Fukitt clothing Blog

Jan 10 2012

Preparing for the MAGIC Tradeshow


We have been so busy just trying to prepare to exhibit at the MAGIC Tradeshow.  Everyone in the clothing industry knows how big this event is...where the buyers and sellers of small and big companies come together.  I've done other tradeshows before but I've never exhibited at this one.  As we mentioned in our previous blog, we had originally applied to exhibit in the POOL section of MAGIC.  The account executives there approved us for the Street section and they are very insisting that we belong there.

We've never even attended the event as a spectator so we really have no clue what to expect.  We're not sure if they are only taking advantage of our ignorance of the show or if they are truly marketing geniuses who know really know their buyers' behaviors.  The Street section is significantly more expensive but we definitely expect to gain more traffic.  We just feel very intimidated by the idea of being in this section because we will probably be surrounded by nationally established brands.

We were debating on whether or not to proceed with exhibiting at the tradeshow because we felt that we are not established enough to compete at that level.  But of course, the "fuck it" attitude overwhelms our worries so we said, "You know what...let's just fuckin' go for it.  Maybe they're right and we get acquainted with the right connections."

For the past couple of weeks, we have been creating different designs that we hope will be attractive to buyers.  We developed a variety of styles that might cater to different venues.  We've been very hesitant in acquiring accounts because we didn't feel that the industry was ready for our brand...but times have changed...and we're hoping that we're finally introducing ourselves to the masses at the right time.

I believe that the market segments are definitely changing.  Not only has the extreme sports consolidated their cultures but new companies are incorporating lifestyles that overlaps into and from the urban culture.  Back in the day, there were people who felt very uncomfortable fitting into a specific culture because they didn't want to be called "posers".  Today, we don't really have that anymore because these cultures have integrated into one broad culture with multiple interests.

We are definitely hopeful that this is true because we believe that we provide a truly universal brand that can transition into several markets without being tagged as "selling out".  We hold true to our belief and mission of inspiring and motivating people to live life without regret and to accept challenges worth the risk.  We don't stray away from our core beliefs and people find our brand very authentic.

It's only a month away and we're still not sure about how we plan to design our booth to enhance the awareness for our brand.  We are just finishing up the line sheets now, which contains pictures and relevant information for each design.  We still have to order stickers and other advertising specialties to provide as free give-aways.  We were going to take some professional photo shots of models wearing Fukitt Clothing for our look book but we're just going to wing it with some pictures with a regular camera.

Anyway, we'll definitely keep you guys informed of our experience about everything going on with Fukitt Clothing.  We truly appreciate your support and we are going to need as much help from you more than ever!

Live life...

Ricardo J. Zulueta, Jr.
CEO/Founder
Jan 02 2012

A New Year with a New Attitude

Well, another year is upon us and we plan on making some very big moves.  Since the beginning, people have told me not to pursue Fukitt clothing due to its potentially offensive name, which they thought will never appeal to the mainstream distributors.  I've always thought that distributors don't have the power to choose what consumers want, it's the distributors who must cater to what the customer wants.  I've always known that people were very attracted to my brand and that it was going to be a difficult challenge to grow my clothing line.  

I'm not going to lie...  There were plenty of moments that I felt discouraged and almost gave up.  But I was always re-ignited by my fans and supporters by telling me their stories about how strangers comment on their Fukitt shirts in random places or how the "fuck it" attitude that we promote helped them through rough situations.  In my self-motivational pep talks, I said to myself, "Who am I to promote taking risks and not giving up and then giving up on my pursuit of growing my clothing company?!"

I've experienced so much and learned a lot throughout all these years and I'm glad that I have the perseverance to keep going...because things have changed a lot in the past decade.  I remember when I couldn't even pass out flyers at a dive bar just because of the name of my brand.  Now, I'm able to post flyers and huge banners at public events that promote Fukitt Clothing.  I always thought that I promoted an authentic image about living life to the fullest.  Back then, there were no "lifestyle" clothing companies or at least the industry did not have that category in place yet.

Today, there are mainstream distributors that carry clothing lines with extreme images, which I feel is so much worse than the potential offensiveness that my brand might portray.  For example, I've seen apparel that say, "Fuck the world" or images of lesbians kissing each other.  It's funny that distributors thought that my brand was offensive when I promote a more positive message than most of the brands they carry.  It was only offensive with their choice of pronouncing my brand name as "fuck it" because that all goes away when it is pronounced properly and grammatically as "few kit".

Anyway, I love that the tolerance of potentially offensive brands have now gone mainstream because I feel that I can finally penetrate into the shops feeling even slightly conservative.  Their perception changes dramatically when they find out exactly what our mission is for our brand, which is to inspire and motivate people to live life without regret and accept challenges worth the risk.

We are going to take you guys through this fun ride as we attempt to finally acquire retail accounts across the nation!  Our first move is attending the MAGIC tradeshow in Las Vegas in February.  We've created plenty of designs and we will be hiring sales reps to gain small retail accounts in other areas.

This is going to be a very exciting year for us so I hope we can rely on your continued support to help us grow and spread our message.  We look forward to keeping everyone in the loop with the challenges ahead...  Thank you again for all of our supporters.  We REALLY couldn't have kept going without you.

Sincerely,
Ricardo J. Zulueta, Jr.
CEO/Founder
Dec 29 2011

Are we in right category for the MAGIC tradeshow?


So, we are going to be attending the MAGIC Tradeshow for the first time in February 2012.  We originally submitted our application to be approved for the Pool Tradeshow, which I thought was meant for up-and-coming companies but not very established companies.  We have been approved by the exhibitor account executives to be in the Street section.  We argued with them that this might not be a good fit because we saw ourselves to be more related to the action sports culture, which is the S.L.A.T.E. section, which is described as "a curated gathering of the most progressive streetwear labels representing the underground surf, skate, art and music communities—from indie to established."

I understand that Fukitt clothing represents a lifestyle that overlaps into other cultures and market segments but I just don't understand why they keep insisting that we should be in the Street section.  I know that there are apparel companies in that section that are not a typical urban clothing line, like Hart and Huntington or Famous Stars and Straps, but how do I fit in with this more than the extreme sports culture?

I believe that Fukitt Clothing has only been an extension of myself and my lifestyle.  I grew up skateboarding and have always surrounded myself more with people within that culture.  Even though I am very open to listening to urban style music and people, I find myself just more comfortable around the surf-culture or lifestyle.

However, I do know that my brand has a better chance of relating with the urban market based on Calum Richardson's insight:

"Volcom, Quiksilver, etc. have retrospectively gone after the surf, skateboard, BMX market from a purely commercial perspective and it is proving difficult for them to translate overtly strong surf values and twist them to be relevant to the inland, urban market.  Of course, on the West coast and Florida, people know or were part of the organic connection between surfing and skateboarding.  But to a kid who has never seen a wave in his life, those roots are more or less irrelevant.  Add to that the fact that skateboarding, BMX, etc. are independent cultures and it increased the difficulty for these brands to get the foothold that they would like in urban/tribal markets."

We are still hoping to be placed in the S.L.A.T.E. section but if we end up in the Street section, we are going to proceed with confidence and hope that we have a higher success rate based on the expertise of the exhibitor account executives.  We'll definitely keep you guys informed as to what we experience at this tradeshow.
Sep 07 2011

Mountain Mayhem 2012


This is one of the best snowboarding/skiing trips on the East Coast.  Jay Peak mountain gets hit with the most snow on the East Coast and is one of the tallest mountains.  The best thing about the trip is that it's affordable!  For only $419, you get 5 nights in a slope-side condo, which means that you can basically ride from the top of the mountain straight to your door!  You can take a break at anytime to rest, eat, take a quick nap, etc.  You also get 6 days of lift tickets!  The average price of a one-day lift ticket is probably $60 on any mountain.  If you multiply that by 6 days, that's already $360...but on this trip...we're including a condo all week for just another $60!

There is a kitchen with everything you need so you can cook your own food to save even more money!  There is also a washer and dryer so you can always have clean clothes on the trip.

If you're a beginner, it includes FREE LESSONS!  This is the best way to learn how to snowboard because you are going for a week straight instead of going once then going again a week or a month later where you would have to re-learn everything again!  For the intermediate and advanced riders, you guys are going to love riding in the glades.  It's not as cold in there and you get a lot of fresh powder!

And then on top of all that, there's a new water park that just opened up!  You can check out the video below...  It's always summer time inside the indoor water park with slides and a flow wave...surfing time!!

Well, we hope you decide to get on this trip!!

CLICK HERE For more information on this trip!

Thanks for your support,
Jack
CEO
Fukitt Clothing


Aug 22 2011

NFL Theme Edition Designs

NFL Ravens

So, we've been entertaining with the idea of incorporating some kind of designs with local loyalty towards teams and colleges by using colors.  Some of our fans and supporters have actually suggested similar ideas so we decided to give it a try.  Anyway, we've decided to test the idea by creating the NFL Theme edition.  I actually don't even have a favorite NFL team but as Joe Dirt said in the movie, "it's not what you like, it's the consumer."

We've created some designs already for some of the NFL teams; Ravens, Jets, Eagles, Giants, Steelers, and Dolphins.  We have received some really great responses to our designs!  As we kept brainstorming about the NFL Theme Edition, we realized the potential advantage of catering to the millions of loyal fans for each team.  Advertising mediums, especially Facebook, allows us to target to only specific fans for each team.

NFL DolphinsWe're making sure we're not deterring from our mission of inspiring and motivating people to live life without regret and accept challenges worth the risk by incorporating that message into the designs according to each team.  We do not use any of their trademarked logos to prevent any kind lawsuit from infringement laws.

I definitely find it pretty difficult trying to apply some kind of positive concept attached to each of these designs...but I've been lucky so far! You can check out the pictures for the NFL Theme Edition designs on our Fukitt Facebook page.

We're probably going to implement a pre-order system for these designs as a start.  We're going to integrate a Groupon-style of crowdsourced or group-buying to give our fans and supporters a deal only if they spread the word to enough fans to buy the same shirt.  We plan on launching this in September.

Well, if you're a fan of a NFL team, we hope you like the design we create for your team!  I look forward to hearing some feedback...

Regards,

Jack

Jul 22 2011

Printing In-House

We've recently decided to print all of our merchandise in-house and there have been so many great benefits already.

  • Creativity
    We are now able to create what we want, whenever we want!  We listen to our fans and supporters about new designs or get their feedback before we print any upcoming designs.  If we see that something is not selling, we can simply discontinue it or get more feedback and see if a simple change of colors might do the trick.  We can experiment so much more on what colors we want to use or where we would like to have the designs on the shirts.
  • Lower Costs
    We have lowered our costs of printing by 50% which gives us the ability to re-invest more of the revenue back into the business.  We have to take into consideration our labor into making the shirts but it's still more cost effective.
  • Retained Capital
    We used to have to purchase a shit-load of shirts just to take advantage of better pricing from bulk-purchases.  Now, we are able to print only what we need, when we need them.  That means we only spend the money on the shirts that we need and use the capital for other things such as marketing and advertising.
  • Production Efficiency
    If we have a big event coming up, we can now evaluate the demand for that specific event and print only a specific quantity.  We can also produce designs that might be more relevant for an event.
Anyway, we're really excited to bring our fans and supporters new designs and really create Fukitt Clothing that they will be proud to wear.

Thank you for always supporting us,
Fukitt Crew

Jul 08 2011

Liver Killer 2011 coming soon!

We are about to celebrate our annual event, Liver Killer 2011, in Seaside Heights, NJ.  This is probably one of the best events we host because we really spread the message about the Fukitt mentality and really inspiring people who meet us on our path.

It's really just a fun old sloppy time with friends and family!  We start the event off at 4:21PM at the South end of the Seaside Heights boardwalk at Sawmill and hit 8 bars in 8 hours to the North end at the Aztec bar.

It's not a typical bar crawl where people just get wasted.  We really try to instill our message in everyone to enjoy their time and not waste any of it.  We persuade our fans to mingle with one another and we do this by associating a name with each person by a name tag.  Then we pull out random names to interact with each other with games at each bar.

We've done so many things like beer chugging contests where we handcuff the guy and girl to each other who took 2nd place and soak the 3rd place losers with water balloons!  We're not sure what kind of rewards and punishments we have this year but our fans are looking pretty creative and want to implement their ideas into the event.

Anyway, we really hope we get a great turn out again for this year's Liver Killer event!!  We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Live life...
Fukitt Crew

P.S.  Here are some pics from Liver Killer 2010  

For more information on Liver Killer 2011, check out our Facebook Event page!

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