Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mark Jones. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Mark, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

My brand NoNoiseMade is ran by me and 5 of my brothers. The brand itself was created based upon us taking a risk and betting on ourselves to bring our vision to life.

NoNoiseMade is a streetwear brand based out of Louisville, Ky and has been around since August of 2018. The ethos of our brand is “The act of being humble and appreciating the grind” so, letting your success speak for itself, you don’t have to be cocky or flamboyant.

We sell anything from hoodies, sweatpants, shorts, T-shirts, beanies, socks, bags, ball caps, etc.

How we even came up with the concept of the brand was from my big brother RonNell (Nell). He was a college athlete, attending Mount St Joseph in Ohio and he had this saying/hashtag he would always use on his social media post called #NoNoiseMade. I always looked up to my brother, especially bc I was an athlete myself and wanted to follow in his footsteps.

I was in high school at the time and was an athlete myself and started using the quote #NoNoiseMade on all of my social media posts and it just stuck and people began to find a liking to it due to it being a different, but yet catchy name. The saying also represented who I was as a person to those who know me so that really made people gravitate to it. They seen it wasn’t just a brand to me, it’s a lifestyle.

From then on, Nell had his senior night for college and his family had made airbrushed T shirts with his picture and “#NoNoiseMade” above it. The shirt was nice and got a lot of attention from not only us, Nell’s family, but from other players’ family as well.

This is when me and my brothers, Nell, Chris (CJ), Quinton (Q), Cameron (Cam), and Karvontay (K Slay) came up with the idea to really bring NoNoiseMade to life and start a clothing brand that not only sells clothes to people, but pushes the lifestyle that all of us pride ourselves on living by everyday.

Getting the idea to start the brand was only half the risk!

The real risks came when the brand first started to launch and I was a broke college student while others may have just finished college or were just working full time.

We used the little funds we did have at the time to invest into the business whether it was paying to register the business then hiring a trademark attorney to help us apply for the copyrights of our brand to protect us.

This was probably my biggest risk because at the time, it costed roughly $4,000 for us to hire our attorney and have him apply for the trademarks we weren’t wanting.

At the time the 6 of us combined didn’t have the funds to put together to come up with the money so I took it upon myself to just pay the tab in full using my college refund check and that they could just pay me back their portions whenever they were able to.

I was fully invested and devoted to making this brand work and come to life. I didn’t care that that was my only money and that I would have to literally penny pinch until the next semester came around. None of that mattered to me because I seen the vision of the brand and knew it was going to be something special.

That risk that I took resulted in us being able to launch the brand while also being educated on how the trademark process goes, therefore we won’t need to hire an attorney next time and could do it ourselves.

It also resulted in our brand still being able to remain strong and prosperous here today in October of 2024.

We have had thousands of supporters from all over the country support us along with top entertainers such as Grammy nominated artist, Swae Lee, Pittsburgh Steelers starting cornerback, Beanie Bishop, and University of Louisville basketball player, Kasean Pryor to name a few.

Lastly, to me, when running a clothing brand, there’s a risk you take everyday because you can literally wake up and realize that what was once working for your brand and trending, is no longer there and the consumers are on to something new.

We live in a trendy world now, so if you’re not constantly innovating and growing, your brand won’t either. With innovation and growth, you have to take RISKS or are you truly maximizing your potential?

I feel NoNoiseMade is living proof of that due to us still being here 5 years later while continuing to grow our brand and get better.

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

I’m Mark Jones Jr. I’m 25 years old and I’m from Louisville, Ky. I attended the university of Louisville where I graduated with a Business Marketing degree in May of 2020.

I work for ADP, a payroll/HR company. My role is “Small Business – Senior Sales Manager”.

Outside of that, I have 2 companies that I’m running; No Noise Made LLC (streetwear brand) & No Noise Maid LLC (janitorial services).

*I already explained how No Noise Made was started in the last section*

No Noise Maid is a janitorial service that I just started this year. We offer cleaning services from residential housing, to office cleaning, industrial building cleaning, etc. Pretty much any type of building, we’ll clean it.

How I came about the idea of this company was due to the help of my mentor, Greg Braun who has his own business, Maid In Louisville.

Over the past two years, I’ve been helping him with day to day activities and learning the industry/business until one day, I decided to take the risk and following in Greg’s footsteps and starting my own business since I was more educated now.

I used the connections I’ve made with Greg over the years to negotiate my first contract with a local Non-profit organization here in Louisville by the name of Parks Alliance. I am responsible for the maintenance of a newly built park, (Alberta O. Jones Park) in the urban area of our community that I grew up in.

Recently I also just finished my biggest contract thus far for the Bourbon and Beyond and Louder Than Life festivals. The city of Louisville hosts these events each year and top country and rock artists from all over perform. I was responsible for the maintenance of the Artist and VIP area during each event which is a pretty big deal.

When it comes to No Noise Maid, the problems that I am solving for my clients are making them feel comfortable and clean in whatever space that needed my service. It will be in a timely and professional manner as well.

For No Noise Made, we solve the problem in making our consumers look no further to another streetwear brand. We give consumers the confidence and comfortability or wearing our pieces and knowing they look good in them while also representing what the brand stands for and of course, them. That’s what makes me proud the most. Seeing the genuine joy and energy in our customers as they rock our pieces. Nothing beats that feeling to me.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn is when people say “don’t do business with family”. I can’t stand that logic because that’s exactly what I’m doing now with my companies and it has been nothing but success for us. People say that assuming it won’t work for you because it didn’t work for them and I don’t like when people project their beliefs onto me as if I’m them and they are me.

Now I’m not suggesting just work with any family member. Pick one/some you genuinely trust, know and can hold accountable and vice versa.

Also, I suggest taking votes or having a unbiased third party opinion present when discussing the company’s next step/ideas and how yall would want to move forward. This makes it fair for each person while also letting everyone’s voice get heard and respected.

Find a role for each person. Everyone can’t be all doing the same thing. Find your teams strength and assign roles based upon them.

You do this, and I promise you’ll be fine. I trust my brothers/family more than anybody else.

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

We don’t personally manufacture our products. We hire a manufacturer who does it for us, but all of the ideas are created originally by us.

We knew how the manufacturing process worked in regards to direct to garment (DTG) and screen print but we just didn’t own the equipment ourselves nor know how to use it. To save time and money, we just said we’d outsource a manufacturer.

We started off using local manufacturers, but we’ve soon found out that they are hard to deal with, whether pricing or can’t necessarily produce exactly what we are wanting so we had to outsource even more and start looking at manufacturers overseas.

The complications that we face with our overseas manufacturers, are language barriers and time barriers sometimes. Outside of that, things have been very great.

I would love to keep things local, but until I find a business that works for us this is the route that we decided to take.

That’s one of the lessons that I have learned is that overseas manufacturing is significantly cheaper than local here in the states. Along with there being way more manufacturer options for you to choose from.

Another crucial lesson that I learned is always asked for photo/video proof when dealing with an overseas manufacture and never send your form of payment in full.

So if I place an order with my manufacturer, I will only pay a quarter or half of whatever the price they are requesting from me and then I will ask for proof, whether video or photo, of the production and once it is finally complete is when I send the second half of the payment for them to ship it to me.

This better protects you and your money because trust me, we’ve been burned before by these manufacturers and it is a pleasant experience haha.

Last lesson I learned is, you have to learn patience when dealing with manufacturers and understand you are not the only customer and that good quality things don’t come fast nor cheap.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nonoisemade.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nonoisemade_mj?igsh=MTJmYXVtOTI2YTJ2dw==
• Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/markjonesjr22
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nonoisemade_mj