Indie Clothing Blog

I recently had the chance to interview Rohan Gandhi about his new start-up clothing company Academy Thread. Most of the designs are pretty simple with a solid color and a crest on them, but although simple it works. The shirts look good and I hope to receive a shirt soon too see first hand the quality of the shirts. You can check out the site here and take a look at the shirts in the online store. Check out the interview with Academy Thread below…

When did you start Academy Thread?

I started conceptualizing the idea in December of 07, towards the new year. My band had been in the mid-west recording our debut album for a small indie label, but we had a falling out with them. I was working at an Internet marketing firm, and had to leave that job due to the time off needed to do the album. When I came back, I decided to make good on my ambition of starting a fashionable clothing company.

How many people did it take to start your company? Was the work split evenly or did each person have their own defined role?

It took a whole group! My Father has been an entrepreneur himself, so he helped me with everything financial - how to treat your seed money, how to price, etc. But aside from support from my family, my core group consists of Dawn Calvert, who has been an important part of the whole process, from branding to design, and my friends and bandmates Bob Bates and Dan Teixeira. Each person has tasks and roles they handle, from graphics/web to marketing/branding, to sales and networking.

How much time did it take from the first idea for Academy Thread to putting out your first piece of clothing?

From formulating the idea to actually having the clothing come to fruition, it took about 4 months.

Your designs appear to draw from School and University designs; is this where you got your inspiration from?

Yes, definitely! I’m a New England boarding school kid myself, and I’ve always liked all things prep school - stripes, crests, anything like that.

If so how do you plan to make your designs stand out from what university students wear?

We stand out by combining that kind of regal and classy aesthetic with the kinds of garments and styles we ourselves wear - v-necks, boat-necks, and track jackets are all types of garments we have in our wardrobes.

Everyone hits roadblocks when getting their company off the ground. If there was one thing you could do differently what would it be and how would you do it differently?

I’d watch how I built my marketing plan - the web is a great place to connect with customers, and a great place to sell and promote but you need to do MORE! We’re just now coming up with ways to make inroads on building the brand besides on the Internet. There has to be balance - you have to have GREAT web presence but you need figure out how to build the brand on a street level as well.

You mentioned that Indie Clothing Blog helped you out when getting off the ground, could you explain how?

Indie Clothing Blog basically gave me my starting point! I had no clue about anything, except that I wanted to make clothes. Indie Clothing Blog helped me understand what it takes and what needs to be done - from marketing to selling to retail, all of which we’re working on now as we’re still a really young company.

Where do you plan on taking Academy Thread in the next year? New clothing? New markets? Events?

We’ve got some great stuff going on - we’ve just taken on The Human Abstract for sponsorship. They’re an amazing band from California, signed to Hopeless Records and people may recognize them from the Take Action tour. They have a new release coming out in the Fall, and you can be sure we will be coordinating some contests and such with them. We should have some new pieces coming out in a couple of months, and you should be seeing Academy Thread clothing in online shops and boutique brick and mortar stores too fairly soon. As for events, we’re currently determining what festivals and public events we’ll be attending in the near future.

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me, I think you’ve given others a good insight into some of the complexities of starting and owning a clothing line. I look forward to receiving my shirt soon as for everyone else head over to the site now and get one for yourself.

Since I haven’t posted an interview on the blog since i’ve taken it over I decided to ask Chris Reagan over at Artifex Shirts, a new start up that is specializing in 100% organic cotton clothing, a few questions.  I welcome any feedback about the interview or the questions asked, if you want to see different types of questions asked let me know and i’ll see what I can do.  I plan to do more interviews as I believe it gives some great insight into starting up your own clothing line.  Well enough of that now lets get to why we’re all reading this.

Artifex Shirts is a new start-up offering 100% organic cotton clothing with a goal of offsetting 50,000lbs of CO2 emissions.  Also Artifex Shirts plans to help fund the production of a windmill facility in South Dakota.  They are going to do this by donating $3 from every customer purchase of the Windmill shirt to Native Energy.

Now that we know a little bit about what they offer, here’s a few questions I asked Chris Reagan, one of the co-founders of Artifex Shirts…

What made you decide to start a clothing company?

After a few environmental lectures, I decided that I wanted to do something for the environment. But I wasn’t sure what to do. During my brother’s senior year in high school, he purchased a screen printing kit and made shirts for his friends. After some thinking I put 2 and 2 together. I knew how to build websites and he knew how to print T-shirts. But we didn’t want to just be another T-shirt company, we wanted to make a difference.  That’s when we decided to go the organic route and to contribute a portion of our profits to Native Energy. A clothing company would become our vehicle for making a difference in this world.

What’s been the largest obstacle getting Artifex off the ground?

Starting a business is similar to swimming upstream….there never is a moment where you are able to relax. The moment you do, you begin to lose the progress you’ve been making. My brother is a sophomore at U Buffalo majoring in architecture and entrepreneurship. I’m a first year high school teacher in Boston. Finding free time to get together is tough…but this is what we love to do.

Is there any advice you can give others looking to start their own clothing line?

Starting your own clothing line is demanding yet rewarding. If you want to enter the clothing industry, don’t just print T-shirts — print T-shirts that you love. If you would not wear something you make, then you should not be selling it. The market is already saturated…you need to differentiate yourself from everybody else. Find a niche and run with it. Set a goal and follow it. Be open to ideas, but never lose site of that goal. Never do anything that will compromise it. But most importantly, do what makes you happy. If you love it, then somebody else will.

Do you create your own designs?

Yes, my brother Tim is the creative force behind Artifex. He has created - and will continue to create - every design we print.

What’s the most popular piece of clothing right now

Our most popular shirt can be found here: Windmill on Aloe, We are very proud of our Windmill design. Not only does it convey a strong message and is a great design, but we also donate $3 from every Windmill shirt sold to Native Energy, a company that uses that money to construct a windmill in South Dakota. We are glad to see so many people support this cause.

Where do you hope to take Artifex in say the next 6 months?

Our dream is to have our products carried in clothing shops and boutiques. March 11th will mark the first day a shop will carry our products…and we have a feeling there will be many more to come. But more importantly, we hope that by summer we will have a social project affiliated with every one of our T-shirts. That way, no matter which T-shirt you purchase from Artifex, we will donate a portion towards an environmentally-conscious project.

Thank you for taking the time to answer those questions Chris, anyone looking to pick up some of these T-shirts as well as a few other pieces of clothing head on over to Artifex Shirts now and make your order…

Today I’m debuting a new interview section here at the Indie Clothing Blog and we’re getting started in style. Our first victim is a long time friend of mine, as well as a very successful colleague who I first met when he had his own music television show back in Boston. Welcome Blake Ricciardi, King of the wildly popular Karmaloop Kazbah!

First of all let me thank you Blake for taking time out of your busy day for my blog. Let’s get this going.
I myself am a big fan of the Karmaloop Kazbah, how did you get started with them?

I met the CEO of Karmaloop, Greg Selkoe a few years back when I was running a music television show and we’ve stayed in touch since. He needed someone to run this new concept he developed, the Kazbah. I had been working for myself for years (and considering starting my own clothing line) but the opportunity to run the Kazbah and work with all these clothing labels really excited me. (more…)