If anyone has turned their dreams into reality, it’s Jeff Staple. He started making t-shirts his sophomore year in college, and before the year was up he had so many orders that he had to drop out to fill them all. From there, he has built a creative empire. Staple Design encompasses a design consultancy, a clothing line, some stores, and most recently, a magazine. His positive energy and a hell of a lot of hard work have gotten him to the very top.
STPLxAIRWALK collection
You do so many things – I’m really curious, timeline-wise, what was first? What was the first project you created?
First was clothing. I was at Parsons School of Design for graphic design, so I guess you could say that was first. But it was just schooling. I didn’t make any money from it.
What inspired you to do clothing?
It started because I was taking a silkscreening class. They taught you how to silkscreen on canvas and paper. Well, my friends weren’t really about putting art up on the wall of their shitty apartments that they shared with six people. There probably wasn’t even a wall – more like a curtain! I wanted to make tees for my friends to wear. That was really how it started. And the funny story is that Parsons didn’t allow you to print on t-shirts.
Really?
Yeah. They didn’t allow it. So a friend of mine and I would break into the silkscreen lab. We would leave a window open and climb in at night. We would come in with a pillowcase full of tees, set up a sweatshop, and print stuff. It was really, again, just to give out to friends.
STPL collection Spring 2009
That changed on March 7th, 1997 – my birthday. I was going to go out with my girlfriend and get a nice dinner. She wanted to get her hair done, so I dropped her off at a hair salon. While she was there, I went shopping and walked into a store on Lafayette – Triple Five Soul. Back then, in ‘97, Triple Five Soul was a boutique; it was a much smaller operation. I walked in and the manager said, “Hey, that’s a cool shirt you’re wearing, where’d you get it?” I told him I made it, and he said, “Well, if you make 12, I’ll try to sell them here.”
Nice!
That was the first order. I always wonder, if my girlfriend wasn’t doing her hair, or if I didn’t go in that store, literally this whole thing that you see might not exist. I had no plan to do it. It’s weird to think that if I’d made a left on Crosby or something, my whole life could have been changed!
So what happened next? Did you start trying to sell the shirts more?
No! [laughs] It just happened.
In a week, the guy at Triple Five Soul told me, “We sold out. We’ll take 24 this time.” So I made 24. Then another store in SoHo, called Union, saw what we were doing. They said, “Hey, we love your stuff. Why don’t you do a different design for us, and we’ll start ordering.” So I was selling to two shops in SoHo, all the while, still breaking into school with my friend to make the shirts.
Eventually it got to the point where my studio apartment in Chinatown was like a sweatshop. There were boxes everywhere. I had my friend in fashion design cutting labels and sewing them in. I had another friend making hang tags for me. I remember one time when we had to get an order out the next day, the needle on the sewing machine broke. It was the last needle. And it was 3AM! I started calling all these places to try and get more, and finally found a place that was open. I skated up to 70th St. When I finally brought the needles back, they were like the holy grail! That’s how we started. It was pretty fun.
STPL collection Spring 2009
How did you go from having your clothing line to doing work for clients?
People who were fans of the t-shirts would come to me and say, “Hey, I heard you’re a graphic designer, can you help us with our CD cover?” Or business card, logo, party flier… Various little odd jobs . I started taking that on as well, and the business kind of became twofold.
So when you graduated, were you set up enough that you just went straight into doing your own thing?
I didn’t graduate. I dropped out. It was my second year, sophomore year, that I was doing this.
Wow, that was quick!
I’m a hustler. I get bored easily. I’ve gotta do something! My sophomore year those two SoHo stores were putting in orders for 24 or 36 shirts. Then this Japanese guy bought one of my shirts at Union and told them, “I want to talk to this guy,” so they gave him my number. He calls me at home and he says, “I want a shirt, and I live in Japan.” And I was like, “That’s awesome! I’ll send you a shirt in Japan.” And he’s like, “Uh, no, I want 1,000 shirts.” My third order! 1,000 shirts.
No way. That’s when you have to drop everything and just do it.
I was like, “Please hold,” and started screaming and jumping up and down on the bed. And then got back on the phone, “OK, yes, 1,000 shirts, we can do that.”
But I had no idea how – how was I going to break into school with 1,000 t-shirts? That was really when I said, OK, I can always go back to school. But this opportunity – I’m not going to tell this guy, “Let me graduate, let me take my finals first.” It was now or never. I took the opportunity, and I haven’t gone back yet. But I do teach now! I teach at NYU, Parsons, and I just started teaching at Columbia University, at the executive master’s program. I don’t even have an associates degree! It’s kind of ironic.
Reed Space in the LES
It makes you think about the value of school.
It does. I think school is for some people and not for others. It just depends on how your brain is wired.
So your clothing brand was taking off, and your consultancy was taking off – when did you open Reed Space?
Right as the clothing line was doing well, I knew I wanted a retail store. When I would go to visit stores that carried Staple, I’d always be a bit disappointed. As a store, you’re not worried about individual brands, you’re worried about your whole shop. I would think, “Why are they displaying it like that?” Or I’d listen to a guy selling it to a customer and I’d think, “That’s not the concept!” It just wasn’t right. I always felt, “Man, I want to open my own store.” And not just to sell Staple, but to represent brands properly and in a way that they respect and appreciate.
In 2001, 9/11 happened. Our office at the time was on Division St., which is in the shadow of the World Trade Center. I couldn’t go to my office for weeks. Sometimes they would let us in, but the electricity was shot. If you printed and faxed and got a phone call at the same time, all the power would just go down. We had to move.
Why did you move to the Lower East Side?
One of the other things that I like to do is DJ, and I was DJing at this place that doesn’t exist anymore, that was on Orchard St. DJing would mean getting off of work at 5AM, standing outside with your records, and waiting 20 or 30 minutes for a cab to come. This was 2001, so the LES wasn’t like now. You had to hope that cabs would come by.
One night, as I was waiting for a cab, I looked across the street and I saw this “For Rent” sign on a storefront. When I looked in the window, I saw that the store went through the whole block and had a second entrance on Allen St. It was amazing! I immediately typed down the phone number. I called the guy, and then the next day I went to go look at it.
Reed Space in the LES
So you moved your office into that storefront?
Originally, it was Reed Space on one side, and Staple Design in the back. I built a partition to separate the space.
The idea was to have a design studio, and then make clothes and just put them in the store. Plus we could talk to our customers – it seemed perfect.
A couple years later, we moved Staple Design out, and made Reed Space the whole thing. The split space wasn’t big enough to carry all the brands that I wanted to be in Reed Space. And we were trying to work in the back, but every 30 seconds someone was coming in. In the beginning, only 10 people a day would come in, and it was fine. But once there was a constant stream of people, we couldn’t get any work done. So we had to separate.
Wow – so Reed Space just kind of took off on it’s own.
Yeah. Again, maybe if I wasn’t DJing that night, or if I didn’t look in a certain direction, there would be no Reed Space. I never said, “I’m going to open a store. I’m going to hire real estate agents, and scout locations, and create a P&L, and a budget.”
In the beginning my path was very random, and it felt random. But more recently, I’ve learned the ability to listen to that voice in me. You could say that it was totally random that I went to Triple Five Soul, or totally random that I found Reed Space. But I think that there is some sort of ethereal voice that compels you to do these things. The key to success is listening to that voice and acting on it. I think if you can get yourself in tune with that, whatever you want to call it, third eye, or soul – different people have different words for it – then you can start really rocking.
STPL collection Spring 2009
So as the whole thing grew, and you started bringing other people in and making a business out of it, what was the hardest lesson to learn? What was the hardest part of all of that?
People management. I’m still working on that one. It’s hard. We have a team of, depending on the time of year, anywhere between 18 and 20 people. The team is the most important thing, because no matter how smart or how hard-working you are, there’s only 24 hours in the day, 7 days in the week, and you’re only one person. You can only do so much. You need an army of people to help you.
I didn’t take any business classes or anything like that, but I do now read a lot of business magazines. The one thing that I always am intrigued about is management skills, for lack of a better word. Trying to figure out how to get the most out of people. A really big part of my job now, as President or CEO, is making sure that people are in the right position to do the best job possible. You might have a person that is a great person, but stuck in the wrong seat. You put them in the right seat and all of a sudden they’re a star! You don’t want to just fire somebody – you’ve got to make sure that you’ve vetted them properly.
That’s a really good attitude to have. What are you working on now? What are you excited about at the moment?
Well, let’s see. I just came back from Europe, and we showing/selling our Spring 2010 collection. Now, the second you get back from that, you go straight into designing and brainstorming for Fall 2010.
We’re also working on the next issue of Reed Pages. Quite honestly, I haven’t been this excited about a project in years. And it’s ironic that it’s this old-school art form – making a magazine. It’s experimental, in the way it’s done, and the feedback we’ve gotten on it has been incredible. I’m not looking to make millions of dollars with it, because it’s a dying industry, but it is something that I’m really excited about.
Jeff’s new magazine, Reed Pages
One last question. What does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur? What’s your advice to people who want to work for themselves?
Be prepared to work the hardest you’ve ever worked in your life, and multiply that by 100! And, hey, some people aren’t cut out for it. That’s cool, that’s why they make desk jobs where you just clock in at 9, clock out at 5, and you’re done. Your definition of “hard work” really has to be redefined. I talk to some friends, and they say, “Oh my god, it was such a busy day, I had a meeting! And I had to go to the bank! It was so hard, there was like a long line at the bank…” And I’m like, “I did that from 9:15 to 9:30!”
One comment I always get is, “Man, if I was just as lucky as you…” You know what, come to my office at 3AM, and I’ll show you how lucky I am. You don’t see that part – all you see is the Nike that came out, or the finished art exhibit, or the trip to Paris. It’s really hard to explain how much work goes into making those things happen.