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3:07

Hey, just a quick heads up. There are a couple

3:10

of bad words in this episode. Nothing that

3:12

you haven't heard before, but just be mindful

3:14

if you're listening to the show around kids

3:16

just so you know. And I

3:18

hope you enjoy it. I

3:29

went and I brought a business plan. I

3:31

wanted to be a lifestyle brand

3:34

and I write up this story

3:36

of educating, changing, healing, overcome. Educating

3:39

change to heal and overcome. That's what

3:41

ECHO stood for. I

3:43

mean, it's very earnest, right? Well, I'm,

3:46

I'm painfully earnest and there will be

3:48

people listening to this totally vomiting on

3:50

the earnestness. Well, fuck up. Because

3:52

that's real. That's what it was. Welcome

4:03

to How I Built This,

4:05

a show about innovators, entrepreneurs,

4:07

idealists, and the stories behind

4:09

the movement they built. I'm

4:13

Guy Roz and on the show today,

4:15

how Mark Echo's love of hip-hop and

4:17

graffiti gave him an iconic edge

4:20

as a streetwear designer and helped

4:22

turn his company, Echo Unlimited, into

4:24

a major force in fashion.

4:32

In the United States alone, there are

4:34

26,000 fashion labels. Incredible.

4:38

Most of us only know a handful

4:40

of them and usually just

4:42

the big ones. So it's

4:44

not a stretch to say that standing

4:47

out as a fashion brand is

4:49

hard. Really hard. And

4:51

for the most part, just a teeny

4:54

fraction of these brands will last more

4:56

than a decade. The

4:58

Unicorns are labels like Levi's and

5:00

LL Bean. They've been

5:02

around for more than a hundred years. But

5:05

even having an impact for a

5:07

few years is a significant feat.

5:10

And back in the 90s and

5:12

early 2000s, Echo Unlimited managed to

5:14

do just that. The brand

5:16

was started by a guy named Mark Echo,

5:19

along with his partner Seth and

5:21

his sister Marcy. At the

5:23

time, and this is the early 1990s,

5:25

streetwear was just starting to get

5:28

traction in the US. Brands

5:30

like StuCi, Fubu, and Supreme

5:32

were even showing up in

5:34

fashion magazines. Eventually, streetwear

5:37

would kind of take over

5:39

fashion. Even luxury brands

5:41

like Prada and Gucci and Balenciaga

5:43

are heavily influenced by streetwear designs.

5:47

As for Mark Echo, he grew up in the

5:49

1980s obsessed with the rise of

5:51

hip hop and also graffiti culture.

5:53

By the time he was in

5:55

college, he was airbrushing designs and

5:58

fastening rhinestones to denim jackets. and

6:00

then selling those jackets for hundreds of

6:02

dollars. Eventually he got his

6:05

jackets into the hands of rappers and

6:07

musicians, which led Mark to start the

6:09

brand. Echo Unlimited and

6:11

its iconic Rhino logo started

6:14

popping up everywhere, eventually

6:16

hitting over a hundred million dollars

6:18

in sales. Now

6:21

by the end of the early

6:23

2000s, the brand was in decline,

6:25

but Mark was really smart about

6:27

looking for opportunities that could capitalize

6:29

on youth culture. And

6:31

the most influential brand he eventually

6:33

built was Complex, a

6:36

media company that focused on things that

6:38

matter to a growing subset of young

6:40

consumers, sneakers, hip-hop,

6:42

fashion, sports, and pop

6:44

culture. Mark

6:47

Echo was actually born Mark Milakovsky.

6:49

He grew up in New Jersey in

6:52

a town called Lakewood, along with his

6:54

twin sister Marcy, who would eventually become

6:56

his business partner. And even

6:58

though Lakewood was a sleepy town near

7:00

the Jersey Shore, Mark says

7:02

it was a really interesting place to

7:05

grow up. What

7:07

I recall Lakewood for was just

7:09

its intense diversity.

7:11

Growing up there, you're

7:14

like your product and your environment, so you're

7:16

in it. It wasn't like

7:18

I was conscientious of it, it just was.

7:21

You know, I went to public school, my

7:23

neighbors, people lived next door to me, you

7:26

know, across the street from me.

7:28

It was a very mixed race,

7:30

very mixed multicultural experience. So

7:32

tell me about how you fell

7:35

in love with hip-hop. What do you remember

7:37

like listening to or hearing or resonating

7:40

with you? I remember being

7:42

in probably fifth grade art class

7:45

at Princeton Avenue School, and

7:48

there was this awareness of this emerging cultural

7:50

trend. I remember some kids that when the

7:52

buses were pulling up, there was like a

7:54

group of kids that would be doing literally

7:57

like backflips and breakdancing. spinning

8:00

on their back like in the middle of

8:02

the lunch room. And I just

8:05

was like that's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

8:07

But I also was seeing there was a big

8:10

BMX culture that was happening at that time. Kids

8:13

started to wear all of those

8:15

kind of like neon acidic

8:17

colored clothing that was starting to

8:20

come up through skate and skate

8:22

culture, dino brand, GT,

8:26

vans, air walk. So

8:28

suddenly I think that

8:30

it's about the age for most

8:32

kids growing up that sort of

8:34

pre middle school say from

8:37

fifth to eighth grade where they start

8:39

to badge like

8:41

a little chick like born

8:43

new to the world. They

8:45

see these signals of like who their

8:47

cultural mother is or father right and

8:49

it's a part of I think how

8:51

we're hardwired to sort of culturally fit

8:53

in. So I was drawn to that and

8:55

then instead of just drawing Spider-Man,

8:58

you know, I would draw what we saw

9:00

on album covers or when

9:02

I'd go into Queens and see

9:04

graffiti on the subway cars. I

9:07

knew that there was a movie called Wild Style

9:09

because people were talking about it and there was

9:11

Beat Street and there were the fat boys. So

9:14

you were just reacting to what was around you.

9:18

One of the things that you kind of

9:20

got into was learning graffiti art. I don't

9:22

think you were actually going out and vandalizing

9:24

buildings or maybe you were but I think

9:26

you got into like using airbrush tools

9:29

and like kind of

9:31

painting graffiti style but you were

9:33

trying to like hone

9:36

your skill as a as

9:38

a graffiti artist. I guess I think I

9:40

looked at it like, you know, there was

9:42

the four elements right and seeing you know

9:45

DJing, break dancing and graffiti. I

9:47

still think that that's a fundamental part

9:49

of the organizing system

9:52

of hip-hop and here

9:55

I was a very artistic kid. You

9:57

know, my dad got me subway art.

10:00

which I think is like one of the Bibles of This

10:03

is a book. This is a coffee table

10:05

book. Yeah, yeah, basically graffiti art. I remember

10:07

that book Yeah, very important book and I

10:09

think it should you know, everybody should own

10:12

it to appreciate because it was a very very catalytic

10:16

Culturally, so it was either tracing from that

10:18

or tracing from a comic book and

10:20

then It was in the

10:22

blackbeat magazines where I would see the airbrushing

10:24

and that started to come a little bit

10:26

later Okay, so that's fifth sixth grade. That

10:29

wasn't quite a thing yet and come middle

10:31

school a guy Who's one of my my

10:34

heroes and and a friend now? I'm happy

10:36

to say in life is a guy named

10:38

fade pH a de

10:40

King fade from the shirt

10:43

Kings and in the Jamaica Queens

10:45

Plaza Mall He had a

10:47

little stall there that he was airbrushing But

10:49

he was so Jason obviously to all those

10:51

rappers coming up in Queens and on the

10:54

boroughs You'd see those images

10:56

and it was like wow I think I found

10:58

that was the medium because it was like sort of an

11:00

existential Way to get

11:02

to graffiti through the sort of first cousin

11:05

of graffiti, which is airbrushing You

11:07

started to I mean make

11:10

your own shirts, right inspired by some of these

11:12

shirts that you saw Yes And

11:14

and I guess by the time you get to high

11:16

school you started to people start asking you if you

11:19

could make them For them and that

11:21

was like a bit turn into a business Yes

11:24

to the credit of my uncle who

11:26

was the product of vocational education It

11:29

was like a diesel engine, you know

11:31

mechanic. He encouraged my

11:33

parents that because my passion

11:36

was so You know sort

11:38

of manifest to Give

11:41

this kid a shot went to the Sears Outlet

11:44

bought the air compressor for whatever

11:46

80 bucks and started acquiring all

11:48

the materials Picked

11:51

up my first copy of airbrush magazine Which

11:54

serendipitously talk about like how the

11:57

universe and how God kind of

11:59

puts things in your path, but Airbrush

12:02

magazine was the

12:05

only trade magazine

12:07

for airbrushing. And where is

12:09

it published? Lakewood,

12:11

New Jersey. It's

12:13

like one of the odds of that, you

12:15

know? So I said,

12:17

Ma, can we go meet the publisher? So

12:20

she's like, oh, I'm going to take you to go.

12:22

We'll go to the art supply store. We'll pick up

12:25

some paint and we'll drive by the

12:27

publisher location, think it's going to be a building. And

12:29

if I pick up, it's a residential house.

12:32

And I literally go knock on the door. I

12:34

asked for the publisher and there was a garage

12:37

and he's in there unboxing new

12:39

magazines, just on rack, inventory in

12:41

the magazines. So I was like,

12:44

can I work for you? Can I sweep here? You

12:46

know? And? I

12:48

did. You did. And

12:50

then he gave me free issues. Wow. And you

12:52

start making t-shirts for people in

12:55

high school and selling them. And were you making pretty

12:58

good cash? Oh, yeah. I

13:00

mean, you know, better than bar mitzvah

13:02

money. You were selling t-shirts for like,

13:04

what, $50 bucks or something? Well,

13:06

it probably started at like, I

13:09

mean, I was damn near first you do like,

13:11

you just do some gratis and then you start

13:13

selling them at $10 or $15 or I would

13:15

do bulk. And then it's

13:17

$50 and then people would ask for more elaborate

13:19

things. And you know, come junior year, I was

13:22

getting really good at it. So this was from

13:24

eighth grade through the

13:27

time I started the business in 93, I was every year

13:31

building that business. And to the point where

13:34

I was making thousands of

13:36

dollars a week. Wow. When

13:39

I was really, when I would

13:41

allocate time. And these were like

13:43

custom t-shirts? Like custom t-shirts, custom

13:45

denim jackets. And people's names or

13:47

people like. Very elaborate. Very,

13:50

very elaborate. I

13:52

remember someone brought me

13:54

a cover of like Thanos. This

13:57

one is very elaborate cover. This is a

13:59

cover. A comic book, yeah. A comic book, like

14:01

an Avengers comic book. Yeah. And

14:03

it's like Thanos with the glove. You know, this

14:06

is before we think of like MCU. And I

14:08

think that's when I was like, oh

14:10

shit, like I'm good at this. I think I charged

14:12

like $500 for that jacket. Wow.

14:15

It was very elaborate though. It took at

14:18

least six days. And

14:20

then I would hand paint it, and then I would hand

14:23

embellish it. I'd go to the

14:26

Michaels or Joanne's Arts and Crafts, and

14:28

I'd even go into Manhattan occasionally. I'd

14:30

go to the, in the garment district,

14:32

go to the areas where

14:34

they sell rhinestones. I'd buy high

14:36

quality rhinestones. I'd hand laminate them

14:39

on, sew them

14:41

on, whatever, and just create these really

14:44

elaborate, custom bespoke things. Wow.

14:47

And then my father was

14:50

into photography. And so

14:52

I was, the great blessing and gift

14:54

he gave me in

14:57

some of the most valuable time in

14:59

my life was the time in the

15:02

six by eight foot

15:05

closet that had been converted to

15:07

a laundry room and a dark room, watching

15:10

him process film, printing

15:13

photos, and being

15:16

exposed to ideas like composition,

15:18

and burning, and masking,

15:21

and you know, all of these sort

15:23

of ideas that I

15:25

ended up eventually seeing when I got into Photoshop,

15:27

you know, years later. He had a hobby, a

15:29

side hobby. He did, yeah. I

15:32

know that your dad studied to be a

15:34

pharmacist and then eventually became a real estate agent, and I

15:36

think your mom was also a real estate agent. Same, that's

15:39

right. Yeah. You went to

15:41

college, you went to Rutgers, and you decided

15:43

to study pharmacy, to become a pharmacist. Was

15:46

that, like, were your parents encouraging you to

15:48

do that? Like, hey, this is a steady

15:50

job, and. My dad never once suggested

15:54

it. In fact, the opposite, he hated

15:56

it. All he did was talk shit

15:58

about standing on his feet. feet

16:01

and he was so happy to get out of

16:03

pharmacy. But if we rewind to

16:05

that period, you could

16:08

graduate from pharmacy school. And

16:11

at that period, at that time

16:13

in history, if you worked

16:15

for Big Pharma, let's say, and I

16:18

had a sense of marketing, I wanted to be

16:20

maybe on the marketing side of Big Pharma, you

16:23

could make like at that time and graduating in 1990, 65

16:25

to 85 thousand dollars, like right out

16:29

of school. Right out of school. Big

16:31

money. That's big money. Huge money. I

16:34

mean, I graduated in 97. My first job was 30 thousand bucks a year.

16:36

Yeah. I was like, wow! Right.

16:40

This is insane. Right. Right. So

16:42

I only applied to one school, Rutgers College of Pharmacy.

16:45

I applied early, got accepted and didn't

16:47

look back. Only applied to one school.

16:50

So you get there and you're starting to be a

16:53

pharmacist, but you keep this kind of

16:55

side hustle going. My whole identity. Yeah.

16:58

And then, somewhere and suddenly, I

17:00

started to realize and I could self

17:03

articulate that something

17:05

unusual happened for me in Lakewood

17:08

because suddenly here I was in a new

17:12

environment and suddenly

17:14

I was engaging in a social

17:16

milieu with kids that weren't all

17:18

from Lakewood. In fact,

17:20

Lakewood was the anomaly. And

17:23

suddenly it was like the white kids were like, why

17:25

are you trying to be black? And

17:27

then the black kids are like, why are you trying to be black? It

17:31

was not the same vibe that

17:33

I got in Lakewood. And

17:36

my identity was wrapped up

17:38

in building Echo airbrushing, ECHO

17:40

airbrushing at that time. And

17:43

I would do parties. I did a party called

17:45

the Hip Hop Bazaar. Called

17:48

up Ralph McDaniel's video music box, tried

17:50

to get them to come and record

17:52

live from the event. Yeah. That

17:55

was a TV show in New York, right? Yeah. Yeah.

17:58

It was like a public access hip hop TV show. Okay,

18:00

now you're starting to build the Media

18:03

infrastructure around this phenomenon. Okay

18:05

now BT is emerging now.

18:08

There's Yo MTV

18:10

raps now come come 9293

18:13

right so that's that was my

18:15

thing and and I

18:17

was doing gallery exhibitions of Your

18:20

shirts of my shirts and my art. I

18:22

also painted on like, you know murals and

18:24

stuff Tell me because you

18:26

were already calling it. It was called echo

18:28

airbrushing and it was Echo

18:31

like echo like an echo. Yeah, what where

18:33

did that name come from? Well,

18:35

that's the backstory to the twindom, right?

18:38

They being the fraternal twin. My mother

18:40

had no idea she was carrying twins

18:43

She went to the OBGYN months

18:46

before we were due and was

18:48

complaining of This sort

18:50

of kicking book the bottom of her abdomen and

18:52

then like under her breast and she didn't understand

18:54

She's like is my baby doing a split?

18:56

Is he punching? No, no,

18:58

no, no, no, it's just an echo in the

19:01

fluid. You're fine And she's like, but I'm so

19:03

big I'm retaining so much for my mother was

19:05

massive They did not know there were twins in

19:07

there They just said oh there's an echo in

19:09

the in the fluid in the fluid The doctor

19:11

did not know until I was born. They

19:13

delivered Marcy and And

19:15

they said there's another one and

19:18

my dad almost fainted That's

19:21

wild so it came from there

19:23

like that word echo that it

19:26

was just part of family lore.

19:28

Yeah That's it. And

19:30

my mom was a nickname. It was

19:32

a nickname. It was like me

19:34

and So here

19:36

you are rewind back to those

19:38

fifth sixth grade years. I'm reading

19:40

subway art People

19:42

named dandy right scene

19:45

T-kid is the whiz

19:48

Yeah, my favorite rapper krs1

19:51

knowledge reign supreme over nearly

19:53

everyone Bdp, i'm

19:55

like echo educating change

19:58

to heal and overcome can

20:00

change to heal and overcome echo. I love

20:02

that. And I was doing really well. So

20:04

when I did the thing at Rutgers and

20:07

I did my own solo exhibition and then

20:09

I did, I went

20:11

on a like a binge promoting the hip

20:13

hop bazaar and I just

20:15

started hitting everyone like Spike Lee is coming

20:17

to the school to promote Malcolm

20:20

X. He's still raising money for the Malcolm X

20:22

film and he's coming up short and he's going

20:24

around to colleges doing, you know, grassroots

20:27

marketing. And he went to Rutgers to talk about it.

20:29

He went to Rutgers to talk about it. I would

20:31

like hit him with a swag. Oh,

20:34

you just go, you go right up to him and just

20:36

hand him stuff. Yeah. And so I did

20:38

that to rest in peace Chris

20:40

Lighty to try to get to, you

20:43

know, Q-tip and Tribe. I did it for

20:45

Chuck Lee. I did it for Kerris. One.

20:48

You were hoping to do what? Just

20:50

to connect with them for what purpose?

20:53

I was looking for like, I was so

20:55

delusional. I was looking for an investor. It's

20:58

a little bit of this kind of trust

21:00

the universe approach to things and a little

21:02

bit of this

21:04

sort of my reality that

21:07

the most effective means of marketing

21:09

are these sort of nodes of

21:11

trust, you know, between people.

21:15

And I couldn't say that

21:17

then, but I understand that

21:19

now that establishing that distributed

21:21

network of heat and trust

21:24

and understanding of what you do is

21:26

the most powerful fundamental thing you need

21:28

to do in building a network of

21:30

communication. And none of these guys

21:33

were interested in investing in giving you cash. They

21:35

just didn't know what to do with me. Yeah.

21:37

And they themselves were trying to figure out how

21:39

to raise money for their own thing. And by

21:41

the way, how much cash did you think you

21:43

needed to raise? I had no idea. Yeah. But

21:45

You knew that, yeah, but you knew that you

21:48

couldn't do what you were doing as a one

21:50

man shop. You Had to find a way because

21:52

I'm assuming you would go to New York, you

21:54

would buy a bunch of just plain t-shirts, plain

21:56

jeans jackets, right? Is That right? Yeah. I Mean,

21:59

I Think my business. Was the client

22:01

brought me the blank so I had

22:03

no higher costs like all my costs

22:05

were material and labour. Oh set a

22:07

date client would say I want you

22:10

to take this shaggy reply armani jacket

22:12

or a Levi's jacket or be some

22:14

a champion sweatshirt and when they would

22:17

ask me. You. Know what? As

22:19

Adnan A you bring the blank to be don't

22:21

know to get order this one and on the

22:23

strength of that alone you are pulling and to

22:25

three thousand bucks a week. Yeah thereby are they

22:27

pay me for the arts. It. Was

22:29

for the application of the art. Since.

22:32

Wow! So I guess summer or around

22:34

this point you change the name of

22:36

your business from from Echo Airbrushing to

22:39

Echo Unlimited which is still have a

22:41

version of Blood with the name today.

22:43

It's an insult can you. Tell

22:46

me like it in your mind at that

22:48

time this is I guess run nineteen Ninety

22:50

Two. What did you think this business could

22:52

be? So.

22:54

We knew that there was a

22:57

visual aesthetic identity emerging within the

22:59

culture of of the sort of

23:01

a tribal communication amongst each other.

23:03

How we id with one and

23:05

one another we we start seeing

23:07

this this brand. Getting.

23:09

A lot of tension or costs to

23:12

see gets. this is brand getting a

23:14

lot of attention Call cross colors. This

23:17

brand getting a lot of attention. Call

23:19

Tommy Hilfiger. We started to see these

23:21

sort of people daring kind of stepping

23:23

out to build their version of consumer

23:26

product businesses. So here I am doing

23:28

one at a time and some like

23:30

well what if I could scream print

23:32

these things you know in So doing

23:34

them one at a time because you

23:37

are hand making each one the I

23:39

was impossible to scale. You know it's

23:41

impossible to scale the right right and

23:43

you still needed to have you felt

23:46

like. I guess he

23:48

felt like you need to find somebody

23:50

who had the he of the know

23:52

how right and and most importantly the

23:54

class dell bitterness into a real business.

23:57

And to tell me about how you

23:59

met your partner hackers Burke I think

24:01

I think you bet M and like

24:03

like nine. Next any to yes Ninety

24:06

two yeah I meet him first. like

24:08

a year before pulls up to my

24:10

house I'm painting, I'm doing one of

24:12

these like really a you know crazy

24:15

pieces and looking at this guy pulls

24:17

up in a. Shiny Candy

24:19

Apple Red Mustang rights were Chrome

24:21

Wheels. Am I What the hell

24:23

Is someone my age driving around

24:26

with this card? Like for an

24:28

old man? Number one. I appreciate

24:30

that carded X but at that

24:32

time I was like yo, who

24:34

is this dude swearing dirty as

24:36

denim shorts. Does the

24:38

timber the boots like with dirt don't

24:40

grime up his legs is coming from

24:43

a of landscaping get this is gonna

24:45

landscaping company and so he starts tell

24:47

me what he does is of i

24:49

have a landscaped other but I also

24:51

do I buy and sell architectural artifacts

24:53

I just got back from Vienna. Wait,

24:56

Sorry. like are you talking

24:58

about like antiques? Like like

25:00

ancient or antiques? No

25:02

no no no no Nanette not

25:04

age and I'm saying he would

25:06

go to parts of the world

25:08

where they were doing redevelopment or

25:10

or new construction sites and he

25:12

was in the pond business basically

25:14

since air but but expensive architectural.

25:17

Things. Like stone columns, marble statues,

25:19

giants slabs of limestone earns nothing

25:21

that were like not like from

25:24

ancient Rome. Agrees that engine I

25:26

now know know about like you

25:28

know that time through Europe and

25:30

there are some countries ever so

25:32

under development and he just hustled,

25:34

he paid acted to go to

25:37

school for him. To

25:39

take classes under him as an alias

25:41

he was even chance to score and

25:43

he be flying around the country. Go

25:45

in Athens were demolition sites buying things

25:47

are being demolished. Reselling

25:49

them, okay and he was and

25:52

he said to yeah it's go to business i'll give you

25:54

money is like this good if you want to do something

25:56

let me know okay them in out what any would you

25:58

do with your ask i didn't have enough But

26:00

you did not, I think, initially feel like this

26:02

was the right fit. It all sounded like a

26:04

lie to me, and I didn't believe it. But

26:07

you're like in your early 20s and you need

26:09

the cash. I was probably 19 when I met

26:11

him, and I blew him off. He

26:17

spooked me. He spooked me. And

26:20

what intimidated me was

26:22

how good he was. You

26:25

know, that he was very

26:27

sophisticated at understanding a business

26:29

at a very young age,

26:32

clearly had confident one year

26:34

older but felt like 15

26:36

years older. Culturally, we

26:39

were kind of disconnected. I was

26:41

like very much Mr.

26:43

Hip-Hop, and this guy comes pulling

26:45

up listening to like Bruce Springsteen. I'm like,

26:47

who is this guy? But

26:50

there I was relentlessly trying to

26:52

pitch all these hopeless leads of,

26:54

you know, and none of them

26:56

were to stick. It's going nowhere. It's going

26:58

nowhere. So I finally reached out to him,

27:00

and he's like, okay, look, let's

27:02

do this. You know, 50-50, we'll do it. What

27:06

do you need, five grand? He gave you $5,000 in cash.

27:09

Yes, no contract. And he knew that the business

27:11

you wanted to do was to mask. I

27:13

wanted to make more t-shirts. I needed inventory.

27:16

Yeah, right. So you said, all right, great.

27:18

We'll do this. Take a year in

27:20

business. That's it. When

27:24

we come back in just a

27:27

moment, Mark comes up with an

27:29

iconic new mascot, but discovers that

27:31

the very name of his brand,

27:33

Echo E-C-H-O, is going

27:36

to have to change. Stay with us. I'm

27:38

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32:02

Name. A

32:11

welcome back to how I built this!

32:13

I'm garage So it's Ninety Ninety Three

32:15

and Mark is officially launched Echo Unlimited

32:18

with five thousand dollars in cash from

32:20

his new partner, Sectors Bird And there's

32:22

also a third partner in the mix

32:24

Marks twin sister Marcy. The

32:27

and to says credit. Which.

32:30

He deserves a lot of credit for. As

32:33

the business started to take off. I.

32:36

Renegotiated the deal on as like thirty

32:39

three Thirty three thirty three dumb see

32:41

your sister had a third he has

32:43

a third you hazard. Okay so he

32:45

was gonna bring in that the money

32:47

because he had some experience and he

32:49

was just a year to older than

32:51

you desk and so can now you

32:53

had some money to start making t

32:55

shirts. menu had some i'm you Are

32:57

or had already worked for the previous

32:59

couple years building relationships in the hip

33:02

hop community had at what was the

33:04

first. Step in Like starting a business

33:06

like did you guys get an office the three

33:08

of you were used to Just stay in Lakewood,

33:10

New Jersey. Did you move up to New York?

33:12

What it would tell me about The first things

33:14

you did once you are like are right, We

33:16

got a business. Or when

33:19

I wrote a business. Okay, what

33:21

was in there? I wanted to

33:23

be a lifestyle brand and I

33:25

break up the story of educating,

33:27

say Zealand overcome. Educating Change

33:29

to seal and overcome. That's what Echo

33:31

stood for. It's Very. I mean, I

33:33

mean, it's very earnest. I'm not criticizing

33:35

it and that mocking you. It's very

33:38

earnest, right? Well, I'm I'm painfully earnest

33:40

and there will be people listening to

33:42

this. Totally vomiting on the earnestness or

33:44

Falklands is as real. That's what it

33:47

was the idea. and I think it's

33:49

a part of my super power and

33:51

part of my weaknesses. That earnestness, You

33:53

know? So. I not worthy worried

33:56

what people thought of using care of people

33:58

were like I worried about it but. I

34:00

didn't know how to process it. It

34:03

was more of a portrayal of

34:05

my very dear and near friend

34:08

group wanted to

34:10

dissociate with me. They thought I was

34:13

corny or delusional or obsessed over the

34:15

work and you only wanna talk about

34:17

this thing and there's no oxygen to

34:20

talk about. And they weren't wrong in

34:23

terms of where my focus was. In

34:25

terms of my inner

34:27

socialization, I

34:29

would share, I wanted their advice. I would ask

34:31

for their advice. What do they think? If they

34:34

wanna help, they wanna come with me on the

34:36

road and always was a no. And

34:40

so I was making friends with people that

34:42

were more like me, that

34:44

were entrepreneurial. And then they started to

34:47

help me. I mean, you

34:49

had this plan for a lifestyle brand

34:51

but initially to bring in

34:53

money, you had to sell

34:55

products. You had to sell the things that

34:58

you made, which were shirts

35:00

and jackets. And so tell me what the

35:02

first thing you did, did you buy a

35:04

bunch of shirts and start to mass screen

35:06

print them? It was a little bit

35:09

more technical than that. I wanted

35:11

to bring the elaborate aesthetic, which

35:13

was if you look at those like old

35:15

concert t-shirts and rock concert t-shirts, some

35:20

of these t-shirts today, the ones that

35:22

are early references are worth thousands of

35:24

dollars. But that was

35:26

an aesthetic that was not

35:28

being captured by the

35:30

streetwear market. It was not being deployed

35:33

because of the technical constraints, because

35:35

the barrier to enter was to

35:37

make the color separations was very

35:40

expensive. So I did this, I

35:42

was doing these very elaborate pieces

35:44

of art that I was showing. And

35:48

at the time I had, the

35:50

art that I wanted to get produced looked

35:53

more like these multi-color eight

35:55

to 10 color screen prints

35:58

On Black. Most of what

36:01

you saw industry where market was printed

36:03

on whites and here as looking at

36:05

my work's getting creasing elaborate a crescent

36:07

moon you know a high resolution I

36:09

would need a you couldn't produce it

36:11

fair to be simple they to simpler

36:14

designs essentially data be more elaborate designs

36:16

and what the market was don't have

36:18

more eleven again so you you knew

36:20

that you had to. Basically.

36:24

Create these elaborate designs because that was

36:26

what. That. Would stand outs but

36:28

I think up until this point you are

36:30

really selling your stuff and shops. He was

36:32

like person to person right? You had to

36:35

get your. Shirts. Into stores

36:37

So how did you attend? How me how you

36:39

started to do that you would take he would

36:41

get them printed and then you would go walk

36:44

from store to store in New York City. The

36:46

I was. We bought the first six

36:49

styles on spec when say styles. The

36:51

cuts of the shirts I bought blanks

36:53

that were available to and I had

36:56

just six pieces of art that I'd

36:58

identified. and he's like Champion t shirts

37:00

are like Haines t shirts. Yeah, whatever.

37:03

they were Advil or whatever at the

37:05

time and there are you know, no

37:07

labels in the neck that said that

37:10

gone Limited. there were just read of

37:12

very mavericks. The. You would go

37:14

to these boutiques and presumably the buttocks are

37:16

selling this kind of stuff and you would

37:18

walk in and say hey, Can.

37:20

I talk to the owner, the manager

37:22

some like as it was a mix

37:24

of things we did exactly that where

37:26

we would go hustle door to door.

37:29

You know we'd go to Patricia Fields and

37:31

on Broadway go the extra large store. you

37:34

know go to Doctor Jay. They had no

37:36

idea that there was a buyer on I

37:38

speak to the Spire some of the smaller

37:40

mom and pop. so lucky I could talk

37:42

to you that that in the manager was

37:45

the buyer and we were just try to

37:47

put them on wheels. Who would sell on

37:49

consignment? What like consignment they wouldn't Agassi had

37:51

no choice. They wouldn't give you cash book

37:53

or some of the stores that we really

37:56

wanted to get into that were really hot

37:58

source at the time. Wasn't that

38:00

we wanted to sell on consignment is because

38:02

they'd say no and after a month as

38:04

back and forth them saying we've really liked

38:06

your stuff but only taken on consignment. way

38:09

to pick pass. And. A consignment

38:11

mean that you actually get pay any.

38:13

And of course of course you don't

38:15

That forbids he'll get his neighborhood where

38:17

they said they say didn't sell around

38:20

with i'm already you know some of

38:22

them would tape really slow, slower than

38:24

you could afford, and you would convert

38:27

them into a viable account, and some

38:29

were just basically lecherous and just word,

38:31

basically taking advantage of all the young

38:34

entrepreneurs hustling I was. I wasn't the

38:36

only one not getting paid, that's be

38:38

clear and I knew it. A and

38:40

the did start to sell especially in

38:42

Manhattan and we eventually then did a

38:44

trade shows right? So he started to

38:46

learn about oh you should go to

38:48

a trade show, he should go to

38:51

the The Javits Center. they have a

38:53

trade show and here's Action Sports Retailer

38:55

in San Diego. And so a

38:57

silky your do consignment and I'm I'm

38:59

imagining that is that in year one.

39:01

You know even if these things to

39:03

these. Teasers assembling you guys

39:05

aren't like rolling in cash now.

39:08

Now but it was real life. we

39:10

were we we were getting feedback like

39:12

cause like over the weekend you have

39:14

more stock. Like that seizures blowing

39:16

out for us. some of my the

39:18

some of the styles blue started blowing

39:21

out and people just discovered them in

39:23

the shops at Walk and be like

39:25

whoa, what's that Yeah and it was

39:27

also the emergency. the time and Place

39:29

as put ourselves in Jack into Space

39:31

and Time in the in that sector

39:34

of space and time this was this

39:36

emerged in saying and who were my

39:38

near peers. Now it's that farm. It's

39:40

Triple Five Soul. It's Echo Unlimited. It's

39:42

P N B Supremes just coming up.

39:44

Yep. but. West coast street were like.

39:47

Like. Like to see for example, think

39:49

more influenced by surf and state culture

39:51

Yes, and you guys more influenced by

39:53

a little you My hip hop culture.

39:56

I was like explicitly hip hop and

39:58

graffiti. And. My art New. like

40:00

my black book. But there was a

40:02

Venn diagram where those two met. Oh,

40:04

for sure. One of

40:06

the things that I think you did around this

40:08

time in the first year or so was to

40:10

introduce the Rhino, which became

40:12

kind of the symbol of the

40:15

Echo brand. How did that come

40:18

about? It's about three years in. All

40:20

of the brand was just trafficking under

40:23

my art and under

40:25

the Echo Unlimited word mark. And

40:28

I'm at a trade show in

40:30

Vegas and we're starting to really

40:32

kind of hit a stride with

40:34

international buyers. And I want to

40:37

expand beyond t-shirts. I

40:39

don't want to only do t-shirts. And if

40:42

I don't evolve a logo

40:44

mark, that's a non-verbal, non-written

40:46

logo mark, it's going to

40:48

be very hard to ID

40:50

the product. So I walked

40:52

the main hall and I walked by

40:54

like a big Timberland tree. And

40:57

I walked by a big Lacoste alligator and

40:59

I walked by Polo and I'm just like,

41:01

all these guys have a thing in common.

41:03

They have like a mascot and they're able

41:05

to brand their garment in a way where

41:07

they don't have to slap type on it.

41:10

Okay. And I knew that if

41:12

I was going to get into cut and sew, which

41:14

is my ambition and cut and sew is like just

41:17

for people don't know the industry,

41:20

it means imported, more

41:22

technical, constructed, out

41:24

of wear denim, woven shirts

41:26

beyond just printables, which the

41:28

business of printables, right? Where

41:31

you take a blank constructed

41:33

garment and you embellish it

41:35

with a print or a

41:37

transfer of some type. And you

41:39

had to go beyond that. If you want to go

41:41

beyond that, you had to have a non-verbal label.

41:43

It didn't, it's something that just people saw

41:46

it, like they see the crocodile and you're

41:48

like, that's Lacoste. Yeah. Because

41:50

I was like, I got it. It's the Rhino. You

41:52

call me Ernest. But

41:54

I do believe that God puts

41:56

things in your path That

41:59

you, you, if you're A, you're

42:01

A, You ignore them. You could

42:03

say that they are. I'm just trivial

42:05

things. but outside the garage of where

42:07

I airbrush for years my dad had

42:10

a collection of San Driftwood Rhinoceros sashes

42:12

like little would they're like Yankee Little

42:14

Five dollar yes. And as a kid

42:17

growing up I used to play with

42:19

them or with my Star Wars action

42:21

figures. Hours admired the the form and

42:24

the shape and just that. The sort

42:26

of. Ruggedness of

42:28

the the rhino so.

42:31

On ad a hunch like to be

42:33

needed to be of rugged animal as

42:36

like is gonna be a Great Dane

42:38

a beard saw a pit bull. it

42:40

was not a long calculated that never

42:42

big narrative like this is. if I

42:44

want to try this I need to

42:47

have an animal. Yeah right. And

42:49

so I show the buyers the line and

42:52

they're like, what the hell is this. The.

42:54

If we're to get that from Timberland

42:57

or we get that from the north

42:59

face with those as the that weird

43:01

mountain we don't need that from you.

43:04

Because. This looks like an outdoor brand. This looks

43:06

like a hunting brand. Make. Exactly.

43:09

You. Know that's what I'm trying to like. that's

43:11

the that's my a static you know, like I

43:13

was. You. Know tim

43:16

boots and cargo pants and this

43:18

was the a static the up

43:20

it took on a bunch of

43:22

meeting obviously like eat you know

43:24

the herbivore. See. Years

43:26

but gentle pack

43:28

animals survivor. Only.

43:31

Goes forward. like I learn these things

43:34

Anecdotally, they become a part of the

43:36

sale of wanted to produce cotton. so.

43:39

And then I tested one capsule that

43:41

was like all right Now and have

43:43

assists the Echo unlimited discreetly and Stansell

43:46

font very kind of military hunting look.

43:48

The buyers were very resistant and then

43:50

we placed it in a blue out

43:52

and sales and well once had penetrated

43:54

the market. The buyers that accepted that

43:57

stuff it's actually had good performance with

43:59

it. I think by,

44:02

let's say by year three, like when you

44:04

introduced the Rhino, do you, so this is

44:06

like 96, 95, right? Maybe

44:10

something like that. Was it just the three

44:12

of you or at this point, you know?

44:14

No, we started building a team. We graduated

44:16

from the office in my

44:19

apartment and we graduated

44:21

to South River, New Jersey. So

44:23

our first office that became a hub for

44:25

us. Yeah. I want to sort of dive

44:28

into the overall business because I know, I mean,

44:30

you're doing, by 1995, you're

44:33

doing like, let's say, $15, $20

44:36

million in revenue and sales,

44:38

which doesn't mean you're profitable necessarily.

44:40

But no, we were horribly unprofitable.

44:43

Yeah. So this is the thing, like

44:45

from what I gather, like from the

44:47

outside, you look, you're looking really hot,

44:49

like a hot brand. Everyone's talking about

44:51

you. You're making money hand over fist.

44:54

But actually, internally, you were in trouble.

44:56

The company was... It was a

44:58

shit show. You were like bleeding

45:00

cash, right? I mean, we were, the big

45:03

problem is that we were, we didn't

45:05

have the leverage on the manufacturing side.

45:08

So the manufacturing infrastructure was not refined yet.

45:11

You were making it all in China? We

45:13

were importing. I had really bad agency

45:15

production deals. We were making in Taiwan,

45:18

we were making in China, we were

45:20

making in a bunch of places. When

45:23

we started to do the cut and sew thing, it

45:25

was like, it's a different kind of game. So

45:28

we didn't fully understand

45:31

that. And

45:33

we tried it a couple of times and got burnt really

45:35

bad. We would build something and

45:38

I'd say to you, okay, it's going to come winter

45:41

delivery to top

45:44

of the new year. And we

45:46

would ship it in like spring, like heavy

45:48

garments, because we were late.

45:50

We had no leverage with the makers.

45:52

So the importing, getting enough even

45:55

to fit in a container, we didn't have

45:57

enough critical mass so that the efficiencies in

45:59

shipping. So those

46:01

things led us to a conclusion that

46:03

we need a partner in manufacturing. So

46:05

we find an agency partner, which is

46:08

a really bad deal, really

46:10

bad deal that almost went nuclear.

46:13

Okay, so you find an agency partner

46:15

and this actually makes things worse? Right.

46:19

Yes. So here's how I get to

46:21

the agency partner and it's all my

46:23

doing, my Frankensteining. I want

46:25

to make snowboard jackets, okay? Okay. And

46:27

I want to make outerwear. I want to go

46:29

after Pola. I want to go after Tommy. I

46:32

have the drawings. I could see it. I'm visualizing

46:34

it. But I'm going

46:36

to preserve this t-shirt business, preserve

46:38

that foundational essence, but I need

46:40

to get into the making. So

46:44

I walk up at one of those Javits

46:46

Center trade shows. I walk as a consumer.

46:48

I start walking it now, not as competitors,

46:50

but I start looking at who's making what.

46:53

And I just start asking them, do you do

46:55

private label? Can you make me? How did

46:57

you make this? Would you make it with my label? Right?

47:00

If I pay you. One guy I

47:02

just happened to meet will call him

47:05

Boris, okay? Okay.

47:08

For legal reasons because it ended up in

47:10

a real shit show. So

47:13

Boris says, yes, I can make them.

47:15

There's a brand called SMP and it

47:17

was a hot snowboarding brand. Like

47:20

I wanted to make that level of product. So

47:23

he says, all right, we

47:25

make a deal. You

47:28

do the fulfillment in the warehousing,

47:30

Boris, and the making. You

47:33

fund the making and we'll split

47:35

50-50 on the revenue. I'll

47:37

pick up the marketing costs and

47:40

we'll go season by season and we'll commit to

47:42

like a three-year deal. Right? But

47:44

you can't mark up the

47:47

freight on board pricing, the FOB

47:49

pricing, right? That's the price before

47:51

it leaves the country of origin. Then

47:54

there's your landed price. You can't mark

47:56

that up. Deal. Sign

47:58

the deal. Split at 50-50.

48:01

Yes. That's my recollection.

48:05

There's not a court of law. It might've been 51-49, I

48:07

don't know. He's financing

48:09

it, entirely financing it? Entirely financing it,

48:11

but I'm financing the operation of the

48:14

sales costs, the marketing costs,

48:16

the advertising. Okay, so the first season we

48:18

do it, everything works.

48:21

Okay, it all works. This is going good. Second season

48:23

we do it, there's a speed bump.

48:26

Oh my gosh, we get the facts. Edward

48:30

C. Hyman, Echo

48:32

Design Group, E-C-H-O, Season

48:35

Desist. Season

48:38

Desist, what does that mean? I'm Echo, my

48:40

mother gave me that name. Here comes the

48:42

earnestness, right? Here's the super power and the

48:44

weakness. I'm Echo, what do you mean

48:46

Edward C. Hyman? Who is he? Oh, he's dead, this

48:49

is a company, 75 years old. They

48:51

have the trademark on this brand. You

48:53

need to change the name of the brand. They were

48:56

called Echo Design Group, and this is

48:58

like three years into your business, and

49:00

they say you cannot use that name

49:03

anymore. Right, this is going like this. I

49:05

have this new production deal with this agency

49:07

partner. Yep. So I've

49:10

got goods with E-C-H-O embroidered on

49:12

them, advertising campaigns

49:14

that are getting

49:16

a ton of hype, E-C-H-O on

49:19

them, and funding that. If

49:21

I don't ship my goods to pay all

49:23

the debt of advertising, this is how I

49:25

got underwater. The name Echo

49:28

you could not use anymore. You had

49:30

already made clothing with

49:33

E-C-H-O in it. First of all, did you

49:35

have to recall that stuff? That's exactly what

49:37

was going on. When I say pump the

49:39

brakes, halt the

49:41

production, there was stuff in

49:43

pipeline en route about to

49:45

ship in the midst of

49:48

peak manufacturing. They're

49:51

about to punch an embroidery, and you can't

49:53

undo that embroidery. Once it's punched, you can't

49:55

undo it. But you had to

49:57

stop that before it happened. Yes, we had to stop it. By

50:00

the way, how much merchandise are you talking

50:02

about? Two, five, ten million dollars worth of

50:04

stuff? Oh, it was probably like, don't

50:07

quote me, but it was probably about

50:09

eight million dollars worth of stuff. Okay. Eight

50:11

million dollars just at our cost, not like the value

50:14

in the market. And so you knew that you were

50:16

not going to fight this? You were not going to

50:18

fight this Echo design group? Oh, I tried to fight

50:20

it. Okay. But?

50:22

I lost the fight. So just with

50:24

the name, you decided to change it

50:26

to ECKO, so it's still Echo. And

50:29

also you changed, you legally changed

50:32

your last name to ECKO. Yeah,

50:35

that took about a year after that, but

50:37

yes. And that was because by

50:39

having your name as the

50:42

name of the brand, you can't, nobody could

50:44

challenge the trademark because it's your last name.

50:47

It was legal advice. And

50:49

it was also kind of funny and confusing

50:51

because I was so stubborn that in my

50:54

agreement with Echo design group, I'm like, I

50:56

will change the trademark, but I am Mark

50:58

ECHO. And for like three

51:00

months I went around with, oh, Echo

51:02

unlimited, ECKO, but I'm ECHO. And

51:05

it was confusing. And my sister's like, why are you

51:08

doing that? I'm like, I don't know. It's so stupid.

51:10

People are spelling the name wrong and they're still

51:12

getting it wrong. Like why, what am I doing?

51:15

And then my lawyer says, you know, Mark, it

51:18

probably will, like, let me do an analysis and

51:20

the discovery on what this could mean for the

51:22

marks if you legally change your name. And

51:25

if you intend to start

51:27

marketing Mark, M-A-R-C-E-C-K-O as

51:29

a mark in itself, which we hadn't contemplated.

51:32

I hadn't labeled, I hadn't put my name

51:34

on things yet. So, and I'm

51:36

like, oh, that's interesting. And I'm like, oh, well,

51:38

Tommy Hilfiger does it and Ralph does it. And

51:40

Ralph was, you know, it's not Ralph, it's not

51:43

polo Ralph Lifshitz. It's polo Ralph

51:45

Lauren. Ralph Lauren, right. Right, right.

51:48

Exactly. That's his last name. I changed it to

51:50

Ralph Lauren. So, okay. So

51:52

you've got, you changed the name. In the meantime, you've got

51:54

this brewing challenge with, actually, I want to go back to

51:56

this challenge with the partner in just a moment, but I

51:58

want to ask you to go back you overall

52:01

from what I understand. I mean you're

52:03

still a, you know, a relatively small

52:06

company, but from what I understand you

52:08

guys were spending money like crazy. What

52:10

were you spending money on? Like advertising.

52:13

Advertising. Like crazy. Like

52:15

you were spending more than you had. Oh for

52:18

sure. Where was it? Okay,

52:20

advertising. You were buying splashy ads

52:22

and like in magazines. It was expensive. What

52:24

else were you spending on? That's

52:27

pretty much it. This was peak.

52:29

You remember like magazines were forces

52:31

of nature. I mean there was

52:34

no YouTube. No. There

52:36

was no, there was no other, I couldn't

52:38

get on TV, print magazines. If

52:40

you were in the pages of Thrasher

52:42

magazine or the pages of The Source

52:44

and PC Gamer, Spin. It should

52:49

cost money and they're selling full retail and yeah

52:51

maybe I can negotiate with them and get crazy

52:53

terms. I get a 180-day terms to pay and

52:55

they liked

52:58

us. They were rooting for us and

53:00

that's what we did. We got over our skis

53:02

and the calculus, we weren't spending too much. It

53:05

was the, we were spending to plan,

53:08

but the plan was to have shipped goods

53:10

and then to have cash flow. So suddenly

53:13

what would have been cash flow now was

53:15

suddenly stuck in this legal

53:17

quagmire. So you

53:19

basically, you basically decided to change the

53:21

name. Meantime there's this perfect storm happening

53:23

because you also have this issue

53:25

with your, this partner that you guys partnered

53:27

up with hoping that it

53:29

would create better efficiencies. You'd be

53:32

able to scale and have higher

53:34

margins, but turns out he

53:36

was kind of skimming off the

53:38

top. Turns out Boris

53:42

was marking up on the FOB

53:44

prices. Broke the deal. Breached

53:46

the deal. Milking both ends. So

53:50

when you discovered this, right, when you

53:52

found out about this, what

53:55

did you do? I mean because you had, you had

53:57

this partnership with this guy and you

54:00

felt like did you confront him and

54:02

say, hey, what are you doing? Of

54:04

course. And I got more evidence on

54:06

about six styles or

54:08

so that were price manipulated.

54:12

So then we very aggressively

54:14

sue for them breaching

54:16

using that those six

54:19

price points as evidence. They

54:22

then say, no, that's a

54:24

mistake. That's not true. That's

54:26

not enough evidence. So then

54:28

they counter sue because we're trying to get

54:30

our inventory out and break the deal. And

54:33

they're like, we're going to fight this out in

54:35

court. And they knew they had us because we

54:37

couldn't afford not to ship the goods. We needed

54:39

to reconcile this shit

54:41

show. I needed a completely new

54:45

manufacturing infrastructure. Okay,

54:47

I needed to learn everything that they were doing.

54:49

I need to cut those guys out and

54:53

they were willing to go full nuclear. So

54:57

you guys enter into this

54:59

battle with this guy. But from

55:02

what I understand, and you

55:04

wrote about this in your book, there's

55:06

all this merchandise that

55:08

was being stored at a

55:10

warehouse, I think in LA. Yes.

55:13

Right. Okay. And you and Marcy,

55:17

your sister and Seth decide

55:20

to basically

55:23

take it back. You decide to kind of raid

55:26

this place in the middle of the

55:28

night and just grab all your merchandise,

55:31

which probably not the best form. Not

55:33

the best idea. But tell me

55:36

what the circumstances that led you

55:38

to do this and what you did. Oh, it

55:40

was just it was, you

55:43

know, righteousness versus effectiveness. We probably didn't consult

55:45

our lawyers all the way we felt. I'm

55:47

sure you didn't consult them at all because

55:49

they wouldn't have been like, yeah, this isn't

55:51

a good idea to go to the warehouse

55:53

and take your stuff. Yeah, I mean, I

55:55

think we were just young and

55:57

stupid and thought We

56:00

were robbed and I was very

56:02

hostile. Why I just you know, I just got

56:04

my feelings hurt I got punched in the nose

56:06

with the ECH show to EC KO So

56:09

I was going full cowboy. So

56:11

there was this sort of posture that we

56:13

were taking It was not

56:16

by force. We went in and show up with like

56:18

goons and guns I mean I showed

56:20

up and we showed up just

56:22

saying like okay like here's the paperwork You

56:24

guys are stealing give us our shit and and

56:27

then obviously that they locked it up locked us

56:29

out I don't remember the

56:31

exact you know when they make the movie one day. It'll

56:33

be very dramatic So

56:35

you didn't you weren't you weren't able to get your

56:38

stuff Hell no When

56:41

we come back in just a moment

56:43

echo unlimited runs into so much debt

56:45

But it has to withdraw from a

56:48

big trade show But then

56:50

mark figures out and it turned that

56:52

absence into a major advantage

56:55

Stay with us. I'm Guy Raj and you're listening to how

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59:26

guys, my name is David and I'm an

59:28

entrepreneur from Albuquerque, New Mexico. My

59:30

favorite episode is the lip bar with Melissa

59:33

Butler. From the curiosity that got

59:35

her into lipstick to the way that she

59:37

had her prototypes and her products overtaking

59:39

her home, I believe she really

59:41

represents the entrepreneur's journey. Thank

59:43

you so much to you and your team for making

59:46

this show. I listen to it while

59:48

working on my own products and it makes me feel

59:50

like I'm in a chapter of my own story that's

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similar to the ones on your show. It's

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very inspiring and thanks again. If

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1:00:19

so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And

1:00:22

now, back to the show. Hey,

1:00:32

welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Roz.

1:00:35

So it's around 1997, and Mark

1:00:37

has just attempted to raid the

1:00:39

L.A. warehouse where a shady business

1:00:41

partner has been keeping their merchandise.

1:00:44

The two of them then wind up

1:00:46

in court, and each claims the other

1:00:49

is in breach of contract. And

1:00:52

we knew that we could win a

1:00:54

case, but we didn't have

1:00:56

the funding option to go forward. You

1:00:59

know, our lawyer pulls us aside one

1:01:01

day in court, and he's

1:01:04

like, guys, we could fight this, but this is going

1:01:06

to be six months, and you might not be here

1:01:08

to tell the story because you guys are going to

1:01:10

go broke unless you settle this in some way. And

1:01:13

so that's what we did. And

1:01:15

so what did it take? How much money did

1:01:17

you have to pay him to buy him out?

1:01:20

It wasn't even like that. It was just like

1:01:22

a sell-off period, and we're going to play nice,

1:01:24

and we're going to slowly migrate the goods, and

1:01:27

we've renegotiated the royalty

1:01:29

terms or the rev-share split or something

1:01:32

like that, and then the period. And,

1:01:35

you know, it was more like we

1:01:38

played nice and we said, okay, let's

1:01:40

just settle. From

1:01:42

what I understand, around this time, you

1:01:44

thought maybe a way out of this

1:01:46

– because you almost went bankrupt. I

1:01:48

mean, this was going to – and

1:01:51

you got pretty close to this whole

1:01:53

thing imploding. But I think you

1:01:55

thought maybe a way out is just selling the

1:01:57

brand to, like, Levi's or not as a company.

1:02:00

or Perielsa, a couple of other brands. And

1:02:02

you went to some of these brands and

1:02:04

offered it to them, right, Echo? Well,

1:02:07

it wasn't just us wanting to sell it.

1:02:11

It was more the market signaling that there

1:02:13

might be an opportunity. When we

1:02:15

started talking to more grown adults and

1:02:17

listening to the attorneys and exploring the

1:02:19

options, we hired a banker to

1:02:22

learn, okay, well, what would it mean

1:02:25

to perhaps have

1:02:27

a partner to kind of come in and do the back

1:02:29

of the house ops, kind of

1:02:31

liberate me on the design and us as a

1:02:34

team on the sales and marketing. So

1:02:36

we put out a live wire and

1:02:38

there was people circling.

1:02:40

People started circling. We

1:02:43

did this sort of banker exploration to

1:02:45

see what the market could

1:02:47

offer us in the event of a sale. And

1:02:50

you couldn't find anything that looked good, basically,

1:02:52

at the time? We found things that looked

1:02:54

good. Just the terms were not fair. What

1:02:58

was the best offer you got, do you remember, in terms

1:03:01

of dollar amount? Oh,

1:03:03

goodness. Like more

1:03:05

than 30 million? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,

1:03:07

yeah. So why wouldn't you take it? Well,

1:03:10

Levi's tried to cut my sister

1:03:12

and my partner's staff out. After

1:03:14

we were like the two yard line doing a

1:03:17

deal, you have to understand,

1:03:19

they were basically gonna be purchasing it. It

1:03:21

probably wasn't that much. It was because you

1:03:23

have to remember, I had so much debt

1:03:25

at the time. So they were basically gonna

1:03:27

purchase the debt and you guys would walk

1:03:29

away with almost nothing. We would walk away

1:03:32

with something and earn out and to be

1:03:34

incented to stick around. But that wasn't enticing

1:03:36

to you? Not especially after the 11th hour

1:03:38

of the deal. They

1:03:40

called me in to see me one on one. And

1:03:42

I don't wanna disparage all the people

1:03:45

that were a part of that deal are no longer

1:03:47

there. But there

1:03:50

was one gentleman who worked in

1:03:52

their international business and one of

1:03:54

their finance people pulled me

1:03:56

in. I thought that he wanted to just talk about

1:03:58

whatever kind of little bit of debt. button

1:04:00

up details with me and I

1:04:03

knew that I was sort of the galvanizing

1:04:05

force, but I my

1:04:08

partners, my road dogs was my sister

1:04:10

and my partner Seth, that was my

1:04:12

brother. Yeah. And when they not

1:04:15

so subtly alluded to the fact that like

1:04:17

we really don't need them for that long,

1:04:20

maybe we'll just keep them on for like

1:04:22

a year and we said peace out. And

1:04:26

our friends at Nautica, we

1:04:28

got to know the CEO at the time. He

1:04:30

loved us. He thought we were great. And then

1:04:33

as we get to the one

1:04:35

yard line to do the deal, he's like, my

1:04:37

board won't approve it. It's mission creep for us.

1:04:40

We can't afford to do this right now. You

1:04:42

know, we just newly public. He

1:04:44

got scared and pulled the deal. Okay.

1:04:47

So now you are

1:04:50

this is around 97 98. You

1:04:52

are in pretty bad financial situation. You've

1:04:54

got a lot of debt, like tens

1:04:56

of millions of dollars in debt from

1:04:59

what I understand. And you needed a

1:05:01

creditor. You needed

1:05:03

somebody to help bail you out. And I guess

1:05:06

Seth had a connection to some

1:05:08

guy named Alan Finkelman. And Alan

1:05:10

was a guy who said, sure,

1:05:12

I will give

1:05:14

you a loan and

1:05:17

help you pay your debt. But I need to own

1:05:20

a portion of your business as

1:05:22

collateral, something like that. What was the offer? Yeah,

1:05:25

the exact terms were… If you

1:05:27

pay your debt, but I need

1:05:30

to own a portion of your business

1:05:32

as collateral, something like that. What was

1:05:34

the offer? Yeah, the exact terms

1:05:36

were – it was more like a debt

1:05:38

deal and it was a very much an

1:05:41

angel, good guy deal. There was nothing about

1:05:43

taking a piece of the marks. He

1:05:46

was that generous. He had

1:05:48

some protections in place. We

1:05:51

knew that we got our hands slapped. We

1:05:53

learned to be on better behavior in terms

1:05:55

of our marketing planning and be more fiscally

1:05:57

responsible and maybe not be as… a

1:06:00

cavalier with the advertising. And we said if we

1:06:02

just put our head down and focus, we

1:06:06

could do this. And if we

1:06:08

could use our weakness at the

1:06:10

time, which was the being underwater

1:06:12

financially as some sort of Tai

1:06:14

Chi strength, maybe there's a

1:06:16

way to sort of harness that reality of

1:06:19

not being able to afford to be at a trade show, having

1:06:22

to be low key, and

1:06:24

basically do this whole thing called

1:06:27

where's Echo. And magic

1:06:29

trade show, we could

1:06:32

spend hundreds of thousands of dollars

1:06:34

there creating the spectacle, couldn't afford

1:06:36

to do that. So we- This

1:06:38

is in 97 you're talking about. You could not

1:06:41

afford to go to this show,

1:06:43

which is a really major show. Yeah, at the

1:06:45

time it was like blowing up. So

1:06:47

we paid for the booth to

1:06:49

hold the space and we couldn't get the

1:06:52

money back, but we didn't have money to produce

1:06:54

the booth itself, to ship

1:06:56

people, to build the

1:06:58

booth construction, the union, all that

1:07:00

stuff. So we just put

1:07:03

a sign in the middle of an

1:07:05

empty booth, where's Echo? Where's Echo? That's

1:07:07

what it said. Yeah, where's Echo? That

1:07:09

was your campaign strategy to say, let's

1:07:11

just end that there was

1:07:13

that. And what about outside the convention

1:07:15

center? Oh, stickers everywhere, giant stickers. Stickers,

1:07:17

and the stickers said where's Echo with

1:07:20

the brand logo on it. Yeah, we

1:07:22

got fined till, took a couple

1:07:24

of years to settle with the city of Vegas, but

1:07:27

full proper like 11 by 17, full

1:07:30

page like paper, glossy

1:07:32

stickers that were like impossible to take

1:07:34

off. Did that actually gain

1:07:36

attention for you? Oh yeah, in

1:07:38

some good ways and some bad, yeah, yeah. Did

1:07:41

it result in sales at the trade show?

1:07:43

Huge sales, huge sales, not the trade

1:07:45

show in our office. Cause

1:07:47

people set people what? They were just

1:07:49

like, wow, these guys are clever. They

1:07:52

just were rooting for us. And we

1:07:55

started to build the muscle of properly

1:07:58

building production. and

1:08:01

manufacturing infrastructure. We

1:08:03

put our heads down, Marcy

1:08:05

became a world-class operator. I

1:08:08

became a much more focused merchant, right?

1:08:11

In understanding how to build in a

1:08:13

line that was not as ad hoc,

1:08:16

getting really good at color separations

1:08:19

on the t-shirts, like crushing it

1:08:21

on new innovations

1:08:24

in screen printing, pushing

1:08:26

my screen printers to the limits to do things that

1:08:28

no one was doing at the time, in

1:08:31

terms of colors, high density, ink,

1:08:33

gloss, all sorts of techniques that

1:08:35

were very novel at the

1:08:37

time, that have since become wildly mainstream. If you

1:08:39

looked at the market, your eye wouldn't see

1:08:41

it, but at the time, we're a

1:08:44

big differentiator. And who were

1:08:47

your customers? I mean, was it young men mainly?

1:08:49

At the consumer level, yes, it was young

1:08:51

men's. We managed to break into Macy's, and

1:08:55

the business started to really, it

1:08:57

started to become durable. They

1:08:59

got the bugs out of the system and we grew up.

1:09:03

And what was the biggest seller?

1:09:05

Was it t-shirts? No, the core

1:09:07

competency was fleece hoodies.

1:09:09

Fleece. And people started

1:09:12

to associate that Rhino logo

1:09:14

with all the coolest events

1:09:16

that we would sponsor, and

1:09:19

the advertising that we had took

1:09:21

and took forever to pay for.

1:09:23

It's still the composite brand awareness

1:09:25

was out punching, there was more

1:09:27

demand, there's just pent up demand

1:09:29

in the market. So in

1:09:31

some odd way, all of the unintended

1:09:33

consequences of shipping late or off

1:09:36

cycle, in some weird

1:09:38

ways, just

1:09:40

created more of a vacuum for

1:09:43

demand. I

1:09:45

wanna shift to this

1:09:47

completely, not completely, but this

1:09:49

other part of you, this other

1:09:52

side of you that many people

1:09:54

may know even better

1:09:56

than Echo, which is

1:09:58

complex, because while... Now you're running

1:10:01

Echo, you decide to pursue this

1:10:03

idea of creating a print

1:10:06

magazine, a streetwear, hip-hop print

1:10:08

magazine. The idea was

1:10:10

that this would extend the brand, the

1:10:14

Echo brand? Oh, there was no

1:10:16

doubt. Looking at what was,

1:10:18

I don't know, our business was probably

1:10:20

$150 million in business, right? Something

1:10:25

like that, north of $100 million. We

1:10:28

were looking at a $12 to $15 million marketing

1:10:30

budget, okay,

1:10:33

of paid media that I was using

1:10:35

for paid media. And

1:10:37

I found it very frustrating as

1:10:40

I started to become like a

1:10:42

darling amongst the publishers who all

1:10:44

were very gracious and GQ and

1:10:46

details. I

1:10:48

said, hey, it's not enough just for

1:10:51

the publishers to be nice, like why

1:10:53

aren't these peer, near peer editors

1:10:56

and chief, they're my same age or sometimes older

1:10:58

than me, or the stylists,

1:11:00

why weren't they taking the brand into

1:11:02

their shoots, especially at the men's

1:11:05

fashion magazines? And I found

1:11:07

that offensive, you know?

1:11:09

And I had this thing like from

1:11:11

the media side, they were like, you're

1:11:13

too black for GQ and

1:11:15

you're too black for the skateboard magazines,

1:11:18

but you're too white for the source

1:11:21

magazine. And it was all that

1:11:23

same narrative over and over. I

1:11:27

just was like, let's take three and a half

1:11:29

million for a year, for the next

1:11:31

couple of years and let's incubate a magazine, right?

1:11:35

Because the marketplace is

1:11:38

showing us that they're not

1:11:40

getting convergence culture. I

1:11:42

had this thesis around convergence and

1:11:45

that cool doesn't discriminate

1:11:47

or live within these silos

1:11:51

in the way that the media industry

1:11:53

sort of designed constraints of the past.

1:11:56

And I was looking at just

1:11:58

the multicultural reality. looking inwardly

1:12:00

at my company, looking at my staff,

1:12:03

looking at my own family, and saying,

1:12:06

this is not where the puck is headed. Someone

1:12:08

needs to answer that, let's go for

1:12:10

it. And to my partner's credit, Marcy

1:12:12

and Seth, they bought

1:12:15

into the vision. And how are

1:12:17

you going to... I mean, this is

1:12:20

a magazine with an editorial team and

1:12:22

writers and all this stuff like, what

1:12:24

did you know about running a magazine? Well, some

1:12:26

people are just that good, I guess. I'm

1:12:29

kidding. No. I mean, did

1:12:31

you hire an editorial team? Did you hire a...

1:12:33

Of course I did. I didn't know how to

1:12:35

run a magazine. I

1:12:38

start to hire consultants,

1:12:41

someone, a newsstand consultant, help

1:12:44

me structure the org. You need to hire a publisher,

1:12:46

an editor in chief. And we were

1:12:49

sunsetting a showroom that I still had.

1:12:51

I wanted to move to a bigger

1:12:53

showroom in Manhattan, but I had two.

1:12:56

So I was opening two showrooms, and we converted one

1:12:58

to Complex, and we just went for it. And

1:13:01

so the idea was you would have your, essentially, your

1:13:03

own publication. You wanted

1:13:05

this to be a culture lifestyle magazine

1:13:07

around it. I wanted to earnestly build

1:13:10

the most culturally relevant media platform for

1:13:12

my generation. And it

1:13:15

would focus on things like sneakers and

1:13:17

food and pop culture and music and

1:13:19

sports, like all these things. Convergence

1:13:21

culture. That's what I would label it

1:13:24

as. Okay. In the meantime, I

1:13:26

guess around the time you founded Complex,

1:13:29

you started to work on Complex, you

1:13:32

made a conscious decision that you wanted to

1:13:34

build up you as a brand

1:13:36

because I guess you felt, or the feeling

1:13:38

was, that not enough people

1:13:40

knew who Marc Echo was, and that

1:13:43

could be helpful for the Echo apparel

1:13:46

side. Is that about right? Well,

1:13:48

yeah. It was a bunch of

1:13:50

things that were happening. It was just

1:13:52

the sort of professionalization and maturation of

1:13:54

the business. We started to license Echo

1:13:58

Unlimited successfully. I

1:14:01

launched Echo Red, which was the women's wear

1:14:04

division. I

1:14:06

was having a lot of growth. The mouse

1:14:08

trap is, if you will, of our infrastructure

1:14:10

was becoming quite serious.

1:14:14

What was once a company underwater.

1:14:17

Now we had very sophisticated lines of

1:14:19

credit, you know, with big banks. So

1:14:22

I started acquiring businesses. I acquired

1:14:24

New York. It

1:14:27

was just a part of us looking forward. Okay,

1:14:29

what is the picture? What are we building for

1:14:31

here? I mean, as

1:14:33

part of, you see, had these,

1:14:36

they had complex, which is growing as a

1:14:38

magazine, but within

1:14:40

a few years, the print

1:14:42

version of complex was struggling. It was

1:14:44

really hard, because it's expensive to run

1:14:47

that. It was really hard, why?

1:14:50

Because they were all online. So

1:14:52

why would you pay for the print if you could just

1:14:54

get it for free online? Right. And

1:14:57

I guess there were also challenges,

1:14:59

or some issues with the Marc Echo

1:15:02

Enterprise. There were, you guys had some

1:15:04

racked up, some debt, and then you're

1:15:06

in the middle of a financial crisis.

1:15:08

You had a lot of real estate,

1:15:12

you know, because you had showrooms,

1:15:14

you had stores. Yeah, we've rolled out retail

1:15:16

quite aggressively. So you had like those 2006

1:15:18

leases in 2008. And

1:15:22

I think at your peak, you had like 110 stores. That's

1:15:25

right. It wasn't so

1:15:27

much that complex was in trouble, but we

1:15:30

were, and we were the only funder. So,

1:15:32

you know, they were just breaking even. So

1:15:34

even though the, and was the

1:15:36

Marc Echo brand, I mean, even if

1:15:38

it was the clothing we're selling, the

1:15:40

clothes of Neaparo was selling, you

1:15:43

guys were over leveraged, right? Basically, you had

1:15:45

too many stores, too much real estate. Is

1:15:47

that about right? Totally over

1:15:49

our skis. How did that happen again? You

1:15:52

were so experienced by that point. You were

1:15:54

such a smart operator. You'd brought

1:15:56

the business back to $100 million. How

1:15:58

did you get to this point again? 2008. Oh

1:16:01

my goodness. I

1:16:04

guess not

1:16:06

that smart of an

1:16:08

operator. The common

1:16:10

killer in our industry is inventory.

1:16:13

Yes. And it's why we have,

1:16:16

there were macro things going on

1:16:18

in the market. You were at

1:16:21

the peak of the real estate

1:16:23

industry. Real estate was cratering right

1:16:25

about, was about to. Amazon

1:16:28

was this incredibly powerful

1:16:30

but corrosive force in

1:16:33

affecting the way consumer behavior was

1:16:35

going to be direct to consumer online.

1:16:39

And so, you know, partially

1:16:42

macro, partially our own doing.

1:16:45

My partner, Seth

1:16:47

was a cowboy. And to his credit, that

1:16:51

kind of wild, aggressive

1:16:53

stretch planning, which

1:16:56

had proven so reliable for five years was

1:16:58

now going to be tested again in a

1:17:00

way that hadn't been. And banks were collapsing

1:17:04

all around us. This

1:17:07

also, I'm assuming, really starts to strain

1:17:09

your relationship with Seth. I know because

1:17:11

there was a falling out. Yeah. Your

1:17:13

sister Marcy had already left a couple

1:17:15

years earlier. She was bought out and

1:17:17

I think she left on good terms

1:17:19

with your sister. Yes. But you and

1:17:21

Seth, start to have

1:17:24

more disagreements about the future of

1:17:26

the business. Tell me about your,

1:17:28

what was going on with

1:17:30

your relationship as business partners. Oh,

1:17:33

my goodness. It was incredible.

1:17:36

I could only I've, you know, I've been

1:17:38

very lucky in life to have a beautiful

1:17:41

wife, my wife, Alison, and in a

1:17:43

long marriage and healthy family, thank God.

1:17:45

But I think

1:17:47

I experienced a divorce. It was

1:17:49

effectively what you see within any

1:17:52

sort of divorce, where

1:17:55

just two parties grow

1:17:57

apart and there's divergent sort of

1:18:00

point of view on the path forward and I

1:18:03

was becoming increasingly conservative

1:18:06

and wanting to lean

1:18:09

more into re-energizing

1:18:11

the brand and

1:18:13

sort of doubling down on

1:18:15

quality rather than quantity and

1:18:18

he was trying to feed the machine, the

1:18:21

beast that we had built and he would

1:18:24

say to me, Mark, we've been through this. We've

1:18:26

had ups and downs. This is not the first time.

1:18:28

I'm telling you, you could push through it and I

1:18:30

just felt like, no, this time is different, mate.

1:18:34

We can't push through this and I don't

1:18:36

want to because I feel like it could

1:18:38

be corrosive to the brand. We

1:18:41

were just doing too much. We're running

1:18:43

a full retail business. We're running an

1:18:45

outlet business. It was too

1:18:47

much. We needed to focus and

1:18:50

Seth was like, no, this is

1:18:52

cycles. We'll get through it. We could get through

1:18:54

and he was more gung-ho and

1:18:56

I said, I don't know.

1:18:58

I don't agree. Yeah,

1:19:01

I'm curious because this is happening

1:19:03

in the middle of a financial

1:19:05

crisis and you guys had to resolve

1:19:07

this in some way and

1:19:09

I'm going to kind of oversimplify what happened

1:19:12

but basically you decided that you would

1:19:14

sell your stake in Mark Echo Unlimited

1:19:16

to an outside partner called

1:19:19

Iconics and I guess they bought about 51%

1:19:21

for $109 million at those according to

1:19:24

reports at the time and then Seth would

1:19:26

still get to keep a 49% stake and you would essentially

1:19:31

kind of leave the day to day. You wouldn't

1:19:33

be involved in the day to day as much

1:19:35

with the clothing company. But

1:19:37

just to get back to this, I mean, $109 million for a 51% stake in the company in

1:19:45

the middle of a financial crisis, I mean,

1:19:47

that seems like a really great outcome. So

1:19:50

was it? I mean, it seems

1:19:52

like you guys did pretty, you know, you

1:19:54

did okay. You did pretty well. We did

1:19:56

do okay. I landed the plane with the wings

1:19:58

on fire. I sold my... equity

1:20:01

interests to make room for

1:20:04

Iconics to buy my position.

1:20:06

There was a payout for me

1:20:09

and I would keep complex

1:20:12

and I would get a royalty on

1:20:15

the gross sales of the business

1:20:17

for forever. So

1:20:20

from what I gather, initially this was great.

1:20:22

You walked away with you know a nice

1:20:25

chunk of cash. Oh it wasn't great. I

1:20:28

mean as a maker, as an

1:20:30

empathetic maybe saccharinely earnest kid who

1:20:32

loves design, it was like suddenly

1:20:36

having phantom pains

1:20:38

of the hand that was once attached to your

1:20:40

body gone. So that divorce

1:20:43

came with a lot of

1:20:45

trauma and I

1:20:48

was my job was

1:20:51

to now be that

1:20:53

puppet, like that caricature, that mascot.

1:20:55

I see. And it was not

1:20:58

my skills and

1:21:01

it wasn't also aligned to my real

1:21:04

authentic personality. So

1:21:06

okay so was this the first time in

1:21:08

your life, this is around 2009, where you

1:21:10

actually, I mean you had

1:21:12

a salary you were able to do, you

1:21:15

were making money, but was this the first time in your

1:21:17

life where you actually had significant money? Yes.

1:21:20

So wasn't that a win in the sense, I mean you

1:21:22

mentioned you had a young family. No, this is the wild

1:21:24

thing it was the point in

1:21:26

my life where I had

1:21:29

the worst, I

1:21:31

think I had my first proper breakdown.

1:21:35

I had so much PTSD

1:21:38

of the world collapsing, the weight of

1:21:40

landing that plane to get on the

1:21:42

other side of that iconic deal, which

1:21:44

was not a pretty picture. And

1:21:46

there was such hostility with those banks that

1:21:48

were, it was like a love affair with

1:21:50

those banks. I was in a CIT ad

1:21:53

for goodness sakes, you know back in the

1:21:55

heyday when I had a, I still have a plaque

1:21:57

around here for whatever, you know,

1:22:00

500 million dollar line of credit that I had, whatever absurd

1:22:03

line of credit, which was, you

1:22:05

don't do business that way anymore.

1:22:08

And those same banks were now like breathing dead in

1:22:10

your neck. Hostile, like

1:22:12

hostile. Like you

1:22:14

can't run Complex and Echo at the

1:22:16

same time. Shut Complex down. These

1:22:19

are creditors, these are bank, these are creditors. Yeah,

1:22:21

these are. They were coming after you because of

1:22:23

the financial crisis. And they were upside down and

1:22:26

they were doing their jobs. It

1:22:28

wasn't personal. So

1:22:30

you felt this PTSD from the process

1:22:32

of unwinding this, even though financially

1:22:35

you were successful. And people from the outside are

1:22:37

like, oh my God, high five, Mark, look, you

1:22:39

sold it. You're good, but internally

1:22:41

you're like. I felt like

1:22:43

a loser. Wow. I

1:22:46

felt like a total loser

1:22:48

and I was depressed. I

1:22:52

started getting psychotherapy

1:22:54

and try to

1:22:56

figure out my

1:22:58

new vocation. And

1:23:00

I went, I got addicted to

1:23:02

working out and I was the most fit I ever

1:23:04

was too. It was a wild thing really. It was

1:23:07

like, here it was like more fit, more

1:23:10

from an outside perception, more

1:23:13

affirmation, but internally hollow. So

1:23:16

those sort of, okay, you did good

1:23:19

kid. Here's your trophy was

1:23:21

never my measure. I'm that kid

1:23:23

that was airbrushing T-shirts

1:23:26

and sweatshirts. I wanna make stuff.

1:23:28

I'm a creator, I'm a maker.

1:23:30

Do you understand? I have to

1:23:32

use my hands to make something.

1:23:34

And suddenly the sort of mousetrap

1:23:36

of, okay, I IDA once every

1:23:38

week that cycle of I draw

1:23:40

something and then you get the

1:23:42

prototype in and then you're gluing

1:23:44

and taping the prototype and the

1:23:46

manipulatives of like that sort of

1:23:48

auto didactic learning the craft of

1:23:50

the trade, which I was becoming

1:23:52

good at was

1:23:54

gone. How

1:23:57

about your relationship with Seth? What happened to it?

1:24:00

Oh, it was very icy and we've

1:24:02

since totally reconciled our

1:24:04

relationship and I love them very dearly.

1:24:06

How long did it take before you

1:24:09

guys... Oh, years. Years. So

1:24:11

it was years of not speaking. Yeah. Yeah.

1:24:14

It took a solid, I'd say five, six

1:24:16

years. So he stays on with Marc

1:24:18

Echo. He was the 49%. Yes.

1:24:21

And you focus all of your attention now

1:24:23

to complex media, which was also having some

1:24:27

financial challenges. Well, I mean, well,

1:24:30

the business was break even, but

1:24:33

now we had a... And this, I

1:24:35

give all the credit to my good

1:24:37

partner, excellent operator, Rich Antonello, who became

1:24:39

the CEO of Complex, but I hired

1:24:41

him and he was

1:24:43

doing a great job. I mean, to his credit,

1:24:46

to land the plane with

1:24:49

investment, with venture investment

1:24:51

in the crisis years, which was

1:24:54

crazy if you think about it. You think it was

1:24:56

crazy to sell the company as

1:24:58

I did, which was also a blessing. You're right. I

1:25:00

should be grateful that it landed in the way that

1:25:03

it did. And in my heart, I'm grateful, right? But

1:25:05

it didn't come without some brokenness,

1:25:07

right? Okay. Let's

1:25:09

talk about complex because I know now

1:25:11

you're out of the Marc Echo enterprises

1:25:13

and complex is your main work.

1:25:18

Did you... I mean, you say that

1:25:20

you were sort of depressed at this time when you

1:25:22

left Marc Echo, but did it also... Did

1:25:25

you throw all of your energy into complex? I

1:25:28

started to, and then Rich knew

1:25:31

my professional woes. The

1:25:34

way I'm talking to you is I've talked to

1:25:36

him in earnest and I explained the things that

1:25:38

were bothering me creatively, professionally. And

1:25:41

he was like, let's get involved in the

1:25:43

operation, dude. Come

1:25:45

manifest the brand. So I started

1:25:48

operating back into complex. You

1:25:51

really kind of shift. You shift towards

1:25:53

video, digital video. And one

1:25:55

of the, I think, turning points was this first

1:25:57

wee feast, this like complex, really

1:25:59

It really becomes known for, it's sort of

1:26:01

like, at the time, I mean, Vice was

1:26:04

starting, you know, was really kind of coming

1:26:06

into its own and complex. They were the

1:26:08

darling. Right. Yeah. But

1:26:10

you guys were also making videos and content that

1:26:12

was really starting

1:26:14

to turn around. I mean, complex started to become

1:26:17

profitable or started to make money. Started

1:26:19

to make a lot

1:26:21

of money. And it started

1:26:23

to become a business that also had a

1:26:26

better multiple than a apparel

1:26:28

business. It was an

1:26:30

interesting thing. And then here, I have different

1:26:32

relationship with inventory, right? You

1:26:34

know, it's like inventory is vapor. You know,

1:26:36

it's what's on the hard drive. It's production

1:26:39

costs. It's a much

1:26:41

different business. And I was

1:26:43

thrown into the deep end and there

1:26:46

I was on the road with big

1:26:48

buyers and doing, you know, up

1:26:50

fronts and running production and being like

1:26:52

sort of the little, the

1:26:54

sort of more maverick version of Vice. Yeah.

1:26:57

And as ever committed to convergence culture as I

1:26:59

ever was, you know, doing the one thing I

1:27:02

knew I was good at. You

1:27:05

got acquired in 2016. You

1:27:07

got out of that business at

1:27:10

the right time because it's

1:27:12

a tough business. And as we've seen

1:27:14

with Vice and other and BuzzFeed and

1:27:16

complex and others, but in

1:27:19

the print industry as well Conde Nast and, you know.

1:27:22

Oh yeah. It's in another

1:27:24

phase of reinvention

1:27:26

right now. But when they acquired it,

1:27:29

you did stay on with complex, right?

1:27:31

You stand for some time. I

1:27:33

stayed on. It was just like

1:27:36

I stayed on at Echo just in a much

1:27:38

more sort of advisory

1:27:40

consulting. Yeah, well in

1:27:42

the nature of, in

1:27:45

the Echo business, I get a royalty. So

1:27:47

my sort of feedback, it just, I

1:27:49

don't have to be in it operationally

1:27:51

in a deep way. We're

1:27:54

gonna sort of jump

1:27:56

ahead to where we are now because

1:27:58

of course complex and. Mark

1:28:01

Echo, two brands that had

1:28:03

pretty significant impact on culture

1:28:06

in the United States. First

1:28:09

of all, when you see, I know

1:28:11

in the last year or so, you

1:28:13

have actually collaborated with the Echo

1:28:15

brand again on some

1:28:18

designs. When you go

1:28:20

to the website for that brand today and

1:28:22

you look at it, do you recognize it?

1:28:25

Do you feel like you're really the ethos and the spirit of

1:28:27

what you did create at the

1:28:30

beginning, or does it feel like, this is

1:28:32

not really totally my brand today? I

1:28:35

think that feeling of it's not

1:28:37

totally your brand came before

1:28:39

I sold the company. When

1:28:42

you start to develop, when

1:28:45

you develop IP at that

1:28:48

level of international

1:28:50

distribution, this

1:28:53

hyper-localization starts to happen

1:28:55

that starts to really

1:28:57

create some dissonance as the

1:29:01

chief creative officer or the creative

1:29:03

director. There

1:29:05

are certain functional things,

1:29:08

be it climate,

1:29:10

be it color palette,

1:29:12

fabrication, fit that start

1:29:14

to Frankenstein the business in a

1:29:16

way that it's very hard to

1:29:18

explain to a lay person. When

1:29:22

I would travel the world and

1:29:24

see my brand on people's backs,

1:29:26

it had this multiple

1:29:29

personality thing that was going

1:29:31

on anyways that was emerging.

1:29:34

Things were happening, pockets that weren't all

1:29:37

the way tuned to my Bluetooth.

1:29:40

It wasn't like my creative Bluetooth.

1:29:43

To answer the question, when I see

1:29:45

the brand today, is it

1:29:47

the portrait of what I would make it

1:29:50

if I was fully staring at? No, but

1:29:53

that is the nature of this business. I

1:29:55

think you could say, for me,

1:29:57

it was the 30-year anniversary. The

1:30:00

fact that some of my old peers

1:30:02

and colleagues that worked for me

1:30:05

were still there, call

1:30:07

me nostalgic, call me earnest,

1:30:11

I wanted to work with them again. It

1:30:13

just felt good and it was like no strings attached

1:30:15

and it was like do what you want. HOFFMAN

1:30:18

Yeah. Mark, when you think about where, you

1:30:20

know, what you've created and the ups

1:30:23

and downs of it, but also the amazing

1:30:25

success that you've had, you

1:30:28

know, as an entrepreneur and failures too

1:30:30

as we've outlined, which is part of

1:30:32

the journey. But how much of

1:30:34

where you got to now do you attribute to timing

1:30:37

and luck and how much do you think has to do

1:30:39

with the work and the grind that you put in and

1:30:41

just the sheer effort?

1:30:44

I think that luck

1:30:47

is an incredibly

1:30:50

real thing. The

1:30:53

first bout of luck was being

1:30:55

a twin and having a twin sister. So

1:30:57

if you took that out of the equation, I probably would

1:30:59

not be speaking to you right now. I've

1:31:02

been lucky in marriage. I've been lucky in

1:31:04

having my partner Seth, even though

1:31:06

we had a professional divorce and we

1:31:08

eventually totally reconciled and I love

1:31:10

him. I learned

1:31:12

things that was going to the university,

1:31:15

the super smart, you know,

1:31:17

I've been lucky to grow up in Lakewood

1:31:19

and have the diversity that

1:31:21

was around me. So yeah,

1:31:23

luck is a big part of it, but it

1:31:27

was also, I believe, talent

1:31:29

and skill and

1:31:33

a relentless belief

1:31:35

in yourself, which at times probably sounds

1:31:37

irritating to the listener because it's probably

1:31:39

moments that are somewhat cringe

1:31:42

worthy. Like this guy sounds like an

1:31:44

arrogant prick or he's not listening or

1:31:46

he sounds so earnest.

1:31:48

There is a little bit of

1:31:50

this sort of mania that

1:31:53

you need. And I

1:31:55

think the thing that I attribute most of

1:31:57

it to, and this is a...

1:32:00

It's not this podcast, but maybe a different one,

1:32:02

is God. There

1:32:05

have been moments where the

1:32:07

grace of God has given me the opportunity,

1:32:09

and I do not discount that.

1:32:12

And I know that, you know, it's a

1:32:14

different conversation, but I do think

1:32:16

that it's an important part of the calculus. That's

1:32:20

Mark Echo, co-founder of Echo

1:32:22

Unlimited and Complex Networks. This

1:32:25

year, to celebrate Echo Unlimited's

1:32:28

30th anniversary, Mark came

1:32:30

back briefly to design a limited

1:32:32

edition collection with some of his

1:32:34

most atomic designs. He said

1:32:37

he thought of it as a love letter to 1993.

1:32:42

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this

1:32:44

week. Please make sure to click the follow button on

1:32:46

your podcast app so you never miss a new episode

1:32:48

of the show. And as

1:32:50

always, it's free, and don't forget

1:32:52

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1:32:54

newsletter at guyraus.com. It's full of

1:32:56

insights and ideas from some of

1:32:58

the world's greatest entrepreneurs. This

1:33:01

episode was researched and produced by

1:33:03

Catherine Cipher with music composed by

1:33:05

Ramtin Arab-Louis. It was edited

1:33:07

by Niebha Grant with audio engineering

1:33:09

help from Gilly Moon and Quacy

1:33:11

Lee. Our production staff also includes

1:33:14

Casey Herman, Jacy Howard, Alex Chung,

1:33:16

John Isabella, Elaine Coates, Kerry Thompson,

1:33:18

Chris Messini, Carla Estes, and Sam

1:33:20

Paulson. I'm Guy Raus, and you've

1:33:22

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1:33:24

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