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How Chocolate Clothes Global Turned African Culture Into a Global Fashion Brand · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Earners. What's up.
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• 1:38
  Speaker 3: When I did the podcast with you all, I was telling.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: You probably the most impactful interview I've done in my career.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Heroes out as real hero he shot at Troy talk
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: about the tags, letters about ciance.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: You know, we talk in a language that is common
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: to the people that's from the community that we grew
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: up with.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: You all are the bright spot.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Thank you, real Estate, thank juership for Black Americans.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: This is the knowledge that actually matters both of you.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: For this isn't it a country issue. It's not an
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: American issue, It's a world issue.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: We came to earn Lisa.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Welcome Back special episode. This is Atlanta.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: The lightning is is great?
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Isn't yeah, we're back. We're back in the Mecca. You
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: know at that time we got we got a special guest.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Today we know him its chocolate. The world knows miss Chocolate.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: The world does know him as chocolate.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Name. You want to say his name?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Well, way cool, quite cool. We should quay cool. We
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: got the first name correct. That means born on Wednesday.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: I'm a born on Wednesday baby as well.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I felt brothers.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah we do dioco Yeah so I mean yes, but bidiac,
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: which literally means came to fight. So I'm a warrior
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: then or darn duro? Yes, quake cool? Bediako, Yes, that's
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: my dad's name. Yeah, so quick. Who is my born day?
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: That's like my nature day? Bediako is my soul? Who
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: I am warrior, fight out, I never that, that never
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: quits and is my nature.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so okay, welcome my brother. All right, Well, first
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and foremost, thank you for joining. I appreciate it. I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: appreciate it.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: And then listen, it feels always great to come back
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: to Atlanta, and you know now it just feels surreal love.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: It and so all right, So for full context here,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Chalk is from Ghana, which I just found out. He
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: was actually born and raised in Nigeria, but living lives
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: in Ghana. So when you obviously if you've been following earlierly,
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: you know we've been doing a lot of traveling and
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: work on the continent and Ghana is like the primary
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: hub where we've been going. Shout out to Kwame, shot Alvin,
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: our whole team out there. So what he does is
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: he he's like the fashion god when it comes to
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: all things West Africa garment. So when you see us
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: in the caftans, that's kind of what Troy is wearing
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I'm wearing chocolate, chocolate.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Most of the stuff that you see us wearing over
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: there comes via him, he said. Clients in the past
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: like Steve Harvey, who else, Michael B.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Jordy, Michael B.
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  Speaker 4: Jonnan and the family, mister Jordan's. The list goes on
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: and on and on. Jamie Foxx, we currently clothed over
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: forty presidents now in prime ministers as well. But then
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: this goes on and on. I think it's not just
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: about the celebrities and public figures that we close. It
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: just goes a long way to just tell the world
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  Speaker 4: that just validate the work, validate the brand, Uh, but
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: you know, we're very very excited to work with everyone
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: who understands what being different means and subscribes to a
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: global vision of where Africa has always been. And now
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: we get the chance to fuse in high level afrocentric
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: type where with high fashion.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah did the fashion show it in vest fast, legendary,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: first time we've ever done that. So yeah, man, you
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: want to you wann a nice role right now? So yeah,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: looking forward to this conversation. Sorry, so let's let's let's
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: bring it back. And he has a store, so if
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: you ever go to a crowd, the number one hotel
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: is the Kopinski Penske Hotel.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: Shout outs to them. They've they've held me down for
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: six years. And across the street from the Kopinske Hotel
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: is the mall. Yeah, it's the more. It's a gallery mall.
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: It's like an art gallery mall. But again they are
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: very open to work with brands that has an artistic
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: aesthetic and we fitted riding to that.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: And you know it's just a beautiful store.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: We have a full blown runway, so you know, come
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: pick up some clothes and do the catwork for us.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: That's the fact.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: All right, So we're gonna have this cross continental conversation. First,
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: how does this start?
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Right? Like, how does this start?
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like the whole continent in Africa
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: right now is super popular. Everybody's you know, into the
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Afro beats in the fashion and all that.
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  Speaker 1: But that wasn't always the case.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: So you growing up, what we'll put the dad's seed
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: in your head to be like, Okay, I'm gonna be
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: a designer, not just for where I live, but I
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: want to spread it out all over the world.
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  Speaker 4: Well, it's been it's been a journey, man, it's been
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: a journey. My parents' professors. My dad is a uh
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: it's a professor implants pathology, and my mom is a
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: professor in botany. Every member of my family read science,
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: including me, and so from by the chemist uh to
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: molecular biologists, to a stem cell researcher, to a nurse
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: now turn public health person then to me that read
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: tech it and archaeology before I moved into fashion. But
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: you know, let's again go back to, you know, back
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: in the day where I feel like my my my
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: design power started when I was born. I used to
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: design cartoon characters, used to design buildings like buildings like this, this,
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: This is me used to design cars grails, used to
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: design car grails, the datchboards, gears, and also the signs
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  Speaker 4: that I read also helped me sort of add that
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: sort of scientific touch to the design, Like can you
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: picture an idea of having a clutch system powered by your.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Hands on your steering wheel, So.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Literally you get a half clutch when you're edging close
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: to the wheel, and so you design a wheel to
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: like a steering wheel to go with that. So I've
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: always been a good blend of my nature and my nature,
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: which is being born with a creative edge, but being
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: also natured from a science, you know, community pretty much. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: I get the chance to look at things from a
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: different perspective.
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  Speaker 1: Now.
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  Speaker 4: It's very interesting looking at the rise of the different
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: facets of culture and today I'm just really excited with
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  Speaker 4: music as one sector, but its ability to feed into
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  Speaker 4: the different branches food, storytelling, movies, fashion, and so on
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: and so forth. Yeah, so it's so very interesting to
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  Speaker 4: see how they all feed into each other.
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  Speaker 1: Now. All though I was going about my.
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: My schedule, which was to design buildings or to write poems,
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: I used to rap so wrap lyrics to songs, come
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: up with storylines. You know, when I was in university.
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: I finished UNI back in two thousand and nine, and
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: back in the day, I wrote about three different movie scripts.
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: I had this concept edge and felt like I was
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: going to make it to Hollywood.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought about that, so, but anyways.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: My pastor was Hollywood twenty twelve, because again I felt
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: like I was so much filled with creative energy that
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: was backed by a lot of cultural a cultural push,
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: just filled with many ideas.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: You said your nature versus your nurture, right, And so
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: I'm listening to it. Having parents who are in the
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: education field, I'm sort of certain expectations that.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: They had for their children. Totally, you have this creative gene. Yeah,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: this sounds like a class Is that?
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  Speaker 2: It was so like as you're realizing, like, this is
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  Speaker 2: my gift, like to express myself, whether it's to lyrics
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  Speaker 2: or it's through fashion, what is this class like?
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Right? Because I'm sure.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Like West Indian it's like you're going to be a doctor,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: You're going to be a lawyer.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Oh you're not going to be that. Oh no, no,
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  Speaker 1: you better be that. Yeah? What was that like? For
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: you as you're going through the creative process.
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  Speaker 4: Well, it was beautiful, man, it was beautiful. I've never
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: I've never kicked down. I'm a stubborn guy.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Man like.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: There was a reason why the confide and named mediacal
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: to me, right, And I think that my parents really
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: got to understand what it meant after a while. It
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: wasn't easy. Clearly, I slept out of the house so
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: many times. I was kind off stipends so many times.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: I remember when I started chocolate and by that time
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: I used to have a nine of five in marketing communication.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: So afterwards I now go almost another hour and a
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: half to whether store used to be, and I recall
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: not having any money. And then you know you will
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: work till about six seven. You have extra work to
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: do about till ten. So by the time you want
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: to jump on public transport to get where you're going,
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: the cars are done, like they're done for the day,
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: So you got to walk all the way till you're
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: able to get something. And because you've been cut off
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: and you're trying to also hustle, you don't have the
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: means of jumping in a taxi or a cab or
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: uber or whatever. So there are times I recall walking
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: a good two hours three hours after work to get
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: to my destination and I have to leave in two
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: hours because I need to join the first public transport
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: from back to the house to get ready for my
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: next morning job.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Because if you get that after eight, you will be queried.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: So this going on for like an hour, like a
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: year and a half, And clearly my parents are also
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: worried because they're like, yoh, listen, like you're going to
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: read this. First of all, the marketing communication you've gotten
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: into is not science, And I was like, no, that
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: is a science to this, Like, it's not just advertising.
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: You have to you know, there's a science behind it,
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: there's methodology. You have to understand that the way people
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: are thinking. So it took a while, like my first
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: two three years in that advertising space was not easy.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: But again I recall gotting working up around three am someday,
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: or my dad just telling me that, hey, I'm listening
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: to this thing on BBC and I think advertising is
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: a science, you know, And I get that maybe made
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: him realize that, okay, maybe I should be open to that.
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: A year and a half afterwards, and I'm coming up
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: with his clothing brand, and he's like, like, what do
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: you want?
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Is it fast? It's is this tomorrow? Is that? You know?
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: So I guess you know, it was very different. You know,
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: my dad was the first guy in his village to
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: go to university.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: My mom out of eleven kids.
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: My mom was the first out of twelve kids and
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: used to also hustle way back. You know, she would
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: wake up in the morning, take bread the mom used
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: to bake, so take bread to the neighborhood, sell it
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: before she goes to school.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So they were also natural born hustlers.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: But then they also found their career path through science.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: So they knew that this was the only direction they
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: could go because this is what took them out of
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: the you know, their villages, right, and so it was
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: not they were not about to gamble with your with
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: your kid essentially. But I think one thing I'll say
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: is a lot to doff my hats to my parents
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: because they groomed us so well, they natured us so well.
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: Although you know we used to clash a lot, they
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: did a good job by by helping us to understand,
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: like well, first of all, boundaries to understand, to encourage
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: us to read to learn so much beyond what you
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: were studying, right, and that for me went a long
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: way to.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Ground me.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: And so they sort of understood that it wasn't a
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: lost case.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: He might know what he's doing.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: Let's just, you know, let's just be on the sideline
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: and watch what he's doing, right, And so it's not
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: surprising when I first finished my first store and I
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: went to my dad and I told him, Hey, I
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: wanted to rent one of your buildings. So they eventually
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: got into real estate as well, and you know, I
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: went over to them. I'm like, hey, can I get
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: one of your one bedroom houses where I can turn
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: into a like a little workshop, And they're like, yeah, whatever.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, the rent is a year. You know how
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Ghana is.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: You have to pay rents between a year in two years.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: You don't pay monthly rents. So the following that I
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: cooked up the money and gave it to him, and
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: he was shocked because no one comes to rent a
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: house and they pay out rightly. So it made him
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: start to observe, started asking questions. Remember, he popped into
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: the my office sometime he had gone to a friend's
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: seven yeth birthday and he was walking chocolate, And when
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: he got there, the celebrant seven year old guy was
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: walking chocolate. All his kids from age like twenty eight
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: to about forty five, we're all walking chocolate. Very big
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: in new door was wearing chocolate at the party. So
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: he comes in, He's like, quick, who what are you know?
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: I just lived this party and it looks like everybody's
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: wearing chocolate, Like what are you doing?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: What are you doing?
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: So I started explaining to him, Hey, you know what,
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: like because of the science background, I'm able to attach
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: to the back end sending solutions. People just don't need
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: clothes that just enhances them but also close the coverage
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: and the floor. So your ability to gauge that solution,
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: mix mix, and then create a connection makes our brand different.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: And then he was like, okay, so are you saying
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: that you also so it's like you fish out defects
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: and diseases in people's worldrope.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, then let's call it fashion pathology, you know.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: And I think since that day, my dad started becoming
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: very open to the idea of what I was doing.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: Started seeing a ton of celebrities coming to the house
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: because I started off in his house and you know,
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: let's just say twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, we
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: got prof out on CNN, and I remember he got
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: calls from his friends, his cousins, his work colleagues. They
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: were like, I think we saw someone like KiB on CNN,
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: you know, and my story was so impactful. They aired
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: for six months on African Startups and Voices and that's
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: what changed the whole that I make of your perception.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: And you know, later on we got a chance to
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: make clothes for our local our Black Stars team, our
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: soccer team. Shout out to the Black Stars, you know,
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: when we're going for Brazol twenty fourteen, and it just
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: the global journey has just started.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It just started unfolding.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Got prof out on Forbes, then got profilt on so
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: many different platforms on BBC, and then the journeys just started.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Let me ask you this, what's it like as far
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: as fashion, know, we do the fashion thing, and you
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: know me, I like really study the fashion game. So
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: a lot of people may not be familiar. But like
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: in the nineties, late nineties, Kent cloth, kent te cloth, right, correct, Yeah,
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: that was a big thing in America. Like even I
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: look at my my brother's high school graduation, and yeah,
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: they kent to cloth skall phone that comes from Ghana, right.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: Well, Ghana, West Africa. Because what it is is that
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: back in the day, it wasn't Ghana. You know, the
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: whole West Africa was kind of like just one different
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: different trips exactly different different types of kinte. So talk
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: about okay, talk about West African fashion, the Kent cloth,
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: the up and downs that they wear in Nigeria, right,
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: like the Ghanaian style.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: We were just in beneath.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: We've seen that they had their own staff like kind
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: of educate the audience.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: So, I mean so Africa as a whole is full
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: of beautiful art, right. The idea of cloth, indigenous cloth
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: has always been part of us. Weaving of these cloths
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: have been part of us. When you go to different
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: parts of Africa, they call it different names. Also, these
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: different patterns also reflect different messaging.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I was privileged enough couple of last year when.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: We got hosted by Prince William at a short prize
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: and I got the chance to meet other people who
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: were who've been doing specific studies about sustainable fashion, i e.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: What kinty cloth is and how it makes it sustainable
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: and all of that, and you'll it will be surprising
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: for you to know that back in the day, you
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: pull up wearing a certain type of kinte and it
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: shows your status a certain type of cloth woven. It
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: shows the kind of men even if you had an
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: issue with your wife as a couple, and let's you
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: take it to the chief right to be the judge
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: of the issue. Depending on the cloth you wear, depending
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: on the white weave that you wear, it shows that
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: you're remorseful. It shows that you're not remuseful. It shows
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: that you are ready to take this to another level.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: It shows all these meanings have come through just by
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: wearing seting or adorning setting cloth. It's very similar to
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: even like symbols like the gm is and then the
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: Dinkrahennas and all these other like symbols that also go
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: a long way to say things without uttering out a
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: word pretty much.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So for us, it's not just about wearing clothes.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: Again, as I said, it's about key message and it's
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: about communication. And because this has been a core part
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: of us, you realize that everyone expresses it differently and
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: it makes it authentic. So when we talk about authentic clothing,
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: authentic art.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: This is what we mean.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: It goes beyond Hey, like this color is fly, so
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: I'm going to wear this. It goes a lot on
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: what does green mean to us? What does it's fusion
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: with orange means? What does purple and gold mean? Doesn't
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: mean or does it mean something else?
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So that is literally the crux of what garments
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: from our continent means. But of course recent times has
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: come with its own interpretation of it. There are certain
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: type of comms that we're not relevant or are not
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: necessarily relevant.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: To today's age.
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: But it's kind of like propelled setting conversations in today's age.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: And that's why you know you're looking at even what
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: we are doing. I'll try to show some pans that
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: I brought where Now, what designers like me are doing
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: is we're coming up with our own type of patons, right,
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: and so if we're saying, okay, this is traditional canteke, however,
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: this is how I'm going to weave this into that.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Like, take a look at this shirt. This is like
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: a Lays shirt.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: But then what we did was we wove a setting
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: line of patson which is very similar to the traditional
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: one and then we crouchede on top of it. We
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: then creates a different element of or a layered experience
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: to it. So you might be talking about, hey, I
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: am royalty in terms of like they can't take woven approach,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: But then you also get an element of style design.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: Who's a modern guy? Does the modern guy just subscribe
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: to the old way of doing things?
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Not quite? But does it inspire him to do greater things? Yes?
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: You know, like back in the day, for example, our
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: fathers will want to they call something called pension homes
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: like and I I don't get roasted for this. It's
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: an internal joke that we have in our home, for example,
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: where my dad is like, oh well, hey, I'm gonna
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: finish this building for my pension. And then you realize
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: you go toi Ghana, you have all these three stories,
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: four stories at age sixty, who will be staying on
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: the fourth floor?
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Right? But the modern African things differently.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: He is trying to say that, Hey, listen, I'm aspirational,
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: I'm ambitious. I love to connect with like minded people,
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: and I love, at a very early age to establish
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: basic things so that I can also make time for family.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: And so you realize that it's literally the same thing,
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: but like we express things differently and in that same way.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: It's seen in our type of clothes we wear and
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: a type of choice of setting, woven type of fabrics. Also,
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: you know, posts, colonization and everything. We also had, you know,
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: some elements of how do we create how do we
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: scale this idea? Yes, do I think it took out
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: a little bit of the crux of weave and of cloth.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, But the good news is it still gets done.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: But in the attempt of scaling the art, you have
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: conversations like wax printing, where in that case, you know
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: you've got like a digitized version of of the same
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: idea of the can't take weave, but then it's now
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: showcased in a more scalable way. And then you know,
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: to aid distribution to aid, other people also tap into
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: the art.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: And that's what how.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: Come today you see the likes of companies like Blisco
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: Woudine that we actually work with with just about dropping
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: a collab first time in history in the four African countries,
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: been in Kodivoa, Togo and Ghana. So yeah, so you know,
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: just to give you just like a little like a
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: surface conversation. That's that's that's that's the bigger look of
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: the fabric itself and how in modern day it's being
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: scaled on one level for let's say, affordable luxury lines,
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: and how for high fashion it still remains as woven.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: As I'm hearing you talk, and the more we have conversations,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: I hear the science right like I'm listening to the
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: fashion pathologists in you. It's interesting, right because we had
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: a conversation the other day, and I know we're talking
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: about West African fashion, but the impact that American fashion
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: had on you, right, Like as we were even discussing this,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: we were talking about the nineties and that's the era.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: When you talked about the nineties, I'm like, oh, we
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: grew up in the same era, right, It was like
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I could.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Never get to Sean John Villon. Yeah, I'm just like
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I loved it, Like that was the thing for us.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: But the fact that you incorporated the valor into your
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: fashion now talks about that scale and that modernization, that
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: science pathology. Talk about the influence that America had on
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: your design and how it's incorporated into stuff now.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I mean definitely, I think my my connection
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: with America started way back. I mean my dad schooled
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: in Cisson and lectured in both you know, Arizona and
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: University of California, my mom's school in Canada. Right, they
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: met even at at a very early age three four,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: I think we met. We might have come here for
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: a few months before we went back to Nigeria, where
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: I was born. So there are elements that these things
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: play in the heads of creatives. Right fast forward back
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: in high school when the Lords became a thing, like
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: we were deep. As I said, I used to rap,
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: so I used to dance. I used to rap, and
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: so the hip hop culture was embedded in my blood
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: right and obviously you had music like hip live afro
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: beats also tapping into like a good fusion of taking
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: beats from here, tapping back into where the original hip
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: hop beats are from. Like all these things have. There's
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: been a cross cultural diffusion of all of this, right,
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: So for a creative like me, going to parties and
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: look in a certain type of way was was my all.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: Like I was telling you yesterday that I could afford
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: some red monkeys and some Gino Greens and some visu.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: But back in the day, man I couldn't afford or
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: even have access.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: To the son John.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: The laws, the Rockaway, the laws, right, the Jaafari's you know.
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: And so for me looking at fashion back in the day,
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: let's say, early two thousands, looking at when that was
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: the first time I ever got a chance. And again,
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: I used to like all the facets of all the
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: cultural facets. So I used to like basketball, I used
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: to like the movies. You used to love food, right,
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: But then you take a look at the culture back
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: then you go like you watch NBA games from the
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: screen and then you're seeing hip hop parties at these
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: basketball games. You're looking at all the food elements being incorporated.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: You're looking at all these fashion elements that were incorporated.
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: And let's look at twenty years afterwards, what is happened
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: to the world currently, And it's the same thing, but
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: now it's happening to Africa where you take a look
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: at Jeeloff Wars, right, you know, it's a sensitive conversation
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: with me when it comes to Jeloff.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: But yeah, like Olmo, don't kill me. What's that?
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Well, you can't play either side, Okay, what I mean?
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I said, man, you have to tick sites.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you take how that is influencing type of
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: even songs being done.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You take a look at.
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: Songs also talking about ten type of gears like chocolate gears,
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: like Christie Brown gears like you know, so many different
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: new crop of new African creatives coming up with all
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: these spiffy clothing that also ties in with the culture.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Right. You take a look at even NBA Africa B
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: A L. So you look.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: At the texture of the space and you look how
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: afrobeats is influencing the fashion, fashion, influencing the sports, sports,
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: influential the movies art as well, and the artists well,
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, hey, come on, I'm an artist, you know.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: So it's a very interesting conversation of what happened back
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: in the day early two thousands, late nineteen nineties, and
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: how everything sipped into each other, and how as a
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: young designer or a young creative who are still studying science,
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: how that sort of plays in my with my mindset
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: and helps me tap into inspose to now redesign and
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: come up with a new line of ideology that's able
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: to fuse affrocentric lifestyles into high fashion, that's able to
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: fuse afrocentric lifestyles the hip hop culture that's able to
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: fuse different mindsets, different people, different cultures, you know. So
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: today we're doing kaftans, as they call it, all boo boos,
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: and we are not just fusing king. We want to
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: fuse it with the laws. Want to fuse it with
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: cor drays. We want to fuse it with sustainable someone's
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: old sustainable denim that is never being done again. Bring
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: it back to life, and get our Cacaw brand to
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: jump on that, to repurpose it, you know. So it's
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: it's a fusion, if you're to ask, it's a blend.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: And for us as a brand, for me as a person,
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: I've always been about that, that lifestyle. Like I love networking,
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: I love meeting people, sharing perspectives.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: And so you know, take a look at every.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Type of chocolate and you see buttons every type of chocolate.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: You see stitch work.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: And because these two elements invariably brings things together, bring
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: people together, it helps blend cultures and mindsets. And no, no,
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: you look this spiffy man, I'm wondering why I was shot.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: Didn't wear nothing chocolate? Man, shot? What's happening? What's happening?
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Man?
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: So talk about the power of networking. Tell the story
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: about Steve Harvey, because that's a good story. But also,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: you know, it's important for people that are looking to
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: get their brand in front of big names or just anybody, right, like,
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: talk about your strategy and that story specifically.
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: Well, so first of all, shout outs to Steve Harvey man,
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: Like I still remember when he said when he had
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: his first chocolate on and he said, Yesterday's prize is
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: not today's prize.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what he said.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: But yeah, well, first of all, I can talk about
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: Steve Harvey without shotting out Kevin Autry. Kevin Autry has
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: been a big brother friend of mine for a while.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: And I do recall when I when I was very
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: specific on my vision, how do we build the biggest
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: lifestyle business and brand in the world that happens to
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: be from Africa. And I knew that and at that
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: time we were responsible for like what was indigenously African culture.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: With weddings, I used to make.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: The biggest weddings clothes for the biggest team of groomsmen
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: and bridal teams. Right, so let me give you a
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: typical example when people are getting married here, you see
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: like maybe five grooms men, six brides mates. We decided
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: way back to fully understand what that meant for our
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: traditional weddings. You finished school with such a huge community,
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: and for us in Africa, community has been part of us.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Like you're going to school and everybody can query you,
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: everybody can punish you, everybody can reward you. So community
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: has always been part of us. So why then would
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: you want to marry in a traditional community and make
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: six people your core groomsmen? So for us we started
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: to say, no, hey, how many friends you got? How
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: many associates do you have? So I mean, the biggest
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: wedding we ever did was one hundred and seventy five
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: grooms men. I just said a one hundred and seventy
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: five grooms man, which was between Garner and Spain. We
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: started this whole idea of pretty much like your pack
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: will be behind you. Like, the whole idea is that
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: if I'm going to get married to someone, the family
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: has to know that I've got community and that the
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: out daughter is safe. If I'm not there, the community
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: got her right. So that was the whole idea of that.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, I guess.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: You know Africa, everything is tricky, right, but yeah, so
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: you know, after doing it for a while and we
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: realized that now like, yeah, this is a good strategy locally,
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: but on a global startus, how then do we go
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: back to our vision? And we quickly realized that no,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: the first thing we got to do is to look
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: at the connecting factor. How do we connect our people
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: with our Afrid Diasbra people. How do we connect cultures?
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: How do we connect mindsets? How do we connect sectors?
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: So conversations such as even not just with Steve Harvey,
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: but with NBA Africa with BA l started as such,
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: how then do we create a link between sectors fashion
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: and sports?
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: How do we create connections between.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: As you know us from back in slave trade, post
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: slave trade?
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: How do we turn that energy back into power?
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: And then how do we work together you know to
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: form bigger businesses and bigger fronts. So that then started us.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: That front started with Boris Kujoe.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Me.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: We met in London and then we got a chance
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: to he was coming to Ghana at that time, Uh
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: to start the whole year of return.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Uh. He had I think.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: Merged with a Bosoma Saint John and I think richlu
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: Uh to form what they call the full circle, and
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: then they launched the first of our Year of Return
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: a year before the Year of Return. So that was
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: a wide awakening for us because then we got to
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: we realize that, oh wow, we can get a lot
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: of validation and a lot of endorsement from not just
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: captains of industries but also public figures that could understand
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: our vision and where we're going, so that, you know,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: in ripple effects then got us to got me to
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: know that, well, hey, Steve Ave's coming to Ghana. So
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: I'm sitting there, I'm like, yo, listen, I got to
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: make clothes. And this is the thing that I've been
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: blessed with. I'm able to eyeball people and tell you
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: what your size is. And I think the first a
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: bount of close y'all got was like that, right, and so,
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: but for the funny thing is with Steve Harvey was
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: always in suits. He was always in suits. So then
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: I kept on tracking his social media. I'm like, how
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: do I get this guy's measurements right? And then he
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: went on this holiday with the family in Czech Republic
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: and they went for fishing, they cast some muscles and
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: was wearing those white Lenden shirt with coral shorts. I
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: still remember, like yesterday and I was like, ah, there
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: you go. So I bought him, came up with a
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: good suits for him. He came to Ghana, tapped in
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: with Kevin, met him in his office, and I remember
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: when we got introduced.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Kevin's like, hey, Steve, uh, this is chocolate. He's one
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: of the best designers over here. He's made you too, Steve.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: He's like, no, no, no, I don't wear no ready to wear.
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: You know I don't wear I don't wear no ready
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: to wear a thing. I'm like, no, trust me, man,
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: I've been I've been following. I've worked over four hundred
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: episodes of Family Feud. To you, Harvey show, you were
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: always in suits. It didn't help me. But last two
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: weeks before you came here, you were in chechopop me.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: You were wearing this da da da da. Dude is
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: just standing there.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: Like he was just staring at me, and he's like, listen,
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: my credibility is on the line. If you rock this
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: and it doesn't fit you, like, that's it. That's my shot.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: And I lost it. It's like okay, So he picked
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: up the clothes, goes into the washroom. I'm sitting there
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: tensed as hell, like I wanted the I don't know
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: whether or not you feel so tense sometimes like you feel
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: like you're sitting straight by, like your care there's so
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: much weights on you. And then he comes out like,
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: so we're sitting there, I'm chatting with the team, with
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: the family, with his kids.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden we hear.
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: So he comes out of the washroom dripped and those
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: all black suits, topping pants captain with trims of kinte
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: listen and at that time he was into boggy stuff,
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: baggy pants.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: So as soon as he came out, the first response
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: was from the wife, Marjorie said, finally, these are the
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: pants I've always wanted you to have, And it was
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: like clockwork, like he was. He was blown away. He
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: immediately ordered for five more suits for him and ordered
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: the suit for everybody in the family. And that's literally
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: what he said. Well, yesterday's fries is today's fries. And
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: he said, quick, I'll make it my mission to make
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: sure that everyone knows of chocolate and you're going to
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: be global. And since then, you know, we've done family
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: two seasons of family feud, Africa. We've done I think
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: Miss World, you know, succeeded in clothing him in different
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: spheres of life. But again it goes back to the validation.
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: It goes back to when opportunity meets preparation and you know,
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: very very excited by our association and we still stay
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: in touch. You know, we messaged you out us a
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: few days ago. He gets your uh you know, chance
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: to meet him as well. But yeah, it's just really
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: really exciting and posts him. I mean, the list.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Goes on and on.
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: He grise ELBA, the Bee Jordan family entrenched more of
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: our position with the NBA and the NBA Africa. Yeah,
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: and the list goes on and on.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So that moment changes your life. It definitely did
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: changes everything for you. I wonder as you get this moment,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: obviously you prepare for it, but challenges come. Right, So,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: like when we think about it, like we prepare for
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: this moment our whole life, we don't know what's on
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: the other.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Side of that.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: So what were some of the things challenges that you
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: face post that moment?
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you scale too fast, the business may not be ready.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: What are some of those things that you face after
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: having this huge moment.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Excuse me, I think definitely I even have a story
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: with that structure.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: Now, most businesses on the continent, the necessary structure that
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: should guide businesses aren't available. You even getting to work
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: with the best of accountants, lawyers, all of that are
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: not readily available. There's also this sort of myth that,
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: like things that has to do with lifestyle, such as clothing, food,
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: all these things are not typical careers.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: If I'm gonna put it this way, like everyone is.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: Naturally, it's not your way that you got to be
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: a doctor, a lawyer, engineer, right, And so imagine you
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: have such a business and opportunity and you go talk
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: to a lawyer. He's wondering why he's giving you his hours. Definitely,
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: structure now becomes a huge conversation. Then you start asking yourself, Okay,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: what does this mean? Would you want to continuously make
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: just bespoke suits? How do you even just continuously make
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: bespoke suits? Or are you going to are you link
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: thinking of scaling? That conversation and to answer all these
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: these questions goes back down to structure. So, yes, we
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: definitely did have our own fast share of not being structured.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: Enough to leverage off this one hundred percent on the continent,
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: though we still went ahead to still push the narrative
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: on weddings, people's ceremonial clothes, copy clothes, casual clothes. And
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: this also helped us to gradually move the business on
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: a continent from it being just a one off, one
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: man business to also attracting people over time because they
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: started realizing that it's not just about being a lawyer
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: and doctor, but there are other conversations and other sectors
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: that could also attract individuals that are also learned in
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: the accounting and law and all of that. Secondly, this
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: is the story right and you know shutouts now we
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: Campbell acquired recalls. Noami Cambo was in Ghana twenty eighteen,
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: twenty nineteen. One of my big brothers, fred Swanka and Achalecki.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Fantastic individuals. Man.
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: They have this platform called African Leadership Network, so they
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: launched it a year in Mauritials and then to Ghana
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: and it attracted one of the wealthiest billionaires in the
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: world Andris Polsen who owns asos dot com bestseller. All
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: of these so that weekend was filled full of a listers.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: I recall meeting being Nowomi and I'm like, hey, I
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: would like to grab a picture.
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: Like she was saying no to everybody, but for me,
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: there was something about me, that thing she was gone to.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: So now mem yeah, so you know, she did a
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: quick selfie and she's like, hey, you know, let's talk later.
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: Now we show up at the event and every a
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: lister at that event is wearing chocolate. So she goes
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: to tell Fred, hey, where is where is this chocolate guy?
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: So he's like, oh, he's coming, He's coming.
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: So now I get to the space and yes, so
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: you know, everyone was wearing chocolate was eyeballed. Okay, we
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: didn't have access to the to them, you know, all
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: of them. So I get to the space. Nowomi it's
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: like no. So they go like, well, hey chocolate, come.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: Have you met Nami Kama before? Now?
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Like why we met earlier today? So we laughed at
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the office.
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: He's like, yo, quick coo, I want this that that
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: she wanted everything everybody was wearing. What did the Stomorne
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: quick go and do? I went back to my workshop
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: and decided to be what was the word. I decided
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: to be like I'm there, I'm there, know it's all
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: start doing, started doing some things and went to meet her.
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: She was twixed, like she was calling, quick, who when
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: is my clothes coming? Like she was so excited. Now
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: I get to her, the clothes get to her. She
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: gives it back to the people like this is not
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: this is not this is not for her before I
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: clicks her that wait, is this what you made for me?
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Listen?
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: It was one of my biggest regrets off and two
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: and there are two elements here. We got to be
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: very very careful when you want to scale. Organic growth
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: is very very important. People are so quick to want
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: to get mileage eyeballs, but they're back in and ready. Two,
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: you also need to know that you don't know it all.
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: You learn on the job. You never think that, hey,
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: I've gotten into the status. I'm doing all these businesses
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: with all these big A listers.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: And so I know it all.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: And so these two things was a lot of It
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: was a learning care for me with Naomi. I mean,
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: we still got a chance to finish up another outfit
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: for her, and you know, I mean it's been a
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: while since I met her, but like, at least we
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: did solve that issue.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: But for any other person.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: I guess it would have been a blow because some
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: opportunities just don't come like that, you know, they don't
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: come like that.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: We need to.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Wanted to do. You took creative design to do what
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: you wanted to do, not what she wanted.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: What she wanted. She was disappointed in that. She was
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: definitely disappointed with that.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: And you know, I know that, like I'm up tune
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: through creative I do love the idea that.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: I'm able to come up with set in ideas.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: I love it when clients and I love it when
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: individual goes like, hey, Greake ool, they don't want tweet
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: this for me all of that, or hey, come up
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: with something beautiful.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: But again, it's not every single time that you meet
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: people that are going to be comfortable with sets in
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: line of design pallets. We need to and this is
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: a creative conversation. We need to understand who our client
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: audience is. We need to understand who the client is.
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: So at the end of the day, when even if
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: we are given the power to design, we just don't
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: go imposing sets and type of ideologies and cetain type
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: of looks on that end of it all, especially when it's.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Not who they are.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Well, that goes back to just not just it's a
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: business conversation, because it happens all the time in business
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: where the customer acts for one thing and then you
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: give them something else.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: They could be content.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: Then they might not even verbally say it, but they
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: could like show it by like they're watching this type
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: of content, and then you, as a content creator, you
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: want to make another type of content. Or it could
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: be let's say, like we have an event, right if
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: his speaker or whatever. Like you know, bottom line is this,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: you have to listen to the audience, but it is
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: a thin line because you also have to drive the
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: audience also, right, Like you can't you can't get held
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: hostage by the audience. That happens in music all the time. Right,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Like you look at somebody like Nas for thirty years,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: they wanted him to make his first album. If he
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: were he would he would have still be nineteen. Like
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: you know, I mean, like you got to be able
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: to grow and you got to force the audience to
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: grow with you. But that is definitely a difficult balance.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, but I think that like this was
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: my lending curve, right, Like I'm still very stubborn, like
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: a lot of my great clients would tell you like,
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: quick who, Like you know one of my my big brothers,
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: Pops Polpman Si Bones who first got in to play
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: the NBA shut out the Pops Man, and he would
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: tell you, quick who quao listen, I want this luck,
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: that's pretty, that's really good.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Shout out to you. That's really good.
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: Right, But I think it takes time. It goes to
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: building an organic business. You need to be able to
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: understand that, yes, you have full of all the great ideas,
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: but you cannot You can't get to the top in
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: a day, you know, And so forming a good balance
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: also does mean that Okay, hey, okay, this is the
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: first time, Like I remember the very first time I
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: met y'all. Yeah, we're pretty specific on what you had wanted.
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: But then it takes time because I was like, okay,
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: we'll do a top and down each, we do topping
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: shorts each. Okay, then we'll learn from what you wanted
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: versus sending colors that I tweeted in Okay, this doesn't work.
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: So you learn with your audience and then you start
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: tweaking it accordingly. You can't just surface and then come
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: in and post. It's in fact, this conversation goes beyond
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: just clientele, even goes beyond I'm humming more on even
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: ideas that we want to bring to even this market.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we've got our global strategy guide
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: with us. The type of clothing we do in let's
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: say West Africa versus the type.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Of clothing we do let's say in the Middle East, verre'us.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: The type of clothing we do in the Caribbean versus
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: the kind of clothes that we're hoping to do here.
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: Are all different because every society, every community is different,
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: and as a creative or as a business owner, you
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: need to be able to be discerning to know this. Otherwise,
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: if I show up just coming to impose it's in
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: line of look on you, you might not have a
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: good break through in the market. That's literally what it is,
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: you know. So I'm very, very sensitive when it comes
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: to these conversations. My greatest goal, which we've started doing,
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: is to have creative teams and all these different markets,
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: because what happens is that you are able to now
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: tap into the soul of people and so when they
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: look at the clothing, they don't know what it is.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: It might not necessarily be what they will go in for.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: I guess its all the time. Wow, I would have
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: never picked Brown. Oh wow, I never knew that. Like
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: this looks nice for me.
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: Why because it takes it carries essence and spirits of
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: who the who they are and people blended with ideas
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: and perspectives from a different place that now they start
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: getting comfortable with.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you had that moment.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: And then we talk about the power relationships, right, I
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: think since we've met, we've seen you with.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: This bad talk about.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Talk about the influence in basketball, the partnership with the NBA.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: How that all came about. What are the dynamics of
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the relationship. No, I mean it's amazing.
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: I think for years I've always been a big fun
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: of basketball, Like I've not been the best of players.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: But self awareness is important. Yeah, exactly exactly.
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, now I'm about the business, you know, And
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: so it was very interesting to me again knowing that hey,
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: we want to build the largest lifestyle business in the
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: world that happens to be from Africa, and so conversations
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: and networking, Hey, who is in the NBA?
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Who do I know? You know, who do I lice with,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: who do I vibe with?
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: Especially after we made clothes for All Black Stars twenty
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: fourteen and soccer right, so twenty eighteen twenty I think
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, I got a chance to meet Pops.
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: He came to Ghana for the first time after a
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: long time and I met him, Lual Dang, Chris Bosh,
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: a couple of guys that came to Ghana and I
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: was really excited because I ended up making clothes for
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: them and back in the day, I saw also make shoes,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: so I made shoes for them with size fifty and
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: size fifty ones. First time we ever made shoes like that, right,
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: and so I started getting more insightful about that space.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: Fast forward to Black Panther and there was so many
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: different parties and events that were hosted in collaboration with
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: Black Panther, and will get a lot of requests for
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: setting looks and drips for these parties. And there was
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: one such party that was done by I think it
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: was World Dang or one of these big NBA players
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: in La And at that party, everything changed because then
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: now people started seeing not just clothing, but they also
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: started seeing.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: An armor.
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: So you have the story of Black Panther that with
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: maybe fiction, but also speaks to the reality.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: On the ground in Africa and how that empowers us as.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: A community, and having the clothes as a tangible element
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: of what that key message it will be. So any
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: long story shorts is a lot of people fell in
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: love with the looks and the drips.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: So then we built much stronger relationships.
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: And then I quite remember twenty twenty when the launch
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: of NBA Africa with Ball was happening. I got the
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: chance to be in Chicago and witnessed it. At that point,
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: I still didn't understand what the bigger conversation was. In
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: my mind, I'm like, hey, you know what, I want
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: to make clothes for everybody who's a top executive in
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: basketball in the NBA all of that. Also there was
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: a little bit of I mean, uh, you know, uh
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: a former president while your former president Barack Obama is
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: a key is a key is a key, uh pillar
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: in NBA Africa in ball. So I also had an
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: idea that, you know what, I want to make clothes
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: for Baba two.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: Plus he's left handed, you know. So it was all
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: the elements. I was getting me really excited with the
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: NBA Africa back in the day. But then I also
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: realized after a year, a year or two in post COVID,
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: that it meant more than just high fashion.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: There was a great space for.
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Off court, off pitch merch and obviously a lot of
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: people know our brand and so having conversations key conversations
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: like this and in a space, and then the business
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: model of bal which is to empower the community within
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: that same direction or in that same direction. We then
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: sported a gap which is okay, hey, there are no
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: brands that are doing merch for the league, and so
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: we got into conversations, looked into it. It was not
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: a model we were doing because we do high fashion,
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: but we got so inspired, got challenged. There was an
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: initial brand I started a little bit as outside chocolate,
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: which was called Chocolate Urban or it was called Urban,
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: but like it was still affiliated to chocolate. But back
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: in the day, people still didn't see what I was
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: trying to do, so we just still made it as
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: part of chocolate. So when the conversations with Bow NBA
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Africa was getting close to like our sailing the deal,
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: we realized that no we need to be able to
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: have a separate brand that will cater to partnerships, catered
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: to the affordable luxury space, and you know you speak
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: to such deals and you know we you know, got
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: a deal signed about I think the first contract was
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: three years ago. Got a global deal to distribute March
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: by March first time in history. And it has been
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: such an amazing journey because again Africa, we don't have
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: a lot of brands that are doing this within the
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: African space and also brands that are also looking to
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: take Africa to the world. So initially we just did caps,
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: T shirts, hoodies and I was like, no, what else
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: can we bring to the table that would be totally
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: different And you know, definitely came up with these repurposed
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: ball bags and you know, recyclable straps and got into
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: motion and till they like everybody's in awe, you know,
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: seeing the brand associated with with bl and NBA Africa.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: You know, we see we're always having conversations with this.
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: We did another BBC article last year we got this
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: featured on. We just did another one with d W
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: also got that featured on. So you know, there's a
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: lot of great conversations again going back to the fusion
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: of cultures where we're now able to like look at
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: it from Okay, what can we do within the music space? Okay,
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: what can we do within the within the sports space?
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: What can we do within the food space? What can
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: we do within the movie space? What can we do
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: in the art space? You know, and we've thanks to
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: Cacao and even chocolate, we've touched on all these things.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so talk about your subscription model that you're launching.
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, membership, man, Like, Okay, so I got I got
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: to reminded. I got reminded the subscriptions on Netflix and
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: members are membership is in the high fashion. But yeah,
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: so you know, with every with our global strategy, you know,
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: there's a very important element of always what we've been doing,
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: which is bespoke fashion. I made a promise to several
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: clients about ten years ago that we will never repeat
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: the same thing, and we put money on it.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: Two years afterwards. I want that money.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: And so being doing custom made stuff, bespoke stuff has
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: always been a core part of us.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: But again, we wanted to structure that conversation.
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: We wanted to make sure that the wardrobes of our
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: target audiences are always very different. We're always we're always
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: coming up with collections twice a year. But again, for
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: people who show our bespoke clothes, they get a chance
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: to wear most of the looks way ahead of even
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: when the idea of the collection will come to play.
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: We've also seen the need that a lot of target
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: audiences that are very busy, you know, they don't have time.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, I remember when we're trying to coordinate your.
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: Looks earlier I could quick these says that yo, dude
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: is in like six countries in a week, the last
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: thing he's thinking about is clothes. Right, But with everywhere
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: you show up, you want to look a certain type
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: of way, be it a casual meetup, ceremonial meetup, corporate meetup,
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: and for a browd like hours that caterced to all
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: these three segments. We wanted to give the opportunity to
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: our you know, our members right to get the first
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: scoop of what being different does mean.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Also, you know, we close over forty presidents.
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: Different coptoins of industries, different celebrities. My power of networking
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: has gotten me here, and there's so many different examples
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: I've given with shows we've done back in Ghana, shows
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: we've done in Senegal, shows we've done in the Caribbean.
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: That brings people together and we feel like we're building
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: an ecosystem and community of like minded people. When you
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: meet another person wearing chocolate, there's hardly any form of airs.
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: There's always that sort of power of collaboration rather than
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: like competition. And we felt like, Okay, how then do
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: we give back to that same community? Uh ther people
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: looking to expand your businesses beyond your community, beyond their
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: where they stay. Are we able to do a show
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: in Guyana? You know where you know the president is
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: a big, big, big fun of mine. I'm a big
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: big fun of his as well. Are we able to
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: get people who are trying to expand your businesses to
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: Guyana to be part of this?
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: How do we even leverage off.
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: Some of these captains of industries who are maybe on
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: the verge of doing setting big deals. Are we able
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: to get people within the network within that ecosystem to
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: work hand in hand? Are we able to look at
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: how also these captains of industry sits at the forefront
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: of setting businesses and are able to offer set in
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: line of rebates discounts to our members. So, for example,
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: I have a good friend of mine, Terrence Terrence. Terrence
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: runs an agency called icons Who's that's an eyewear agency,
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: and he's actually responsible for a lot of activations LVMH
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: is doing in the States. For example, there are loads
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: of clientele that love sunglasses. So part of the membership
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: structure is number one, get certain type of rebates, certain
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: type of exclusive sort oftwares.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: Also back on the continent, we have several collaboration deals
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: with win we mentioned earlier were one of my good
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: friends Caveman. Caveman makes amazing watches. We're teaming up to
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: make very fantastic one. I think I'm gonna have a
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: sample here where literally every member is going to get
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: one with their customized names on it. And the most
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: important thing about these watches is it's even with our
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: Cacao concept.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: Cacaw is our our sustainability brand. We repurpose, we eco friendly,
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: all of that, And for this line, we are coming
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: up with repurpose denim. So you have like this and
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: then all you have is a customized names and then
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: you know, making the world a better place.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Right. Uh yeah, So there's so many different collaborations.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: Grenada. Grenada is like my second third home. I love
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: love Grenada. It's like it's like haven to me, right,
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: And we have our team out there, right, We have
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: our team out there. And what we're doing with such
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: markets is to collaborate with like different the different youth
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: out there, to help skill train them right and then
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: build stoll fronts that could celebrate that that collaboration for example.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: So again, anybody who's looking to expand your businesses or
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: expand your social circles to all these places that are
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: part of our membership comes with all these pecs now
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: and all of that.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Shout out to Caveman. We met Caveman. I think you
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: got a cave Man. Give me a watch.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Man got the watch cave still wait and my brother,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: your trail blazer obviously, I mean appreciate that the brand
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: is global.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: When you see that. See what that ice cream grip?
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: We know, we know where it came from.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: I wonder, as you're blazing this trail, what advice would
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: you give to up and coming designers, like in terms
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: of getting into this business manufacturer and distribution marketing, right,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: because I'm sure that people like I want to be chocolate.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I want to be successful. Say what type of things
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: would you tell them?
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, thing big, start small, move fast.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: I think big man, I don't have I don't have
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: no cup like I'm just Once we think about something,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: I'm looking at the best way we can build collaborations
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: to make it happen. So thing big, starts more, move fast.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: We need to develop the concept of collaboration. They said,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: if you want to move fast, you go alone. But
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: if you want to go further, you work, or you
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: build a team or your work hand in hand. So
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: again that's going to be my second advice. And thirdly,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: let's let's not think that things just happen. We need
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: to be intentional. I think one of the podcasts I
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: was listening to and I could so relate to it.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: Successful people just don't get up and become successful.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: We need to be able to.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: Plan and learn how to plan. I, for one, I've
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: learned the hard way of I've always been a plan
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: I started playing chess when i was five, so I've
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: always had a very.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Certain type of mindset. But I realized that.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: Learning to plan has helped cutapult my business from not
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: just being a local business in Ghana, but a major
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: frontier and within Africa and is really helping to support
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: this global expansion. Yeah, and so I mean these are
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: the three things thing big starts, small, move fast, the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: power of collaboration, and then learning to plan.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Chocolate, my brother man always a pleasure telling people
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: how they can follow you website for the membership and
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: all that.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean currently we're redeveloping our website. It's
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: Chocolate closed Global dot com, redeveloping it to have a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: new aesthetic. We launched that in October. But definitely Instagram
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: is one of our major plays. We have a lot
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: of like vibes out there where you know, we get
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: a chance to tag people who rock our stuff, our stories,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: all of that. And then we're also building an app
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: that should probably be ready by next year. And hopefully
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: with that app, I just don't need to eyeball you.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: You know, you should probably just take a picture and
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: I'll know your size. Please take that headache for me.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: But yeah, and also quite exciting. We have our team
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: on the ground as well that are going to be
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: an astary're building the major structures for the Americas and
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: any other parts of our global expansion. We're going to
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: also be communicating that we have newsletters, we have We've
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: got so many different ways of that that we're going
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: to be communicating from now to December on how people
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: can stay in touch and everything. But yeah, let's just
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: make sure y'all wardrobes are like looking spiffy. I mean,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: you can tell them how you're feeling.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Now. I'm feeling great. I mean these fabrics feel great.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Like I said, it's interesting because out of the colors
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: that I've told you before, I've never gone with Yeah,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: and so it's great. And if you're looking at this
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: and you're admiring it, as you should be, this is
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: a one on one and so you got to get
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: your own. You got to hit chocolate up and you
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: got to figure out what the design is for you.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: He did this one off the cuff and again he
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: did eyeball it.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: We were playing phone tag for a while and I
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, you made something. Oh if it's perfect,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: thank you, shout out to you.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Man. I appreciate you. Man, I appreciate you. All right,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: my brother.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: No, but listen, I got to say one thing before
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: I go. Man, Listen, you guys are doing an amazing job.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: Like I admire your energy. You keep on hopping on
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: different Marcus, different continents and you know people like us
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: are watching right and it's super inspiring. Just witnessing over
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: forty fifty thousand people was totally overwhelming. And you know
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: my brother partner Fosso was saying that, well, the only way,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: the only people who can command this as a church,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: a bet y'all movement and you know, big ups and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: big shout outs to you, and I can also say
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: shout out to you without saying big shout outs to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: Alvin Man he's been. He's been like my silent pay
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: set as well. You know, got us introduced to Tams,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: to all Irish Star, all these big players who have
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: recorded and written your music in my house back in Ghana,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: all thanks to Alvin and eventually making this meet up
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: possible finally with him.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: And also shout outs to Kwame and Ko Kwame Ko
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: got us together first.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: Yes, and you know he's been an amazing pillar of
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: hours and big shout outs to you Kam and Koh.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely absolutely. Then you have a ladies and gentlemen
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: that you rocking Onsill see you next week.
• 1:06:03
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