What I Learned From Meeting With The Founder Of UNRL

Yesterday I had the privilege of being able to meet and sit down with Michael Jordan who is the Founder of UNRL. 

I have followed UNRL for about 4 years now and have always admired their clean look, high quality gear, and their marketing tactics with athletes. If you're wondering how I got this meeting, I just DM'd him asking if he would have time to sit down and answer some questions about the clothing industry. Crazy what opportunities you can have if you just ask.

I want to share how this meeting went because I find it super important to be transparent with the audience I have. The first thing that I told him was that it feels like I have been taking one step forward and three steps back when it comes to the financials of Opinion. We went over the numbers and found that although I have been keeping every single sale, and every single expense, I haven't been calculating the prices of my clothes correctly so that it is possible for me to make profit. I need to change how I look at pricing our clothes so it's not only fair for the customer, but also fair for me as well, and I haven't been doing that.

I know that I have talked about how money is not my motive, but making this my full-time job is, and that means I need to be profitable so that I can first of all, put money back into the company, and then down the road hopefully make this a living for myself.

We also talked about the voice of Opinion and what the goal of this company as a whole is. Every time I give someone the reasoning of why I started Opinion, they always love the story and the meaning behind it, but they find that the website doesn't show that story. and I'm going to take action on that. It's so easy to think that people understand the vision of your brand without explaining it to them because it's your brand, you made it, and you yourself know the exact reasoning behind why you started it, but others don't know that just by seeing a logo. I need to be better at sharing other what Opinion means and sharing peoples stories to explain what Opinion is as a brand.

We also talked about transparency, and how being transparent with your audience is important, and that's exactly what I'm doing with this blog, I'm being open 100% with all of you how this process of starting my own clothing company is going, and this shit is hard. I now see the meaning behind the quote "If it was easy, everyone would do it". I will start to try to ask the audience about the products and share previews of new ideas and ask if they like the design so that before I go into bulk ordering, I know that people like it and will hopefully purchase them so that I don't have a bunch of extra inventory on the shelf (my room in this case).

Those were the main points that I took away, we also talked about pricing, charity work, and how I could improve the website. After this meeting I felt incredibly stressed but incredibly relieved at the same time. I have a problem where I know I'm doing something wrong but continue to do it because I think it will work itself out. I knew after this meeting what I was doing wrong and now know that I need to fix things. It's going to be a lot of work to get back on my feet, but I am willing to put in the work to see the results.

Thank you to Michael for the opportunity to talk, and thank you to everyone who has been supporting me in this journey, I know I always say that, but damn do I really mean it. Remember to always be yourself no matter what anyone else says about you. The only person who can criticize you is yourself. You are your biggest critic.