Entrepreneur's Journey: Building a Fashion Empire from Struggles

Matt, founder of one by one, overcame failures and financial struggles to build a successful fashion brand through perseverance and out-of-the-box ideas.

### From Teenage Dream to Fashion Empire: The Story of One By One
* 🌟 Matt, the founder of the iconic fashion label One By One, started the brand as a teenage uni project, inspired by his **passion for design** and the **skate/surf culture**.
* 🏢 Initially a small-scale operation, Matt hand-printed t-shirts in his garage and received **positive feedback from friends and influential athletes** in the industry.
* 💸 Facing financial challenges and store debts during the 2008 recession, Matt persevered and landed a **game-changing order from a major retail chain**, revitalizing the brand.
* 🎤 Collaborations with Australian rappers like 360 and marketing strategies, including **store signings and launch parties**, helped boost **brand visibility and sales**.
* 🏖 ️ Matt strategically opened brick-and-mortar stores in coastal towns, targeting both locals and tourists, before transitioning to a primarily online business model using **Facebook ads**.
* 💼 Leveraging his experience with One By One, Matt went on to start five other successful brands, reaching a peak of **$13 million in revenue in one year**.
* 👕 Quality and fit were emphasized in product development, with extensive trial and error to **perfect the t-shirt design**, leading to **frequent sellouts and high demand**.
* 🚀 Despite the challenges and uncertainties along the way, Matt's journey as an entrepreneur highlights the **power of persistence, adaptability, and taking risks** in pursuing one's passion.

this is Matt. He made one of the most iconic fashion labels in the world, one by one, which has revolutionized Australian fashion. He invited us to his Warehouse in Melbourne where he runs his entire operation. He came up with the idea while he was a teenager as a uni project. I think I just like the idea of someone else wearing something that I designed. The crazy part is he failed so many times before he finally came up with an idea which shot his brand through to the Stars. It was something that I was I hated doing. I hated bugging for money even though these people clearly owed me the money. The secret behind his business is how he never gave up amid all of the struggles he went through and the out-of-the-box ideas that he came up with. We're going to break down why this is making him one of the fastest growing entrepreneurs in the world. And now we've sold out over 15 times and we just can't keep up with orders. Sometimes in this video he shares everything how he launched his stores in

the coastal areas of Victoria. How his supplier messed up his biggest order, and how anyone can build a life-changing business on doing what they love. And fogy, this is another daily Mentor Memoir. Growing up as a kid, I was actually pretty shy. I enjoyed skating with friends. I was always very creative, making skate videos, photography, design. We were probably considered middle class for the most part in my younger years. My father then went and started his own business, left the company that he was working for, went and started his own business. That business, unfortunately, had to go into forced liquidation because a supplier didn't pay them. It did put a lot of pressure on our family. I did see Mom and Dad fighting, sort of like stress level in our family, and my parents at a really high level at the time. Dad ended up, you know, going back to the company he used to work for, and now he owns that company, and it's been gone on to be more successful than ever before. But I suppose as a kid seeing that and going from being middle class to probably H

not having much at the time where Dad lost that company. I realized later in life that if you do fail, you don't actually die. You can actually get up and you can go again, and you can do bigger and better things. After I finished year 12, I got a pretty okay Enter. I wasn't really keen to do anything else other than following my passion of design. I studied graphic design for 2 years. There were definitely times in that course where I probably thought that I was not going to uh pass, or I was going to drop out. It took a lot of willpower to stay and continue to do that course. It's probably one of the times in my life where I thought that I was probably failing, but I stuck to it. I finished the course. I completed the graphic design course. In the final year of the course, one of the assignments which probably resonated with me the most was we had to start a brand. So I decided in that final year of graphic design that I was going to start the brand, and that brand was

one by one. When I was studying graphic design, I was always very creative, very interested in photography. I was very interested in skateboarding. At the time, I was buying Monster Children magazine. It was probably my favorite magazine at the time, and it was always full of like surf, skate, art, and I was just really connected to that type of world. For me, I felt like they were my people. And when starting the one by one brand in the final year, it really became my passion. It was something that I was really, really interested in, and obviously it was super small scale. I was getting screen prints and screen printing them in my own garage. It was one of those things that just expanded from there. So after I finished graphic design, I started doing freelance graphic design so I could pay the bills to continue to fund my dream, which was the one by one brand. I decided very quickly that I was very interested in screen printing, which is a technique used to screen print on the front of t-shirts. Pretty soon after that, I was hand printing t-shirts for the one by one's first

range of t-shirts, and I just knew that it was something that I thought had potential. There were a few people that would come and buy them off me, and at that point, that's really where the brand started. When I first started one by one, I didn't even think that it would make money, to be honest. I just thought that it was something that I was interested in, and it was more or less a hobby to begin with because I didn't know anyone else that had started a clothing brand that was successful. Obviously, at the time, there's the likes of bong, there's Rip Curl, there's vum. There were a lot of skating brands that I was also wearing at the time, and I think I just liked the idea of someone else wearing something that I designed. I was really interested in logo design. I was really interested in typography. I was really interested in seeing how far I could take the one by one brand. So I don't think I ever thought at the start that potentially that it could do

as well as what it has gone on to do for me. It was something that I enjoyed, and I continued to do freelance graphic design on the side just to be able to afford to continue running the brand. So growing up as a kid, we would often send $2 coin to a lot of brands, and they would in return send us back an envelope full of stickers. I would then put those stickers all over my school diary, over my skateboard, anywhere where I thought that sticker would look really cool. It was something that I think made me really want to continue to do design. So as the brand was more or less a hobby at this point, I was getting a lot of feedback from friends. Friends were buying the t-shirts. At this point, I started to develop some shorts. There were a lot of friends that were wearing them, that were some influential athletes at the time, whether that was surfing, skating, wakeboarding, whatever that may look like. There was a lot of that sort of going on within my sort of

mutual friends and their mutual friends. So, I was trying to be seen as much as I possibly could by giving some of these people that were at the time, you know, on top of their game. So, I was giving them free clothing. The feedback was good, so with the feedback being good, I thought to myself, maybe, maybe I'm on to something here. Maybe I can turn this hobby into more or less a job, and maybe I can make it, you know, a passion that's actually going to pay some dividends. So, I decided to try to focus on it as much as possible. Obviously, at the start, working super long hours, you know, I would get up, go for a run, go to the office, just work as much as I could, come home, have dinner, go back to the office, stay there till 12:00. That was really what I was doing in those first few years with building the brand and trying to be seen by as much as possible. I suppose the next point for me was like, I can't just keep screen printing all these t-shirts myself. There were a

couple of stalkers at that time, and those stockists were wanting more of a variety, and they were wanting a bit of a bigger range, so I decided that the next step for the business was to head to China. I knew I needed to advance the range, and I thought that China is probably going to be the best place to do so. This is kind of before the days where you just jump on to like Alibaba and type it in and find all the suppliers and deal with them and message them, and you know you're getting quotes back and you're getting samples sent before you even leave. I was literally going to China blind. I'd never been there before. I didn't know what to expect. I'd hired a car, a security guard, and a translator, and we drove around day after day to factories that were like 4 hours away in some cases, having meetings with factories that didn't speak any English. So obviously the translator would jump in and tell me what they were talking about, and we would discuss how.

to print the new one by one range. So, because of that trip, I locked in a supplier, and the new one by one range was getting made. Obviously, this was a big financial outlay because I had to pay for the order up front. There were no payment terms at this point, so I had to work super hard to be able to afford to even get the stock in in the first place. Of course, with the first order, there were a bunch of delays, there were a bunch of things that went wrong, and when the order actually arrived, all the men's t-shirts, when you washed them, shrunk up 10 cm. When I realized that the factory had not listened to me with pre-shrinking all the material before they sewed it together, I was obviously devastated, but I knew I had to do something. I couldn't just not sell all these t-shirts. You know, I've just got a container of t-shirts in amongst other things, shorts, singlets, hats. I couldn't just not sell t-shirts, so I had to take

it to wash house pre-shrink all the t-shirts, and then relabel them down a size, and that was the only way to save the day at that point. Again, something that was very new to me, had never had to do that before, but definitely a life lesson that I learned. So at the start of selling them, I was trying to sell them to as many stores as possible, so I would hire a van and drive around Australia, mainly east coast, got the coast deal with all the shops, and do a showing for shop after shop after shop, and try to get them to put their orders in. That was proven pretty tricky when I'm just a small brand from Melbourne at the time, and I'm pretty much a one-man band. I'm the sales rep, I'm the graphic designer, I'm the accounts, I'm the person who's emailing you the order form sheet. I'm also the person who's designing the board shorts and talking directly to the manufacturers. So wearing all the hats and having to drive around was did take

a toll, but I was just trying to get into as many stores as possible. 2008, I think, uh, Australia was going through a bit of a recession, and we were owed a lot of money from stockers that just hadn't paid us. So, they'd received all the stock, most of them they had already sold through most of the SKUs, and I needed to get paid. It was pretty much if I didn't get paid, I knew the business was going to be under. Often, I would go to the office and have to call these companies day after day after day and beg them to pay me. It was something that I hated doing. It was something that was like the worst job. I hated bugging people for money, even though these people clearly owed me the money. And it got to the point where I was actually drinking shots of vodka to call some of the bigger stores to tell them just to pay their bill. And that was a time that I remember that I just really, really hated. But eventually I got paid by some.

of them. However, unfortunately, I was still owed about 70 grand from stores that went into liquidation. So, at the time where I was owed all this money, I was still living with my parents. I think I was probably 23 at the time, and I just thought that this is it. This recession has killed my brand. It's killed my passion. The dream's now ending. I was just seeing everything fall apart. It was a dark time at that time. It was a time where I did call my dad and ask if I could get a job at his business because I thought that that's what I'm going to need to do to pay the debt that I was in at the time. And he, you know, inspired me to keep going. He told me, Don't give up. Just keep trying. Something will happen. Just hang in there. Hang in there. Believe in yourself. And I think a lot of what he said to me that day really did inspire me to continue to keep going. I kind of probably needed that. He could have easily just said, Sure.

you start on Monday. That for him, he probably didn't want to see that a particular retail chain sent me an email and gave me a call. Buyer wanted to have a meeting. From what I heard, they were pretty interested in stocking the range. And at the time, they had about 20 retail stores. So I had the meeting, I did the showing, and they placed an order. And it was kind of like I'm back. And I think that that was a point in my life where I realized right when you think it's over, and you're up against the wall, and you think that everything's crashing down, there's always something out there. If you keep looking, if you get up, and you keep trying, there's always something out there or a lever you can pull that will get you out of it. And I definitely felt that like that was meant to be. And I ended up stocking to those stores for the next 5 years. From there, we are now stocking into this big retail store. They've got 20 stores Australia-wide.

things are looking good. I also have now got a brick-and-mortar store in the uh Regional uh coastal town of Philip Island, and I am doing a store signing with 360, the uh upcoming uh rapper, Australian rapper at the time, and I was really lucky in the way that I booked this in with him and his management early uh, and his album had blown up at the time, so we're doing the store signing down in my store in Philip Island, and there's about a th000 people lining up up to get into the store. The only way I knew that my store was going to make money that day was that I told the security guards that I hired to walk down the line and say anyone who buys anything, one by one, in the store goes to the front of the line because the store was full of people. There was no other way that I was going to make any money in the store that day. Everyone was there for 360, and obviously I was organizing this event, and we were collaborating at this point, so people would buy something.

get to the front of the line, get their photo, get their uh signature for their idol. At that point, there were girls crying in the store, there were people screaming. It was kind of like nearly the Taylor Swift moment for some of these fans. And we went on to do a lot of other collaborations with other rappers as well, like Pez and Seth Sentry. And we would always throw these summer launch parties at the local bar down in Philip Island Cold Hotel. And 360 played the night that he did those store signings. And it was a full house, like we sold it out. It was the biggest night that they'd ever done at the time, turnover-wise. And that was my event at the time. Philip Island was kind of like my flagship store. I was definitely known in that area as being a brand that was probably on trend. We were selling a lot of stuff through that store, so I obviously wanted to see what I could do and open some more stores. The next store that I opened was a store in Sorrento.

Main Street, another coastal town in Mornington Peninsula. My idea behind opening these stores in regional towns that were coastal is that I wasn't necessarily just appealing to the locals in the town. These coastal towns were getting people from interstate, from international, and they would go and buy the product in the store, they try it on, they feel it, then they go home back wherever they live. And if they didn't want to make the trip back to the store, they, at that point, could just buy it online because I just started my first online store. Coastal stores were going well, so I thought the next step for me was to open up in one of Melbourne's most expensive streets. It was probably the fashion capital at the time, and I went and had a look at a store. And I think it was around 2,000 a week in rent. It was a lot for me. The other coastal stores weren't that much in rent, and I knew it was going to be a big commitment. So, I decided pretty quickly then that maybe I should just

spend that money on some Facebook ads. Facebook had just started advertising at this point, so I spent around $2,000 a week, maybe a little bit less, for the first week. I didn't see a huge return, maybe like a 1.8 or something on return on investment, but I decided that there could be something in this. So, I quickly pulled out of the lease, didn't get the store, and I decided to pursue my brands doing the Facebook advertising. The lesson that I learned from dabbling in the Facebook ads instead of taking on that lease was that if I continue to try to teach myself Facebook ads, that I could probably close down all my stores and just focus purely online for e-commerce. It was a scary feeling at the time because a lot of my success had come from these coastal stores, but I would then have less overheads, less rent, less store managers to look after, and it was something that I was very intrigued to learn more about. The reason why I knew Facebook ads were the future was

because I was getting pretty sick and tired of stores owing me money and dictating what recommended retail prices I could sell my own brand for on my own website. At the time, for example, I would often sell a store t-shirt for $25. They would then want to on sale it for around $50. That means that they're making about $25 margin, which is actually more than my margin, because I like to pay for the product to get made. Now, at the time, I worked out that if I could get Facebook ads to convert of a CPA of around $10 to $15, and if that was scalable, there would actually be more margin in it for me to sell direct to consumer than it would be to continue to drive around Australia and show these wholesale accounts my new range. Very quickly, I decided that wholesale was also no longer for me, and that scaling Facebook ads was definitely the future. From having all the skills that I had learned from getting one by one as far as what had come with marketing distribution and Facebook ads, I realized

that I could go on and use all of these knowledge to start other brands. I went on to start five other brands and went on to also do $13 million in Revenue in our best year. I was able to pay off my house, I bought some Farmland that looks over the ocean in Philip Island, and bought a classic Ferrari. I think the key to success for a fashion brand for me was obviously quality was number one and the fit number two. You'll be surprised how many times we trial and errored different t-shirt fits and different quality of t-shirts. You would think a t-shirt's pretty easy to make but it's actually not. We experimented for years to get our Perfect Fit of our men's t-shirt and now we've sold out over 15 times and we just can't keep up with orders sometimes. I still do think that if I had known actually the challenges that were before me, if I actually would have continued on and done and built these brands that I built, but I suppose not knowing was really the key to the

success because I didn't know what I was in for. And I think along the way, that's the journey that you take as an entrepreneur. [Music]

My brands have done over $100M in sales

Davie Fogarty

The Journey of Building the One by One Fashion Label

A teenager's university project turned into the iconic Australian fashion label, One by One, driven by the founder's passion for design and skate culture.

Despite facing multiple failures and financial struggles, the founder's perseverance and out-of-the-box ideas propelled the brand to rapid success.

Starting from small-scale garage screen printing, the founder's dedication to the brand's vision led to its exponential growth and a significant impact on the fashion industry.

Starting as a hobby, the clothing brand "one by one" began with selling t-shirts and receiving feedback from friends and influential athletes.

The founder's passion for design and determination to succeed led to long hours of work and eventually expanding the range by heading to China for production.

The challenging process of finding suppliers in China involved hiring a car, a security guard, and a translator to visit factories with no English speakers.

Overcoming Challenges in Starting a Clothing Business

Facing production issues and a financial burden with the new clothing range.

Had to take unconventional steps to fix a major quality problem with the t-shirts.

Juggled multiple roles and struggled to secure payments during a recession, even resorting to unusual tactics.

Overcoming Adversity and Finding Success in Retail

A young entrepreneur faced a huge debt after stores owed him $70,000, but his father's encouragement kept him going.

Despite the struggle, he managed to secure a big order that revived his business, eventually expanding to multiple stores.

His store even hosted a successful event with a popular Australian rapper, solidifying his success in the retail industry.

Building a Fashion Brand: A Journey from Physical Stores to E-Commerce

The speaker's brand gained popularity through store events and collaborations with artists like 360, leading to a strong local presence.

By expanding to coastal towns, they aimed to attract not only locals but also tourists, using the stores as a way to promote their products and later launching an online store.

Instead of committing to a costly lease in a prime location, the speaker decided to invest in Facebook ads, realizing the potential of e-commerce and the opportunity to reduce overhead costs.

Transition from Wholesale to Direct-to-Consumer Sales

The decision to shift from wholesale to direct-to-consumer sales was driven by the potential for higher margins and scalability through Facebook ads.

This transition ultimately led to the founding of five other brands and a revenue of $13 million in the best year.

Emphasizing quality and fit was crucial for the success of the fashion brand, leading to high demand and multiple sold-out periods.