As a survivor of the “scene” era and a fan of entrepreneurship, I’ve been following of indie clothing company Glamour Kills since they started making waves on Myspace back in 2008 or so. While there were a ton of DIY clothing brands who popped up from that world, drawing from the pop-punk/metalcore/etc lifestyle as inspiration, Glamour Kills was always in my opinion the best and it’s one of the few brands that actually survived the demise of what I like to call “The Neon Years.”
What was once a little brand that only scene kids on MySpace knew about is now a global brand with distribution via huge retailers like Pacsun and Zumiez– not bad for a brand that was started by founder Mark Capicotto when he was barely out of high school! I am also a veteran of the apparel industry (I did marketing at Abercrombie & Fitch), so I know firsthand how incredibly difficult it is to accomplish what Mark has been able to do with GK, so I wanted to get into some of the parts you don’t hear about very often: the nitty-gritty, day-to-day operational challenges of running a clothing brand.
For example, how do you know what’s going to be cool next season? How do you decide how many units to order of a t-shirt design? How do you get stuff on the shelves of a retailer like Zumiez? What happens when 20,000 units of your merchandise gets stuck on a boat coming over from China? These are the realities of the apparel business, and if you want to know the answers, then check out the podcast!
[powerpress]
Follow GK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram // Follow Mark on Twitter
