Glamour Kills Clothing's Mark Capicotto on Do's And Don'ts For DIY Startup Companies

When you think of clothing companies rooted in the music community, nothing should be more obvious than GLAMOUR KILLS CLOTHING. Not only has the brand spread to thousands of show-going bodies, but it's collaborated with bands, filmed live sessions, sponsored entire tours and released free samplers (most recently a covers compilation) since its foundation by MARK CAPICOTTO in 2005. Tracking down CAPICOTTO was no easy task—flying to Europe one week, Bamboozle the next, and so on—but AP finally squeezed some of the best lessons he's learned in the business out of him.

Altpress asked me to do an article for them about a month ago to talk about running your own company within this scene. I knew I would have a lot to say and have been working on this periodically since the idea came to form. Hopefully, some of you will read this and take something away from it. I'm not a writer by a longshot, so many thanks in advance for reading this essay that is probably riddled with grammar miSTEAKS (He wasn't kidding. -ed.).

Old Business Models Are Broken – Create Your Own Way

With technology always changing, it dictates the way consumers consume, the way marketing reaches consumers and the overall way business is being conducted. Even well-established companies & industries (Exhibit A: The Music Industry) have been scrambling to keep up with the ever-changing business landscape.

Being a young brand—whether you are a record label, clothing company, management company, etc—WE are in it. Meaning, we aren't a bunch of suits sitting in a boardroom, planning our next multi-million dollar ad campaign on Myspace. We are the early adapters Instgramming our brands months before Mark Zuckerberg spent his lunch money on the application.

You don't need millions of dollars to build buzz for your brand. You also don't need investors to get one started. I started Glamour Kills seven years ago with only $300, three shirt designs and a Myspace page. I've used technology as the topic for this category, but this really applies to everything. Keep your ear to the ground. No one ever said you to need to do X to achieve Y. There is no set path for starting a business (or living your life for that matter). Break the mold. The rat race was meant to be run by rats, not humans.

Grassroots Are The Only Roots You Should Know

After running a company for a few years, you may generate some extra revenue and it's very easy to say to yourself, “Let's spend some money on ads. Let's spend money on wrapping a tour bus. Let's spend money on getting throwing crazy elaborate events.” Be careful!

I have realized that the most effective form of marketing are the ones that are free. Consumers see through the bullshit of major ad campaigns and things that are essentially being forced down their throats, so to speak. For the sake of me not getting shot at Warped Tour this summer, I will not use any names, but take for example some bands that sign to a major label. They have the look, they have the sound, they have the hair. They are the “perfect” band. The major label spends money for the biggest name producers to appear on the album, buys them onto the best tours, teaches them the perfect way to talk to a crowd in between songs (like a broken record), and has a marketing budget that puts their faces in all the right ads and magazine covers. There is nothing real to them, no substance, it's not honest. 

Put them up against a band like All Time Low, for instance, who started out in high school, toured in a van for years straight opening up for 20-30 people and who are hardworking kids who write honest lyrics and run their own social networking sites. What you see is what you get, basically. Who will the fans/customer gravitate to? Long winded example, but this can be applied to everything and anything starting from the ground up. Get on the social networking grind: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Give away free music, shirts or anything that lets your consumer know what you stand for and who you are—and let them grow with you.

Stick To Your Guns

Do what you know. A lot of people (myself included) get very ambitious and want to expand their brand. There is nothing wrong with this, and maybe if you're a record label you want to stop signing pop-punk acts and start signing dubstep DJs. Just remember, you built this brand with your customers (a successful company is only successful if your loyal fans stick with you), and two things will happen as a result.

You built your name as a pop-punk label, so no dubstep fan is going to give a listen to “the next Skrillex” you just signed when you have been putting out New Found Glory albums for the past ten years. The second thing is that the loyal fans of your company who have helped you build your brand this far will flat-out abandon you because you wanted to become a dubstep label.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't want to sign different styles of bands or try new techniques for your clothing company, but it needs to be gradual and tasteful. Especially in this music scene, where “what's hot” changes daily. Stick to your core ethos and give people a reason to understand why you wanted to sign the new Skrillex and don't just hop on the next trend bandwagon overnight. Stay who you are and grow from it.

You're Only As Good As The People In Your Corner

I wouldn't have gotten to where GK is today without the people I've surrounded myself with. From my mom, who let me use her basement for the first three years I started the company, to the folks at Zumiez, who I have gotten to know over the past four years to help me expand my business, and finally, to my staff of ten people at GK who help keep this whole thing running daily.

As a business owner, you get this feeling of having to do everything yourself and be in control of everything, which from what I can tell is only natural! But it will come to a point where you physically can't do everything yourself—letting go and putting the people you trust in charge becomes a necessity. For years, GK ran its own warehouse, shipping and logistics. A couple of years ago I realized we weren't running a clothing company anymore. We were running a warehouse. Every day, the entire GK Staff (myself included) would be counting boxes and mailing packages. We had our marketing department filling and packaging retail orders. I made the decision to move our warehouse to a third party in California.

I was always against outsourcing anything GK. Keep everything in house, I always said! DIY 'til i die! But this ended up being the best move we've ever made. The third party we work with maintains both our customer service and shipping. As a result, things have never been better. Orders reach our customers faster and we have seen a huge increase in positive feedback from customers ordering from us now.

Adapt Or Die

How can I sum this all up? Stick to your guns, stick to what your company's about and don't stray from your mission—but also don't be afraid of change and adapting to what's happening around you—whether it's new technology or new styles of music or new ways of running a business.

No one ever told me starting GK would be easy. I was just some dumb kid at 18 who didn't want to have a real job and didn't know what the hell else to do. But I would (and still do) work until four in the morning just to keep what I love going. alt

Mark Capicotto
Glamour Kills Clothing