Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Moses.
Matthew, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started the company as a high school senior at B. E. Mays High School in Atlanta. In my junior year, my friend Kwame Thomas and I created a comic strip called THE YARD for the school paper. The strip was popular, as we always found unique ways to include other students in the storylines. As our senior year rolled around, we realized it was May and we didn’t have class T-shirts. I acted quickly and asked Kwame to design a graphic that featured the two lead characters from the comic. We used this design as our senior class T-Shirt. We sold a few hundred within the week. We were in business.
This strategy continued with other high schools in Atlanta, and through college. I attended Hampton University in Virginia. I worked with many clubs and organizations to design and produce their shirts as well. Once I left college in 2007, I partnered with two friends to begin producing concerts back home in Atlanta. We did good work, including the Goodie Mob Reunion, Drake’s first Atlanta performance, and a cluster of shows with an emerging MC from Los Angeles called K.Dot. but I realized again, that we needed a merch component. This led to creating T-Shirts for a few of our shows and then local brands. This gave me the opportunity to connect with artists and young entrepreneurs. In 2008, my Cousin Victor and his friend Darius started a line called BC&D. I stepped in to manage the brand and we gained a great local following. I met Big Krit in passing a few times, and eventually, the BC&D team would go on to design and produce a T-shirt for one of Krit’s first tours. Things progressed from here.
I kept growing the business one project at a time, and then, I started developing brand licensing initiatives in Los Angeles for the Estate of Pimp C. A friend from college saw the old BC&D line on Facebook and asked if I could develop something similar for Google’s 2013 black history campaign. This was a game-changer. The Google experience opened me up to a larger audience and allowed me to test the full capacity of my supply chain. The business went from producing 50 unit projects here and there to producing hundreds and eventually thousands of shirts. As the opportunities grew, I needed help to cover more ground. Darius from BC&D connected me with Keenan Alexander, a young graphic designer from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Over the past eight years, Keenan and I have grown Apparel By SMG tremendously. Our client list includes Google, Facebook, E-Bay, Uber, Bridegstreet Inc., Sony Music, Nesby Phips, Decarlo Tatum Jr. and more. Our brand licensing and management clients include legendary hip-hop duo EPMD, and R&B luminary Leon Ware. Most recently, we launched our house brand Mansfield Outpost, a resort wear concept featuring cut and sew jackets, T-shirts, and hats.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Entrepreneurship is never easy. When I started the business in 2002 being an entrepreneur was not the “cool” thing to do. My Mom would send me job opportunities regularly until about five years ago. Even though she did this out of love, it creates a lot of pressure for you as the Entrepreneur to execute immediately. That’s a good thing. Pressure forces you to get results.
For me, the biggest challenge was not wanting to be constrained to only doing corporate work or only working with musicians At our core, we are a creative agency that uses apparel as our medium for communication and execution. Other agencies use, social media or video, etc, we use apparel. We’ve had to learn how to push our medium so this idea comes through to our clients and to potential clients.
Apparel By SMG – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Apparel By SMG is an apparel design and production company.
We focus on four categories; Corporate lifestyle apparel, private label, brand licensing and developing in-house brands.
Our specialty is making cool culture accessible. For instance, when we develop corporate projects we don’t just slap a logo on a shirt, we design collections that feel more like lifestyle brands that the end-user can incorporate into their day-to-day wardrobe selections.
We are specialists, again we think like a creative agency… so if you need a basic T-shirt, we can totally do that. If you need something really unique for the season premiere of your HBO series we’ve got you covered and we will have in hand by Friday. We truly shine when we work with clients who have an idea for a brand or an existing line but they may need help with all of the creative and production. This is our sweet spot. We are great at identifying the narrative and translating this into something tangible.
We have a very diverse supply chain of black and brown vendors who are also specialists. We understand storytelling and the elements that make people connect with brands. These elements allow us to bring a unique perspective to corporate projects and also allow us to truly understand the needs of an artist or private label clients.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Overall, this is a really exciting time for our company. We’ve had many awesome moments over the years. We worked with Jamie Foxx and his stylist, Tasha Boue’ on a series of Trayvon Martin tribute shirts that he wore in several national TV appearances. This year, we presented our cricket inspired VERDE. A line from Mansfield Outpost at the LA Men’s Market.
However, we recently opened an office in downtown Los Angeles, in the heart of its historic fashion district. This was a culmination of many years of hard work. New challenges will be presented but new opportunities will also be birthed. To date, opening an office in Los Angeles is the proudest moment.
Contact Info:
- Website: shalimarmedia.com
- Email: matthew@shalimarmedia.com
- Instagram: @mansfieldoutpost.com
- Other: mansfieldoutpost.com
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