We recently connected with Demetrius Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Demetrius, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I was managing an artist in the music industry by name of Young Dirt.. He’s one of creator/founder of our slogan, “Grind Hard Sleep Less”.. As his manager I was trying to think of a way to keep our brand on the consumers mind at all times.. What better way to do that than clothes.. You wear clothes at least 85% of the day, everyday..So i felt doing fashion would help me execute my task effectively.

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

Greetings..My name is Demetrius Williams Owner and senior designer at ghsl wear fashion house. I got into industry by via Hiphop from managing an music artist.. I used the gifts that god gave me to style people in the art of HipHop culture.. The culture of hiphop has been styling my generation since 1985 by the hands of the great designer Dapper Dan.. I used to buy word up magazines and see my favorite hiphop artist rocking his latest designs.. I always remembered how the artist looked while wearing Mr Dapper Dan’s creation.. The pride and the confidence they portrayed in the photo..and as a consumer, i picked up on that..fast-forward to the present, that’s the feeling i want our consumers to feel, important, stylish, confident… What i think that set us apart from other brands is our attentions to details..We take pride on how our garments are made from the thought conception process to manufacturing..

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

It was 2014 and we just came out of the product development stage.. We didn’t have a website yet.. We was just trying to find our way.. New to the fashion business, we was learning everything on a day to day process..Money was getting low and sales was next to none.. The price point i was looking for was to high for our current market of 0%.. By having a market of zero, that means no monies is coming in.. Our bottom line is in the red.. So everybody was giving me their advice of, why don’t you decrease your sales value.. I didn’t want to do that because i knew the value we were building.. Why decrease our value now to increase it down the road.. I wanted the market to be use to our values from the beginning.. So we kept pushing and adding more value to the brand by being consistent.. Few years later we have been seen in British Vogue magazines, Tatler magazine and other international magazines..

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 in the journey that nothing is written in stone.. You can achieve and adapt to anything that comes your way..I learned from the Bruce Lee philosophy when he said “Be like water”.. And what he meant by that is water can come as a liquid(move around objects) or a solid(go through objects).. I use that philosophy on a daily bases..

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ghslwear.com
• Instagram: @ghslwear
• Facebook: Ghsl Wear
• Linkedin: Demetrius Williams/Ghsl wear
• Twitter: @ghslwear
• Youtube: Ghsl wear

Image Credits
TOMMY THOMPSON