Today we’d like to introduce you to Johnny Suede.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I knew I wanted to make clothing back when I was in high school. Because FIDM was so expensive, I had to be an electrician for two years to save up enough money to go to school which was probably a good thing so I took it a little more serious since I had to work hard to go there. Once I started school, one of my teachers took a liking to me and got me an apprenticeship at a dressmaker downtown, so after my classes I would go there and learn the behind the scenes nitty-gritty real garment making. When I finally graduated, I had a considerable more amount of hands on knowledge than most of the people in my class.
After I graduated, it was almost impossible to get a job so me and a girl I was dating from school decided to take the leap and start our own company. It was when the gulf war started so we made these American flag jeans, hand-painted over a hand bleached old pair of Levis. Just by luck Nordstrom’s picked them up and we were off and running. We eventually built a whole collection and got a showroom in the California mart and New York and everything was great. After five years of making higher-end womenswear, I just got burned out on not being able to wear anything in the warehouse, I wanted to make stuff me and my buddies would wear.
Thats when I started Johnny Suede clothing. At the time, it involved everything I was into rockabilly music, hot rods, Harleys and tattoos. It was great and had great success with it and had a good ten years run. We did all the MAGIC shows in Vegas and always rented out the joint in the hard rock for big industry parties, life was good until 2008 when the economy hit the skids. It was time to reinvent myself and think of what was going to be the next chapter in my story.
Again luck was on my side, I was getting by doing private label for big corporations but then I saw this new show called sons of anarchy that came out. Because I have Ridden Harleys for 25 years, I wanted to be part of this somehow, so again I took a chance emailed 20th-century fox and told them I had an idea for a jacket for the show. It’s truly a miracle that I got a reply and they told me they wanted to meet and hear what I had to say. The rest for me was a true blessing, for the next five years I made all the jackets and outerwear for the show, which let to a licensing agreement for the walking dead outerwear and gas monkey garage. Like all good things everything must come to an end as did my licensing agreements when the shows ended.
To keep the doors open, I turned to doing band merch its started off good because the quantities were big and the orders were flowing. This was fun for a while until everything was about how cheap we can get it made for. When you are an American manufacturer, you can only take competing with china pricing for so long. When we would give in and try to compete with the pricing we ending up working on huge projects for three months just to break even. I finally decided, you want china pricing go to china you can have it I’m done.
So now here we are again time to reinvent, I am bringing back Johnny Suede but now it’s a little more tame and a little more custom. All American made right here in my shop in Santa Ana. I do everything from start to finish, patterns, cutting, sewing and shipping. I think I am one of the few true, start to finish, cut and sew shops left. They say everything’s a cycle so its time for another round.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think with every company, the struggles we face are usually funding.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I specialize in the ability to be able to bring someone’s idea or sketch into a reality. I pride myself on being able to always find a way to make and produce the item my clients are searching for. I can always find the fastest, most cost-effective way to produce something, probably from working so long with cheap band merch customers.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
If you really want to learn, you need to be a sponge and absorb all the information and experience you can, you also need to leave your attitude at the door. If somebody comes into my shop with an attitude, I guarantee you will be called blocked on my cell. Being humble is an extraordinary quality in a person.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: johnnysuedecustoms.com
- Instagram: johnnysuede1
- Facebook: johnnysuede1
