Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Myles Nicholls. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Myles, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?
The name of my business was conceived in May of 2020. The initial idea of the brand name wasn’t created for the sake of selling product. It was to label a message, from what I was learning while in therapy about myself as well as what I was learning about my friends and family. Being able to reconnect to myself and the ones I cared about felt like “Emotional Therapy”. Then when I launched my first and second release I donated all proceeds to mental health awareness and helping wrongly convicted peaceful protestors. As time went on through the year I felt a change in myself, my community and my thoughts towards creating a brand; I realized I couldn’t stop what was originally going to be a 3 part series. Instead I went full throttle and taking it on full time with the brand naming being what it is now known as, “Emotional Therapy”.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Myles, but I go by my artist name Malo. I’m a Philly native, where I’ve built and continue to grow my fashion career. Creativity has always come naturally to me, and my unique personal style set me apart early on. I studied Fashion Merchandising & Management at Philadelphia University (now Jefferson University), and during that time I explored other creative fields like fashion design, graphic design, and animation—all of which helped shape my journey.
What started as customizing Nike Air Force 1s for fun in college quickly gained traction. By sophomore year, I was working with rappers, stylists, and music labels, which boosted my social media presence and led to custom clothing work. By senior year, I was designing graphics for brands across Philly.
Post-grad, I’ve deepened my roots in the industry—attending NYFW shows, connecting with stylists and celebrities, and releasing my breakout product, the MADGRILLZ beanie, in 2022–2023. Running a brand comes with real challenges—delays, imperfections, financial ups and downs—but my work reflects who I am and who I’m becoming.
This business isn’t about fame or money; it’s about authenticity, growth, and building community. Every item I create is a risk and a reflection of me. I’m still learning and evolving—and I’ve only just begun. Your support fuels the vision, and the best is yet to come.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I’m a people person and I’ve always naturally been a helping hand. I don’t look at my peers as negative competition, more often than not I do my best to help other brand owners and business owners when needed and if it’s within my means of capabilities. I feel this has helped grow my credibility within my market from business to business and developed trust. This has reflected well in support from other business owners and the reciprocation of resources.
As for my customer base, I try my best to keep everything transparent, legit and honest. On my website I keep everything as up to date as possible with inventory and if something is out of stock I reach out to the customer to inform them before cancelling their order incase they want something else. This also applies to if the shipping information looks incorrect or if a customer is local and would like to pick up their order via appointment. On my social media’s I sometimes may host a giveaway, a challenge to be apart of the brand with helping on a design and post shipping updates on packages.
Lastly overall I keep my integrity and reputation intact by never scamming a customer out of money, I rarely do pre-order for items unless the demand requires it and I keep an open and clear form of communication for customer to reach out to me.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
I’ve been doing manufacturing of most of my most popular products since mid 2021. Being that I was fortunate enough to go to a university and major in Fashion I was exposed to how sourcing and communication worked for finding manufacturers. I even took a short course study abroad to China where I visited some factories and companies. However, even with all this information, post grad doing it for my own business I’ve had many trials and errors working with manufacturers such as incorrect bulk orders, quality control issues, shipment delays, lack of communication and that’s still just some of the problems faced.
I’ve dealt with vendors in Pakistan and China predominantly and have had better results with china but faster turn around with pakistan. When it comes to finding the “right one” I personally am still in search for that. I’ve found great ones for particular products but lack at diversity into other product segments, thus having to find another one elsewhere. I’d love to find one solid at majority of what I’m looking for. What I always start with asking is their MOQ (Minimum order quantity), cost per unit, sample turnaround time and overall product turnaround time; in addition I’d ask for a clear and consistent line of communication with picture and video updates. and inform them that I am looking to lock in with a reliable vendor so if they can provide these things we can continue to build.
There’s no one shot clear answer of finding manufacturers but I do tell other upcoming brand owners to be weary of ones that randomly dm or whatsapp them since they can be scams, and to start off they should download Alibaba and only work with verified factories.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.malovisions.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emotionaltherapy_/ https://www.instagram.com/malo97/?hl=en
Image Credits
@chakhie_ for the hoodie picture, @jayvito for the red backdrop picture