We were lucky to catch up with Michael Chandler recently and have shared our conversation below.

Michael, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

When I first started my company it was all about unique basketball shorts. The company name then was called The Baller’s Hospital with the slogan “Everything We Make is Sick”. As I started to grow and add all types of other apparel, I realized I needed to change the name. It was a struggle to come up with something until one day in Los Angeles I was driving on Imperial Street. When I thought about the word imperial it made me think about emperors. I know emperors would have luxury type items and I felt the quality and designs of my apparel were in that category. So I decided to go with the name Mperial Sportswear. Since my name is Michael, I removed the letter i off of the normal spelling of imperial and spelled it with the letter M first.

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

I am a retired Air Force Veteran. I spent 21.5 years in the Space Systems Operations career field. While serving in the Air Force I had the opportunity to do some amazing things such as having top secret security clearance jobs, worked with billion dollar satellite systems, and I also had the chance to work inside of a mountain for 3 years. The best part of my career was being able to do what I loved most which was play basketball. My love for basketball is eventually what led me to starting my own company. Like most basketball players, I was into the sneaker culture as well. I always had a taste for fashion in general. While being stationed in Los Angeles, my son whom I’ve trained since the age of 5 was doing very well with his travel basketball team. I got requests from parents to train their kids as well so I started a basketball training business. I had my own shirts made and eventually had my own basketball shorts made with just my personal logo. One day I noticed everyone going crazy over customized Nike Elite socks. Socks were being customized with Marvel and DC comic characters and all types of other designs. People were paying a lot of money just to get pairs. After seeing this I thought what would happen if I customized basketball shorts in the same way. So I customized a few pair of shorts and then put them on eBay. They sold instantly and from there my company began.

One of the things that set me apart was that the basketball shorts I designed were very unique. They drew lots of attention including from a few celebrities. One of the big problems I felt like I solved was the sizing options. Unlike limited sizing you may find in a mall, the sizes I offered were limitless and could also be customized.

After couple of years of just designing basketball shorts, I decided to expand into all types of sportswear products such as leggings, tracksuits, bags and more. In the 10+ years of doing this business, the proudest moment I’ve had and still continue to get is seeing my designs being worn by other people.

From the beginning, the Mperial brand has always been about being able to wear something nice to any occasion but at the same time be able to go to the gym without having to change clothes. As we move forward we will continue to add fashionable products that can be enjoyed by all whether you’re into gym/fitness or not.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Before I actually created an official business, I only posted pictures of the designs I was created on my personal Facebook page. As I started to realize that I was onto something with what I was doing, I decided on an official business name and then I created a Facebook business page and joined Instagram. My main audience for social media is on instagram. The basketball shorts I designed and the way I matched them up with popular sneakers and custom socks was how I built my audience. Another strategy I used came from probably the most popular basketball movie of all time Love & Basketball. After that movie, guys loved women in basketball shorts and sports bras. I took that approach and used women to model my basketball shorts in the same manner. During this time, I don’t believe anyone else was doing designs the way I was so I was able to gain a lot of attention. Even with that, my audience was still small. I had a friend who worked at an Equinox gym located in Los Angeles. Celebrities are known to go there. One day Justin Bieber was there and saw my friend wearing a pair of shorts I designed and he said he liked them. My friend called me and told me so I immediately sent him several pairs to give to Justin. After he received them Justin called me the next day and told me how much he liked them. He even talked about doing some business together. He followed my instagram page and as soon as he followed I gained about 12,000 followers over the next several days. So in a way my audience came from my own uniqueness of my designs and a little bit of celebrity luck.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

During the first few years of business, I was also still active duty in the Air Force stationed at Los Angeles Air Force Base. One of the best parts of my business was being in a city like L.A. that always had events and things going on along with better chances to run into athletes and celebrities. After being in L.A. for 4 years, the Air Force decided it was time to send me and my family to our next duty station. I arrived at Patrick Air Force Base Florida. This was good in the fact that me and my wife are both from Georgia and we would be closer to family. For my business in which I was still in the early stages of building, the move to Florida was devastating. We went from an exciting big city to a small town. It was the complete opposite of Los Angeles. For a period of time my morale for the business was very low. Although my business continued, it was just different. I had to just continue trying to build an online presence. I occasionally traveled back to California for fashion shows and other events. I regained my morale and kept pushing on with the business. This past year a couple of my designs made it into a television show on the BET network

Contact Info:

• Website: www.MperialSportswear.com
• Instagram: @Mperial_sportswear
• Facebook: Mperial Sportswear
• Twitter: @Mperialsports
• Youtube: Mperial Sportswear