We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brian Wright a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
The idea for Grim + Proper started 5 or 6 years before I even launched the website. It started out as a pipe dream when I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I knew I always wanted to do something creative, as I have been drawing and painting since I was a young child, but I didn’t know how to make that love of art into a career. I knew I would never make it as a “starving artist” so I thought about things like event planning and interior design. One year I went with my mom on a business trip to Cocoa Beach and spoke with an owner of a local surf shop, where he explained how he started screen printing in his garage and somehow managed to turn that hobby, that passion into a full blown successful business. That’s when it really clicked for me. I always loved fashion, so I then realized I could combine fashion and my art and create a really cool and unique brand. But it was a long road. I had no idea what I was doing or how to even go about making this idea a reality. I first thought of a brand name, which was a long process in itself. I remember I had about 15-20 possible names and had all my friends over and we went through them all and slowly narrowed it down until we finally landed on Grim + Proper. But in the beginning, the designs and the clothing was much more formal and wasn’t as grungy and edgy as it is now. I was also naive when I first started planning out designs for clothing, thinking I was going to make shoes and mens suits and that it was going to be relatively cheap and easy to have a full blown collection right out the gate! I had tuned my room into an office/design studio, constantly creating designs that I thought I’d be able to get produced. I reached out to a few manufacturers about what I wanted to create and was quickly met with disappointment. It was way more than what I could afford or wanted to spend, even with scaling back the amount of items I was trying to produce at the time. I was crushed and disheartened and for a while pretty much put this dream on the back burner. It wasn’t until a couple years later, I moved to Tampa, FL (from Virginia Beach, VA) and met my husband, who was also dark and edgy and really helped resurrect this dream of mine and helped be the muse that made Grim + Proper what it is today. I scrapped all my old designs and simplified the garments I wanted to produce. It was the perfect moment in time too, right before the resurgence of pop punk music and the craze surrounding people like MGK and Travis Barker. We also were in the midst of a pandemic which not only brought out peoples darker more macabre side, but I also was fortunate enough to get stimulus checks while retaining my job, which gave me the extra capital to be able to fund my dream. I found an affordable manufacturer overseas and started out with 2 T-shirts, 2 pins, 2 bandanas and 2 hats. Before I started my online presence I was selling these items at a local Oddities shop called Dysfunctional Grace which helped get my name out there. At the same time I was trademarking my brand, building my online presence and gaining a following on social media. About 3 months after my first designs were produced I launched grimandproper.com and have been working every day since on creating even more exciting tattoo inspired designs and doing everything in my power to grow and maintain my business. It has been a lot of trial and error and a lot of learning and growing and adapting, but it is my dream and my passion and I love where Grim + Proper is today and look forward to watching it grow more and more as time goes on!
Brian, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a Scorpio and a Halloween baby. I was born October 29 and have pretty much always had a Halloween themed birthday party which I think helped shape me into the edgy/gothic guy that I am today. My art wasn’t always so dark though, I would do a lot of animals and floral themed artwork but always had a love of skulls. I was always trying to create something beautiful with skulls or skeletons in it. When I turned 18 my artistic style really changed because I started getting tattoos. I was obsessed with tattoos, the pain, the sound of the tattoo gun and just the idea of using your body and your skin as this canvas to cover with beautiful pieces of artwork that last forever. I had an entire sleeve my senior year of high school. My art started getting darker and my artistic style morphed more into the style of traditional tattoos. More simplistic but bold at the same time. Tattoos and metal band artworks really helped shape Grim + Proper and helped me create the designs like you see on my Instagram or website. It has been a fun evolution, but it definitely has been difficult and has taken a lot of work and discipline. I think one thing people are always surprised by is that I do everything myself. I am my only employee, working everyday to gain my Instagram following, answering customer emails, posting photos, taking and editing product photos for the website, packing and shipping every order and of course constantly coming up with new designs and artworks and communicating with my manufacturers to bring these designs to life to sell around the world!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The fashion industry is tough already, you have multiple seasons and trends are constantly changing and what people want now might not be what they want next month, and you pretty much have to somehow be ahead of the trends at all times. So you definitely have to be resilient, because not everyone is going to like what you’re selling and you’re going to have some designs that miss the mark and you have to just learn and grow from every mistake. I remember with my first set of designs the Smalls sold out very quickly so with my next set of designs I ordered extra Smalls and for some reason that season people didn’t want Smalls anymore, then I was selling more Larges. You’re constantly shifting and even when it seems like you can never get it right you just have to do your best and pull through and look forward and trust the process. My products, my style are also very niche. Not everyone likes my stuff and I constantly have people giving me mean looks, scoffing at me, writing mean things in my comment section on Instagram and I have had a ton of older women come up to me at markets trying to pray for me and help me find Jesus and tell me i’m on some horrible path to hell. So you really have to believe in yourself and your art and take things like rude looks or comments with a grain of salt. If it’s what you love doing then you just have to know you’re doing what you need to do and be confident in your art and your products and in yourself!
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Growing a clientele is one of the more challenging parts of starting a business. I think the most successful thing for me is consistency. Everyday I am on Instagram, posting stories and reaching out to local and independent artists, making those connections. I also participate in local markets and conventions, which help get my name and my products out in front of people. My brand has been worn by local bands and has also been worn by people in the inner circle of names like Machine Gun Kelly and Avril Lavigne. But you have to put that work in, these people aren’t going to reach out to you first. I reach out to celebrities and artists and their friends, their managers, cameramen, etc in hopes that it makes its way to those artists/celebrities and blows up. Owning your own business is a lot of drive and determination and you can’t stop for a second.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.grimandproper.com
- Instagram: @grimandproperclothing
- Facebook: @grimandproperclothing