We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nathan Tan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nathan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I studied Industrial Arts and Graphic Communication at San Francisco State University graduating in 1994. After a short testing career in the video game industry, I finally landed my first graphic design job and had a ten year run at that employment path. It would eventually lead me to owning my own business for 20 years. In 2003 when we brought our son home from the hospital I was abruptly laid off from my corporate design job. Needless to say I was shocked but quickly picked myself up and started doing freelance design work. One year later I decided to break away from the norm of most Hip Hop artists who often times start a streetwear brand for adults. What I did was start a cool kid’s line for parents of my generation. When brainstorming the name for it my wife asked me, “What do you guys (Hip Hop heads lol) call the next generation?” I said “Shortys?” and she said “no.” Then I said, “New Skool?” And that was it! Thanks honey. :)

Nathan, 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?

In 1987 I started painting large scale graffiti murals in the Bay Area with my crew the Master Piece Creators. This was my introduction to producing art as a teenager and I knew I had found my calling in life. I carried the Hip Hop torch through high school and college years in the 90’s even though Graffiti Art aka Writing was far from being fully commercialized like it is today. This edge is what set me apart then and today. Years later I curated many art shows that featured some of the original pioneers of this art form here in the Bay. Helping to create the HIstory of Graffiti Art workshop at 1AM Gallery was also a pivotal step in my role in the community. It taught me to speak and lead classes in front of large groups of clients from local kids to large tech companies.

Besides designing apparel and accessories for New Skool, I often partner with local boutiques to provide them with artwork for their businesses. This has been such a great help to spread the word about my art. I hear it often from my customers that I am their go to artist when they want that authentic, raised in the Bay artwork for their home or office. That is truly an honor.

I have always been a mentor over the years, first teaching young artists, then fellow entrepreneurs how to organize and manage their business journey. I help lead a business strategy workshop at Hunt & Gather in the Sunset District. We have already helped so many young creatives to have the courage to start or continue their work while being realistic about goals with progress, goals and finances.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Learning to create products from apparel to hard goods was something I learned on the job. I always say each job you have in life will teach you something that you will need in a future job and it is true. Telemarketing in my college years taught me to communicate with any random person and all my graphic design jobs challenged me to design and satisfy the buyers and I had to follow through with the factories to make sure everything was produced correctly. Even though I am a much smaller company than the ones I have worked for, knowing the protocol for the design process is something I use almost everyday.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I touched on this earlier but losing my job as a new father definitely made me lock in and do this independent thing for real! Young, scared and with new responsibilities I had to learn how to start and run a business. I had to learn how to navigate through all the typical negative things that come with owning my own business. Haters, doubters, whatever you want to call them eventually become fuel for the fire towards your goals. I saw that in graffiti as a kid and later in business as an adult.

I would not have been able to succeed if it weren’t for my wife, my parents and parents in law who helped raise our two kids while we were on our hustles. Being able to put the time in was so key to get my business off of the ground.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shopnewskool.com
• Instagram: @newskoolsf and @nate1design
• Facebook: New Skool
• Linkedin: Nathan Tan
• Twitter: newskoolsf

Image Credits
@415leroyphotos