June 12, 2025

When life gives you older-than-average fatherhood, you get used to people assuming you’re Grandpa, not Daddy.

You can let the misunderstanding make you feel old. Or, like Robb Long and Chad Vander Lugt, you can embrace it.

Proclaim it, in fact, with caps, mugs and T-shirts that proudly boast your status.

The two men have created a business that uses the two-word phrase they developed as a kind of shorthand for their adventures and experiences since children entered their lives as they neared or passed 40.

“We’re just out here old daddin’ it,” Long and Vander Lugt would assure each other as they compared stories.

Now, they — and other older fathers — can proclaim their status as fathers-not-grandfathers with Old Daddin’ merchandise. They are marketing it through a website, the Meta platforms of Facebook and Instagram and on Shopify.

“Their kids are graduating,” the website proclaims, referring to the dads who started younger. “Yours just learned to read.” Or “Old enough for back pain, young enough to chase your kids.”

Old Daddin’ officially launched in January, and the eventual plan is to make it more interactive, giving dads of a certain age the chance to form a community, Long said.

“It’s not just some clothing and accessory brand-building,” he said. “We’re going to try to build a community of older parents in general. Eventually, we want to start our own podcast, interviewing other old dads and asking why they waited. It’s going to be really fun. We’re trying to get the word out there, making men comfortable, let them know it’s OK to start a family later in life.”

Long first learned he was in a different category when he and his wife, Misten, who have been married for 10 years, first started trying to have a family. He was 39, she was 36. They turned to fertility treatments, which were successful.

At their first ultrasound appointment, they saw the phrase “geriatric pregnancy.” That phrase and “advanced maternal age” are medical terminology for a pregnant woman older than 35 who may face certain risks. If Misten was a geriatric mom, they realized, then Robb was a geriatric dad.

“We were both kind of chuckling about it,” Long said. “I had a childhood best friend, and they had gotten pregnant, too, and he said, ‘We’re a geriatric pregnancy as well.’ He mentioned to me something along the line of ‘We are going to be old dads. Think of it, a few years from now when our children are 6 and 8 years old, our high school friends who had kids at a typical age, all their kids will be heading to college.’ I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, that’s crazy. We’re going to be like Grandpa.’”

Today, Long is 47 and father to son Seanix, 8, and twin 6-year-old daughters, Flynn and Leighton.

Vander Lugt and his wife, Amanda, are the parents of Wil, 10, and Owen, 7. Now 52, Vander Lugt said he was busy chasing his career as a creative director for an ad agency when he met his future wife, eight years younger and then in graduate school pursuing a doctorate. Now the manager of marketing for a corn and soybean company, he was 42 when his first son was born, 45 for the second.

The two men didn’t realize it at the time, but they aren’t alone. According to federal statistics, the average age for first-time fathers in the United States is 30.9 years. That has increased from 27.4 years in 1972.

Several years ago, Long and Vander Lugt became acquainted, and during an early conversation, they learned that they were both older fathers. Vander Lugt noticed that Long had a reference to his status as an old dad on his license plate.

“I thought it was funny, I’m older than Robb and his kids are younger than mine,” Vander Lugt said.

Sharing the things they had learned and experienced, the sentiment “we’re just out here old daddin’” was uttered.

That stayed with Long, and less than a year ago, he decided to do something with it. Long is a commercial director and photographer in an agency that prepares TV ads for clients all over the country. July 2024 was slow, and rather than just twiddling his thumbs, he decided to start another business to keep himself busy.

Long also had become intrigued by the people he had seen on TikTok and other social media who were talking about their own brands. That’s interesting, Long told himself. He could start his own brand. He had the skills to shoot his own content and multiple friends experienced in marketing.

But what brand could define him? Long pondered that question. And as he did so, Vander Lugt sent him a text with an “oh, man, wait until you hear about this old daddin’ experience.”

Ding ding ding!

“That’s it,” Long thought to himself. “I’ll have Chad come up with a great logo that we can put on some merchandise. We’ll have a clothing and accessory brand, and we can shoot tons of content with other old dads.”

Vander Lugt of Sioux Falls serves as the creative partner in Old Daddin’ while Long handles marketing and sales from his home in Garretson. Long is the entrepreneur, Vander Lugt said, while his goal is to help his friend be successful.

“He works for himself and has more time flexibility,” Vander Lugt said. “I agreed to do some design work and the logo and help out with website designs. I’m writing phrases that will show up on T-shirts later on, like ‘Not Grandpa.’”

Vander Lugt has experienced being mistaken for a grandfather before or has received side eyes from people who just aren’t sure. As a coach for his sons, he sees many fathers half his age with one or two who are a bit older.

It took about six months to plan the launch of Old Daddin’. The company started with caps. Decisions had to be made — patches or logos in thread on the cap? — brand standards established, trademark obtained. For Long, whose career involves capturing the client’s vision, it was the chance to experience their perspective.

Friends generously donated their expertise. Long consulted with Laura Benson, who founded the Filly Flair clothing line, and she offered advice on purchasing and other areas. Benson had started the online clothing boutique in her basement in 2010, then opened a 20,000-square-foot warehouse north of Sioux Falls. In 2020, she sold a majority stake in Filly Flair to a Massachusetts-based private equity firm focused on e-commerce.

Other friends shared knowledge in the areas of marketing, graphic design, art direction and production.

When Old Daddin’ was launched in January, Long’s hopes of a dazzling debut met economic reality. Aside from sales to family and friends, it just wasn’t happening. His photo/video production company kept him busy, but he continued to create content for Old Daddin’ like mugs. T-shirts were added in a few days ago.

About two months ago, a friend who is a new mother shared a story with Long. She had given an Old Daddin’ cap to her child’s father, and he wore it one night to an Applebee’s in Minneapolis. Another friend from Sioux Falls visiting the Twin Cities happened to walk into the same restaurant and spotted the cap. He told the “old dad” that he knew the business founder and took a selfie to send to Long.

“It really made me feel good — wow, that is so amazing that someone out in this world where only five guys are wearing an Old Daddin’ hat and someone sees it,” Long said. “It gave me a lot more drive to get this out more. People are gravitating to it.”

Long conferred with Vander Lugt, and they agreed to start pushing the Old Daddin’ brand. They set up a national ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram, got on Shopify and on other social media. Things slowly started to pick up.

Over the few weeks, Long has sent out 50 hats and 20-plus mugs to customers. “They’re not our family and friends,” he marveled. He has sold five T-shirts, even though that product has not yet been launched officially. As Old Daddin’ grows, jeans, pants and flannels will be added. Eventually, there will be golf apparel, then children’s shirts and women’s clothing that salutes — or teases — the old dads in their life.

It’s not just the niche marketing that attracts Long, however, but also the chance to inform and educate people about the growing trend of “geriatric dads” and establish a community.

“I want to let them know it’s OK to start a family later in life,” Long said.

That’s important to Vander Lugt too.

“I always joke that having young boys is a young man’s game, and I’m in my 50s,” he said. “So how can you help each other to be the best dad we can be? At a certain age, you start to get set in your ways, then along comes this person, and you can’t be set in your ways anymore.”

Starting the podcast would be a way Old Daddin’ can help build a community, Vander Lugt said.

While the Longs can speak only in generalities, they say there are benefits to being older parents versus starting a family in their 20s.

“What I’ve witnessed in old dads, they’re a bit more established in their careers, they’ve learned a lot of life lessons, they understand the importance of being there, being a presence for kids,” Misten Long said. “I’m watching older dads become young again. Having younger kids, they’re almost rejuvenated by the whole process. While it can be very tiring, it’s almost a rebirth for old dads. Aged back.”

Again, broadly speaking, while younger dads may do more physical activities and have more stamina, older dads share quality time, more focused attention and tend not to sweat the small stuff, she said.

“When your kids ask you to do something, you jump right up, and you get to it,” Robb Long said.

As an older dad, Vander Lugt focuses on staying healthy and in shape so he can keep up with two endless forces of energy, as he describes his sons. He also seeks out experiences he wouldn’t have done alone, such as buying an older Jeep just because it’s fun to ride in and a boat so his sons can go tubing on a lake.

“Also, because I’m older and more established in my career, I had the means to do that,” he said. “Earlier in my career, I was on the road a lot and living in hotels. Now, it allows me to participate and be present.”

The Long children occasionally help their father prepare hats and mugs for shipping and enjoy making the trip to Ace Hardware in Brandon to start the packages on their way. Long hopes the business grows enough that he will need a warehouse for his goods.

Last week, after he sent a cap to a customer in Utah, Long stopped to think about the impact a very small business in small Garretson in relatively small South Dakota could have on others as more and more people wear his brand.

“Everything Old Daddin’ stands for is basically because of our kids,” Long said. “And all the funny things that happen. My wife actually said in a story that she wrote on LinkedIn that ‘yes, I was concerned being labeled a geriatric pregnancy, but Robb goes out, gets mistaken as our children’s grandpa and starts a brand.’”