Even from an early age, I would sell candy, I
would sell sneakers, sell clothes.
I just love the idea of selling something and
getting value in return.
My name is Justis Pitt-Goodson.
I'm the CEO and director of BrownMill Company, and
I live in Newark, New Jersey.
From an early age.
I've always been like a hustler, an entrepreneur.
I don't know where I got it from. Mom says I
got it from my father, who was also an
entrepreneur. So maybe something that's genetic.
But one day, you know, a tutor of mine, she let me
borrow her sewing machine. At that time, I
was really into style. This is around eighth
grade. Seventh, eighth grade. So an idea popped
in my mind, Like Imma make bow ties.
Imma make ties.
So I started to do that.
Back then, you couldn't tell me anything about
these bow ties. These were the hottest thing
ever. Looking back at some of the work, seams
everywhere. It was awful.
The confidence that was instilled in me by, you
know, the people around me. "Keep going.
This is dope Justis." You know, that type of
encouragement was crucial. Then I met my other two
business partners in high school and just kept
developing it from there.
Ironically, I went to school for free because my
mother, she was a police officer at Rutgers New Brunswick.
The college era was crucial.
I went to Rutgers, Newark studying business
management at the business school.
I'm interning with stylists, so I'm learning
different parts of every piece of the business of
fashion. So I think all of that mixed with going
to the business school at the same time really helped
shape an idea and give me vision for what I wanted
this company to look like. I end up not
I ended up not graduating. My whole family is like, "Why?
What's going on?" But for me, it was a time thing.
It was a resource thing.
I could play this out for the next 2 to 3 years, or
I can just use my time a little more wiser if I
know what I want to do.
When I was 20, my mom, she was diagnosed with
breast cancer, I think like stage four.
So it was like pretty intense. Simultaneously,
you know, my lady, she mentions that she's pregnant.
Before I could quit, they fired me from there.
But I was happy, you know, even though my mom
was battling cancer, month-old son at home, I
was like, I know it's going to be okay, you
know, deep down. But ultimately, that's like
the last job I had because after then I was
like, All right. Something has to change.
Simultaneously, the website is going pretty
well. We're getting a lot more serious about pop
ups, our e commerce.
So things are moving in different cycles,
different cylinders all at the same time.
But COVID hit.
My family was ready to sell their home in Piscataway.
The decision behind the subscription model was the
fact that we needed to raise money.
We saw that certain individuals would purchase
from our website consistently.
For instance, every year buy 12 items.
So for the subscription we did a couple of tiers.
I think we did like a $200 level, a $500 level
and like $1,000 level.
A lot of people were into it because, like I said,
they were already spending that money with
us. But at least on our side, if we had all the
money in a lump sum, it would allow us to activate
that capital, to build a system to invest into
machinery or something that would be pivotal to
our growth and scale.
I used to work at a sneaker store down the
street, actually on Market Street.
That was an eye opening experience because one, I
didn't know how much my people- black people, shop
for shoes. Two, I recognized a shopping
culture in Newark that I didn't appreciate.
All the while we're spending all this money,
we're not getting the customer service I think
that we deserve or even the customer thought they
deserved. Opening our shop, it's going to smell
nice. It's going to look nice, it's going to look
clean. We're going to talk well, we're going to
present ourself properly.
Whether you're spending five bucks or $500, you
should leave here feeling appreciated.
You know, dignified.
We take donated things, upcycled things, and we
rework it. Whether it be turning shorts into jeans or jeans
into shorts. Patchwork this, patchwork that.
We love getting funky, you know, with some of that stuff.
We have our mainline stuff our graphic apparel.
You know, we have our line that says “Think Bigger" that
we consistently hold in shop. That's one of our
slogans. We also do a lot of one of one piece with
our tailor shop and production team.
There's honestly no typical day.
My son wakes up at 6 a.m.
He's expecting breakfast.
He's expecting, you know, this and that.
So ultimately, that's making me wake up at six
or 7:00, going to my store at 8:30.
Even though our store opens at 11, you know, now
I have 8:30 to 11 to kind of overprepare for the
day. So because of that, it's made me better.
I try to do the same thing every morning to
standardize my day, plan it out.
From there. BrownMill takes control, whether it
Whether it be some alterations or communicating with my team,
planning for the next event, planning for
our next collection. I'm doing a little bit of
everything each day.
I'm grateful for it.
Newark is a big spot for filming, you know, with
movies or shows.
So a lot of times stylists would come in
and, Oh man, this is here, this is dope.
They'll pull stuff, buy a whole bunch of stuff at
the same time. That's how kind of the Gabrielle
Union/Dwyane Wade thing happened.
The stylist came in and bought a whole bunch of
items, and ultimately Dwyane Wade liked them and
started rocking them. And after a while
Carmelo Anthony and other NBA players.
Andre Iguodala, many more.
Newark is a unique city.
You know, it's so rich in culture, heritage
potential and it's progressing fast.
I want to be able to give a lot of Newarkians
insight of what is possible.
We were young people that started a business and now
have a store. I think there's a lot of young
people here in Newark that might have the same
aspirations but not have a reference point.
I know I didn't, you know, growing up in
Piscataway. That's why I kind of looked elsewhere
and saw that it was possible.
We want to grow the business. We don't want to
grow to be too big, because then we kind of
lose a quality control or a level of coolness, right?
Within five years definitely like to have
another store, maybe two located in growing black
communities that we can serve maybe somewhere in
Atlanta, maybe LA, maybe Accra, Ghana.
One of the biggest things we're working on is
developing more retail partners. For us, we don't
have any retail clients, so the fact that we're
doing those numbers direct to customer, our
million dollar, $2 million goal, I think it's
definitely feasible.
People come in here every day with all types of
characters. And I think one of the things I
realized this year is how important it is to be kind
to people. People can have any type of day
outside of here. So when you're walking out of
here, you're having a better day than when you
came in.