Young Businessmen Score With "For Us By Us" Clothing Line

Ebony, Oct, 1999 by Kevin Chappell

THE elevator to the FUBU corporate headquarters on the 66th floor of the Empire State Building moves so fast that the ride is over before you realize how high you have climbed. But as soon as the doors open, the significance of the journey is immediately apparent.

In this high-rise bastion of lily-White stodginess, hip-hop tunes spill out of FUBU's mahogany and black marble offices and into the hallway. Within the company's expansive maze of corridors and offices, baby-faced executives wearing baggy jeans, bubble jackets and big-lace sneakers fill million-dollar orders, and four similarly dressed 29-year-old Brothers run the show.

Some have called the story of how Damon John, J. Alexander Martin, Keith Perrin and Carl Brown went from hawking tie-top hats on New York City street corners to heading a global fashion empire "the classic rags-to-riches tale." But it's much more than that. It is in fact a story unparalleled in modern fashion history, and one that holds its own with any business success of the late '90s.

Seven years ago, FUBU was little more than a street hustle. Last year, the company raked in $350 million with a line of 500 garments in more than 5,000 stores in 15 countries. "We all thought we'd have a company and work," says Alexander, who serves as vice president. "But not have a compan-e-e. I spell that with two e's. To take nothing and turn it into something, and to be at this point in our lives where we can sit back and see all the things that we have accomplished feels really good."

Selling everything from jeans to watches to pajamas, FUBU has infiltrated the 'hood, Hoboken, Hong Kong, and every place in-between. Now the company is on the cusp of becoming what few corporations ever become--a household name, and perhaps even a lifestyle.

Leading the charge are the four Brothers from Queens who are looking to overthrow Hilfiger, Lauren and the other European fashion kingpins who have long held the world captive under their thimbled thumbs. "A lot of designers feel like their ideas can change the world," says John, FUBU's president. "One designer who is really in love with fashion won't take the advice of anybody else. His mind-set is, `I want to make this, and that's it, and everybody's going to love it.' That's not the way run our business. It's a `majority roles' situation and we listen to our consumers in regard to what they want. And besides, we live a fairly normal life and we know what we like when it comes to fashion. We might be a little off sometimes, but our little off is better than the other guy's best."

Confident talk from a guy who was once a waiter at Red Lobster. In 1992, while waiting tables at the seafood restaurant, John began to make extra money by making tie-top hats. Carl would cut the simple squares of fabric, and John and the other guys would sell them at concerts, sporting events or anywhere there was a group of Brothers. One day, they sold $800 worth of hats and knew they were on to something.

The name FUBU--an acronym meaning "For Us By Us"--was created one day while the guys were just sitting around kicking it. "When we were making the hats, a lot of people were making those same hats. So we figured, what can we do to make ours different? So we decided to put a name on it," John says. "We wanted to come up with an acronym meaning something. It had to be a name, a name that you hadn't heard before, but a name that you would definitely remember. You didn't know if it was Italian or Japanese or American. So that's how we came up with the name."

It was Martin, then a student at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, who persuaded the guys to make a variety of other garments in addition to the hats.

The group's first break came in 1993 when they convinced rapper L.L. Cool J., a neighborhood acquaintance John had known since high school, to wear FUBU garments on a magazine photo shoot. Then other rappers, like Brand Nubian, began to wear FUBU clothes in videos and at concerts.

After becoming aware of the street acceptance of their creations, the four founders flew to a garment trade show in Las Vegas in 1994 in hopes of snagging a retail account. With no money to purchase a booth, they handed out postcards that invited buyers to come to their hotel room a few miles outside the city to see their garments, which consisted of several embroidered and screen-printed T-shirts, a few sweatshirts and polo-style fleece tops.

When the trade show ended, they had written $300,000 in orders. "Booking turned out to be the easy part," Martin says. "But it was an ordeal to make those 15 pieces. Now we had to make 20,000 to 30,000 pieces, and we had no idea how we were going to do it."

Money was the first thing they knew they needed. John took out a second mortgage on his two-story home, and turned the first floor into a factory assembly line. "We had these ladies come in and cut and sew fabric all day long," John says. "At the same time, we took out an ad in the New York Times. It said: `Million dollars in orders. Need finances.'"