We were lucky to catch up with Artur Klimov recently and have shared our conversation below.

Artur, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

As my teacher of Art said about success: “It takes 1% of talent and 99% of sweat.”
I truly believed in this, first when I practiced at her classes, and second when I applied this rule to anything important in my life. Throughout my career , I saw how not talented but hardworking people became successful, and it empowered me to apply this model in times when I experienced a lack of motivation—those days when I didn’t see any or little result from my activity. I think that at least if you have 1 percent of talent and you love what you do, then you enjoy the process anyway no matter of what outcome you get time by time and eventually you’ll succeed.

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?

I’m very lucky that from a young age I was able to express my talents, and my mom was a big supporter of mine, who encouraged me to continue to develop my art skills in a special art class in elementary school. After high school, I didn’t pay much attention to design as my discipline at the university as a building engineer was more about analytical skills. It took me a while to come back to design, and that time came after I moved to the USA. Starting life from zero in a new country with no friends and no support was a challenge. So, one of the things to get more joy and relaxation after long working days was my passion for design. I don’t remember the exact situation which led me to design T-shirts, but I remember that I wanted to find vintage-style tees with original prints, and I was struggling to find one. At that time, print-on-demand was just in the beginning stage, but it was enough for me to start with something. The first tees I made were for myself, then I did some for my friends, and later I got many positive feedbacks as well as negative ones (couldn’t avoid those, of course) . After that, I decided to be more serious about it and try to sell online.

I’m happy to see my clients wear what was on my computer yesterday. That vintage charm of cool clothes like ringer tees, crew socks, leather jackets, and pants from the 60s – 90s really inspire me, and I want to see how I can add more of my creativity to make someone’s clothing collection unique — how I can help my clients create their own individual style.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My business with designing T-shirts was not the first business I did. I sold some other products far from the apparel business, and it was selling very well, especially after I improved its design. I sold it for a couple of years until one day I wasn’t able to sell it anymore and needed to stop it completely. It was very difficult to go through this situation, and I took a break as I was mentally exhausted. The good thing is that I learned a lot about my ability to concentrate in critical situations, my ability to react and solve new problems more efficiently, as everything I did – speed in making decisions and taking action to sell the rest of my stock – was all new to me.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I learned a lot about myself, not only my talents but about concentration and how my stubborn character can help me to continue my business no matter what.
And that all success is inside you, and your job is to bring it out by having a good plan.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://artreedesign.com
• Instagram: @artreedesign
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artreedesign

Image Credits

Savage tee: Eric Wertz @Bluecollarprep
Ringer tees: Lujan Sotolutz @lujansotolutz
Oversized/Ringer tees: Fran Marques @fran_marques106