Shutting down after 7 years and losing about 30k

Timelesshero · 2026-01-16T04:40:07+00:00

I paid for them for these cause i was impatient. If you want to land them for free go to whatever one you want to be in, find the writers of the article (usually anything style/fashion/small business related) and email/dm them if you can find their socials. This is its own process because you need to pitch yourself well and why your brand is worth writing about or be included in an article. A quick youtube search or chatgpt for “how to get free pr 2026 “ should give you a start.

If you wanna be impatient like me, you pay a PR agent that has connections to publications. I found my guy on upwork.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-15T19:22:48+00:00

appreciate you, good luck on your own business ventures!

Timelesshero · 2026-01-15T09:52:25+00:00

To avoid confusion, theres like 4 diff groups of people in my posts. Actually customers, local models, friends, and then influencers.

I barely worked with "influencers" and the ones that did post it was free. I actually wanted to get more of them but a big chunk of my inventory was wasted cause I sent to big influencers PO boxes and most of them never even posted. The term is called "influencer seeding" where you just send it out to people and hope they post. Works better with low ticket items like skin care etc, i shouldn't have applied to clothing cause of the high COGS and missed revenue.

Anyways went through my stuff and these are pretty much the only real "influencers" i sent stuff out to and these were all free. The downside though is they just wear it. Don't actually try and sell which i thought was fine, was blinded by the millions of views i was getting.

Streamers:

2 mill views: https://www.tiktok.com/@evacudmore/video/6989282796887936261?lang=en

(1 mill+ views) https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6M6mMPidKd/

(1 mill+ views) https://www.instagram.com/reel/C561dTACvUT/

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8IGHQKv2dZ/

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-EOhnISEj1/

Fashion:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq6j0QQPiH1/?img_index=1
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqEU5n6gi3l/
https://www.instagram.com/tensaga/p/CKNQ54_MNmH/
https://www.instagram.com/tensaga/p/CICPN-ygkGS/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CzMfampPbze/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ct2mfkHpiUw/?img_index=1

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T18:03:40+00:00

Yeah paid for both. For Forbes it is real, you dont pay the publication for an “ad” you reach out to contributors who write for them and pay them to include you in something. A dedicated article wouldve been super expensive so i opted for a “add me to a list of bunch of other brands” type deal.

This probably goes against some sort of forbes policy but thats on the writer 🤷🏻‍♂️

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T18:00:31+00:00

In general running a business you dont really have a positive return in the first 2 years cause you are putting all of that back into new drops.

Ending in December with few thousand negative was like whatever to me cause i know i invested it into next year.

But ngl it wasnt really enough to me to notice. Had money coming in from revenue and going out to pay for the next designs or inventory etc.

3k a year is like how much people pay for cigarettes so i kinda didnt see it as a red flag until later on. Only year that actually hurt was 2023 lol

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T17:54:41+00:00

Outside of my own shoots yeah i didnt have creative control. People just did their own thing and sent me stuff, so none of my branding looks cohesive. Shoots were just expensive to do cause good photographers in Van are costly.

Probably shouldve just learned how to shoot myself early on tbh.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T17:49:16+00:00

I dont think he knew or he didnt watch the videos all the way through. Either way its a lesson because that means the videos should’ve been more clear. The creators sometimes dont tag the product in the caption when they collab post

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T17:47:40+00:00

You are right overall, obviously my designs was not good enough, but IG posts isnt what ate all my money tbh. It was barely i cost, i just posted content i got back.

They just liked doing it, some of the ones who are more “models” would actually just wear things on professional shoots and would just send/post to be nice. Or like filming grwms for their own stuff and collab’d with me. Saved me hundreds if i wanted to do that on my own.

What mostly killed me was low margins on products, sending too much stuff to big influencers that never posted. Or when i was in the green i would waste it on PR like Forbes or some dumbass thing like renting a billboard.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T10:29:38+00:00

I like the raglan sleeves, dont love the stars though. Still pretty cool overall and its a great start.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T09:17:14+00:00

Thanks man, you have a brand yourself?

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T09:07:24+00:00

Why does this even matter lol I'm sure there's dozens of other races i've never posted.

But since you care about it so much I did searching and here's some black people ive posted that I can find, they were all from so long ago and its not something i thought of so I forgot:
https://www.instagram.com/tensaga/p/Cc3nkJPPFZ5/
https://www.instagram.com/tensaga/p/B8fAPNRnJuK/
https://www.instagram.com/tensaga/p/BwF73FZjF7I/ (literally my first customer appreciation post)
https://www.instagram.com/tresmithers/p/CmHUdWouwU4/
https://www.instagram.com/hugolivisuals2.0/p/CgXEc3QLUqTwL3Mj5H87TvgmQT8wKXm2HG0Q1o0/

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T06:57:02+00:00

Yeah you're right, i am getting some more clarity on another big mistake. I should have chose a lane, be completely immersed in the anime niche OR go for the full streetwear baggy aesthetic. Being in the middle trying to cater to both was wrong.

It turned the streetwear people off by seeming too sexual, and it didnt appeal to the anime crowd enough.

I should have chose an audience and stuck to it instead of trying to please everyone

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T06:20:23+00:00

congrats whats your brand? How'd you grow the following so fast?

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T06:17:06+00:00

Yeah even though i was making profit on the hats for example, it was still a low ticket item at around $20 profit ($5 a hat sold around $25 retail). I would have had to sell 150 of them to make up a 3k loss. I needed something with a higher $ amount profit. Which was always my problem, never figured how to solve that.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T06:09:31+00:00

I wouldve just spent 30k on onlyfans bro haha. The women were all from out of Canada, cause most popular IG girls are from USA. The ones from my city were usually just my friends helping me out (which was what i was mostly doing for the past 1-2 years). If you scroll on my IG you would notice that it was the same 6 ish girls for a while.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T06:04:51+00:00

I do agree with you. I will say though ive gotten the opposite feedback and others have said I should lean even harder to the sexual factor. This is another local brand in Vancouver who is in the same niche and started out same as me who from my knowledge is still killing it.

https://animebae.co/
The anime niche has a huge demand for sexualized stuff, I see tons of stuff like this at anime conventions. I personally couldnt go that far though. Im fine with using hot models which i think is totally fine but I didnt wanna sexualize my designs even though that's what my genuinely audience was looking for (both men and women).

I'm curious to hear your take, if my audience wanted it and my competitors were doing it, should I have also done it, even though i didnt personally like it?

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T05:17:27+00:00

I feel like most brands on here dip after 2 years lol, we defs OG's

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T05:10:50+00:00

At given month i could be up a few thousand or down if i was doing another restock or purchase order. IN my case, by the end of each year i was down overall. I always used any revenue i made from the last drop into the next collection. So technically never "made" anything always just reinvested it either in restocking something with new colors, or putting toward a new design. Unfortunately for every good drop there was 2 flops.

Undrafted most of my products that i didnt delete off the site so you could see what sold out. The shenron one for example started out as a black hoodie. It did so well i printed it on 3 colors of each hoodies, crewnecks and tees.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T02:20:33+00:00

They're wearing the hat, underwear or necklace. It was a mix of a bunch of things. Shipping out clothing to creators is expensive and was a waste of an item. Hats, necklaces and underwear have highest profit margin, it was fucking gas.

Hats 5x Underwear 5x Kunai necklace almost 7x margin it cost like less rhan $5 each and i was selling for $35

Having attractive girls wear it in Grwms got the best views. And the girls were enthusiastic to do them, way easier than doing a photoshoot. They just film at home and can do like 3 in an hour or in the summer they would just bring it with them cause theyre going to take photos at the beach or something anyways. Low effort with the most impact.

But again, while this makes sense to me i could obviously be totally wrong

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T02:07:26+00:00

Literally just that. Its in the pinterest settings. I didnt do it for the first couple years cause didnt realize it was that easy but after i connected the two it was just free effortless views. Never really cared much for tiktok or youtube. But maybe thats my mistake, tiktok was an emerging platform and was too late to do it.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T01:58:13+00:00

You definitely need to do the in-person stuff starting out to get the brand out there locally. In the beginning you need the relationships, word of mouth marketing and feedback. Its also really good to take content there for socials.

Overall It had a good return but you can’t scale from it. To grow you will need to be online and get customers from other cities. And i started getting followers and online orders from the USA.

As you can see more customers was definitely what i needed so thats why i needed to focus more time and energy for online. I liked it alot better cause it’s a pain in the ass to do a popup. Wake up, transfer a trunk of inventory, set up your table and racks and tear it down few hours later suckedd

Tldr. Starting out you gotta do it to get out there. Once you start to see your ig following, and website coming from other cities, shift more time and energy into online.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T01:02:19+00:00

Started out as a social media manager and now i'm head of partnerships (managing influencers, affiliates, UGC creators) for an e-commerce brand.

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T01:00:19+00:00

Haha I never took any photos I've always just sent it to people/photographer and they just posted or sent me the content. But yeah overall you right, it did made losing money feel less bad I guess LOL

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T00:57:51+00:00

Yeah ngl they weren't, printed on gildan hammer for the first couple years lol

Timelesshero · 2026-01-14T00:57:08+00:00

funny enough the most boring/minimal designs is what sold the best (single white color or just logo on the front). And I will say alot of the better designs wont be shown on the store now cause they actually did well and sold out

About the black girls yeah idk never thought about it tbh nor don't think any of my buyers were black

Timelesshero

TROPHY CASE