Originally posted on <a href="http://www.tshirtfashion.blogspot.com">tshirtfashion.blogspot.com</a> Special thanks to Reese Imhof at <a href="http://www.410bc.com">410 BC</a> for this interview and the rest of the 410 BC team <img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3536/3813476688_ef523b579d.jpg"> 1. Let’s start off with the basics, how and when and why did you start 410 BC? 410 BC is almost 2 years old and this is the basic story behind how we started. About three and a half years ago, I got into diy/screen printing with my friends. I was just designing tees and screen printing them by hand – very simple stuff. I wasn’t too great at it at first, but I kept practicing and got better. I started doing this because I’d always want a specific tee that I couldn’t find. I had all these ideas in my head for designs that I could never get anywhere. I just wasn’t happy with a lot of the selections at big name brands and stores. When I did find something that I liked it was usually too expensive, being a college student you have to learn to scrimp and save (at least I did). Also, I’ve always been into conscious consumerism and I’m very picky about which companies I support, I just don’t want to spend my money on a company I don’t respect and I hate buying things that everyone else has. Sometimes I’d get a tee and then see five different people at school wearing the same thing as me. All of these reasons prompted me to start making my own designs. Then a few of my friends got into it too. People found out about what we were doing and liked our designs, so they asked us to make them tees. Eventually we started getting random e-mails and requests from strangers who heard about us or saw a tee somewhere and wanted one. It was really unexpected and at that point we realized we could make a business out of this. It has always been fun since day one. Being able to make designs with your friends and meet and network with other artists and commission designs and give back to the art community is the best, I could spend my whole life doing this and be very happy. We’ve always been an artist collective and the thought of being an artist collective/business seemed so awesome because we knew we’d be able to do even more. At the end of August in 2007 was when we decided to become a full-fledged business and we created 410bc.com, which went live in September 2007. Ever since then we’ve been growing and pushing to expand and improve every way we can. 2. I read somewhere that you guys started out screen printing everything by hand in your college dorm room. Did you find it difficult to make the transition from completely diy to an actual professional company and brand? Not really, it came pretty naturally. Of course we’ve faced a lot of obstacles since establishing ourselves as a business, pretty much the obstacles that most small businesses face. In terms of just transitioning it was a fairly slow process, but a very natural change. Becoming a business just seemed like the next step and it always felt right and has been so rewarding. I’ve always felt very comfortable with this and although I know this isn’t the same for everyone at 410 BC, personally I love the business side of things. I do most of the business side and it’s probably my favorite work, which is saying a lot because I also really love the art/creative side. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been into business and entrepreneurship although I didn’t recognize it as such. When I was in elementary school I used to go door to door on my block selling my old toys and other things I made. Then when I got into middle school, I made my own magazine and Xeroxed copies at the library and sold it to kids in school/my parents (my parents bought about 20 copies each, haha). 3. What were some obstacles you’ve faced as a business? What was the hardest part of starting up? Finances, haha. Never having enough money. We’re all college students and none of us come from money, so that’s been really difficult. Every business needs money to start up, that’s just the way it goes. That old saying “you need to spend money to make money” is true. In the beginning most companies don’t even break even for a few years. Most small businesses fail because they can’t make ends meet. We literally had hardly any startup money, the only money I had was a tiny bit of savings from my summer job. Even though I’m young, I’ve been self-sufficient since graduating high school. I pay all my own bills, bought my own car, etc, so saving for the business was tough on top of bills. That goes for the rest of 410 BC as well; we all have a lot of personal expenses, mostly related to the high costs of college. Everything we make from 410 BC goes back into the company. We haven’t taken out any business loans yet or anything like that, so for now it’s just recycling our profit. We want to expand the business more, but that is going to take time and a lot more money. There are just so many expenses. The amount we’ve spent on accountants and lawyers alone this year makes my head hurt. 4. How do you manage running this business while being in college full time? Did you ever just want to drop out and focus entirely on the business? What would you tell someone who is trying to decide between being a college student or opening their own business? I’m going to be completely honest, yes, it has been extremely difficult being in college full time and doing this. There have been too many sleepless nights staying up to work on 410 BC while studying for an exam or writing a 20 page paper. I missed out on the typical college experience for sure. I had to give up a large part of my social life to keep my grades up and run 410 BC at the same time. Sure I’ve made close friends at school, but I never drink and hardly ever go to parties because I’m just way too busy. I always have 410 BC stuff to do on the weekends and I always have to turn down friends or be the one who has to leave things early. There were times when doing the business and school felt like too much, they are both so time consuming. I had thought seriously about giving one up. I kept at it and I have never regretted my decision. I am lucky enough that I have other people helping out so much with the company, some other students run businesses without any help at all. But again, everyone else at 410 BC is in the same boat as me. Nicole (Nicole Giambalvo = one of 410 BC’s co-founders) probably has it the toughest right now because she is applying to law school, taking the LSATs and doing 410 BC. She does so much, I don’t even know how she does it, she really amazes/inspires me. She is a Philosophy major at Mount Holyoke College, so 20 page papers are nothing for her, she gets crazy long papers all the time. A typical day at school last year she was updating the 410 BC site/blog, responding to e-mails, working on design stuff, working on marketing, student teaching a philosophy course at a school in Springfield, taking classes, doing school work (keeping up a 3.7 GPA!) and all the other things she does like volunteering and working in Mount Holyoke’s art department. She is probably going to be really embarrassed that I told you all this because she is super modest, but seriously all that work makes Harvard Law look like a walk in the park. I am really happy that I stayed in school and did not drop out. You never know where life is going to take you and if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to college, you should take it because a college degree is so important. My experience at college has been amazing. Especially with networking, I have been able to meet and network with so many people and learn so much about business. And although it will be tough work, if you are dedicated and have passion, you can definitely run a business and do college at the same time. 5. Your website design has always intrigued me. It’s very clean and unique, one of my favorite site designs. Tell me a little more about that and how the actual site evolved. We have Luis Lucas (www.lalucas.com) to thank for that. Luis does a lot of work with ALIFE and Married to the Mob, which is how we first got in contact with him, when we found out about the awesome site design he did for MOB. He has been so great to work with. When we met him he was such a genuinely nice guy, so enthusiastic and made us feel so comfortable. He was really excited about the project and our brand, he gave so much feedback and industry tips and thought it was cool that we were so young and doing this. Sometimes people will patronize you when you’re young and breaking into the industry and Luis was just the opposite of this. He is truly gifted, a design genius and I cannot say enough good things about him. Working with him has truly been an honor and a privilege. Our re-design is still pretty new, before that we had gone through a bunch of different site designs. One by Elena Gallen, another person we have worked with a lot and love (www.elenagallen.com). The rest were all done by us using adobe dreamweaver, we probably went through about 6 different designs in total. 6. Have you guys ever gotten really bad feedback? What did you do? Of course, anyone who puts their stuff out there for the world to see will get some negative feedback! If it’s constructive criticism and you can use it, then it’s great. I actually really like getting constructive criticism because it’s helpful. If it’s something that is just malicious or negative for the sake of being negative and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, well you just shrug it off. You learn to not pay attention to certain things and you develop thick skin. I remember in some community or blog someone once said they hated, no “loathed”, 410 BC. I was a little bummed at first, not going to lie, but then I just realized how silly that sounded. Who has that much hatred in them that they actually spend time and energy on “loathing” some clothing brand that has no effect on them? It didn’t make sense to me. We’re just doing our thing, trying to do a good thing and giving back to our community any way we can. I mean you might not like our stuff, you might never buy it or wear it, but what is there to hate really? It’s not like we’re using sweatshop labor or killing people in the process of our tee shirt making, haha. There will always be people who never have anything good to say, there will always be people walking around with a lot of hate towards everything and everyone and you just have to accept it and you can’t let it get to you. Most of the time people will just say they hate something because they’re mad they didn’t come up with it first. Also, it’s always good to look at the ratio of people saying they like your stuff versus people saying they hate your stuff. If you’ve got tons of people saying they love your stuff and only one or two people saying they hate it, then you don’t have anything to worry about. 7. You guys have been coming out with more and more skate decks. What prompted that decision and how have the decks been doing sales wise? We started producing skate decks because a lot of our art has been influenced by skate culture and a few of us skate, so it just made sense for us to make decks. A lot of our customers and friends skate as well so we were constantly being asked to make decks. We always wanted to eventually do decks since day one, but we couldn’t afford it for a while. The first run we only released two decks. Those did really well and we made enough money from those sales to release an artist series of 3 decks. Then after that we did another very limited artist series deck. This line we have released 5 skate decks and they have all been selling well so far. People seem to really like the artwork on these, which is awesome. We do sponsor skaters and reach out to the skate community. We’ve sponsored skate competitions at local skate parks and we’ve gone to parks and had giveaways, so I think all that has helped us to get out there so people know we make boards. Our decks are very high quality and also sweatshop free/made in the US and they hold up for a long time, so that’s another reason people like our boards. 8. What are some other clothing brands you like? Obey, Ben Sherman, Cheap Monday, Obesity and Speed, Supreme and Mishka are a few of my personal favorites. We really like a bunch of the other indie tee brands out there as well. We’ve got so much respect for other brands doing their thing. Any brand that can get themselves out there and bring something unique to the industry is good by us. Got a lot of respect for Electric Zombie, Snakes and Suits, Seibei, Pyknic, Paper Root, Linty Fresh, all those guys and many more are doing awesome things. I’m actually wearing an EZ tee right now haha. 9. I was impressed by the cut and sew you guys came out with for this line, very strong pieces. I especially love the 410 BC varsity jacket. You usually don’t see such a young brand doing cut and sew. How did you make that happen? Are you planning to do more cut and sew in the future? Thanks! We were honestly planning this for a while. We just saved and saved for a long time to be able to afford it. It got a bit frustrating at times because it took so long to get everything together. We saved money that we made from previous lines and cut down on a bunch of costs in order to do the jackets, those were especially expensive. We’ve already made almost everything back from the jackets though, we’ve been selling those a lot. We were actually really surprised at how quickly people started buying those. We were a bit worried that people might not like them or might not want to spend money on them and then we’d be out the costs, but luckily that’s not the case. You can expect to see a lot more cut and sew pieces from us in the future. I don’t want to give away too much, but right now we’re working on some Oxford button down shirts and more sweaters, to be released in the winter in time for the holidays. We also have 410 BC books coming out with the winter line. They are commemorative books for our two-year anniversary. They’re hardcover, “coffee table” style. We’re really happy with how they came out and hopefully other people will like them. 10. What are your plans for the (near) future? After graduating this year, we’re going to get a new office space and hire 1 or 2 new full time employees and hopefully a few part-timers as well. We’ve also been looking at retail space. We definitely do want to open up a flagship store as soon as possible. That’s been a dream of ours for a long time and we’re going to do everything we can to make it happen. Whether or not it happens depends a lot upon things that are out of our control though. Hopefully our customers will continue to support us and make this dream a reality. Whether or not the economy improves soon will also be a factor. We definitely are not going to give up on this though, so at some point it will happen! 11. What do you think of all the new brands popping up? Do you think the market is over saturated? How many of these brands will actually end up being successful? Do you think there are too many brands doing the same thing? I think there are too many brands doing the same thing, yes, particularly young brands. I’ve noticed a lot of brands that are just starting up and they take ideas from more established successful brands. Now I’m not just talking about inspiration because in my opinion, that is totally fine and a natural part of the creative process. What I’m talking about is straight up copying of ideas and not brining anything new in terms of concept or execution. For a brand to be successful they must bring something new to the market. I admire unique and original ideas even if the design or product isn’t my style or aesthetic, I can appreciate it. Now I’m not saying that there aren’t any new brands that are unique, there certainly are many! But a lot definitely need to be more creative and make a conscious effort to do something different. You may sell tees and you may make money in the beginning by doing something that’s already been done many times before, but you won’t make it in the long run. You can’t build a memorable brand when you’re basing things off another brand. This can often be a really big issue and I don’t think there are enough open discussions and debates about it. There have been times that I’ve looked at sites of certain brands and their entire line is identical to something that another brand did six months ago. I want to make it clear though that I’m not even talking about brands that have similar styles or themes, rather I’m referring to an established and unique brand versus a brand that has yet to find it’s own niche, so instead directly copies designs from other brands. 12. I’ve read that 410 BC donates money to different charity organizations and gives back to the community in various ways. Can you tell us about some of the ways your company has given back? Why is this important to your brand? We’ve supported various non-profit organizations in different ways. Sometimes we’ll just release a specific tee and donate a percentage of the proceeds. Other times we are more hands on. For example we raised a lot of money for a local non-profit organization called Hands Up For Kidz (a group that supports children and families in underserved communities who are impacted by HIV/AIDS and alcoholism/substance abuse). Hands Up For Kidz had a fashion show recently where 410 BC was a main sponsor. The fashion show raised enough money to send 50 needy children from addicted families to a therapeutic summer camp environment with no expense to the family. That was through tickets to the fashion show and a raffle. That was definitely one of our big charitable contributions as of late. This is important to our brand because we promote ethical consumerism and a lot of our customers, especially ones who have followed us since the beginning, have always known us for that. We’ve been planning to do an entire line of shirts soon that all go to specific causes. I know Nicole wants to do something with the Guide Dog Foundation as well since she volunteered there over the summer. 13. What do you think are some necessary components to creating a successful clothing brand? Creativity, passion, a unique vision, a business plan or some knowledge of business management (I don’t mean you need to go out and get an MBA, but having an understanding of how you plan to run your business and make it successful is important. While some people have a natural inclination or talent with entrepreneurship, it’s still good to do some reading and research), patience. You also need to be a bit of a risk taker, especially in the beginning when you are starting your brand and investing your own money in it. It’s a risk all entrepreneurs take, but the thought of losing a lot of money is really scary to most people, which is why they don’t start their own business even if they have a great idea. Specifically in terms of a clothing brand, it’s definitely necessary to take professional product shots (photography is so important, especially if you’re web based, but so many young brands overlook this), creating quality products (you won’t get customers to come back to you if they buy a tee from you and then after getting it in the mail they find that the fit, cut or print are bad), going the extra mile with packaging and presentation so that customers are really surprised and excited the day they get your package in the mail. Although I don’t think it’s necessary, having a blog has been very beneficial for us. We update the blog regularly and we have various people who work for/with 410 BC blogging on a number of subjects. We get e-mails regularly from our blog readers, so it’s been a great tool for us to stay connected to our customers. 14. What advice would you give to a new brand or someone who wants to start their own clothing line? It’s so imperative to have something that will make your brand stand out, to offer something to customers that they can’t get from somewhere else. You need to really ask yourself “what is going to make my brand unique?” and think, “why will people want to buy something from my brand?” Then go from there. Having some sort of a business plan is important, even if it’s not a traditional business plan. It can be very helpful to just write your ideas out. I got a journal and forced myself to use it and that has been so helpful with generating and remembering ideas I have for 410 BC. 15. There have been a number of well known bands and musicians seen sporting 410 BC such as Tegan and Sara, M.I.A., Hayley Williams of Paramore, Beirut, etc. How important has this type of publicity been for your business? Do you think it is necessary for a brand to have popular bands wear their clothes if they want to be successful? I’m not sure if it’s necessary, but it definitely helps. We’re just grateful that some of the bands and artists we admire like our stuff. We were sort of in awe when we found out about all these bands wearing 410 BC, we would get messages from customers and people started sending us photos, most of the time we had no idea and it was just a huge shock. In running 410 BC we’ve been able to meet different bands and musicians, interview them for our blog, work out sponsorships and it’s just been so awesome, we’ve been really lucky. 2009-09-28T19:52:54-04:00 Q & A with one of the 410 BC owners. Good resource for start up clothing brands. true 0 1351 Interview with Reese Imhof of 410 BC 11553 1 2010-03-11T03:37:35-05:00 2345