- Hey, everyone.
I've got a guest with me today.
- What's up, guys?
My name is Brett Conti.
I am a 24-year-old living in New York City.
I own a clothing company,
a skateboard company,
and I also make daily YouTube videos.
- Yep.
But your clothing company is what I wanna talk about today
'cause I get a lot of questions about clothing companies
'cause I have some videos about one
I started one when I was in University,
but, unlike mine, yours is pretty successful.
- Well, thank you!
I like to think so.
I'll tell my parents that.
- What made you start it?
How did you get into it?
- Okay.
My grandfather owned a textile company.
- [Charli] Cool.
- So as a little kid,
I was always so intrigued about like fabrics
and design and stuff like that
and when I was in, as you guys say, University,
when I was in college,
I just started sewing five panel hats,
pocket T-shirts, snapback hats,
all from scratch.
And then, you know, started to turn into a brand.
- That's amazing.
See I started mine at University as well.
- Did you? Okay.
- But I was mostly..
I was, like, screen printing on existing T-shirts.
So, that's cool that you were making your own.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So, where was this point where it was like,
this little thing, like who did you sell to
to start with?
Was it like friends?
- Yeah, yeah.
That's a good way to go with it.
- [Charli] Yep.
- [Brett] Of course, you know,
you don't wanna invest too much money into it
and have like all this inventory so you know,
I started small.
I was sewing everything myself so it was easy
to manage the inventory.
But, yes, selling to people on campus
and then, also, I'm a big skateboarder
so through the skateboarding niche market.
- [Charli] Yep!
- [Brett] I was able to connect with them
and sell to them and then just
eventually kept growing.
- [Charli] So how did you,
how did you grow it?
What are some tips there?
- Yeah.
For me, selling..
This was four years ago,
back when brick and mortar stores were a lot more popular.
I mean, they still are but you know it's kinda dying out
where the internet's taking over.
- Yeah, thanks, Amazon.
- Yeah, exactly.
So I was able to get it into a lot of small skate shops
at first.
- Cool!
- And that helped spread the word
because then the employees would talk
about how, you know, it's a local brand
and, you know, it would give the whole story behind it,
the name of my clothing company is called Fortune
and I got the name from wanting to help the less fortunate.
I've done stuff with the homeless here in New York City.
- [Charli] That's cool.
- [Brett] Toys for Tots.
So, having the employees of the stores know that
and sell that to the customer made it a lot easier.
- [Charli] Yeah, like it's got a story behind it.
- [Brett] Exactly, right, yeah.
- This is one of your T-shirts?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Actually like the signature thing that I like to do
with Fortune is like a small front left chest hit
and then like a big,
a big back graphic.
(Charli laughing)
- Okay, so you were selling into stores
and that's how it was like growing.
Now, though, you've got like a warehouse, right?
- Yeah.
- And it's like a big deal?
- Yeah.
- So how did you figure out all that stuff?
'Cause I'm imagining that
you didn't know that before you started.
- Alright, so, you might not know this,
there's a big chain store called Zumiez.
- [Charli] I have heard of them.
- [Brett] They have over 750 locations in America.
They own chains in Canada.
They own a different chain called Blue Tomato in Europe,
and something else in Australia.
So, they're a massive company
and when I got my first big purchase order from them,
I was like, oh man.
I don't have the warehouse.
I'm doing this out of my mom's garage.
I had a purchase order with a cancel date
and I stayed up for three days straight
trying to fulfill this order just like by myself.
Had my friends come over, we had pizza,
they were helping me package stuff.
And it was very stressful.
I was like, alright.
This was the first and last time I'm packaging an order
this size with thousands of shirts
so, after that, I just called everyone I knew
in the industry and now have a whole fulfillment center
that handles everything.
- [Charli] Nice.
- [Brett] So much better.
- This is a design channel
so what about the designs?
How does that process work?
- Yeah, so, I used to design everything
and now I come up with most,
I would say about 90 percent of the ideas.
- Yep.
- And then now I have a full-time designer
who him and I will create a mood board.
- [Charli] Yep.
- [Brett] And you know,
we'll go through Google images and magazines.
And after we have a solid 10 to 20 images
for our next collection,
then from there we start,
like, oh, maybe a shirt like this would be cool
and just get inspiration.
Also something, being in New York City,
so easy to get inspired for new graphics.
- [Charli] Yeah, I found that while I was here.
- [Brett] So easy.
Sometimes when I'm having a creative block,
I just go walk around.
- [Charli] Yeah.
- [Brett] The energy just comes to you.
Yeah, yeah.
Go get a bubble tea and walk around.
It's like oh I can do this for days now.
- So do you wanna like give a plug
where people can go buy your T-shirts?
- Yeah, fortuneny.com.
- There we go.
- Check it out.
- Yeah, check him out.
Thank you for sharing some thoughts.
- Of course, thank you for having me.
- One last tip for like building a clothing brand.
What would be the main thing that you'd say?
- Focus on building the brand
and don't worry about sales at first.
- Kay.
I like that.
- Don't look at, like, your sales numbers at first,
think about how you're growing the brand.
You know, maybe,
I don't know, and especially now,
social media is so important so.
- It's like the brand personality sells the product.
- Yeah, exactly.
- I like it, thank you for being on my channel.
- Of course, thank you for having me.
- There will be links to Brett, his YouTube channel,
and store and everything in the description.
Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it
and I'll see you next time.
Bye.
It's hilarious saying your name
because everyone's going to make
Flight of the Concord jokes in the comments.
- The what?
- Have you ever seen that?
- [Camera Man] Brit.
- You've seen it, Brit.
- Brit.
(everyone laughing)
- What's your name again?
- Bret.
- [Woman] Brit?
- Bret.
- Brit?
- [Bret] Bret.
- Brit like, like Brittany?
- No, B-R-E-T.
- Oh, Bret.
- Yeah.
(casual upbeat tempo)