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Clothing For Us, By Us
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August 10, 1998: 4:07 p.m. ET
FUBU clothing is a street-level success story with impeccable credentials
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - One of the hottest labels in the $5 billion urban clothing market is FUBU, a $200 million sportswear empire started by a 22-year-old waiter with a talent for sewing named Damon John.
FUBU -- "For Us By Us" -- began six years ago when John and a friend bought a spandex stocking cap from a street vendor, and discovered something remarkable.
"It was about $20," John remembered. "And we said to ourselves, 'We can make this. You know, we can sew it at, you know, at home.' Because I knew how to sew a little bit, you know, from hemming my pants or whatever it may be. So we made the hat. And then we made a couple more. We said, 'You know what? Let's make a couple, and see how they would do if we try to sell them ourselves.' Because they were $20 apiece and we needed the money."
On the first day they sold 40 hats, earning $700, and John was hooked. The self-reliant son of a single mother, he quickly set up an assembly line in his living room in the New York City borough of Queens, enlisting the help of four friends.
Within six months they had sold $10,000 worth of hats and used the money to bankroll a line of shirts, buying them in bulk, affixing their logo, and smartly placing them in rap videos.
But FUBU took off too quickly. By the end of 1993, John had $600,000 in orders to fill but no source of cash to buy the needed material and expand.
"I decided it's either do or die right now. And we needed the capital. And nobody else really cared about what we're doing or actually believed in us," said John. "So what I decided to do at that point was take out a mortgage on my home."
With the $100,000 mortgage, John bought 10 sewing machines, hired four sewers and moved all four friends -- now partners in Team FUBU -- into the house. Each worked at menial jobs during the day and then toiled into the night.
"For the first three years it was, it was a very, very hard struggle. You know, I'm telling you about the good times that happened," said John. "But the rough times . . . like I think in any start-up business almost destroyed us. But because we were all so close as friends, you know, we would push each other."
At the same time the urban sportswear market -- a phenomenon that fueled Tommy Hilfiger's $700 million label and spawned a rash of imitators -- began capturing the imagination of trend-setting youths.
"The urban sportswear is big right now because it really appeals to a customer we haven't appealed to in a long time," said Terry Yanke, divisional manager at Macy's. "The designers of this merchandise are either the customer or know the customer, and are able to come up with some real novel designs."
FUBU's success grew out of its authentic beginnings. It was designed by young men who had street credibility with urban consumers and the legion of suburban teenagers who have adopted urban brands as an essential status symbol.
As FUBU continued its expansion into jeans, shorts and caps, it became a hit, starting at Manhattan's ground zero of hip hop fashion, Dr. Jay's.
"Consumers are finding FUBU attractive, because basically these are four young, talented, black guys from the inner city who are designing," said Damaris Vega, menswear buyer at Dr. Jay's. "And they feel a bond with them. It's not some guys from Beverly Hills that don't know what it is that, you know, our consumer wants. These are guys that lived it, live it and are a part of it."
With street savvy, John gained grass roots marketing muscle by giving the clothes to such fashion-setting stars as Will Smith and Mariah Carey.
Happy to look alive
Perhaps surprisingly, FUBU's style is anything but gloomy, and the clothing is less about the grit of urban living than bright, happy colors.
"When people want to wear something they don't want to look dull. They want to look alive," explained J. Alexander Martin, vice president of FUBU. "And when you have something alive on, you feel happy, you know, be happy to wear it. So we try to make everybody happy and make sure everybody looks good. And they can get that girl, you know."
For a clothing company, scoring a major retail deal is comparable to getting the girl. After selling exclusively in specialty stores nationwide, the label last year landed in Macy's, the mecca of mainstream fashion.
FUBU is comfortably profitable, although John won't disclose figures. He has, however, paid off that $100,000 mortgage, licensed the label with six separate manufacturers, and hopes to launch three FUBU stores by 2001.
The company's Empire State Building headquarters seems a long way from his Queens neighborhood, he said.
"When you sit there now and look at your life now and look at your life in the past, you say to yourself, you've come a long way," said John. "And you didn't really see it coming, because it happened so gradual and you were working every day that you really didn't see it coming. But you turn around and you wake up and you're there." 
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FUBU
Dr. Jay's
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