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HOW IT ALL STARTED | STARTING A CLOTHING BRAND AT 18

HOW IT ALL STARTED | STARTING A CLOTHING BRAND AT 18

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This is such a weird feeling writing about where it all started over 3 years ago. In saying that it’s awesome to take a moment to zoom out and look at how far it’s all come.

 

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.

By Ryan De Gennaro
2 Comments
  • BD Wear

    Whether it is a company or an individual, buying T-shirts in bulk can bring many advantages, and its quality mainly lies. The first of the benefits to buying t-shirts in bulk is the cheap wholesale prices.

    https://www.bdwear.com/kids-wear-manufacturer-in-bangladesh/

  • Lucas Allender

    Enjoyed reading this brother <3

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