I Built a FAKE Luxury Brand With $100 In 7 Days

Manufacturers overseas are exposing how much it costs to produce brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Jordan, and even Nike sneakers. This branding bag at Hermes boutique will cost you $38,000 USD. This bag from our factory only costs you $1,000 USD, but even better quality and craftsmanship. Now this sounds like a complete scam, but it got me thinking, can we build a luxury brand with a $100 budget and launch it within seven days? But before we dive in, here's something that you need to understand about luxury brands. They don't just sell products, they sell perception. Sure, they might use slightly better materials, but the real reason that they could charge thousands or even tens of thousands is because they've mastered one thing, the art of scarcity. Walk into a Rolex store, and you're not buying a watch, you're entering a waiting game. They don't actually sell anything off the shelf. You inquire, you wait, and if you're lucky, they'll contact you. Chrome Hearts, you can't get in unless you pass the vibe check from security. Now these hurdles are not an accident because luxury is not about what you make. It's about how people feel when they see, hear, or touch your brand. Now that drives people to wanting to pay 10, 20, and even 50 times the value. To create that high-end perception on a shoestring budget, we've got to absolutely nail three things. The very first is design. It has to look expensive. The second is the quality. Even though we're working on a budget, it has to feel premium when people feel it and touch it. And last but not least is marketing and branding. Now I'm hoping that if we get these three things right, we're able to launch a luxury brand and people are willing to pay premium prices. But the one thing I'm really unsure of is the fact that we are working on a budget, so let's see how this goes. The other day while browsing Instagram, I came across the perfect person who's a young designer out of the Middle East and goes by the name of Mayar. And he actually won a design contest that was featured on Complex, where he designed an entire collection within a few days. And what really stood out to me about him is that he didn't just design something that you normally see in the market. He designed something that really stood out for a specific niche. And because of that, I slid into his DMs and I asked, yo, you want to share some of this information with our audience? And he said, let's do it. First of all, my name is Mayar, I'm 22 years old. I always wanted to start a brand, I always wanted to work with clothes or design clothes. I was just awake at like 3am and I saw Clint's tweet. And you know, I just said to myself that it would feel so wrong to me not to at least try to do what I love and just participate in that contest. All of the people voted for his designs, which looked authentic and premium and really command a high price. And I challenged him with this and he agreed to take it on. These big brands can sell pieces that you can't really sell when starting because these pieces are sold because of the love of the brand. Because this brand is doing this piece, that means this piece is fire. So it's like, it's like a marketing thing. I've seen a lot of cool designs. But as I said in that Complex magazine, they look good on the screen. What I like to do is I kind of get like a general idea, a general mood board that explains how my brand will look like. So with doing that, let's say I choose something like a desert photoshoot so I can get the colors out of it, some pieces. Because at the end of the day, if you want to do like a really good collection, it's not about the design that you put inside the t-shirt, it's about how you present it as a whole. So thinking about that photoshoot and what the customer is going to be seeing. Let me show you some of the pieces that I got from this brand. So you can see a lot of the images here, but at the same time, they all have the same identity because I'm using the same logo, the same typography, the same design. What I'm playing with is the piece itself. Now even though this collection looks fire, this is cool. I'm looking at these designs right now and I'm seeing a lot of different styles of cuts. So I'm seeing a polo, then I'm also looking at the different styles of prints. What do I need to do to get this accomplished? When it comes to manufacturing, you typically get the best prices when you make a lot from the same fabrics using the same manufacturing processes. And in business, this is called economies of scale. What I want to do right now is I want to figure out how much would this actually cost because this collection looks incredible. And if you have a really good collection idea and you know who your market is, you should find out how much you need in order to launch it. We're on the first call that I found with one of the suppliers that I know. We're about to reach out to a couple random ones on Alibaba and just see what we compile. And we'll report back to you real short. This is, that's your lowest price. All right. So now we're going to break down the numbers that I've been getting from the factories. And these are the numbers for the quantities. Everything's at a thousand quantities. So we're going to put that in there. Now, these are really good prices. The challenge and the issue is when it comes to producing all of the garments. So in this case, let's, uh, let's go through and create the total about 60 grand estimated at a thousand units. When you bury your collection, like we did in this example, you don't have the economies of scale and that results in a higher manufacturing costs, which unfortunately means it cannot be made with a $100 budget in less than seven days. So I challenged him to recreate something using wholesale blanks, but not just any type of wholesale blanks. We're looking at premium blanks. So we selected ringer tees and a couple of other t-shirts that were just really unique. What we're looking at calculating our costs for sampling. So I know exactly what we're looking at. $200 or a little bit over the a hundred dollar budget, but, but this includes the blank as well as labor and setup fees that are associated with creating the products. So this is a big difference from the 60,000 something that we'd have to spend. Um, huge difference. And after sending the scope of work and our limitations, Mayar was ready to present his redesign the next day. I created a little mood board to kind of set the vibe. And I tried to choose something a little bit different since I'm designing another collection. So I tried to choose some, uh, summer colors. You can never go wrong with the baby blue, some light colors. I chose the maroon color because it really compliments the two colors that I chose the primary and the secondary color. I tried to go for something darker, but at the same time can be really complimentary. And I found these pieces that I really like and really stood out to me. They all really compliment each other. You can create so many different shirts with these pieces, a couple of t-shirts, some shorts, hats, and a long sleeve. I created a logo for myself and the secondary logo, which is like a typography logo. When I put these into the designs, I want the whole collection to have a really similar vibe. So I don't want the t-shirt design to be really different from the shorts design from the hat design. I tried to keep it really minimal. You don't have to do that. You can, you can experiment more with designs. Point that I'm trying to prove here is just keep your designs in the same identity and the same vision. See, when you put the whole collection together, all the pieces can go well together and make different fits with them. And that can help you later with the marketing, with advertising and a lot of different reasons. The reason I chose these typography logos is because the main idea is to go with something, how to create something really easily. And there are a lot of free fonts that you can use even commercially on the internet. So you don't have to work with an artist to create your logo for a couple of hundreds. I use the free logo on the internet and I made like some stroke, like a path into it. I just made like a clean design. Some people might say this is boring kind of, but you can, you can't really tell them like that. It's boring because they're using the same check design. It's not about the design itself. That's how you put together the whole thing. You see all of these big brands, they all like slap a logo on their t-shirt or a hoodie and they make like a, like hundreds and hundreds of sales. So how do they actually do that? What do they have? What do they know that other people don't? Which is really focusing and mastering every step that you do. Now t-shirt blanks are a great way to be on budget when you're building a brand. In our example, we're using AS Color, which I ordered up and was actually the one thing that took the longest. It took a day and a half to get here. But in the meantime, we were actually setting up the sampling of these designs. So now that we're waiting on our garments here, the next thing that we want to do is actually prepare it for sampling. Since we're working with Illustrator here, since all the graphics are vector, all you got to do is copy and paste it over to this template. Now, by doing this, we're essentially going to be able to size what we need and build out a gang sheet here, which we'll then send to streetcrafter.com. With our designs formatted, all we got to do is upload our file here, use a discount code that we included down below for you to get a discount on your orders. Once it uploads, add to cart. And the next day, we finally received the samples from AS Color and we were able to review them and confirm that these felt like premium and could demand a luxury price. The fabric itself feels premium. It doesn't feel like it's cheap. And that's what I love about AS Color. AS Color blanks are really elevated. This one here is a blend of 100% organic cotton. It's navy shirt. This is what I was interested in seeing. So I got it in the size large because a lot of times you're trying to fit the model and the model might be me or it might be the cameraman behind me right there, Preston. So it's the first time you probably hear that you're going to model this clothing brand, but I got your size. You're large or medium? A medium? Damn, I missed up. I got a large on this one, so I might have to fit that one. But you know what? You're in luck, Preston, because I think I got some mediums on the other one. So now I also want to open up this box here. This is some of the hats and the goal was for it to match this red shirt. And I think it does a great job at that. Now this is very hard to accomplish between other wholesale companies. So if you bought this hat from AS Color and maybe you wanted to match it with another wholesale brand's red, it might be a tint or shade off. Whereas this one here absolutely crushes it. It looks almost identical. Now that we got these products, I'm excited because tomorrow we're going to start sampling this thing. We're going to take it over to a street crafter that we found in our community. Let's get it. So right now you may be wondering why are we going to go sample at somebody's house or with a crafter versus just taking it to a print shop and, you know, having them do our samples. Well, for two reasons. The very first is if this is the first collection that you build out, you don't know what's going to sell. And print shops, even though they can sample for you, they're not necessarily set up for one off. So it's going to cost you a lot more to sample with a print shop than it would with a street crafter in your community. Now, this is the very first time that I meet Jordan Marshall and his setup blew me away. Bro, you're killing it in here, man. From making custom rugs to custom hats, t-shirts and more. He's running this high level print and embroidery shop right out of a spare bedroom. And the secret weapon, this right here, the Melco EMT-16X. Now I've seen embroidery machines before, but Melco's on a different level. 3,400 stitches in about four minutes. Everything from design uploading to tension settings is all handled from this computer. We're going to flip this. Make sure you always do the 180 because if you stitch it like a regular, it's going to come up upside down. And the best part is you don't need to be a tech wizard to run one because when Jordan bought this, Melco literally flew a rep out to his house to show him how to use it. Their support is next level. Now what's pretty cool about them having two machines is that we don't have to wait for the hat. We can just pop over to the next one and we're working on the shorts. You can control multiple machines from just a single computer, which means more output, faster turnarounds, and no warehouse needed. You could literally build a print shop business from your garage. And look at the quality. This is retail level embroidery done right at home. Whether you're doing five hats a week or 500, Melco gives you the tools to look like a pro from day one. So if you're serious about turning designs into a real business, especially if you're on a budget, check out Melco. We dropped the link in the description and remember their machines are built to grow with you. So we got the shorts, the hats. Now it's time to do some pressing, man. Let's get it. Let's get it. And the best part about working with a street crafter like Jordan is the fact that you could pivot and make adjustments in real time. So it was awesome to get to meet him, his family, and see everything that they're doing for brand owners and businesses in their community. So if you're building a brand but are on a budget, this is a great way for you to launch it. So because of the seams and stuff, trying to get it pressed on flat, it sometimes doesn't. It just keeps it flat because when you're doing something like shorts like this, it's two sides of it and the seams also makes like a little dip. So you want to make sure it's flat and it's pressed on flat so it can get all the surface of the image. Check them out. Check them out, guys. Clean. We just got the full line sampled. So now from here, it's time for us to start marketing, man. So like you said, make sure you know what you want to do and then come to him to make it look good. Yeah, bro. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. With one day left to go for us to launch and go test it out in the market, we got to start getting our photography and our marketing down. So what we're going to do is actually set up a quick photo shoot in the back and then we're going to use some new editing techniques that I'm going to show you how you can leverage to really help elevate your brand. So let's get into that. But you guys, before this photo shoot, we're just going to use a phone and we're going to use Preston, the man that's usually behind the camera, as our model. So let's go. All right. Okay. So right now what we're doing is we're using Preston as our model. But if you don't have a model, I'm going to show you guys a trick that you can use with flat lays using your phone still. So it's still accessible. The goal is for us to get this out within seven days. So we didn't have time to set up a very beautiful shot. We're literally using this background and getting creative with what we got. So what we're going to do is actually do some flat lay photography. So it pretty much means just laying your products flat and then taking photos with them. And then we're going to be using AI tools to really transform this photo shoot into something that could command luxury prices. So now with our product photos and flat lays or even just mock-ups, what we can do is actually use one of the photos that we had in the inspiration and generate a prompt that tells ChargePT to use a similar model, but using our t-shirt. This is absolutely insane because we don't even need to take photos of the products. We can literally start with just a prompt. So there's a guy wearing the polo and the shorts. Wow, guys, this is insane. Insane. We just brought up a collection here. I mean, take a look at this. This is just a little taste of what you can do with some mock-ups, some flat lays, and some models if you got them to help you pose a certain way. And with these marketing now completed, next comes showcasing this to the people to see what they have to say. All right, you guys, so as you can see, I'm wearing the official merch that we sampled. And now we're actually going to make our way to a very unique store located here in downtown Las Vegas. It's called Bring It Back. And at Bring It Back, they specialize in luxury as well as lightly used clothes. So you can actually bring your clothes back and then they resell it to somebody else at a discount. I sent them a message on Instagram. I let them know, hey, I want to go down there. I need your honest review. And their response was, we're going to give you an honest review. And I said, all right, that's all I need. Let's do it. So the whole idea for this video was like, can we build something premium by sampling it like from a house? And then like bringing it to you guys since you guys, you know, pretty much master on like authentication, luxury products, and getting your honest opinion about it. Yeah, yeah. It's cool. So this is what we created. We did it on a budget. That was the whole goal for it. So let me start with each piece. Well, first, we need some hats here. Okay, corduroy is nice. You said you were working with the budget? Yeah, so we did it on a budget. Like, we didn't, you know, we didn't spend hundreds. You got them made in Vegas? Yep, yep. Not your normal tank top. Very softy. Very, very soft. And a nice little rugby. It's pretty fire. I like the rugby. Not many people do a long sleeve polos like this. They're very good quality. Yeah, sure. So the quality is good? Yeah, no, for sure. What would you say in terms of like the potential retail price for the, you see it priced online, how much could you charge for like? Honestly, that just depends on the following. Yeah, you can really charge what you want. Something like this, if I were to drop in my logo, I'd probably sell them at like anywhere from 75, 50 to 75. Probably closer to the 75 range though, honestly. I usually sell graphic tees like 30. Something softer like this, I may price at like 45, 50 just because the material's more up there. Where like a rugby like this, for sure, like $85, if not like $100, you know what I mean? So overall, pretty good collection would you say? Yeah, very good collection. For sure, especially with the corduroy hat too. That's cool, man. Yeah, this is good quality. Very nice. I like seeing stuff that people really don't do. Like you never see people drop the corduroy hats with the rugby. You know what I mean? Yeah. So there it is, guys. We just got done meeting with the man Yovani from Bring It Back and like he said, he was very impressed with this collection. So this is a huge shout out to the designer Mayar for designing something that really stood out to somebody like Yovani who buys and resells luxury and premium brands. Now, one of the things that of course you're watching right now and it's the promise of this video, were we able to pull off a luxury brand with a $100 budget in seven days? Now, luxury, I wouldn't say that we were able to pull off a luxury brand, but we were able to pull off a premium brand. And even though it's a little bit further away from luxury, we were able to command a higher price point for the products that we designed. So instead of a t-shirt costing $20, $25, you can actually retail it for $30 to $50, maybe even $60 depending on your brand's presence. By choosing unique products like corduroy hats and two-tone baseball caps, you're able to get a new style and when somebody sees the whole scope of work, they're impressed with it and it can command a higher price. So overall, I feel like we accomplished the mission. We didn't get all the way to luxury, but we got to premium and that's one step above what everybody else is doing in the market. And right now, you may also be wondering, okay, well, now that you sampled it, where do you go from there? How do you actually mass manufacture and start making money by printing in bulk and really building a brand? So I want to invite you to watch this video right here that we filmed, where we actually take you behind the scenes into a mass manufacturing facility, where we're going to be breaking down pricing, profits, strategies, and things that you need to know before you go to mass market production in order to be profitable with your brand. So make sure you check out that video right there. Hit that subscribe button and turn on post notifications for future videos. And more importantly, leave a comment down below with a question that we should answer in a future video. This channel is all about helping you launch a money-making brand and we're here to assist you in that. So we'll see you.