#theearlyhours

I’m really excited about this interview today, because it’s with my brother, Clif! As some of you may know, Clif started The Distillery with me two years ago. He also has his own brand called The Early Hours. I thought it would be interesting to hear about Clif’s two businesses in his own words. I even learned a few things about my brother through this conversation that I didn’t already know! I hope you enjoy it. 

- Catelyn

The Distillery: Tell us a little bit about The Early Hours, and how the company has evolved over the last 4 years.

Clif: I started The Early Hours with Loren (my fiancée) in November, 2011. We had finished school in Chicago earlier that year and were working various jobs. We were just kind of having fun and toying with ideas of what we wanted to do for the next 5 years, or few years even. We'd been anxious to do more, and to pursue something that would allow us more financial freedom in the future, to travel etc. I'm still trying to convince Loren it was the right decision, but hopefully we have more freedom for the rest of our lives if we build our businesses correctly.

I originally had an idea for a polo shirt with a red cup embroidered on the chest. I thought if we could market it to college kids correctly we could make a really simple, successful product that could live on its own. I came up with The Early Hours to brand it. We sold them fairly easily but I quickly realized, at art school we had been living a very, very different reality than most college kids, which would be the largest potential market for that product. I didn't know how to market to them, I was out of touch. But we had a lot of creative friends interested in the brand - we were all sharing late nights with each other in the studio, at shows, at bars, encouraging each other and helping each other, even if it was just blowing off steam about life. They got into the brand, even though I didn't see or anticipate it originally. I was trying to force it to a certain market when another was ready to accept it.

So, I saw two ways to take it - keep it at the one product and figure out how to market it, with a team of friends or people who went to larger schools with traditional academics, frats etc, or expand the brand to reach a larger percentage of the niche markets I was hitting already. I wanted to stay involved in the brand personally and not just sell it off, so I pursued ways to expand the brand. The Double Cup (Texas hip hop, drank culture), Bolt Cutters (graffiti, exploring), Candle (writers, night owls, workaholics), and our newer designs came from that intention. I don't want to try to put out products to a market I don't understand. So I looked at my life and what stood out, and looked at my friends and associates. I realized I want to focus on things that bring people together, things that remind us how we relate to each other when we're at our best.

We've found a great niche in customers who are a part of all types of different sub-cultures, and see themselves differently than the rest of the world - namely, they don't want to be a part of the rat race.  

Tell our readers a bit about your involvement in the Distillery.

Catelyn and I started The Distillery when she was moving back to Austin after she married Komson. I had The Early Hours and was still working another job, but I pitched the idea to her that we could start an e-commerce site. I had experience with several companies - fulfilling orders, social marketing, and customer service -  and she had the brains to make it profitable sooner than later, with low overhead running it from home etc. We both inherit an eye for antiques from our mom, and have a similar dark but goofy aesthetic. Our mom had a bunch of antique booths around Dallas for years, and some stuff she bought just wasn't for that market. Catelyn said she was down to go for it and we came up with the name and logo, color scheme, etc. and dug in. We bought a lot of our mom's inventory and some stuff to round out our aesthetic for the brand and started hammering out product photography in Catelyn's house with a simple roll of paper and a Canon Rebel t2i with a flash. I handled most of the web development (modifying Magento themes to our taste, making graphics etc), photography and editing, and showed Catelyn what I knew about social media marketing. We worked every day for months to get it up and running and teaching each other what we could.

Now, Catelyn handles most of the day to day while I run The Early Hours with Loren, and we conspire on big picture, event planning (which she really has taken front man on as well), and general branding and development. I brainstorm new creative directions and projects as well as new products for the brand, outside of vintage (art and manufactured goods). I hope to move into producing videos for The Distillery, which we've brainstormed for a while now, and working with Catelyn's impressive network of creatives she's built to come up with new projects and products. We have a lot going on, and it's all really exciting. :)

What does “The Early Hours” mean and what does the brand represent?

The Early Hours is a reminder to me of the late nights I've put into things I care about, and the late nights and early mornings I've shared with friends exploring ideas, pushing each other, and celebrating.  That's more personal to me because it's a congregation of my ideas, but I want other people to get that from the brand too. It represents a moment in time, that some are wistful for and others live for - you have no responsibilities, you are free to choose. Are you just going to sit around or are you going to do something you love?

I know hip hop culture and graffiti culture have been influences in the past, how would you say they’ve shaped the brand? Do you come up with the  designs yourself?

Hip hop and graffiti have been big parts of my life. Dallas did not have a big hip hop scene that I was exposed to growing up, but it had some great graffiti, albeit pretty localized to certain areas. I loved music growing up. I like all types of music because people are pushing ideas - whether it be jazz, blues, hip hop, punk, rock or country. I liked hip hop in particular so I started to look into Texas hip hop, since I didn't know what they were talking about in New York, Chicago, Atlanta or California. Texas is such a different place than any of those cities. I found Houston's scene that was going wild in the early 2000's, DJ Screw had just passed away in late 2000 and sparked a huge fire. Everyone wanted to show that Texas could be a part of the game, and deserved to be on the map. They had their own style and it was big and bold and different. It's everywhere now - the drank culture, slowed down raps, big heavy bass, but a lot of that started in Texas.

Texas graffiti is the same way. I am a part of the internet graffiti generation - there's a clear divide of how graffiti existed before and after the internet - but I tried to learn from the resources and stay out of the shit talking and self-promoting. You could look at how the rest of the world did it, and then drive around and see how it was done locally. And again, Texas did it so different. For one, there's so much space in Texas. You cover ground no matter where you're going, there's not a lot of the stop and go traffic you see in Chicago or New York or the Bay area with rooftops and commercial buildings on both sides. In Texas you have big highways, wide streets - it means you have to go bigger and do more to be noticed. But Texas is still pretty conservative so you actually have more problems than a lot of places, with a lot of "Joe Heroes" here who will try to stop you, or call it in - or worse, pull a gun on you.  Long story short, you learn a certain way to carry yourself and a certain way to paint, that carries with you wherever you go. You move with a purpose. It's a big, loud, Texas personality that a lot of locals in other cities decry. We are polite, and we have our manners. But we're not here to follow your rules...we're here to show you that we can do it too, and we can do it our own way, and we can earn your respect that way, not by following your rules and doing it how you think it should be done.

So more than the Double Cup, or the Bolt Cutter designs, or anything super direct - the influence from hip hop and graffiti is more obvious in how we do business and how we carry ourselves. We pride ourselves on figuring our how to do things our way, especially when the odds are against us. It's not the easiest route, but it fosters creativity and originality.

Other people like that drive me every day to do more and expand my ideas and reality. I like people and ideas that are pushing boundaries and influencing change - in a positive way, encouraging others to explore themselves and not be brainwashed into thinking there's a right and wrong way to live your life.

I come up with a lot of the designs, and some are ideas from Loren - the pineapples, ice cream - and some have been from friends. Hunter Doyle has helped a lot, with designs and shaping the brand conceptually and pushing me to look for more. We've also had contributions from our friends Chase Sperry, Emma Wasielke, and more. People I have known since around 2008 when I moved to Chicago mostly. I hope to collaborate with new friends, old friends, and come up with more designs personally as well.

What are your current best sellers?

With our current products, the Outdoors Cap, Wallets, and Pins have been big. We used to use another brand of cap and embroider and tag them ourselves, but we have our own hats manufactured now and have had a great, really positive response. Some of our customers have started collecting the wallets, and a lot of one off sales - they're a great product I carry myself every day. Then there are the pins and patches - we jumped on that idea early this year, seeing some other products pop up that we liked. We had no idea that we were going to see a huge revival of those products pop up in fashion - both high fashion and underground. It gives our customers a nice low price point to enter the brand and check us out without a huge investment. And they can tailor the pins and patches to any style - punk, rocker, streetwear, higher fashion, business wear. We've seen everything pulled off really well by our customers.

You went to SAIC in Chicago. What did you study there? What kind of art are you currently making?

Yeah Loren and I both went to SAIC, where we met. :) I studied a variety of things there - they encourage you to look outside your ideal concentration for "conceptual development" (read: everyone wants to take certain classes and they're probably already full), but it was my choice too. I started in Graphic Design, and then Industrial Design, or product design, because I felt like I could find a career right out of school to make the investment "worth it." I had a small scholarship but it was still an expensive school, out of state. I landed in fine arts, mainly because I realized I would be unhappy in either of the other two careers (graphic or product design). I settled in Fiber and Material Studies - textile and material design and manipulation in fine art, not fashion. Fashion was a completely separate department that I didn't experience at all.  

After making that decision, design felt very pressured to me - to be the next big designer, to please your family or impress your friends, to reach a deadline that might not matter if the project is scrapped in the end. In Fibers, I found a very explorative, very unique perspective on art and design, surrounded by people who were not only exploring their own unique ideas on reality, but really hustling - either weaving, or sewing, or cutting seemingly endless amounts of work. It really appealed to me. I learned especially to respect the process of art and design, and learned to plan and be patient with my work. I am high energy and low focus by nature. I like these practices that focus my energy and reveal things to me in the process, whether it's thread based, a drawing, a drip painting, etc.

Last question: have you read any good books lately?

I just read the first book in a comic book series called Transmetropolitan that's really great, I'm going to continue the series.  I'm re-reading Show Your Work by Austin Kleon, and in the middle of Judd Apatow's Sick In The Head as well as The One Thing by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan. I’m all over the place.

Find Clif at The Early Hours, The Distillery, Instagram, Vimeo, and Facebook.