We were lucky to catch up with Vincent James recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Vincent thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

We differ from other fashion brands because we are ethical, sustainable, and pop-culture inspired. Most nerdy or pop-culture inspired brands use unethical manufacturing processes or are a part of the fast fashion umbrella. We believe and have proved that there is an audience for high quality, fandom-centric clothing and fashion. The other aspect that sets us apart is customer service. While there are numerous examples of glowing customer service in the food-service industry, we strive to achieve that same level of customer service within the fashion industry. Overall, our designs and our people give us our unique competitive advantage.

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

The idea for Fira X Wear was sparked on a pandemic walk in the park between founders Vincent and Jasmine. When they wanted to get away on a vacation to Mexico, Vincent thought it would be a great idea to mix cosplay with swimwear. Jasmine made ‘beach episode’ designs of her favorite characters to test the appeal on social media. After trolls online commented on how swimwear couldn’t be cosplay, the two decided to build a brand based on the idea to prove the naysayers wrong while keeping ethical working conditions and sustainability in mind. While the designs can be utilized for cosplay, the main focus was to create a Premium Pop Culture brand.

We just launched in the Summer of 2022 and are so excited at the reception that both our summer and winter collections have had thus far. We’d love to expand our business even further and partner with major entertainment brands in the future for more in-depth crossover fashion collections.

We feel that the creative space has always been what we are the most passionate about and is ingrained in the fabric of our business as well as throughout our lives. Jasmine, Fira X Wear’s Chief Creative Officer, is mostly known for her cosplay and costume-making online as @CutiepieSensei and has been featured on Disney+, SyFy, and Prime Video’s social media channels for her costume designs. By day, she is a concept artist that creates skins for the video games SMITE and Paladins at Hi Rez, a local Atlanta video game studio. Being the Chief designer for all of Fira X Wear’s clothing was a natural next step, combining her design skills for both video game characters and costumes with her love of pop culture. Vincent, the Chief Operations Officer and other half of Fira X Wear, has a background in Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech but has always had a passion for the intersection between technology and art. While his experience mostly lends itself to managing the customer experience, manufacturing, and web design aspects of Fira X Wear, he is able to let his creative side shine through his management of Fira X Wear’s social pages. While he excels in engineering and technology, nothing exceeds his passion for creative writing, cosplay photography, and pop culture. His passion for pop culture led him to introduce Jasmine to cosplay and conventions when they first started dating. This eventually started them both down the path of creating both CutiepieSensei and Fira X Wear. The two founders, now married for over five years, knew that Fira X Wear was the perfect culmination of their skills and passions.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We funded our business directly from our bank accounts. To be honest, it was entirely a project of passion. As founders, we put our savings together and did research on how much it would cost to build our business, manufacture inventory ethically, and still create a profitable business. Once we found that figure, we saved up and took the plunge. It was extremely difficult. When you think about all the other ways you could invest a sizable amount of savings and you take the plunge by investing it in a business, it is exciting, but also scary. We decided to invest in our passion and so far, we have no regrets! We’ve been able to become profitable and have 100% ownership of our company.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Our social media audience was built via our co-founder’s cosplay page, @Cutipiesensei. She has been cosplaying and excelling at her craft for a number of years, so our goal was to leverage her audience for Fira X Wear. During the years, we’ve also made a lot of cosplay friends in the cosplay, social media space and they were happy to wear and promote our brand as well. Our advice for any starting company would be to leverage yourself and your community for social media and marketing. True connections and community beat out paid advertising every time in our experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: firaxwear.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firaxwear/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Firaxwear/