Why Start a Streetwear Brand for Gen-Xers?
Why start a streetwear brand for Gen-Xers — well, why not? We grew up on punk rock, riding our banana-seat bikes till dark trying to pull off Evil Knievel stunts, and when we got home from school there was a key under the mat and a note on the fridge telling us not to eat the entire box of Capt’n Crunch before dinner.
Just because most of us ended up in cubicles in a soul-sucking corporate machine doesn’t mean we have to wear polo shirts with khakis every day of the week. This solo project is me having some self-indulgent fun and keeping design and marketing skills sharp while I revisit consumer brand marketing.
The Intrepid Disruptor Society is an eCommerce site apparel brand aimed at alterna-brat Gen-Xers with a tongue-in-cheek, rebellious streak — harkening back to our punk-rock, FAFO roots. The I.D.S. brand is also an elixir of my fascination with esoteric symbology, sacred geometry, and a passion for creative discontent.
The following is my self-justification for starting this venture — and like any venture, requires a delusional amount of optimism to find out if it “catches fire.” Copy here is captured from my ABOUT section on the Intrepid Disruptor Society website. And yes, I am the one-man army putting the whole shebang together from product designs to social channel content, yadda yadda…
[ If you’re interested in the Branding Process > Click Here. ]
Founder’s Story
I’m a first generation Gen-X’er. We are the Fool Around and Find Out generation. No cellphones, no internet, no helmets, and entertainment was seeing what you could make out of wood scraps. And we did make stuff — we built skateboard ramps & halfpipes, forts, go-karts, and with some fiberglass, what would become today’s snowboard sport (Google history of snowboarding / Avalanche snowboards & my best buddy growing up, Earl Zeller). I went to high school with the founders of 7 Seconds, Glen Plake (google him) and other early Disruptors.
I know I sound like an old fuck — but I have to laugh when I see streetwear brands selling clothes that are “distressed” — carefully-placed holes & frayed edges and artfully-shredded jeans. The difference between today’s GenX-inspired streetwear and our original shredded clothes is that ours had blood on where the holes were. My jeans got shredded from eating shit on a skateboard while trying to clock in at 30 MPH. Or catching a skateboard wheel on a nail sticking out of our homemade halfpipe.
All my friends would be considered “creative” by today’s standards, we all taught ourselves to draw stuff — comic book characters, plans for go-karts, customized hot rods… Some of us taught ourselves how to play guitar, play drums… and making stuff what just a part of life.
I knew when I got out of high-school, I wanted a career that involved making & designing things. My dad told me if I wanted to be a Fine Artist, I would probably be poor all my life and recommended I be an optometrist because people are always going to need glasses.
I settled my sites on becoming a Graphic Designer because it was a legit “profession” and still in my wheelhouse of designing stuff. After a 40-year career of designing everything you could think of a graphic designer designing, I still love it. Got my BFA at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, where I learned to dye my clothes black and smoke clove cigarettes — and learn about creative problem-solving, human psychology, art, and keeping the spirit and passion alive to keep creating. Even (and especially) in the face of instructors telling me I needed to do projects over because my work just “didn’t measure up to Academy standards,” fellow students telling me my concepts were cliché — and later CEOs telling me my corporate identity designs were “not on target” (when they asked for an “edgy, out-of-the-box brand overhaul”) — I kept designing.
It takes a special kind of masochist to go back to the drawing board over and over — to stare at a blank screen or notebook page and ask “What’s next?” Day after day, year after year. And finally validation when I can tell critics to pound sand while a client happily pays $20,000 for a logo design for their international brand identity.
Forty-years and counting of creating award-winning product packaging, printed brochures, annual reports, corporate identities (my favorite specialty), then software interfaces, websites, advertising… With ad agencies, corporate marketing departments, and my own creative services agencies….
Through it all I’ve seen corporate executives treat creative work and creative process with disdain. While creativity in business is thought of a necessary evil with a checkbox and line-item expense.
“We’re a data-driven, results-oriented company.
We can’t waste resources on artsy-fartsy stuff.”
Um… yeah — tell that to Steve Jobs. The tech industry has either the tolerance or the support of creative process and people to thank for their billions. And with today’s AI magic, creativity is being devalued and commercialized to a few lines of prompt input. Know why business leaders are afraid of creativity? Because it’s not predictable. It leaves an open door for “failure.”
For the past few years, I’ve been getting more and more frustrated — and frankly, pissed off — at how companies and society in general are disparaging creative process and getting complacent with the mediocre Pablum of group-think.
So What is this Brand About?
This brand is my big FUCK YOU to the brain-dead bullshit that passes for product design, customer service, community and national problem-solving. And it is my group hug to anyone creative out there who feels like they are getting their soul crushed by people with a megaphone that are as idiotic as they are arrogant.
It’s a Call to a Rebellion
Time to revive the punk rock spirit that ignited a generation of music, art, inventions, books, ideas, products, and self-expression that defined the X Generation. If you’re ready for something more expressive than your polo shirt from Target, yet not feeling the vibe of carefully crafted holes, this brand could work for you.
The Blessings of Creative Discontent
At the risk of sounding like an old fuck again: If you’re a Gen-Z, Gen-Alpha or Gen-Whatever who is spending your hours poking at your phone and have your face glued to a screen — Get your little bastard ass OUTSIDE AND DO SOMETHING. Paint a mural, get together with friends in a tent and tell ghost stories, make a go-kart out of a lawn-mower engine, hang a rope-swing over a river, make sure the holes in your clothes have a story behind them.
I wanted to create a streetwear brand with cool stuff to wear that wasn’t necessarily full of holes reflecting activities I never did but that has some CREATIVE DISCONTENT behind it. Creative discontent is the state of mind of looking around at something/anything and thinking: “This is stupid, and I could make it better.” And if you decide to not just think about it, but actually act on it — well, that’s where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it?