So like I said in the previous post NONE of my close mates knew this was the mission at the time.
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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