Before his streetwear brand BrownMill took off, Justis Pitt-Goodson designed, sewed and sold his own bow ties to his middle school peers.
BrownMill's storefront has to look, smell and feel professional because "whether you're spending $5 or $500, you should feel appreciated," Pitt-Goodson says. Pitt-Goodson says he started designing bow ties in middle school, after his then-tutor let him borrow her sewing machine.After befriending his two future business partners, Taha Shimou and Kwaku Agyemang, in high school, Pitt-Goodson studied business management at Rutgers University-Newark. He took internships with stylists and fashion brands in New York while juggling classes.
To keep things afloat, he took a copywriting job at luxury consignment company The RealReal for $17.50 per hour. He was fired after less than a year. Customers still spend roughly the same amount, in total — a subscription gives people monthly credits to spend on the site — but BrownMill gets the money upfront, and uses it on new machinery to help scale the company, Pitt-Goodson explains.