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

Alright, Rob thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?

I worked for many years as a Senior Designer and Design Director at the Jones Apparel Group, I had the opportunity to travel the world for both Inspiration and Product Development. Travel coupled with the day-to-day seasonal design cycle gave me a broad perspective of the business world and how product fits into it.

Rob, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

In addition to my work in fashion design, I have always been involved with skateboarding, in my teens and twenties I was very active on a national scale, competing at events and fully immersed in the culture. ALL ONE was conceived while I was running my first business, SURE Skateboards, a New York City based Coaching & Consulting service. Over the course of a few years, I hammered out the initial concept for ALL ONE with Rodney Smith, my original partner in the venture. Rodney is also a skate industry veteran, he helped me launch the brand and remains a business partner.

Our premise was; We’re both very active in the skateboard business, but we desired something beyond, a platform to show the world that the experience of skateboarding can lead to deeper thoughts about life and the world we live in. With that, ALL ONE UNIVERSE was born.

We established ALL ONE as a lifestyle apparel brand with the main message being; We Are All One! This is what we want to resonate with our community and for them to feel the importance of. At the same time we pride ourselves on having the freedom of being able to harness our quirky and sometimes ironic skateboarding sense of humor.
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Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We have our own website, it is supported by Shopify, which we love. We chose to have our own online store as opposed to one being nested inside of Amazon, Etsy or other shopping destinations. From a brand identity perspective, when you have your own website, there are less restrictions and you build the look and feel of your site from the ground up. It is so much more than just an online shop.

The challenge, and this could be true of other third party platforms, is driving traffic to your website. Constantly putting the word out there via Social Media and Email Marketing seems to be the best grassroots way to go for small companies.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

As mentioned above, I feel that email marketing is one of the best ways to stay in touch. With a popup email sign up form, you can build a healthy list of people that are genuinely interested in your brand when they visit your website.

I have been a fan of mailing lists and email for a while, I follow many brands in both the skate and fashion industries. This is the best way to stay up to date about what a company is currently doing and the best way for a brand to market directly to consumers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.all-oneuniverse.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/all_one_universe/