Mani, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Polar is an acronym that means Positive Out-Look About Reality. The Polar Movement’s purpose is to spread positivity and inspire followers to navigate through life as visionaries with an optimistic mindset.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The Polar Movement is a multidimensional lifestyle brand consisting of a clothing company, media/entertainment company, and community outreach who’s purpose is to spread positivity and inspire others to navigate through life as visionaries with optimistic mindsets.

The Polar Movement specializes in high quality streetwear clothing. Each garment is “Engineered with optimism” We started making clothing because of our interest in fashion, and the lack of representation for black designers in fashion. The brand gained notoriety at North Carolina A&T State University where we were named number 1 student owned business during our time on campus.

We’ve expanded the brand with nationwide exposure and have over 12k followers on IG. You can shop and support our company online at thepolarmovement.com

Any advice for managing a team?

Managing a team is all about leadership and culture. Once you can influence people to believe in you as a leader, they will buy into your vision, and then you can develop a strong team. I was fortunate enough to have a solid group of friends early on who believed and supported in my vision. I also empowered them and encouraged them to rep the brand as if they owned it. It’s almost impossible to run a business by yourself, so being able to lead a team is key. Remember people buy into the leader, then the vision, so hold yourself accountable and establish a positive influence over your team that will keep morale high and cultivate a winning environment.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

In the clothing industry manufacturing is difficult. We had no experience in manufacturing so it was just through trial and error. We had to learn about fabrics, materials, printing techniques, and learning how to create tech packs for the manufacturers to fulfill our vision. We started out going to local manufactures for basic screen printing designs, but as the brand progressed we needed more resources who could do more of a variety of high quality garments. We were introduced to a manufacture overseas through networking with other clothing lines. Now, we’ve been able to establish relationships with several manufactures internationally to produce high quality garments at more affordable rates, although there are still challenges we face along the way.

Contact Info:

• Website: thepolarmovement.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepolarmovement
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePolarMovement/
• Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/polarmovement_
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC74macNzdQBeIHHB_oxhspA/videos

Image Credits
@zlewisphotography for the 4 photos @trillrellx for the brand photo