We were lucky to catch up with Christopher And Courtney Rhodes recently and have shared our conversation below.

Christopher And Courtney, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

FLAVNT (pronounced “flaunt”) was born at Austin Pride in 2013 — Chris and Courtney both made shirts for the parade and Chris’ was a white cutoff with the phrase “pretty boy” on it. At the event dozens and dozens of people came up and asked Chris where he got the shirt — and the people the design resonated with were from across the entire spectrum of the LGBTQIA+ community. The two sat on the idea for a while but with a background in graphic design and having taken a screen printing class in college they decided why not make shirts designed for the queer community by the queer community. What started with a fun pride design quickly became many more designs, at first sold to friends and friends of friends, but social media was a huge help in getting FLAVNT off the ground. They wanted to set FLAVNT apart and make it more than just a clothing line so in the first year of business they began fundraising initiatives — partnering with trans individuals raising money for gender-affirming surgeries. Since 2014 FLAVNT has helped raise over 40,000 for 15 different trans individuals and another 10,000+ for organizations supporting the community.

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?

Chris and Courtney Rhodes are identical twins, as mentioned with a background in graphic design. Chris is trans and Courtney is a lesbian so creating a brand that was for the LGBTQIA+ community just made sense. The idea for running their own business sort of just unfolded and took off in a way that was both surprising and so wonderful — it has been over 8 years now of running this small business and getting to be a part of making change in the community. Aside from offering graphic tees, sweatshirts, accessories, and stickers the product that really changed the game for FLAVNT (and for the queer community as a whole) was our Bareskin Binders. A chest binder is a garment worn to compress your chest, often worn by transgender men or any individual who would prefer a flatter looking chest. Courtney came up with the idea of creating a skin-tone binder after seeing Chris struggle with top options to wear out in the sun and swimming in their home state of Texas — binders at the time were available from a few companies but not available in nude tones. Chris used his years of binder-wearing to help change the silhouette, and then they launched a kickstarted to fund the idea. This really moved the needle within the binder market itself — showing a problem that needed solving it pushed other existing brands to release their own more inclusive range of binders. The kickstarter also helped provide a lot of incredible community feedback — with over 700 backers to the project FLAVNT was able to compile a lot of feedback and input into the production and creation of what would become their best-selling product. It is easily one of the hardest projects we have ever undergone and also one of the things we are most proud of.

How did you build your audience on social media?

FLAVNT is incredibly lucky that it was “born” at a time that instagram was really taking off, growing the brand wasn’t “easy” but it was a different type of social media at the time at least in our opinion. Additionally we had the added benefit of that Chris had a large following of his own and Courtney had a decent sized following (that has grown substantially since as well) where people were invested in getting to know who Chris was as a person and so that allowed for people to then care about the business. Chris’ social media centered around sharing his transition, and I think that vulnerability, authenticity, and visibility were all things that we wanted FLAVNT to embody and were things that people related to and felt comfortable with. That would be the advice I’d give as far as to be personable and unique and give your customers a reason to choose you or your brand over every other one out there as to why they should be invested in you.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

It is probably not the most traditional route but FLAVNT was started with a mere $500 of our own money to buy our first run of shirts, for the first few years every bit of money that came into FLAVNT went right into buying more products or expanding however we could. The only time we have taken on any capital was via crowd-funding during a kickstarter campaign to fund our Bareskin Binder project. If I had advice I would say that having more money going in would create more of a sense of security but if you can keep your overhead low and be smart about it then it’s possible to start with a little and build it into something sustainable.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.flavnt.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/flavnt_streetwear
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/flavntstreetwear
• Twitter: twitter.com/flavnt
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@flavnt_streetwear

Image Credits
Riley shea glenn