning to Bermuda two years ago for the birth of their oldest son Finn, Mrs. Wardman decided to take that idea further, opting to balance her new role as a stay-at-home mom (now with three-month-old Somers, as well as his older brother) with starting a home-based business.

"We actually spent those two years researching and testing fabrics for the shorts before we found what was going to work," she says. "What we're offering now is Bermuda shorts with a difference - they're made from a softsuede microfibre which is fast-drying and wrinkle-free. And they're very elegant looking, so you can wear them to work and out socially, as well as for active play, such as golfing or even swimming, during the day. If you get caught in the rain on your bike coming into work it's OK because the fabric is so quick-drying and still looks great."

Mrs. Wardman is responsible for the day-to-day management of the fledging business, while her husband and business partner, who works full-time as a systems engineer at local technology company Logic Communications, provides support in a variety of ways.

"I've been tester, website developer, model, negotiator, whatever was needed to get to this point really!" he says.

Bermuda Styles only started receiving inventory two months ago but Mrs. Wardman says sales both here and in the US, through the company's website and via word of mouth, have already been very encouraging.

"In fact our sales reps in the US are selling like crazy right now, particularly in Florida," she says.

As they developed the concept for the company, Mr. Wardman says it was important that the end product was not only practical, but also a vehicle for promoting Bermuda and its unique character to customers overseas. With that in mind, the shorts are produced in a series of bold prints with a distinctive Bermudian motif, with different versions depicting blue marlins, cocktail glasses and even spiny lobsters.

"They're fun and colourful but still really good-looking," says Mrs. Wardman. "We've found that a lot of women have been buying the print versions for their husbands or boyfriends - just in time for Christmas - and younger people are buying the really outrageous prints. But we do have the shorts in solid colours for the more conservative shoppers as well."

"We always planned to sell the shorts here, but we also wanted to leverage our contacts and awareness of Bermuda on the US East Coast," Mr. Wardman adds. "Our main market will be the US, and this winter the company will be represented at trade shows in New York and Orlando. We've already partnered with a US distributor based in Maine and have sales reps there and in New York to get the product out there, in fact we're looking for more sales reps already.

"And my dream was to really put Bermuda back on the map for our shorts," he says. "People overseas use the term 'Bermuda shorts' in a generic way but don't really make the link back to Bermuda. We want our shorts to make the link and make people think of Bermuda as a fun, playful colourful place. No-one was leveraging Bermuda shorts out there from here in that way."

To support this goal each pair of shorts carries a tag giving a brief history of Bermuda shorts to promote the Island.

The shorts are manufactured in Asia "because it just wasn't feasible to make them here and be competitive in the US market", says Mr. Wardman. However, there are plans to have a warehouse facility here as the product line expands in the future.

"We plan to introduce women's beach skirts and sailing shorts in the same fabric, in addition to the Bermuda shorts," says Mrs. Wardman. "We'll also be adding a line of children's shorts.

"It's exciting and we're really encouraged by how well the men's shorts have been received; they work because they're comfortable, which is not always the case with standard Bermuda shorts, and at the same time whoever is wearing them just looks sharp."