The It Factor - Interview with Marc Ecko

ME: You screw up. You have to have the tolerance for screwing up. There needs to be a line item in your budget that says, “Screwing up.” You might call it something prettier for the bank, like miscellaneous. But you’ve got to pad [the budget] and you have to have that tolerance.

I started the [retail] business in outlets to cut my teeth. If you look at Ralph Lauren’s numbers, his predominant retail business comes from his outlet business. [Outlets] are less cost per square foot and so I could take my time to figure out: Do I have the staff for this? Do we need to hire regional managers? What about computer systems, restocking from my warehouse as I react to the department store versus my own stores? Slowly, we kept tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, and finally we were ready for our first [full-price] store. Outlet and [full-price] are two different things, but you learn the basics, like working your way up to a black belt.

RL: How did your wholesale clients feel when they heard that you were going into retail?

ME: They’re fine with it. In fact, many of them were eager — especially the bigger box retailers — because it helps strengthen our brand equity. It helps put the flag in the ground that you’re not going anywhere.

Next Generation Marketer

RL: In addition to the fashion brands, you have Complex magazine and Marc Ecko Entertainment. Do you see those as tied into the brand?

ME: I see them as related. I don’t operate like an ambassador brand, like Nike. Nike owns all things sports — from Tiger to Jordan to Bo Jackson. That’s an ambassador brand. They came up during the ’70s and ’80s, when you could run a TV spot and actually make a dent. In those days, you could have a “revolution moment” like a Super Bowl ad. Those are best practices of another era, another time.

In this day, when media is so atomized and disparate, how do you communicate [to your market]? How do I make a dent? Some of the laws of authorship and branding have changed. It’s less about the heavy-handed branding and more about the authorship. I want to convince consumers that I can author other things and I get credit for being more than just a one-dimensional fashion designer.

RL: With Complex, for example, how do consumers identify it with Marc Ecko if doesn’t have “heavy-handed” branding?

ME: The core readers of the magazine know that it’s us. Besides, how can I be heavy-handed about my brand and expect Diesel to advertise inside there? The first six pages of ads in the magazine are competitors. So I needed to back away in order to make the advertisers comfortable. How do I transcend being just a designer? By doing something more than what a designer would do. That’s what Complex is about. It’s the same with Marc Ecko Entertainment. I’ve got the license for Dexter, the Showtime TV series, and we’re creating a [video] game that comes out in ’09. We’ll create an iPhone game also. But it’s not like players will be Dexter killing a guy wearing an Ecko T-shirt. We’ll have a small mention on the back of the box, but not in the game. Enough consumers will know it’s Ecko. It’s like a “Six Degrees of Marc Ecko” thing that I’m trying to create; I think it could be meaningful to the brand.

I could have just taken those resources and bought big outdoor billboards, but would it effectively create the same kind of emotional transaction as being a guy who could author a moment of pop culture? Who could author some new consumer product that’s kind of cool and sometimes very logically associated to the brand? It’ll make you scratch your head and think, “Wow! I didn’t expect that from him.”

RL: I imagine that people want to partner with you all the time. How do you decide which ones you’re going to go forward with?

ME: The most important thing [for] any designer, creator, business leader or anyone who is holding the pen to make the transaction to fund something is to decide what you don’t do. That’s the hardest thing.

RL: Marc Ecko Enterprises is a privately held company. Any plans to take it public or to exit?

ME: I don’t know. I can’t really see further than three or five years out. I don’t see any kind of exit in the short term.

RL: Why not?