Today we’d like to introduce you to Samanah Duran.
Samanah, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in Cambridge but I grew up in a small town in Lincolnshire back in the UK, and my entrepreneurial streak was always encouraged by my grandparents and father when I began working as a pot washer in a local cafe and set up a car-boot sale every weekend to earn extra money.
I also set up a car cleaning business at 15 out of boredom when I moved to Kent for a year. I was always moving from place to place, and school to school due to my fathers work contracts, and I always found it took a lot of energy to keep making new friends again. I finished school, dropped out of a few courses at college then went on to do many different jobs alongside some part-time commercial modeling and beauty pageants.
At 20, I was interested in pursuing a career as a TV presenter, so that is why I originally moved to London, it wasn’t to work in fashion. However, I had a strong desire to pursue my own path in life and wanted to avoid climbing a corporate ladder. So I started my first company back in 2012, after coming back from a presenting gig to the US West Coast which is Critics Clothing-a retail brand.
Although I launched Critics Clothing in late 2012, it wasn’t really until 2014 that it became popularised and became a Private Equity backed start-up. From that, I built my second company BEYOUROWN, a digital media and content company with the aim to help entrepreneurs navigate their way through their business journeys.
With a new factory partnership under my belt for Critics Clothing which enables us to now fulfill and distribute orders worldwide to our customer base, it has really allowed us to focus on other aspects of brand building. BEYOUROWN is now armed with an ever-growing international readership with the US being our second biggest market, so it made sense to swing by LA to accommodate our growth and develop new brand partnership deals here.
As both Critics Clothing and my media companies continue to grow, I aim to expand on my team to be able to facilitate that growth. We all have different approaches to scaling up companies, but I guess what I really love is that as we are still relevantly small, and we still maintain a real company culture attitude, which means we are still able to make spontaneous decisions.
I am truly dedicated to evolving my brand and team and have developed an unconventional approach to business by enjoying life to the fullest and making business enjoyable for myself and whoever I work with. As I continue to be involved in every aspect of Critics Clothing, BEYOUROWN and BEYOUROWN MAN, I love to meet other inspiring entrepreneurs out there on a mission to also succeed in doing what they love, and I remain passionate about passing on my entrepreneurial skills that I have learned along the way.
Has it been a smooth road?
Taking it back to 2014, knowing what direction I personally wanted to take Critics Clothing in as a retail brand was an obstacle I was once met with. It was a question of whether I was to turn it into a mainstream clothing brand or to streamline an elusive brand with less availability to the mass market. Ultimately, for me, a great deal of emphasis has always been on developing a brand that our audience can connect and resonate with through brand DNA, ethos and storytelling, combined with an elaborate focus on providing quality rather than quantity.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Critics Clothing & BEYOUROWN story. Tell us more about the business.
Critics Clothing is a luxury streetwear brand developed and designed by myself in 2012.
Critics Clothing accurately conveys a powerful message to take pride in your identity, demonstrated through an intricate blend of simplistic and traditional but assertive styles.
BEYOUROWN and BEYOUROWN MAN are digital media & news companies dedicated to inspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders. Led by myself as the founder, CEO & contributing editor.
The rapid growth & evolution is down to continuously delivering a fresh perspective from a wide community of the most affluential, influential and entrepreneurial game-changing entrepreneurs of today.
We have just launched BEYOUROWN Pr, a PR, and Management company specializing in Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.beyourown.org www.criticsclothing.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyourownuk/ https://www.instagram.com/SamanahDuran/ https://www.instagram.com/criticsclothing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyourownuk/ https://www.facebook.com/samanah.duran/ https://www.facebook.com/criticsclothing/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/beyourownuk https://twitter.com/Samanahduran https://twitter.com/CriticsClothing
- Other: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/samanahduran
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