Ecko and the rhinoman
Interview | Hazel Davis He has more street-cred than you can shake a skateboard at – meet the creative force behind the global clothing company Marc Ecko Enterprises WHEN THE ECKO clothing line was originally launched in America in 1993, it was aimed at cool young skater kids – similar to its founder. But such has been the roaring success of the label that suit-wearing [...]
Interview | Hazel Davis
He has more street-cred than you
can shake a skateboard at – meet
the creative force behind the global
clothing company Marc Ecko Enterprises
alt="Multimillionaire artist and entrepreneur Marc Ecko, one of the business world’s highest
achievers under
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WHEN THE ECKO clothing line was
originally launched in America in 1993,
it was aimed at cool young skater kids
– similar to its founder. But such has
been the roaring success of the label
that suit-wearing businesspeople are
eyeing the brand to try and emulate
its corporate achievement of becoming a billion-dollar brand.
So how come I am meeting Marc Ecko, who is listed by New
York magazine as one of the “most influential people in
fashion” right now and crowns him “the top dog in hip-hop
fashion”, at the rhino enclosure at Chester Zoo?
“These amazing animals are being killed for a drug the size
of an aspirin,” says Ecko, shaking his head in bewilderment at
the illegal trade in rhino horn for medicinal use. He is here to
officially open the enclosure, and it’s clear that his passion for
the animal extends above and beyond the famous rhino logo he
uses for labelling his apparel and lifestyle products.
Born Marc Milecofsky in New Jersey in 1972, Ecko started
his T-shirt design business from his bedroom in his parents’
home when he was 20. He made just six T-shirts to begin with
– now it’s a $1.5 billion empire. Not that Ecko likes the word
empire: “It’s just a business. It’s what I do for a living,” he says.
empire: “It’s just a business. It’s what I do for a living,” he says.
Nonetheless, since its creation, the group of companies
that now comprises Marc Ecko Enterprises has grown into a
global fashion and lifestyle behemoth and includes clothing,
trainers, accessories and media and entertainment. More
than 5,000 department and speciality stores in the US, and
more than 45 countries internationally carry the Ecko brand.
The entrepreneur now has offices in Munich, Stockholm, Paris
and Milan with eight stores in Germany, one in Austria, five in
Ukraine and four in Russia. With UK sales totalling £10 million,
he’s now looking to expand his business here this year and there
are plans to open a new Paris store this autumn.
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Given the scale of the expansion, it’s no surprise to find that
skater kids are no longer the only ones to be drawn to the Ecko
label. Nowadays, even mass-market celebrities, such as Katie
Price, Peter Andre and singer Alesha Dixon, adorn themselves
in Ecko clothes. It’s clear that its hip-hop subculture roots have
been subsumed by a mainstream market.
The now iconic rhino logo which adorns his watches,
T-shirts and skateboards came about by accident. As Ecko
recalls: “My parents had these driftwood sculptures when
I was growing up. I used to play Star Wars with my neighbour
who had Hans Solo and I needed a ‘ton-ton’ figure, which
I didn’t have. I realised that a wooden sculpture of a rhino
made a great ton-ton.” Thus began Ecko’s love of the rhino
that translated itself into the drawings he went on to do
as a teenager. So when it came to branding his company he
thought a rhino perfectly summed it up: “A big, clumsy animal,
but a very nimble runner – kind of like our company. A little
awkward but it can definitely move.”
However, the direction it was moving in, especially in the
early days, was debatable. Ecko states bluntly: “I didn’t have
a clue what I was doing. We almost went bankrupt a few
times. It was a baptism by fire. Everything you can imagine
went wrong, from not running the warehouse the right way
to borrowing money that I couldn’t pay back.” His business
partners were his twin sister, Marci, who now heads up the
Ecko Zoo York offshoot line of skatewear and Seth Gerzberg,
formerly a drama student, who is now Ecko Enterprises’ CEO.
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Says Ecko: “We were serial entrepreneurs but we saw
an emerging market. Every time we got a stroke right the
return investment would be great. Say you [a stockist] would
order a shipment for October which we wouldn’t ship until
February, but even if you got it late it would always sell.” It was
these early falters, believes Ecko, which made the company
stronger. “In order to learn to walk you have to fall. I believed
in this vision and it was enough to bring me through. The
line between success and failure is so important. To be an
entrepreneur you have to have a tolerance for failure.”
The success story started from Ecko’s childhood passion
for art and illustration. “I grew up in 1980s in New Jersey
during that convergent time in pop culture when you had
MTV and video gaming and hip-hop. That was a time that
really framed my perspective.”
He continues: “Today a young person can go to
Threadless.com and print a T-shirt for $14.99. The idea of
getting something like Photoshop was an abstraction when
I was at high school so I was advised against pursuing my
love for art seriously, even though I was really industrious.”
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He’s not kidding. “My friends were working at local
supermarkets or cafés but I made much more, around
$400 a week from T-shirt sales,” he says. Nonetheless,
he went to college to study pharmacy, even though he
“hated it”.
“At college all my time was spent painting and being
creative and I started getting positive affirmation for my
art. It became a great currency for me,” says the now
multimillionaire street-style guru. So he dropped
out. “I took the passion route,” he smiles. “The first
academic advisor in my whole life who said something
useful was the dean of my university. When I told him
I was leaving he said, “Do what you love and love what
you do, and if you do that everything else will come.”
It did come, thick and fast. Now, Ecko devotes a large chunk
of his time and sizeable income to philanthropic enterprises,
including worldwide educational projects and the International
Rhino Federation: “I think rhinos are one of the earth’s great
creatures and emblematic of a time when we weren’t here,”
he says with passion. “To think of these guys not being around
is sad, so whatever small thing I can do, I do.”
But, despite his success, Ecko doesn’t rest on his laurels.
“I still work really long hours,” he says, albeit now with a young
family to juggle. He and his wife Allison, whom he met at
college, have three young children, Sage, five, Alexander, three,
and Ella, who is nearly two. “I don’t feel like I’ve ‘arrived’,” he
says. “I still feel a tremendous amount of hunger. I am good at
being super-critical of myself. Because of that I stay sober
and grounded in the business sense.
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“I am less hands-on than I used to be. I have more than 800
employees around the world,” he continues. “I can’t author
everything at that scale and I don’t think it’s healthy. But
the greatest lessons I learned were from getting blood in my
mouth. As a creative leader you can’t be so self-important
as to think your own view is the only view. You have to allow
your staff to learn on their terms. It’s going to come with
some failure and you just have to manage that.”
His is a multinational company with a worldwide respected
brand, but Ecko still maintains he doesn’t have a clear business
philosophy. In fact, it’s typically unorthodox: “The only two
things you need in business are a nice watch and a really decent
mattress. I know people who don’t spend money on a good
mattress. That amazes me. It’s the most essential luxury, I think.”
He is busy acquiring further home comforts for the future,
too, with the restoration of a 200-year-old mansion in the
New Jersey foothills: “The greatest trapping of success for me,”
he says, “is that I can have a painting studio and I spend about
30% of my time reconnecting with that. I am really blessed
and I pinch myself often. I am able to create with no real
boundaries. How lucky am I?” You said it yourself, Mr Ecko.
The Marc Ecko website is www.eckounltd.com
