Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Quinten Thomas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Quinten, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

Back in 2021 I lived in Baltimore, MD and was working at Whole Foods as a grocery stocker. I had recently decided that college was not the best choice for me due to personal & financial reasons. I’ve always had my heart set on helping others around me in any way that I possibly could. My first thought was “what can I do or create to help spread a positive message that applies to any and everyone?”. By the end of my shift I had my heart and full intentions set on creating my own clothing brand with a message that everyone could relate to and be inspired by. What was that message you might ask? At the time I had no clue whatsoever. For the next couple of days, I began brainstorming ideas and themes. I was stuck with a blank mind for about two to three more days following so I decided to take a deeper look into myself and my environment. I began thinking about what my life represents and what has helped me persevere through my trials and tribulations leading up until this moment. Then boom! It hit me! “Composure.”

I realized that growing up where I come from people generally focus on the negative things in life or always try to find the negative in every situation. Growing up in this environment I fell into the habit of doing the same thing. As I got older I realized that your thoughts become your words, and your words become your actions which leads to the creation of your reality. With this being said, I wanted to turn things around for myself and the others around me by coming up with something that shows that there is positives into every situation and that there’s always room for growth opportunity and success you just have to put your mind to it and focus on the right things no matter how bad you think things may be or turn out. Moving forward the first step after coming up with the brands name, meaning and intentions was brainstorming logos, images and design concepts for my first launch. For the next three months it was strictly designing. I thought that was biggest obstacle in getting things setup but little did I know of what was in store for me. What I had came to realize was that I had to do research about fabrics, manufacturers, order methods, creating a website and how to run things properly an efficiently. After the realization of this, the next seven months was a humbling experience for me.

During this time I ended up relocating to Greensboro, NC. This major move set me back a couple of months due to readjusting to everyday life a getting settled down. By God’s grace I still kept the same determination from the beginning and was able to use that as fuel to keep moving forward despite the setback. After getting back on track and completing majority of my research at the time, I was able to find a local manufacturer in my city which made designs and sample products easier to access but also caused redirection of launch procedures. With my manufacturer being local and not sending out orders themselves that obligation was left in my hands. I had no clue what to do. After doing research about shipping supplies and procedures such as packaging, shipping label, processing times and fees I was left with a last minute decision of whether to hold off longer on launching or investing into myself and purchasing everything I needed to get started. Of course it was more logical to just wait but I took it upon myself to take the risk of teaching myself and learning along the way. Which was the best decision I made and led to my first launch on February 3rd, 2023.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

First and foremost to all my newcomers, thank you for taking an interest into my brand and getting to know me a bit deeper than the surface! I am Quinten Thomas, a 22 year old born in Fairfax, VA (shoutout to the DMV!!) and raised in Charlotte, NC also known as “The Queen City.” I come from a large family of four brothers and five sisters. I grew up with my mother’s side and always visited my father’s every summer for as long as I can remember. My father passed away when I was only nine months old. Growing up my family wasn’t always in the best position financially but my mother had a way of always working things out one way or another, which allowed me to always have a positive outlook on life. At an early age it was evident that I was very intelligent and ahead of my peers, my only issue was that I was this walking ball of goofy, high energy 24/7 so it lead to me being labeled as a distraction and a “class clown”. One thing about this “class clown” was that my work was always done though.

In eighth grade I decided to finally put all this energy into good use outside of just the classroom. I tried out and made the middle school basketball team. From that point on until freshman year of college my life revolved around basketball with dreams of someday making it to the NBA. I was blessed to receive a full-ride athletic scholarship to Francis Marion University located in Florence, SC where I majored in early childhood education. That unfortunately took a turn on October 3rd, 2019. I had an accident at practice that resulted in me tearing all three ligaments in my left foot as well as having a high ankle sprain. Although it is possible to come back from an injury and continue to do what you love, it is more of a mental battle than physical. I allowed negative thoughts, self doubts, fear, and outside opinions and influences get inside my head and it mentally drained me resulting in me losing focus on getting back to the sport that I once loved. After freshman year I transferred to Fayetteville Tech, a junior college in Fayetteville, NC where I completed one semester but decided at the time that school was not apart of my plan moving forward

At this point I was lost and felt as if I had no purpose or reason for doing anything. I was just working and living life day to day without any goals, aspirations or intentions of bettering myself. It led to a state of depression and isolation from my friends and family. After a while I got tired of being what some would say a “negative nancy” and focusing on everything that went wrong and living in a “coulda, woulda, shoulda” state of mind. My first step of getting out of that mindset was practicing focusing on the positive outlook of situations as once before and a change in environment. This led to me moving to Baltimore, MD with my older sister Sanaya. My time up there was much more needed than I could have ever imagined. I was able to find a decent paying job, build a closer relationship with my sister, receive guidance, and increase my mental stability. After a few months up there I finally began to start feeling like a new and improved version of my old self who was very outgoing, optimistic and determined to help others in any way he possibly could. Things began to turn around for the better. This was my life before I began to train and become a new and improved me. These trials and tribulations are what led up to me being able to successfully come up with my clothing brand “Composure”.

”Composure” provides affordable, stylish and meaningful attire that represents something more than just a logo on a shirt. We are family that is built around the similar belief that no matter what you are going through or what you have been through, by focusing on the positive and living in the present moment, anything is achievable with that belief paired with a will to work hard and be the best you that you can possibly be day in and day out. We are a mental reminder to put your best foot forward at all times, take the risk and never dwell on the past. Always learn from the past whether it is positive or negative but NEVER allow the past to prevent you from moving forward.

As of now my website is closed for rebuilding until about August/September but you can follow us on instagram @composurexclthg for updates on new merchandise in the making, previous releases with some inventory left, as well as website updates and future product launch details.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m still in the early stages of building my audience but I have learned a lot over the past year or so. There is no “hack” or quick fix to building your audience. The four main things that will take you further than before is Consistency, Quality, Meaning and utilizing all of your talents.

Being consistent doesn’t necessarily mean posting every single day. But its good to produce content on a scheduled basis because it allows for your customers, viewers and audience to look forward to certain products or events and for them to easily stay up to date with what is going on. For example posting behind the scenes work every Monday and posting finishing products on Friday. This allows the audience to see what it is your working on beforehand, building anticipation and engagement in following back up to see the finished product later in the week. In this case it being Friday. As time goes on the audience with begin to subconsciously pick up onto your schedule and you’ll see an increase in consistent views, likes, etc. Take a look at a your schedule, right it down, find days that are free or you have the most time and dedicate those times to your content drops. Quality in today’s age of social media is critical to everything. It’s not the defining factor of increasing engagement but it definitely helps out. With your audience viewing high quality pictures or videos it increases appeals to them more effortlessly creating more interest in the product or service at hand. Think of your content as if it were a commercial.

When producing content try to almost always include something with meaning behind it, why you’re creating this product/piece of art, or where you got inspiration from. This allows the audience a chance to connect and relate to you beyond just the product at hand. You give them a chance to peek into your mind and see or understand how and why things came out the way that they did. Lastly, utilizing your skills. Me personally, I am a photographer as well and I also do a bit of videography. Instead of paying someone to do these things for me, I make time in my schedule to do create my own content even if that means losing a couple hours of sleep or having to put in a bit more work on top of my workload. It’s about sacrifices. I have experience with being a brand ambassador for other peoples brands, I take my knowledge and experience from that and apply it to my brand and ways about creating content. Everything isn’t going to be perfect, you may start or shaky but as I said before as you go on and progress day by day you begin to see the improvement in your work, consistency and ideas.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My business partner is my little brother Duval, better known as DJ. Ever since I had the idea of creating this brand I would always call or facetime him to get a second opinion about logos, concept and ideas. At first it was just a few suggestions every once in a while, but overtime he began to gain more interest in what I was doing. This led to our conversations being longer, extended piggybacking off of each other’s ideas and allowed us to create what we feel like is the best in representing what we stand for and the message that we want to deliver. Now it’s to the point where we can call each other just to check in or ask a question about something totally off topic but one way or another we always end up discussing at least a smidget of something pertaining to the brand. Overall it also helps us in building a better relationship outside of the brand as brothers as well. I couldn’t ask for a better partner!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @Composurexclthg

Image Credits
Director/Organizer/Content Creator of Photoshoots : Quinten Thomas @shotbybean_