From Highsonbiety.com
Have you ever asked yourself where the Supreme brand come from? How was its journey? Why are Supreme hoodies that expensive? Well I did, and I figured out all the answers were in the story of Supreme. From the brand creation in 1994 to nowadays the brand has Evolved and is becoming a protagonist on the luxurious apparel market. Let me share with you my findings.
Supreme was created by James Jebbia an English fashion designer born in the United States. This latter has been keen on style and fashion design since the age of 10 and multiplied experiences in clothing stores and ended up gathering enough money to open its own store in 1994. First the store only made hoodies and tee-shirt for skaters and it was more a skaters meeting point than a store. Indeed, the clothes were displayed around the perimeter of store letting a large central space allowing skaters to ride inside the store. Add a Notorious BIG soundtrack, some beers and a smoke cloud and you have the first Supreme store located on Lafayette Street. This store pictured well the spirit of New York in 1995 and it was a far from being a luxurious store. Aaron Bondaroff, a former employee of the store, describes the store spirit as followed in an article of the NY Times: “A lot of us who didn’t have apartments, who had weird situations, we all knew we could get there, get a meal, have a beer, a smoke”.
Images of Supreme Store in LA, from realclobber.com
In 2011, Tyler the Creator (a rapper named MTV Video Music Awards best artist of the year” became a model for Supreme and started to endorse the brand. This brand promotion helped Supreme breaking with this image of “Skaters only brand” even though James Jebbia remains very proud and attached of the brand debut. Tyler the Creator was the first brand promoters and he has been quickly followed by many hip hop artists such as Chance the Rapper, Kanye West, Drake or Justin Bieber (Star endorsement plays such a crucial role that it deserves another post …). This large endorsement coupled with the brand strategy turned Supreme into a luxurious brand. This brand strategy he was talking about deserves another post on this blog to explain it in detail but let me give an insight of this strategy. Supreme marketing strategy relies on customers. The brand is making a very limited number of products not a very expensive price but by playing on this effect of scarcity the prices on the secondary market are astronomical. Because its so hard for customers to get a product on the primary market they often shop on the secondary market were prices are high. The combination of high prices, star endorsement and social recognition allows us to categorize Supreme as a luxurious brand apparel.
Here was the Supreme’s tale, if you are interested on knowing the history of the brand in details, I highly encourage you to check these following articles.
See you later fashion lovers!
By Antoine Gnagne
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