Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
Ecko made millions designing hip hop and skate culture inspired t shirts and hoodies. In this book he explains how he overcame various production and marketing obstacles while trying to build the brand. I think the only part that interested me was how he found affordable ways to do full color screen printing. The 50th law written by Robert Greene and 50 cent is a much better riff on business and "street instincts." It's better to go to the source than to some privileged white man's ideas for that. But also, there are so many whiffs of insincerity that you start feeling compromised. For example he says at the beginning of the book that he wasn't going to drone on about the secrets of his success. Well, that's exactly what he ends up doing. When he draws contrasts between himself and Donald Trump you wonder if he is proactively trying to avoid the inevitable comparisons.He writes "you don't make Grease without John Fucking Travolta" when describing his realization that fashion lines could be built around one signature item, like a fleece hoodie. After the first few strong chapters his voice begins to sound less articulate, more vulgar and noisy. But I got to the end.The packaging of this book is attractive. with a few pages of stickers to put on your laptop to show the people at Starbucks that you're on board. Great book. I couldn't put it down. It gave me a great many ideas on branding my own growing business and also was suspenseful, yup, suspenseful. Will he survive? Go bankrupt? Sell out & retire? It was a total page turner. Anyone starting a new brand will or has done many of the things Ecko did. It was great to learn how they played out for Marc & Seth. I did get a little lost on the concept of gate keepers vs goal keepers and wish there was an index for finding these concepts. I may need to read it again.a
What do You think about Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out (2013)?
I don't even like Ecko. Never have. Didn't speak to me. Now I'm rethinking after having read this.
—anna
Great book and valuable information for anyone building their personal brand.
—ghostcreature1
The most authentic look at branding I've ever read!
—somethinglovely
