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We Got More Glocks and Teks Than You Philly's GlocaWear talks shop with Loosie. The success of urban-oriented clothing companies has always relied on their ability to keep their ear pressed to the proverbial street. Names from the past elicit giggles and embarrassing memories of polka dots and purple overalls -- and we'll put pics of you in CrossColors, Used Jeans and Boss on the SummerJam screen. Glocawear, a Philly-based clothing company who has carved out a niche for themselves by marketing their gear as "the hardest," makes sure to keep their mind in the gutter. It is run by two men whose grind and business savvy have translated into success, exhibited in weekly sales that reportedly reach $10,000. Despite having a name that may be considered by some as controversial, the GlocaWear clothing company has moved units in the stores of Philadelphia and will most likely be coming to a 'hood' near you. Their combination of "gritty urban images, hip-hop phrases and a socially conscious message," is giving a new meaning to the "street edge" cliche. With their "no holds barred" approach, GlocaWear is truly the "anti" to the often glitzy urban fashion trends. We recently had the opportunity to chat with the founding partners of GlocaWear. They're in the hood 'cause they're hood. LOOSIE: First of all, uh, let's get the names of the GlocaWear founding members... Toucan Sam:The founders of GlocaWear are myself (Toucan Sam) and Big Ben, my partner. L: Alright, Toucan, um, I wanna, give me a little bit of the history of GlockaWear, like how you guys came up... TS/Big Ben: Alright, GlocAWear, we began it as a clothing store up in Philly, um, we don't have that store anymore, but we had it a few years ago. Actually we were selling cds and shit, and we had put the image of a gun on a shirt and asked niggas if they wanted to buy it, and they did. We couldn't keep that one style in demand, people kept coming up to the store like, y'all got more shirts?", so we had to create more & more designs and the word trickled out to the point were really checking for us like "yo, these niggas got something nice here", you know... L: I remember, I came down to your store with um, my cousin, Big Al and Kool G-Rap. Um, it was a nice setup you had there... TS/BB: Yeah, well now we sell the shirts wholesale now, we don't have a store we just got a little warehouse now where we print up the shirts and ship 'em to stores. L: Oh yeah, that's cool. Well, tell me a little bit about your vision, where you guys are trying to take this? TS/BB: Yeah, what it is, it's like with our shirts, you know the imagery, guns & whatnot, coupled with hip-hop sayings on it but now we're expanding, you know we got jerseys, basketball, football jerseys and we got like numbers of guns on 'em. You know like the jersey got AK on it and the number is 47, or it'll have the number 9 and the name on the back will be Milli, like team GlockaWear. We're expanding on the product and we're expanding our market. We gonna hit down South and the New York area and take this thing as far as we can. L: Uh yeah, that jersey idea is pretty hard. TS/BB: It's real street-like, real gritty like, you know, but witty though..... L: Ha, ha,(me chuckling) yeah that’s cool. TS/BB: ....and what it is, it's like all our shirts have our logo and on our logo it says that "homicide is the # 1 cause of death amongst black youth, be easy, it's not them that’s killing us, it's us killing us." .... L: OK, Ok. TS/BB:....that's just to justify all the guns and stuff you know, sometimes it takes a negative to draw you to a positive side.... L: Yeah I see, you draw 'em in with the images and you got a message too, that's whats up. Do you guys' ever get any, like flak, from you know the powers... TS/BB: Well not really, you know we deal with like 20 stores in Philly and one of the stores was like a congressman came in and had a little problem with them but besides that, none really. L: Yeah those fucking congressmen, cocksuckers that they are....Anyways you guys have a message behind it so no one can really say much negative. TS/BB: Yeah, you know we don't only guns, I mean we got like over 500 designs, some are guns, some are just real hip-hop stuff...its not restricted to just guns with GlocaWear, the themes just have to be "street"....for real, GlockaWear is like the hardest shit ever in fashion. Nobody can fuck with us and if you in the streets or if you're in the clubs and love that hip-hop shit, you gonna feel us. As long as the streets feel us, we gonna do good. L: Yeah that's real cool. I think that's kind’a what fashion needs right now, a good dose of "streets", something with a real street edge to it, what with everything being so high fashion and "Hollywood". But um, as far as marketing goes, how do you guys like get your stuff into stores, what's the most successful tactic for that sort of thing? L: Cool, the way it sounds, the thing's jumping off really well... TS/BB: Like I said, we've been doing this for like three years and it's starting come along a little bit now...you know...you gotta crawl first. L: Definitely, definitely, speaking of that process, and you know, once you're up and running, a lot of smaller clothing businesses, once they reach that point where they're doing really well, they may end up selling the name to a larger corporation and their faces will still be associated with the product but the product may change. How do you feel about that? TS/BB: Well, to tell you the truth, you get into this because you want to make money, it is a business and that is an aspect of business so if someone was to approach us and wanted to get with us on that aspect, then we would have no problem with that. L: What about the creative side though, would you allow your stuff to be compromised? TS/BB: As far as the creative side, we have enough designs to last like another two years, I mean, we're not even putting them out yet... L: Oh yeah? TS/BB: We sit down and create designs every day, some we put out immediately, others we hold for later. L: Take us through a typical day with you guys, a lot of people don't realize how much work it is to run a business... TS/BB: A typical day for us at GlocAWear, well, we will meet up and have breakfast in the morning set the agenda, then head into the office to set up meetings with suppliers, etc, then we go out to stores to check up on our accounts that we have, later, if we have to meet suppliers, we go and meet them and pick up materials, then around one or two it's back to the warehouse to press up the day's shirts, around five or six o'clock we go out to the streets again for more marketing, networking, collections, etc, youknowhatimean, our day begins at nine and doesn't end 'til eleven or twelve at night, you know? L: Yeah, I guess you gotta really love the grind I mean it's like, real work, huh. TS/BB: No doubt, that's the truth, daddy. TS/BB: The main thing would be is that you gotta keep re-inventing yourself. You might put out a couple of designs or shirts and they might ride for a couple of months or whatever but, everybody's always looking for something new. You gotta keep re-inventing yourself. Just keep changing it up. L: Right, right. That's gonna bring me to one more question, I just wanna know, how do you deal with like bootleggers, the copyrights, that sort of thing? TS/BB: I feel like there are no rules to GlocAWear. Like I said before we got like 500 designs and some are like designs with dead bodies on the shirt...I feel as though if you want street you can't get any more street than that....most designers would be scared to put that kind of thing on a shirt but as the owners of GlocAWear we can put that out, like we got a shirt with two dead bodies on it that says, "Just when you thought it was safe to bootleg our shit..." (we all laugh) Youknowhatimean....and I think from that picture you get the message that these guys ain't playing, they serious about their business, I mean it's tit for tat but you gotta let 'em know....and uh, another thing I wanted to note on the marketing end is that we have mad celebrities wearing the shirts, we got Freeway wearing one of the shirts on the last Source (hip-hop rag), and the Source before that, Malice of the Clipse is rocking a GlocAWear shirt, when Allen Iverson was in all that gun trouble a while back, when he went to court he rocked one of our shirts, and the Daily news did a write up about the shirts, youknowhatimean, I did a shirt for Bernard Hopkins, we did some for the YoungBloods, we met the Neptunes and gave them some shirts and of course, G-Rap reps the shirts, we met Snoop, we met everybody. If they don't love it we at least hit 'em the head, it carries on the product keeps the name out there.... L: That's great marketing strategy... TS/BB: We also gotta website up it's www.GlocAWear.net. It's under construction now but you can log on and see where we're coming from. L: Do you guys have stores that you can be found in? I know you said you do wholesale. TS/BB: Well you can order on the website, it should be ready within the week but as far as stores we have them in Players in Harlem, on 145th and Broadway, in Corona, Queens we have them in Alls Right, & the majority of the local stores in Philly. L: Ok I'm gonna wrap up with that, thanks for the interview Toucan. Best of luck with GlocaWear. TS/BB: No doubt, thank you, daddy. Streets stay tuned. One. L: One. For more info on Glocawear, check http://www.glocawear.net/ Read more articles in Interviews » |
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