Starting Your Startup

CEO
FUBU
New York, New York

You have to start with knowledge of your consumers. In our case, we are the consumers: We live the same life. It was easy to jump in because we had that knowledge. We knew that there was a huge void: We saw that there were no young African-American designers -- even though young African-Americans spend heavily on fashion.

From the start, we also dealt with consumers one-on-one. We learned a lot that way: How do you find that magic price point at which everything starts to move? How important is quality to consumers? Will they come back again, or were they just buying a novelty item?

Exposure was critical for us. We were the first clothing maker to use music videos to market our products, asking celebrities and friends like LL Cool J to wear our clothes in their videos. That's the best way. We would place a garment in a video and have it running as a "commercial" on TVs throughout the whole country. As a result, we got a free endorsement.

FUBU (www.fubu.com) sells its clothing through more than 500 stores, including Macy's, Foot Locker, and Nordstrom. Recently, FUBU expanded its line to include swimwear, eyewear, and timepieces. Daymond John started FUBU in 1992, creating tie-top hats embroidered with the "FUBU" logo and selling them from his home. Later, he added baseball caps, T-shirts, hockey jerseys, and other items to his collection.