Today we’d like to introduce you to Vincent & Jasmine James. Them and their team share their story with us below:
The idea for Fira X Wear was sparked on a pandemic walk in the park between founders Vincent and Jasmine. When they wanted to get away on a vacation to Mexico, Vincent thought it would be a great idea to mix cosplay with swimwear. Jasmine made ‘beach episode’ designs of her favorite characters to test the appeal on social media. After trolls online commented on how swimwear couldn’t be cosplay, the two decided to build a brand based on the idea to prove the naysayers wrong while keeping ethical working conditions and sustainability in mind. While the designs can be utilized for cosplay, the main focus was to create a Premium Pop Culture brand.
We just launched in the Summer of 2022 and are so excited at the reception that both our summer and winter collections have had thus far. We’d love to expand our business even further and partner with major entertainment brands in the future for more in-depth crossover fashion collections.
We feel that the creative space has always been what we are the most passionate about and is ingrained in the fabric of our business as well as throughout our lives. Jasmine, Fira X Wear’s Chief Creative Officer, is mostly known for her cosplay and costume-making online as @CutiepieSensei and has been featured on Disney+, SyFy, and Prime Video’s social media channels for her costume designs. By day, she is a concept artist that creates skins for the video games SMITE and Paladins at Hi Rez, a local Atlanta video game studio. Being the Chief designer for all of Fira X Wear’s clothing was a natural next step, combining her design skills for both video game characters and costumes with her love of pop culture. Vincent, the Chief Operations Officer and other half of Fira X Wear, has a background in Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech but has always had a passion for the intersection between technology and art. While his experience mostly lends itself to managing the customer experience, manufacturing, and web design aspects of Fira X Wear, he is able to let his creative side shine through his management of Fira X Wear’s social pages. While he excels in engineering and technology, nothing exceeds his passion for creative writing, cosplay photography, and pop culture. His passion for pop culture led him to introduce Jasmine to cosplay and conventions when they first started dating. This eventually started them both down the path of creating both CutiepieSensei and Fira X Wear. The two founders, now married for over four years, knew that Fira X Wear was the perfect culmination of their skills and passions.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Running our business could only be described as a wonderful challenge. It is wonderful in a sense that we as a married couple have full control over the design, look, feel, and operation of every aspect of Fira X Wear. We get to dream up designs, sample them, test them, produce them, and then get them into the hands of people all over the world. But therein also lies the extreme challenge for a two-person company who also have their own day jobs. Jasmine is a Concept Artist by day and Vincent is an Engineering Manager in the energy space. Managing both of those demanding jobs in addition to building and running a fashion company have been a whirlwind. We actually began building the business from scratch a year before launching in the Summer of 2022 where we had to design our collection, select an ethical manufacturer, refine clothing samples, build our website and social media pages, design packaging, and complete a promotional photoshoot among the typical business responsibilities. Once we launched, we took on new challenges with managing marketing and customer interaction.
We definitely have a top 5 lessons learned from both starting the business and launching the business to the public:
1. Most of the time, people who are extremely vocal and opinionated online are not paying customers. Listen closely to your paying customers and filter out the noise.
2. Networking is not only important in the corporate world but also in the entrepreneurship world. We’ve gotten so much wisdom and advice from mentors and friends who are entrepreneurs as well. Also, a big part of our marketing push has come from friends who are influencers on social media.
3. You will never be able to predict which of your product offerings or services will be a best seller until you sell it. So get your idea to market as fast as possible and start selling so you can learn what your customers want.
4. The customer is not always right, but they always have a point. Always listen to your customers. Even if you don’t agree with their opinion, there is always something of value you should take from customer compliments and complaints to improve your product and business.
5. Temper your expectations and never give up! It sounds cliche, but it’s true. You can’t be a super successful business on day one, no matter how great your product is. Building a business is a marathon and not a sprint. It takes time to build a customer base and it’s best to create lots of smaller goals leading up to big goals instead of dreaming about only the big goals. We’d love for our business to be so successful that we could take it full-time, but we’ve learned that doesn’t happen overnight. And in order to reach that 4,5, or 10 years mark where businesses truly shine, you can’t give up and you have to be creative in your marketing and message.
In short, some major struggles include:
1. Developing a relationship with a good manufacturer and keeping them on a release schedule
2. Managing social media pages from a business perspective
3. Correctly anticipating consumer demand(We’d all probably love the answer to this one). We have many designs that have almost sold out, but that’s balanced by designs that have not sold much at all.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Fira X Wear?
Fira X Wear is the very first premium, pop-culture fashion brand. Think Ivy Park meets Funko with a healthy dose of body positivity and ethical business practices. Up until now, pop culture clothing has more so been merchandise that only appealed to hardcore fans of a franchise, but Fira X Wear puts fashion forward principles and quality first, creating beautiful pieces that anyone would love to wear, but hold a special place in the hearts of true fans. We are extremely proud of our launch as we’ve been open for around six months but ranked in the top 1% of Shopify e-commerce sites created in 2022. Our first swim collection, the New Challenger Collection, has also been embraced by women of all shapes and sizes for both beach trips and cosplay photoshoots. And many of our winter designs, which were recently announced, have almost sold out for both men and women. Getting positive feedback on our quality and customer service in addition to seeing all the beautiful pictures our customers share really keeps us going and reinforces our passion for our business.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Please follow us on social media or our e-mail list for any updates on sales and new collections. We may be a small two-person brand for now, but our designs, quality, and customer service rival the big brands!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.firaxwear.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firaxwear/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firaxwear
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@firaxwear
Image Credits
Personal Photo: Ben Rollins(Photographer) Fashion Photos: Dru Phillips(Photographer) & Vincent James(Photographer)
