We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick DeBrodie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nick, 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?
The name itself comes from a Demon Hunter song off their album “The World is a Thorn.” After toying with a few different ideas, I landed on Lifewar both to pay homage to the music scene I take inspiration from, but also as a key indicator of what I like to portray to the world; life sucks, but I’m glad you’re here. In other words; life is but a war, and I thank you for your service.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got into merch design out of necessity. I’ve been playing in punk/hardcore bands since I was a teenager, and it came to a point where we didn’t want to shell out money for a graphic designer to make our shirts. I’ve grown to love the process, and I wanted to create shirts outside of a band-setting as a further avenue of creative fulfillment. When the pandemic hit, I, again, learned screenprinting as a necessity to keep things moving without having to shell out extra cash. I’ve grown to love that process as well and brought all apparel decorating operations in-house as a result.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to learn to let go of ego when I was pretty into the process of building the company. When I started out, I very much wanted to be the “Supreme” for hardcore kids; I was so focused on creating a story and overthinking how I portrayed myself that the quality of the designs and the actual merch suffered. Through bringing most aspects of the business in-house, I discovered that it is much easier to communicate to your audience if you just make things that you like and what feels authentic. That, above all else, will get you somewhere where you need to be.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
With me printing all the shirts in-house, there are inevitably going to be shirts that are so mis-printed that there’s no way I can put them in inventory. Just throwing away the misprinted/test pieces isn’t only bad for inventory, but it is not the most environmentally sustainable way to go about that part of the operation. One of my favorite brands, Hungry Ghost Press, started doing a Mystery Grab Bag, where customers paid $10 and provided their size, upon which they would receive a random misprinted item. I took this one step further and offered this “trading card pack” style at pop-ups, where people would pick an envelope with a size sticker on it; other than the size of the garment, there’s no way of telling what you’re actually going to get. Not only did this prove to be a great solution to make sure stock wasn’t going to waste, but it has become a big hit at in-person events.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lifewar.co
- Instagram: @lifewaroutfitters
