We were lucky to catch up with Jas & Monét Winston-Tate recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jas & Monét , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Finding those key vendors can often be make or break for a brand. Can you talk to us about how you found your key vendors?
We actually started our relationship with our manufacturer through social media. We were so trusting in the beginning and ended up getting scammed. We were heartbroken but once our current manufacturer messaged us we explained the unfortunate circumstance we had encountered and to gain our trust, they agreed to make & ship our products and wait to receive payment and after that initial swap, the rest is history. I feel they chose to work with us because they needed a brand to take a chance on them as well as we needed a quality, trustworthy manufacturer & we just stuck. This entrepreneurship world can be scary especially sending your hard earned cash internationally & just trusting the process but we took a leap of faith because we wanted more for our brand and not just looked at as merch resellers.
Jas & Monét , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We Are Jas & Monét a married couple whom co-owns Black Mentality Clothing; which is an online eCommerce, black women owned, gender fluid luxury streetwear clothing brand, based in Cleveland, Ohio. Our brand’s mission is to bring positive awareness to minorities mental health and bring unity and empowerment throughout our communities through fashion. We cater to men (unisex) and women. We offer a variety of jogging suits, tracksuits, short sets, tee-shirts, hats,dresses and more. We know that Clothing is an universal non-verbal language, so we created a space where all genders & non-binary identifying (unisex) persons will be comfortable in their skin, as their most authentic self, in a brand that appreciates them in all forms, shapes & sizes.
How’d you meet your business partner?
We met when we were 14yrs old through a mutual associate, dated for a year then just decided to be friends. After 8 years of friendship we lost contact for 2yrs and Jas ran into my brother and the rest is history. Jas had always been an entrepreneur but experiences with bad business partners, we decided to go into business in love together. We trusted one another and our brand was the perfect creation between she & I. We really balance eachother out, she’s the personality of the brand & I’m the tech portion just the best of both worlds and we make it work.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Once we created our name, slogan, filed our LLC and got our logo created, we both just wrote up an agreement that we would 50/50 contribute $2500/pp in the initial start-up of business from our own personal savings.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.blackmentalityclothing.com
- Instagram: Www.instagram.com/blackmentalityclothing216
- Facebook: Www.facebook.com/JasMonetBMC
- Youtube: Www.youtube.com/c/TheBuzzLifeJasAndMonet
- Other: We started a crowd funding campaign; please donate to help us expand our brand https://ifundwomen.com/projects/black-mentality-clothing-inventory-fund