The Making of FUBU — An Interview with Daymond John
For those that have just joined us this is a lifestle blog, yes we talk about relationships sex and all that goes with that but it's about lifestyle so you'll never know what you'll find. One thing I've always loved is influential people getting paper and sharing their story. Each one teach one, so if you don't know who Daymond John is he is the founder of FUBU and also can be seen on ABC's Shark Tank every friday. This interview comes from http://www.fourhourworkweek.com
The following is an interview with Daymond John, CEO of the clothing brand FUBU, whom I’ve come to know and respect. If there were one mantra I’d associate with him, it’s “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Can’t afford billboards? No problem — just pay retail store owners in key areas to let you spraypaint “FUBU” on their overnight roll-down security walls. His drive and improvisation has led him from sewing cloth in his kitchen to #15 on Details magazine’s list of “50 Most Influential Men.”
It would seem he’s just getting started, but I’ll let him tell the story…
TIM: Many entrepreneurs launch their companies in addition to working a full-time job. How did you manage your time when launching FUBU to get the company going? When did you decide to quit the day job and make this a full-time operation?In entrepreneurship, you decide to give up your day job at the point where either (A) the hobby/new business is at least making some form of ends meet, or (B) you feel that you need to dedicate yourself for a certain amount of time to it and give yourself the last hoorah.
What were your initial struggles with launching FUBU and how did you overcome them?
Like most entrepreneurs, the initial struggle was to go past the point of imagination and make it a point of conception, where I was actually putting together a product and producing it. Everyone has an idea, but it’s taking those first steps toward turning that idea into a reality that are always the toughest.
However, once you take those first steps you will be confronted with another obstacle, and I don’t think there’s just one tipping point for a company, but a string of them. For example, once I decided to put my idea on paper, I had to find a local screen printer. Then, I faced the challenge of increasing sales. Since I knew the stores wouldn’t buy it, I put my product in them on consignment. After I got to the level of making more goods on a consistent basis, I had to figure out how to create a sustainable structure for manufacturing the product, so I mortgaged my house, moved sewing machines into my home, and hired seamstresses.
It’s this string of obstacles that separate the people that truly want their company to succeed from everyone else, because so many questions hit you so fast. It’s just a matter of not letting these challenges keep you down and finding solutions no matter what. It can be overwhelming at times but just be prepared for it. The more forward-thinking you are and the better plan of attack you have to grow the company, the easier these questions will be to answer.
What were some of your first big marketing wins to promote FUBU?
The first big break was when we went down to Virginia and met up with Ralph McDaniels, who had a video show like MTV and VH1, and he fell in love with our product. At the time, Ralph was throwing a big weekend event for Teddy Riley, a producer and musician that really shaped Hip-Hop and R&B. He came back to New York and decided to put us on a local video channel for an interview about FUBU. We all knew the FUBU brand was closely associated with music, but this hit created some immediate buzz and showed us the way to market our product unlike any fashion company out there yet.
We then concentrated in getting our product into music videos. We would sit on video sets all day trying to get the artists to wear it. First it started with Brand Nubian in one of their videos, then Ol’ Dirty Bastard wore it in a Mariah Carey video, then Busta Rhymes wore it on one of his videos, and LL Cool J decided to wear FUBU on the “Hey Lover” video with Boyz II Men. Our product was front and center on the biggest and most influential personalities for our core consumers.
One of the most well-known hits we had with LL was during a Gap commercial. He was wearing a pair of Gap jeans and a Gap shirt, but he was somehow able to sport one of our hats during the commercial. Then during his thirty-second freestyle rap, he looks directly into the camera and says, “For Us, By Us, on the low.” No one at Gap nor any of their ad execs thought anything of it. It wasn’t until a month later that someone at the Gap found out, pulled the commercial, and fired a whole bunch of people after they had spent about $30 million running this campaign.
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