THE JOURNEY PART 1 - Beginnings

Welcome, this is a new blog that I've decided to create. My name is Aleks and I thought it might be cool to document my journey running a start up clothing brand from fuck-all sales to hopefully something reputable. I hope you enjoy as I document and write about my journey, THE JOURNEY (See what I there)

3rd March 2025 -  The day I opened None Like Us

For context, I previously ran a store called None Like Us that focused on Phone cases. I thought they looked sick. One thing after another, (financial shit) I closed that. But on the 3rd of March 2025, I opened a new store with the None Like Us name. However, this time I had a new idea. I wanted to focus on clothing.

I had no idea what exactly I wanted to do, I just knew for a fact that I liked hoodies and generally Japanese themed items. My idea was simple, if I can design something that I like, surely there are other people that might just like it as much or more.

And so, I began.
My first set of designs?

Shit

Second set of designs?

Less shit

and finally I started designing at a level that I personally liked, I started making hoodies and designs that I would wear in whatever setting.

The first hoodie that I was genuinely very happy with and published to the store was the POWER. Hoodie.

I don't know what y'all think about it but TO THIS DAY - I think it look sick asf.

Anyways, at this point, I had only one hoodie and so I knew I had to come up with more designs - I had come across an issue in which one of my friends that I showed the first few designs too said that it lacked a clear brand identity.

My ego was bruised.

But he was spot on, at this point I thought the brand was Japanese inspired clothing, keep in mind I didn't really understand what a brand REALLY WAS. It was only later when it finally clicked and the vision I had for the brand became clear. I will expand on that later in future posts but for now just understand that my main focus was to make Japanese inspired hoodies that I WOULD WEAR.

I spent a good amount of time researching Japanese folklore and single-worded phrases with deeper meanings. I stumbled across IKIGAI. I tried a number of designs focused on typography, but none of them felt right. They didn't have THAT thing. Eventually I gave in and decided to TRY OUT THIS WHOLE AI THING.

I came across this particular design that I liked. It was of a Samurai in a ready stance with his sword at the ready. Something about that had THAT thing. I decided to use it, edit it of course and after a few tweaks I finally had a design that I LIKED. Remember that was the one criteria that determined whether or not I would publish the hoodie. And thus the IKIGAI hoodie was born.

It was about this time where I decided to finally start running Meta ads. I already knew a bit about running ads as I have had previous experience with it and so I started right away with running these things at a MASSIVE budget of $3/day

Okay so this was about the 2 month mark - I did some other miscellaneous things, like the social pages, website, product pages and so on. At this point they were quite ass but that's okay. Anyways, that about all I'm gonna write about today, In the next post I'm gonna talk about MY FIRST SALE BITCHES. aaaand establishing a real brand - 

See you then,
Aleks

BECOME EXCEPTIONAL