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This shirt was a collaboration between Jeff Finley and Ray Frenden for Fright-Rags. My Advice to You Start. As simple as that sounds, it’s the one thing that holds people back the most. They get caught up in minutiae like copyrighting everything they do, or getting a trademark, or worried about their ideas getting stolen even before they have sold a single t-shirt. So my advice is to start right now. Dive in and figure it out while you’re in it. Hell, I didn’t even have a DBA until I received a check for $12,000 from Hot Topic and couldn’t even cash it because it had my company name on it! Trend Watching Well, I have to say that when I started out, horror shirts (or even horror-themed shirts) were in short supply. But since then I’ve seen zombies, robots, vampires, etc infiltrate just about every type of t-shirt company. Plus, t-shirts have gotten much softer and more comfortable. The trends have moved away from the 6.0 oz heavyweight shirt to the lighter 4.5 ringspun cotton which was popularized by American Apparel. THREAD’S NOT DEAD • Jeff Finley My Secret to Success Perseverance. While luck has a huge impact on our success, it was the perseverance to stick it out long enough that even gave us a chance to be lucky. That, and sticking to our guns. It’s too easy to get caught up in all the things you can’t do, and <strong>not</strong> focus on the things you can do well. And I find our best successes come from when we focus in on the things we know we can succeed at, which is usually what we’re most passionate about. When those things align, magical things happen. And cutting out all the distractions helps you do just that. Your Personality in your Brand I truly feel that in order to stand out and move from a side project to a brand, you have to stick to what you’re passionate about and engage your customers. I forget who said it, but the quote I like best to describe this is “People buy products from people, <strong>not</strong> companies.” It’s all too common for people just starting out to tout themselves as bigger than they are. They use terms like “we” when it’s just one guy in his basement. I did the same exact thing... Ironically, as I really did become a “we,” I gravitated to using my own name and identity with my brand. I personalized emails to my customers, and even shot videos of myself talking about how I got into horror and why it means so much to me. Little did I know, I was crafting the story behind our brand and putting a face and voice to the company so customers could relate to us. I spend a lot of my time cultivating those relationships by doing things like sending surveys, allowing customers to vote on designs, showing them the process of taking a design from sketch to shirt, and even showing them how a shirt is printed. The Brand Sells, Not the Design Too many designers get focused on the “design” as a way to express their brand. To them, it’s all about what the actual design on the shirt looks like... Of course, the design is important. But that isn’t what sells. It’s the brand that the design is representing that sells the shirt. So you must spend as much - or more - time crafting and developing your brand than you do on designing your shirts. If you do that, then the shirts will sell themselves since they will be coming from a place of passion and built on a foundation that expresses that passion in a way that others can relate to. Case Studies & Interviews 106
Glamour Kills is the successful clothing line of Mark Capicotto Mark Capicotto My name is Mark Capicotto. I am 24 years old and I am the owner and designer of Glamour Kills Clothing. GK has been in business since 2006. Basically I started the business when I was 19 or 20 years old. I was going to college at the time, freelance designing for bands, and working a pizza delivery job. One day I was just sitting around talking with some friends while designing some merch and said I could do this myself and run and sell my own designs and business. With what little money I had saved up, I printed a few designs and stored everything down in my parent’s basement. I had some html/web knowledge so I built my own site and Myspace and off I went. A few designs lead into a few more and then so on. Every time I sold more shirts I put all the money right back into the business (was still working the pizza delivery job as well for the first year) it wasn’t until about the 2nd year I was able to quit and barely make enough to live off of GK alone. As the company grew so did I. I began getting more experienced with marketing and branding myself and started sponsoring bands, actors, friends, and anyone who would wear my clothes. The rest is pretty much history. THREAD’S NOT DEAD • Jeff Finley My Breakthrough Moment I can’t really pin point it to one moment. The day our brand was sold nationwide through the chain Zumiez would be one. The first time I saw my shirt on National TV. The first time I ran and paid for my first print ad in a national magazine. There are so many milestones, still to this day we do things and I smack myself and say is this real life? My Inspirations I grew up a huge fan of Rob Dobi. I think when I was about 13-14 I was first getting into design I was seeing a lot of band t-shirts and album packaging that really stood out and was so awesome. A friend sent me a link to Rob’s site and I was in love. To this day Rob comes out with some of the best stuff I have ever seen. Be Unique and Do Things First Try and do something no one else is doing and introduce completely new ideas and techniques to designing clothing. Since day one I have prided myself on leading the pack in all things that are popular in our demographic. Case Studies & Interviews 107
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Designs for Fall Out Boy by Rob Dob
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T-shirt design for Slayer by Angryb
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Design by Jeff Finley for Disciple
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