INTRO: Daymond is likely the most conservative investor
on Shark Tank, but usually, it’s not because he’s afraid of capital loss but because of his
investment philosophy. You see, all the sharks are there for various reasons. Mark and Robert like to
invest in businesses that excite them. Kevin likes to invest in businesses that carry low capital
risk. Lori likes to invest in ideas she can blow up TV, and Barbara invests in entrepreneurs that
she believes in. But, Daymond doesn’t really care about any of this. He’s not there to make
money or gain popularity. His primary goal is to help entrepreneurs who really truly need it.
There are so many times that he’s turned down super lucrative deals because he doesn’t feel
that the entrepreneur needs it. I think this makes Daymond the most wholesome investor on the show,
and given his rough background, it makes sense that he wants to help those in a similar
situation. This wholesome investment strategy has rewarded him quite handsomely given that he was
the one to invest in Shark Tank’s most successful business as of the end of 2021. So, here’s how
Daymond went from the ghettos to Shark Tank and became Shark Tanks’ most empathetic investor.
LIFE IN THE SLUMS:
Taking a look back, Daymond was born on February 23, 1969, in Brooklyn,
New York. Initially, his life wasn’t that bad financially given that he was an only child,
and his dad made enough money to make ends meet. But, by the time Daymond was 10 years old,
his parents would get a divorce, and Daymond would be raised by a single mother. To make
things worse, Daymond’s mother was a homemaker and it was extremely difficult for her to find a job.
The family quickly sank into poverty and ended up in the Hollis region of Queens.
This region is officially known as a low-income African American neighborhood, but really, it
was a ghetto. So, to help out his mom through this situation, Daymond began working odd jobs at the
age of 10. This included handing out fliers for $2 an hour and becoming an electrician apprentice.
He also shoveled snow for neighbors and sold pencils. Moving into high school,
Daymond joined a program that allowed him to attend school on an alternating weekly basis.
This allowed him to hold a full-time job as a waiter at Red Lobster, and run a small commuter
van service on the side. Daymond says that this program is what really ignited his entrepreneurial
spirit. Anyway, moving on to college, Daymond really had no intention of attending college.
First of all, he was dyslexic which made traditional academics quite difficult,
and secondly, he didn’t have 4 years to go sit in a classroom. He was already busting his butt
to make ends meet, and quitting his job would make it extremely difficult for his mother.
So, he decided to not attend college and continued on with his waiter job after
high school. Daymond wasn’t satisfied with just working this job for the rest of his life though.
He knew he wanted to create some sort of business, but he didn’t know what exactly it would be about.
This would all change, however, when he came across some overpriced wool ski hats
on the market. Daymond was convinced he could produce the hats for significantly cheaper,
so he bought some low-cost fabrics, learned how to sew from his mother, and began knitting wool hats.
He was able to produce 80 hats, and he went around the neighborhood and sold them for $10 apiece.
He made a solid $800 in revenue from the venture, but for Daymond, selling these hats meant much
more than just making money. You see, during his teenage years, Daymond was a massive fan
of hip-hop and rap. He aspired to be like his favorite artists, but he usually couldn’t even
afford the clothes they wore. By selling affordable clothes rooted in hip hop,
Daymond felt that he could appeal to his younger self and give modern kids what he never had.
And with that, Daymond founded For Us By Us or FUBU in 1992. Daymond barely had any money
himself, but his mother would pull through and risk it all for Daymond. She mortgaged
her house and lent him $100,000 to start up the business. The stakes couldn’t have been higher,
but this was Daymond’s one shot at a better life, and there was no way he was going to give that up.
FUBU:
From the very beginning, Daymond knew that the key to growing a large clothing brand was exposure,
but he decided to start small and keep things simple. Daymond continued to produce the wool
hats that had already sold well, and he continued working as a waiter. In the meantime, he started
experimenting with sewing screen-printed T-shirts. As the hat business grew, Daymond
hired two of his childhood friends to start selling the T-shirts around the neighborhood.
This worked out decently well at the beginning, but selling clothes door to door clearly wasn’t
a very good sales channel long term. So, Daymond started leveraging consignments. A consignment is
simply an agreement with a store or vendor to sell your products for a set commission
or fee. Daymond was able to score a couple of consignment deals with vendors in the Northeast,
and with that Daymond could start focusing on actually building a brand. Daymond and his
friends started sewing the FUBU logo into hockey jerseys, sweatshirts, and T-shirts, and they lent
out this clothing to up-and-coming rappers to use in their music videos. Within 2 years, Daymond was
able to secure product placement within 30 music videos which gave FUBU quite a bit of exposure.
People watching these music videos thought that FUBU was a decently sized mall brand,
but really, it was just Daymond a couple of his friends. And this became painfully apparent when
FUBU started to receive their first big orders. In the early 1990s, Daymond traveled to Las Vegas
to showcase FUBU at a fashion trade show called MAGIC. This was definitely a worthwhile trip given
that he received $300,000 worth of orders, and an offer to be sold at select Macy’s outlets. Daymond
happily took the orders, but only he knew that it was going to be a massive struggle to produce that
many clothes. As soon as he returned home, Daymond applied for loans at every bank he could think of,
but he was rejected by all 27 banks. So, in a last-ditch effort, Daymond use the last of
his money to put out an advertisement in the New York times looking for a manufacturing partner.
And luckily for Daymond, Samsung Textiles responded to the ad and helped FUBU complete their
first mega-order. Around the same time, Daymond’s hip-hop partners including Will Smith, Beyonce,
and LL Cool J were starting to get some notoriety. LL Cool J and Daymond were actually childhood
friends, and Daymond was able to convince Cool J to wear a FUBU hat in a GAP commercial.
Cool J didn’t just stop right there either. He was hired to rap in the commercial and he snuck in the
phrase For Us By Us in the rap. Honestly, I’m not sure how GAP let this one slip by,
but it worked out great for FUBU. As their hip-hop partners evolved into full-fledged celebrities,
FUBU transitioned from being a small home business to a national brand.
In 1998, FUBU pulled in $350 million in sales, but Daymond was just getting started.
BUILDING AN EMPIRE: While FUBU was doing better than ever before,
Daymond knew that hip-hop fame was fickle and that it could disappear just as fast as it appeared.
So, Daymond cleverly started to diversify as soon as possible. In the late 1990s and early 2000s,
FUBU put hip-hop promotions on the back burner and started to reinvest their profits into building an
international audience. They primarily targeted Saudi Arabia, China, Korea, Japan, and South
Africa. Daymond didn’t just limit the company to streetwear clothing either. In 2000, he launched
FUBU Entertainment also known as FUBU Records. As the name suggests, this subsidiary was focused on
producing and releasing music albums. One of their first deals was with Universal Records which ended
up generating millions in revenue. Moving forward, in 2002, Daymond embraced the internet with the
launch of y2g.com which sold their various products online. All of these efforts gave
FUBU a pretty solid safety net, but Daymond didn’t just want to rely on FUBU either,
so he also started ventures outside FUBU. For example, Daymond leveraged his newfound fame to
start selling books. So far, Daymond has published 4 books called Display of Power, The Brand Within,
The Power of Broke, and Rise and Grind. These publications have won him the titles of New
York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author. Aside from publishing books, Daymond has
also become a public speaker and he charges $50 to $75,000 per speech. Daymond has also partnered
with several brands including Pitbull, Miss Universe, Shopify, and most recently, Audible.
It’s a good thing Daymond diversified so heavily as FUBU’s sales did indeed start dropping just
like he expected. From their peak of $350 million in 1998, FUBU declined to $200 million by 1999
and they’ve stabilized around there ever since. Daymond doesn’t seem to mind too much though.
He knew the drop was coming and he prepared as much as he could. Also, he had already
made more money than he ever wanted, and now, he wanted to focus his efforts on giving back.
DAYMOND’S PHILOSOPHY: Daymond isn’t interested in making the
rich richer or even the middle class richer. His primary goal is to help the poor break out of the
poverty cycle. He knows firsthand how impossible it was to secure a loan, and with Shark Tank,
Daymond has prioritized giving opportunity just like Samsung Textiles gave him an opportunity. One
of the best examples of this was with Mo’s Bows. In Season 5 of Shark Tank, a young entrepreneur
named Moziah pitched his bowtie-making business to the Sharks. He asked for a modest $50,000 for
a 20% stake in his business, but instead of offering him the money, Daymond offered to
mentor him for free. Since then, Daymond has helped Moziah secure a manufacturing partner,
get into Neiman Marcus, and even get a 7 figure licensing deal with the NBA. Daymond literally
made this kid into a millionaire for free. I don’t think it gets more wholesome than that. Another
wholesome Daymond deal was with Bombas. Bombas is a sock company that focuses on donating socks to
homeless shelters. The founders, David and Randy, started the company after finding out that the
most needed item at homeless shelters was socks. And for every item you purchase from Bombas,
they donate an item to homeless organizations. It looks like this message has really resonated with
customers as Bombas is not only Daymond’s most successful investment but the most successful
investment in Shark Tank history grossing a total of $225 million in lifetime sales. Shark Tank
isn’t the only way Daymond gives back either. In 2015, he co-founded Daymond John’s Success Formula
which teaches entrepreneurs how to start and grow their business. And that same year, he was
appointed by President Obama to be an ambassador for underserved entrepreneurs. Considering all
this, I don’t think that there’s any doubt that Daymond is the most selfless shark on the show.
DAYMOND TODAY: As for Daymond today,
he’s doing better than ever before. FUBU crossed $6 billion in annual sales back in 2016,
and they’re likely in the $7 to $8 billion range today if not even higher.
In terms of Shark Tank investments, Daymond has completed 61 deals on air which comes
out to a total of $8.5 million invested. Considering this, I don’t think you’d be too
surprised to hear that his net worth is estimated to be around $350 million. Unfortunately, though,
his personal life isn’t progressing nearly as smoothly. In April of 2017, Daymond was diagnosed
with stage 2 thyroid cancer. He did undergo surgery and get the cancerous nodule removed,
but it’s definitely not something to take lightly. Hopefully, the cancer never returns though as
Daymond is not only relatively young at 52, but he’s a phenomenal community-oriented person,
and he would be a massive loss for everybody. Do you guys think Daymond is the best shark?
Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if you think that the other sharks should take
a couple of notes from Daymond. And of course, consider joining our discord community to suggest
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