How Supreme was created: from a skate store to a big brand

It’s hard to find a person who has never seen the Supreme brand logo. After gaining experience in the Stussy brand, designer and businessman James Jebbia began to create his empire, having developed and adhered to several rules of success. What these rules are and what we need to know about Supreme, we tell you in this article.

Prologue: the creative journey of James Jebbia

The Supreme brand was founded in 1994 by James Jebbia. He was born in the USA, but until the age of 19 he grew up in the UK, where he once worked in a Duracell battery factory, and afterwards he returned to his homeland, where he began to take his first steps in business.

He first started a flea market on Worcester Street, inspired by pictures from The Face and iD magazines. Eventually, in 1989, the project evolved into the first store he ran, Union. This experimental boutique sold British brands such as Duffer of St. George, Fred Perry and the most successful in the streetwear market, Stussy. James later met Sean Stussy and opened the first independent store for the brand, where he worked for several years.

While creating his own brand Supreme, James, as a true friend and business partner, still continued to work at Stussy. This continued until 1994.

The beginning: how did it all start?

Having saved $ 12 thousand, James got the idea to start his own business. The thing is that the clothing for skaters at that time was of terrible quality, and the fans of boards on wheels had no opportunity to buy anything but a cap. The guys on James’ team wanted to make the clothes look pretty cool, but sell them without a markup. That’s when James got the idea to start manufacturing his own products. The store was named in honor of John Coltrane’s jazz quartet album A Love Supreme.

The brand’s policy was something like this: Supreme has always tried to produce limited editions, to produce small quantities of goods in order to sell all the items made and not to burden the warehouse. That’s why their products cause so much excitement, because not everyone can buy them. At the very beginning, customers of the new boutique could only buy clothes without trying them on – the sellers of Supreme did not even allow them to touch them. But even this unfriendly policy paid off: Supreme immediately attracted the attention of New York skaters and holds the bar to this day.

Development of action: collaborations with global brands

Supreme was the first to organize collaborations with other brands and print artists’ works on T-shirts with the logo. The first collaboration was with the movie “Taxi Driver” by Martin Scorsese – these were T-shirts with the portrait of Robert De Niro, who played the main role in this movie.

In addition, Supreme had collaborations with Lacoste, Nike, Stone Island, Vans, Trasher, BAPE, The North Face and others. And the collaboration with Japanese brand Comme des Garcons began in 2012 and became almost annual.

In 2017, the then creative director of Louis Vuitton’s men’s line, Kim Jones, offered Jebbia a collaboration. For the French brand, it was an opportunity to gain Supreme’s young audience. The collaboration turned out to be successful: things were bought up almost instantly, and resale prices on secondary markets exceeded $ 10 thousand.

Recently, the site began selling shoes from the collaboration with Clarks. The silhouette’s upper is covered in premium suede adorned with patterned cutouts.

The punchline: logo problems

The red and white logo has become an inseparable part of the brand, but Supreme’s logo has recently found itself at the center of a lawsuit. The reason for going to court was a T-shirt, or rather a print by streetwear brand Married to the Mob with the words Supreme Bitch on it. MOB has been producing such T-shirts, baseball caps, cups and towels since 2004, and they are the main hit of the brand, even Rihanna wears them. In January of this year, MOB decided to turn the lettering into a commercial project by filing a trademark application for Supreme Bitch.

Two months later, the owner of the brand Lee McSweeney received a lawsuit from Supreme for $ 10 million and demands to withdraw all products with the print from sale.

This scandal caused controversy in the industry. Many specialized media and bloggers spoke out about Supreme’s lawsuit. For example, AnimalNewYork magazine released a parody T-shirt with the logo-phrase Sue me, translated as “sue me”. In the end, the parties came to an amicable agreement: the MOB brand could henceforth use the phrase Supreme Bitch, but not in Supreme’s trademark style.

Due to Jebbia’s failure to register the Supreme trademark in a number of countries, including America, several companies took advantage of this and began producing clothing with the real Supreme logo. This phenomenon is called “legal counterfeit production”. Among these companies is Supreme Italia. Since the brand Supreme Italia is registered in Italy and protected by local legislation, legally it has the right to use the Supreme logo, because the American company never got registration in Italy. Which Supreme Italia took advantage of by starting to produce clothing with the Supreme logo.

The denouement: Supreme today

In 2018, James Jebbia’s merits were officially recognized by the fashion community – the businessman received an award from the American Council of Fashion Designers as the best designer of menswear. Before that, Raf Simons, Thom Browne, Tom Brown, Tom Ford and other notable designers were honored with CFDA Awards.

“I’ve never considered Supreme a fashion company and myself a designer, but I really appreciate being recognized for what we do”.

According to expert publications, the brand is valued at $ 1 billion. Even after the sale of 50% of the company’s shares to Carlyle Group for $ 500 million, Supreme maintains its image at the same level. Today, the brand still does not buy advertising, adheres to the deficit in the production of clothes and creates collaborations with established brands in the fashion environment.