How We Started

Posted by Malik Elliott on

Lost Hearts started in a chipotle parking lot after football practice in February 2021. My boy and I were talking about business ideas and said how cool it would be to own a clothing brand. We both wanted to start clothing brands but did not know where to start. I used to sell shoes, so I had $800 to invest in my brand. So we went to Michaels and I bought a heat press machine, and Jack bought a Cricut cutter. We brought all the new equipment to Jack's basement and plugged in the equipment. I had no logo and little to no experience creating a logo. So I downloaded an app called “Bazzart” and within 1 hour I created the first-ever logo. After the logo was made, I grabbed an old black Nike hoodie uploaded the logo to the Cricut, and started cutting the logo out. Once the design was finished we peeled it off and heat-pressed it on a hoodie. The hoodie looked super cool so I took a picture of the finished product on social media and my peers loved it. This made me extremely motivated to release my first collection of hoodies. It showed me I had some demand for these hoodies. I started with 25 blank black hoodies I ordered from a wholesale website. Now I had to make a website. I was 16 and could not use Shopify due to the requirements being 18+. So we found out we could use Godaddy and sell products without being 18. I had a hard
time finding blanks due to all the stringless hoodies being sold out. Once we found the manufacturer we ordered the hoodies. I had no computer. I used my school Chromebook to make my very first website. I had a lot of problems creating the site due to a lot of applications being blocked on the school servers. So I had to use my phone to finish the site. Once it was finished It was time to start printing hoodies. I was spending 6-8 hours a day creating these hoodies by hand. The process was extremely humbling and fun because I was using my hands to create an art piece. While I would iron Lost Hearts started in a chipotle parking lot after football practice in February 2021. My boy and I were talking about business ideas and said how cool it would be to own a clothing brand. We both wanted to start clothing brands but did not know where to start. I used to sell shoes, so I had $800 to invest in my brand. So we went to Michaels and I bought a heat press machine, and Jack bought a Cricut cutter. We brought all the new equipment to Jack's basement and plugged in the equipment. I had no logo and little to no experience creating a logo. So I downloaded an app called “Bazzart” and within 1 hour I created the first-ever logo. After the logo was made, I grabbed an old black Nike hoodie uploaded the logo to the Cricut, and started cutting the logo out. Once the design was finished we peeled it off and heat-pressed it on a hoodie. The hoodie looked super cool so I took a picture of the finished product on social media and my peers loved it. This made me extremely motivated to release my first collection of hoodies. It showed me I had some demand for these hoodies. I started with 25 blank black hoodies I ordered from a wholesale website. Now I had to make a website. I was 16 and could not use Shopify due to the requirements being 18+. So we found out we could use Godaddy and sell products without being 18. I had a hard
time finding blanks due to all the stringless hoodies being sold out. Once we found the manufacturer we ordered the hoodies. I had no computer. I used my school Chromebook to make my very first website. I had a lot of problems creating the site due to a lot of applications being blocked on the school servers. So I had to use my phone to finish the site. Once it was finished It was time to start printing hoodies. I was spending 6-8 hours a day creating these hoodies by hand. The process was extremely humbling and fun because I was using my hands to create an art piece. While I would iron on the hoodies Jackson would help me fold them so we can do more in a shorter period. We started to run out of vinyl & had to run back and forth to the store and buy more. After we finished the hoodies, the first collection of hoodies I dropped sold out within a few days. I had the option to do local delivery. I would drive around all over my town and drop off people's orders the same day! After my first drop, I was extremely motivated to keep going with my brand. That is how Lost Hearts got started.on the hoodies Jackson would help me fold them so we can do more in a shorter period. We started to run out of vinyl & had to run back and forth to the store and buy more. After we finished the hoodies, the first collection of hoodies I dropped sold out within a few days. I had the option to do local delivery. I would drive around all over my town and drop off people's orders the same day! After my first drop, I was extremely motivated to keep going with my brand. That is how Lost Hearts got started.

After our customers got their hoodies they started posting and tagging us on their stories, this helps our brand a lot because it shows real people are supporting us. This was a domino effect that led to us selling out our first drop after this it became football season, and I had to stop doing the brand due to football taking up the majority of my time. This carried on during the whole year. Until junior year of high school came around and I did my second collection which also sold out. Not so easily through...  A lot of learning experiences to sell out because I realize that hoodies were not gonna sell themselves. Unless I market them so I had to tell people about my brand and talk to them to get them to support it. After this sold out, it was my senior year of high school and I was playing football during football season. I was so excited to start my brand back up due to my not being able to do it. I drop T-shirts after the season this is my first time buying a big shipment of 350 T-shirts. Once they came in I was selling all of them to my classmates until I realized something was missing from the T-shirts. Now I had to go back to the Screen print shop and get them fixed. This was a learning experience because I had to be able to communicate with my customers to tell them that there will be a delay in shipment. Also being able to communicate with my manufacturer about the problem. Once the shirts were finished, my friend Brice dropped off all of the orders later that day. During school, we were selling to our classmates heavily. After school was done it was summertime, and we sold out the shirts completely at "Geneva Swedish Days" local fair. This was during summer after this I had to restock. I decided to move to Memphis Tennessee for college. Now I am a freshman in college. I still run my clothing brand and promote it at different colleges, also do pop-up shops all over us..

 

 

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