Marc Ecko

WORDS BY CHRISTIAN SYLT

Most entrepreneurs are frontmen for their companies. Not Marc Ecko. He has built up a global empire by standing behind his brand. But now, he’s stepping into the spotlight.

At 20, Ecko made his first commercial run of T-shirts. Although retailers were initially so skeptical that he had to sell his clothes on consignment, brisk demand soon changed their minds.

Over just 13 years, Marc Ecko has done what most entrepreneurs don’t achieve in a lifetime. He built his hip-hop-inspired clothing company *ecko unltd. from scratch, survived a close call with bankruptcy and created a global brand with sales of $1.2 billion. Now, at the tender age of 32, he’s on a mission to turn his company into a creative content powerhouse for all forms of media.

Ecko isn’t your average hip-hop fashion impresario. For starters, he’s not a former rapper and he’s white. He had a typical middle-class upbringing in New Jersey and then dropped out of Rutgers College of Pharmacy. The clothes bearing his white rhinoceros logo have become successful on their own merits rather than on the strength of their creator’s fame.

He was born Marc Milecofsky, but gained the name Ecko even before he was born. While she was pregnant with sister Marci, doctors told Marc’s mother that they heard an “echo.”

This echo turned out to be a twin brother—Marc. As a child, he devoured comic books and video games. He says he was born a n entrepreneur, but adds that his real-estate agent parents “nurtured my hustle.” It wasn’t long before this showed through. With the birth of hip-hop culture in the early ’80s, Ecko took to graffiti. “I couldn’t break dance or rap, so I did graffiti. My tag was Ecko,” he says.

“Graffiti is without question the most powerful art movement in recent history,” he says, adding that customized clothes were also “a big part of the urban dialect.” Ecko’s genius was in seeing the possible fusion between the style of street clothes and the ethos of graffiti. “It wasn’t a conscious thing, but I knew t hat I wanted certain shoes and jeans,” he explains. He began charging classmates for designs he made in his parents’ garage. “I started airbrushing T-shirts and denim jackets in 8th grade. I was making $500 a week by 11th grade,” he remembers.

Ecko dabbled in public graffiti “on a very small scale,” confining much of his art to elaborate sketchbook drawings. Less than enamored with his studies at
Rutgers, he knew he could make a living from his T-shirt design. He just needed seed capital to start a business.

A friend introduced Ecko to Seth Gerszberg, who helped him raise a few thousand dollars, and in 1993 they became partners along with Ecko’s sister Marci.
The funding enabled Ecko, just 20 years old, to make his first commercial run of six T-shirts featuring his own art. *ecko unltd. was born, and his timing was perfect.

Targeting young males smitten with skateboards and hip-hop, the *ecko unltd. brand quickly amassed a loyal following. Film director Spike Lee and rapper Chuck D were early fans of his work. And although retailers were initially so skeptical that he had to sell his clothes on consignment, brisk demand soon changed their minds.

However, as sales soared, the company’s seams started to fray. *ecko unltd. linked up with an international production and sourcing firm in 1997, but the deal was too costly and Ecko fell $6 million into debt. Ecko and
Gerszberg spent months looking for a bailout deal, but everyone passed. Then, in 1998, as his company seemed set to collapse, Ecko had a eureka moment.

Getting back to his roots, Ecko realized that to succeed, he had to differentiate himself from the crowd. “I went to the Magic trade show in Las Vegas and no ticed that my entire competitive set was using graffiti tags or word marks as their logos. I felt that what we stood for was bigger than what all of these other companies were doing,” he says.

Ecko wanted a symbol, and the unlikely source of his inspiration was found in his parents’ collection of kitschy rhino statues. “If you could come up with a way to say your name without stating your name, that would be the benchmark of a great brand,” he says.

“Rhinos are the only four-legged animals that don’t walk backwards. Rhinos are survivors. We’ve managed to take a logo that has nothing to do with our business and give it a whole new meaning,” he says. It was the secret of his success.

The rhino fitted into branding aristocracy alongside the Lacoste crocodile and the Polo pony, but it also subtly satirized them. Having a large lumbering creature that has nothing to do with hip-hop as a mascot ensured that no one would feel like a poser wearing Ecko’s clothes. They became the renegade alternative, and the future of the company was secured.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, wiser and humbler,” says Ecko of his brush with bankruptcy.

Ecko’s ads in hip-hop magazines like The Source and

Vibe put the rhino on a wide range of maverick recording artists like Talib Kweli and The Beatnuts. By partnering with extreme-sports star Mike Metzger, racing driver Gary Gardella and members of rock band Linkin Park, Ecko mitigated the risk of his urban fan base caving in. He also broadened brand appeal.

“We were inclusive,” says Ecko. And testimony to this, *ecko unltd. has held up better than most of its urban-a pparel

competitors in core big-city markets, and has grown faster in the

suburbs and rural markets. It also has an unusually broad 13-30 demographic—a big boost to sales. Revenues grew from $15 million in 1998 to $36 million in 1999. Ecko was able to repay all the debt by mid-2000 when sales reached $96 million.

Ecko’s immediate goal was to carefully grow the company’s retail presence. His first full-priced retail store, a 3,000-square-foot space, opened in 2003 in Massachusetts, and he signed a long-term lease for a massive flagship store on 42nd Street last year. Searches are reportedly underway for 70 more sites. Ecko’s company also has

30 company annex stores, 16 international stores and products in over 5,000 domestic department stores.

Ecko speaks in a hip-hop patois and has a small basketball court in his office, but make no mistake—he has a business-brain. “We did approximately $1.2 billion in global retail sales last year, with our cornerstone brand, *ecko unltd. accou nting for approximately a third of that,” he says.

Ecko emulates the business model of Ralph Lauren, which has different divisions for different customers and lifestyles, such as Ralph

Lauren Purple Label and the more relaxed Polo Ralph Lauren. “Ralph is a mentor,” says Ecko. “I study what he has done and is doing. He’s pretty fly for an old man.”

Marc Ecko Enterprises now includes Ecko Red women’s apparel, footwear, watches, eyewear, underwear, belts, bags and hats, as well as the *ecko unltd. label. In 2003, he sewed up a partnership with platinum-selling rapper 50 Cent to create the G Unit clothing line, and he also has a skatewear collection.

Running a diversified conglomerate, though, means distractions.

Ecko must strike a balance between growing up with its customers and appealing to trendsetting youth—a trick that Tommy Hil[fb01]

ger and Nautica, men’s sportswear stars of the ’90s, have failed to pull off.

Ecko says he designs clothes for “me and my peers, younger and older.” And he admits that gut instinct plays a huge part in his design decisions. His favored attire includes baggy jeans, sneakers, an untucked button-down shirt and a Yankees baseball cap, tilted.

But, he says, “I am growing up with our customer. I’m at the point where I want a good watch, good luggage and good shoes.”

The Marc Ecko Cut & Sew tailored menswear collection is proof of this. There are blazers, cashmere sweaters, hand-embroidered s hirts and even a snowboard-style jacket in suit fabric with dress buttons. Perhaps crucially, the logo is simply a pair of sewing shears, and when the clothes launched to a lukewarm reception last year, critics cried that Ecko’s name without the rhino meant little to customers. His ultimate goal is to rectify that.

His first step to making the Ecko name signify something bigger than apparel came in 2001, when he launched the male-lifestyle Complex magazine. Ecko began cross-pollination, and with the tags dangling from his clothes offering subscriptions, the magazine soon reached a circulation of 325,000.

Ecko’s latest project is a more blatant branding of his name. Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure (pictured below) is a video game released this fall by Atari. It’s about a graffiti artist, voiced by Ecko’s old friend Talib Kweli, who fights off cops while spraying his name on walls in a fictional city called New Radius. Long-term, Ecko sees his company as being a creative content producer in the Disney mould, more than purely a fashion house. The video game is an early step.

“I envision a day when a new consumer of my brand doesn’t know what came first… the fashion, the magazine or the video game,” he says. “The value of our brand is less about what we make and more about what we stand for.” The next sectors to move into are “strictly top secret.”

However, Ecko’s plan doesn’t ensure success. His strategy so far has been fruitful while he has remained distant from his brand. Ecko has now moved to the forefront of the company’s persona and is at risk of people basing purchasing decisions on opinions of him rather than on his products’ merits.

Ecko’s success can certainly be measured by the fact that it is rare for a fashion company to get to the level he has, remain independent and still be under the control of its young founders. A potential deal to be acquired by Hilfiger fizzled out last year, and critics claimed Ecko was once again in trouble.

Layoffs have trimmed staff numbers to 500, and a plan to work with the rapper Eve on her clothing line unraveled. However, the entire urban market is undergoing a shakeout as the rapid growth of the past decade came abruptly to a halt last year. And although *ecko unltd. is diversifying to protect itself, Ecko is under no illusions.

“The greatest problem with success is that it gives you a false sense of achievement,” he says. “You are only as good as your last move.” And with his hold over the fashion market all sewn up, Ecko has set himself a fine yardstick for expansion.