New beginnings…

So some of you may or may not know, but The Elegant Scoundrel was founded as a clothing brand. This blog was originally created to chronicle the life of an up and coming company trying to make it in an increasingly difficult industry to make it in.

 But somewhere along the line, things got scary. It’s sometimes pretty hard to admit that the times are hard, and it’s not pretty out there. The scene for a fledgling company is pretty grimey. That’s the only word I can use to describe it.

 But that doesn’t quite describe the full scope of it. So I’ll kind of explain The Elegant Scoundrel story, and give you guys kind of a behind the scenes look at where it all started and where we see it going.

 The beginning of 2008, I had an idea. I was working in graphic design as a intern for a company called IFDA. Basically, an advertising agency for niche marketing, I spent 30 hours a week honing my graphic design skills, and under the tutelage of who I consider to be one of my greatest friends, Jimmy Wardlaw, I was able to learn a great deal about not only design, but about business, and the economics of it all.

 Eight months into the job, I was laid off. During that time, I had been experimenting with Adobe Illustrator, and had gotten pretty good at it by my own admission. So testing my abilities, I entered several tee shirt competitions like Threadless and Design by Humans, confident in my abilities to blow the competition away.

Fail.

I quickly realized that there was a certain style to each competition that frankly, I wasn’t driven or motivated enough to imitate. So I decided to try my hand at something a little more safe. A site called Redbubble, which is basically a print on demand service, was referred to me by a friend. I submitted a design, one which I called E=MC Bananas, not really expecting much. Well within an hour, I got an email that someone had purchased a shirt. I was so excited that I jumped up from my desk in a victory pose, simultaneously breaking a lamp with my outstretched arm.

 After that, my Redbubble shirt quickly became one of the best all time sellers on their site, and earned me a pretty good amount of money. I decided that I wanted to create a tee shirt brand, but really didn’t know what it would be called or what it would be about. I came up with the name Villain, but was quickly met with a large quantity of problems as the name was far too similar to a couple already existing companies. So with that, I took my brainstorming to a site of like minded tee enthusiasts named Emptees, and a user by the name of Quakerninja gave me a few synonyms for ‘Villain’, and one of those happened to be “Elegant Scoundrel”.

 I immediately love it, and spent an entire day coming up with brand, backstory, pretty much everything I thought a good company needed.

From that point, it was a bit of a stalemate for a while, as i have many ideas for what tees I would print, but honestly no money to do so, as well as no real confidence in my work. So I sat on several designs for a while, until finally I came up with about 2 designs that I felt were strong enough to send to print.

 So, using a referral from another artist, I used a printing company who shall remain nameless in Atlanta, where I resided at the time. I cannot properly express in words how much crap I went through. Looking back on it, I can now honestly say that part of the blame lay in my own hands, but the company I used was all too quick to sell me the dream of a perfect print job but were not able to meet those lofty goals in any sense of the word. So after printing 2 separate designs, I called it quits with them, having lost nearly a grand in the scheme.

 I kicked around for quite some time, not sure of what I really wanted to do with the whole thing, as I hadn’t had much success thus far, and not many sales either, and then I made the very blog you read now, which by some stretch of the imagination was actually pretty well received. Surprised by any measure of success, I continued to post new articles, pictures, really anything that interested me, and a steadily a fan base grew.

 Then I came into contact with a few great people. Firstly, Alval, the creative mastermind behind Homeroom Clothing, offered me encouragement and tips in ways that I can never properly thank him. He really gave me an insiders look at making a fledgling company work, and even though I am still in the process of applying all of his great advice, I know that most of it is going to be extremely helpful when put into practice.

 Another person who has inspired me is none other than Benny Gold, who I have steadily watch grow from making a few hats and shirts to now having a boutique line and a full lineup. It shows that it is possible with the right connections and determination to make it happen, even in this in-climate economic conditions.

So now I sit, with a new gameplan, and a new resolve to get things up and going and make my mark on the already saturated clothing industry. Will it work? I haven’t the foggiest. But I know that its gonna be worth all the effort, time, and resolve I have to make it succeed.

I hope this story can one day be read as the beginning of the ES success story. But until then, this is my story. Hope you enjoy watching it unfold.

- Julian Cooper

The Elegant Scoundrel