Well let’s get started then hey…
To put it simply it was a bit of a blur looking back now, I do remember thinking at the time that I knew exactly what I was doing and that I had it all mapped out. I look back now and realise there was lots that I could’ve been doing differently.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though like people always say it’s about learning in this time and that’s completely true. For example, during this period we did a lot of collection-based drops where we would buy x amount of stock and try and sell it all before moving onto the next collection. All small batch production from global wholesalers.
This was great for the brand, here’s why. The global wholesalers we were working with at the time were some of the biggest factories in Europe and USA who offered wholesale blanks. Basically, a catalogue of products which you could purchase at wholesale rates. Once the stock arrives to us in Perth, we would work with local screen printers to print our designs on them.
The fun part… I’d then spend hours on end sitting with all the stock and my great grandmothers old sewing machine and sew in all the neck and care labels into each piece of clothing. Now by now means was this the most efficient way of production. But it allowed us to achieve the following.
Amazing quality! apart from some of the neck label which may have been sewn in on a seriously bad angle ahahah – sorry if you received one of these, I was an amateur that’s for sure. But in terms of the fabric and build quality of the clothing as well as the print quality, I could confidently say that it was amazing, and I was extremely proud of it all.
In this stage of the brand having started with such a low capital investment and having little resources to be able to facilitate production at scale we had to make these certain decisions in order to keep things as lean as possible.
When I say lean, I don’t solely mean financially either as the margins on our products back during this time was quite slim due to unit costs being high (low order volumes). However, the benefit to running the business like this considering our situation was that I was able to order any volume, no matter how low, how many size and what product. This gave us great freedom to be able to put a collation of tees, hoodies and sweatpants together with multiple prints without doing huge volume through China.
I definitely still recommend this method for brands getting started as it allows you the most flexibility. However, you MUST be ready when demand increases to make the move to a larger scale custom production facility. There’s pros and cons here too which I’ll write about in a future blog.
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I was already doing the math in my head of how much money I was going to make. But this SERIOUSLY was not the case. All those people weren’t waiting online to purchase, and we didn’t sell out in 5 minutes like most ‘streetwear’ brands at the time would.
The reality was that I made 3 sales that night and one was my brother Adam. To be honest with you, I can’t really remember how that felt, whether I was disappointed/underwhelmed or if I was happy that I made 2 sales from two people I have never met.
However, I do remember the constant thoughts and realisation of how f**ken hard this mission was going to be. Look at it this way… I was an 18-year-old kid with; NO business experience, NO fashion experience, NO social media following, NO personal brand and just all-round NO F**KEN idea what I was doing.
Something about that just made me want to succeed even more. I knew that I really did start from nothing, so I had nothing to lose. The $2,000 that I started the business with bought approximately $1000 worth of blank t-shirts, $200 of plastisol transfers and $800 was spent on a heat press.
Looking back, I probably should’ve started with more capital as it would have definitely helped push the brand. I speak to many brand owners now and when we talk about how much capital we started with and they CAN’T believe me when I tell them I only invested $2,000.
Usually, the answer is $10,000, $15,000 or even onwards of $20,000 + but honestly the fact I started the way I did and used what I had as best as possible is part of my story and I wouldn’t change that.
The early days of the brand consisted of me standing at the heat press for hours, lining up the transfers perfectly as I didn’t want to mess any up because this would cost me $$$ I just couldn’t afford to lose.
The point of this Blog is to shine some light on how tough the early days can be. To all the kids who message me on Instagram asking for advice on starting your clothing brands, the early days are going to be hard.
You’re going to experience issues and slow points where you question whether this is going to work. Every brand goes through it. My advice: be creative, figure it out and move on to the next problem. Work harder than anyone else and I have no doubt that you too will make something out of nothing.
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Myself, my brother and 3-4 other mates had a mutual interest in the same fashion, music, and cultural trends at the time and still all share the same taste today. These topics would make up frequent daily chat and was a strong interest among us.
So the story…
We would have been 18 years old at the time, let’s say a month or so prior to our first drop. At this point the PRIVACY.CLO Instagram page would’ve already been active for about 12 months. The account was a way for me to tease designs without having to actually release them. I’d see what designs people would like, interact with and talk about to get an idea of what type of pieces I’d need to bring into production.
The page would’ve had no more than 1500 followers at the time – and PLEASE excuse my poor memory I wish I could remember exact details, but this shit was a while back now ay. Anyway, our ‘group’ was at one of the guy's houses on a Saturday night, drinking before a night out. I was wearing one of the soon to be released T-shirts, it was a black tee with a distorted ladies face and our logo in replacement over her eyes.
Ground-breaking shit I know…
The tee immediately caught the eye of two of the guys within our group and they immediately brought it into the conversation, “Isn’t that, that new Perth brands tees?“ I replied with a calm “yeah” and they continued to go on about how they liked the look of “that” brand so far and believed it had “potential”.
Now think about the whole idea here….
Remember when I said how I didn’t want to tell my friends, not because I didn’t want their support but for the simple fact that I would rather have them ACTUALLY LIKE the brand for what it is rather than because it was a project of mine. Well, this was all the confirmation I needed, the first form of ‘product to market fit’ from the closest sources to me who perfectly fit this market.
I played off the whole conversation and they had NO idea the brand was mine…
At one point one of them even asked how I had the tee as they knew it hadn’t been released yet. Ryan came quickly with something along the lines of “yeh nah I just messaged them on Instagram hey and they let me buy one early”. Quick thinking from me, but yeh they bought it.
It was a fucken awesome feeling a few months later when I showed them the Instagram account on my phone and told them it was “actually my brand.” At first, they didn’t believe it and asked how I guess their account password. But no, it was so cool being able to explain this whole idea to them and it automatically became a concept they bought into, as they really saw value in the way I approached it. A different and thoughtful concept that not many other brands consider.
To then see the same guys on nights out wearing that same tee I was wearing months earlier, was such a good feeling and the start of something amazing.
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For context clothing and entrepreneurial spirit has always been evident in my life. I would always take strong interest from young around seasonal fashion trends. As I got older and was able to buy my own shit, I slowly worked on building a wardrobe that classified me as ‘on trend’.
From about the age of 15/16 is when I first got a taste of the business of fashion where the hype/sneaker culture was fast becoming mainstream and demand for Yeezy sneakers, supreme and other designer items were in high demand and far more accessible than they are nowadays.
Buying and selling these goods to customers willing to pay premium to obtain them was a great way to make money at this age and taught me how important networking, and hustle is in this industry. I took both into the next venture.
It was around this time in 2016 when internet bots started to swoop up all the online supply and the sneaker game just got a whole lot harder and not to mention it was an EXTREMELY difficult venture to scale. I had to think of a way to work around this.
I started researching how clothing brands were created and built from the ground up. Everything from suppliers, fabrics, printing techniques, design, adobe photoshop/illustrator, website building, marketing and the list really goes on and on.
Over the next 2 years I had probably watched every YouTube video and read every blog on these topics as well.
OHH WAIT I’VE MISSED THE MOST IMPORTANT PART…. So this whole time from 2016-2018 when I was set on this being my future I HADN”T told anyone that this was the plan.
You’re probably thinking why bro, that’s kinda odd isn’t it… But no hear me out it actually makes perfect sense.
So during this time I needed to figure out a way to separate my brand from others a notoriously saturated industry. But FUCK was that a difficult task.
I knew that all businesses needed to establish proof of concept before bringing their products/services to the market. My way of doing this was to not tell my extended family or any of my friends that this brand was mine. Here’s why.
I realised that if a complete random within the market desired my product and purchased it. It would be FAR MORE VALUABLE than a friend buying purely to support their mates business.
This might sound stupid but think about it, at scale this is all the proof of concept you need to truly know that what you’re putting out to the market has legs.
These customers are going to give you the most honest and critical feedback possible, good or bad. There’s no room to have this feedback impacted by your homies who are always going to just gas you up no matter what.
And YES that’s where the name came from, PRIVACY. This was something I was doing behind the scenes for 2 years without anyone knowing, so I saw it as the perfect name for the brand which then embodies the message that you may not know what others are doing/going through.
More on that another time but here’s a REALLY FUCKEN AWESOME story for you. This is how I knew PRIVACY was going to be something impactful. See PART 2.
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