A lot of the brands that sell, they don't look at things like I look at things.
When I design a hat or design whatever I design, I'm thinking, I want the consumer not to just
buy this, I want them to feel a certain way about it, and that's what art is.
Like when you see art, no matter if it's what form it is, or if it's a picture or a video
or anything it is, if you make a person feel a type of way, then they're looking at things
different than everything around them.
So that's how I look at my hats.
That's my whole thing, is basically how I feel about my hats or whatever I do is really
just putting a lot of time and effort to make the person think, you know, and a lot of brands
I don't feel like they do that.
They're going for the profit margin and not looking at really the quality and really
going in depth of designing something that looks different than everything else.
I mean you can look at this hat I have on now, like I guarantee, like you can put this
hat anywhere on Fairfax, in between all those brands on Fairfax, you put their hats up next
to mine.
I guarantee more people are going to look at my hat than they're going to look at his,
because my detail is too much detail to this, you know what I'm saying?
And that's what it's about, you know, that's what I'm about, and that's what we're about.
I'm an artist, I'm a visionary, and my name is Goethear Booker.
And I'm the vision behind Urban Trademark.
When you want quality, quality doesn't happen overnight, no matter what you're doing.
The times that I do feel like I can rush and speed other things, little things up to get
to where I need to get to, I always think back that I used to be in the cell and I
used to think, like, damn, I want to go home so bad, but I wasn't going to go home until
my time was ready to go home.
I couldn't rush it, even though I wanted to rush it, it was going to happen when it
was going to happen.
So that's how I feel like I do with the hats or anything I want to do.
I made my first hat, I want to say 2011.
I was out of jail for like six months.
Basically, you know, I was trying to figure out how to put some money in my pocket.
At that time I was already selling regular hats at Venice Beach, and then one day a police
officer said I couldn't sell on the beach, he only could sell handmade stuff, so I went
home and just thinking, like, dang, how can I make this hat, you know, not a mass produced
product anymore, how can it be handmade?
I thought about it, thought about it, and I just was thinking, like, well, how can I
put my own vision on it?
And basically, man, the next day I had that bin full of hats, I took a couple hats to
Michael Levine's downtown fabric store, and from there the rest was his history, it was
like a talent I didn't know I had.
Periodically as I'm selling hats on the streets, I'm just posting hats on Instagram, so one
day the homie Rob hit me, and he was like, man, I've been seeing what you're doing, you
know, we just opened up a store, you know, if you want to come up here and, you know,
check it out, you know, come up here, so I just, I grabbed a bin, I was excited, I was
like, bro, man, if you want to leave like 11 hats or a couple hats, just to see how
I go, no exaggeration, within like two days it was calling me like, man, we sold out,
you got some more.
It was just crazy, because like, the hats was, it wasn't, it was flying, you know, it
was flying out the shelves, it was all a blessing.
My name's Robert Wade, I'm the store manager and the buyer here at Tradition.
Out of all the brands that I've come across here at Tradition, UTM's been one of our
top sellers here in the store, from athlete to entertainer, that's one of the first items
they picked up every time they walk into the store.
They grab a hat without knowing any history about the company, they just love the product.
Then you tell them a little bit about the hats being one-to-one, and the product being
hand-crafted, and they appreciate it even more.
Having a celebrity wearing a hat is basically, it's an undeniable feeling, you know, seeing
somebody that's supporting what you're doing, that's great at what they do, it's, it's a
feeling that when you do see it, it gives you that gratification that, okay, let's keep
doing this, let's go harder.
To see other people, you know, enjoy your talent, it's a blessing, man.
I got to meet Katie in person, and I remember when he first saw the hat, he was like, man,
you made this?
I was like, yeah, he was like, man, you dope, man, keep doing what you're doing, like, really
he appreciated the work.
Every celebrity that you see, you know, they went in, they saw something that they liked,
and they purchased it.
My feeling about the care packages is basically for me, and what I do, and for my situation,
I don't think it works out for me.
The fact that I really take time and thought in everything I do, me giving a care package
to somebody is just, to me, it's just like, it wouldn't make sense.
I want everybody to like it and want to wear it, and not just, oh, I got this for free,
let me throw this on today because it's sitting here.
Now, I want you to really, you know, if you, if you, either you don't like it or you like
it, there's no in-between, and I feel like that's what care packages are.
Those are in-between, because you're, you're sending something hoping that, okay, maybe
he'll like this.
You know, when you wear my hat, you're going to like this, or you're not going to like
this, because you're not going to be wearing it, period.
The way I got in the industry is separation.
When I came in, I was able to make something that looks totally different than everything
else.
You can't put me in a category when you see my product, because it doesn't look like
anything else.
The fact that everything is handmade and one-of-one, it's a lot of time that goes in there to
making like unique different stuff.
Sometime it'll be like me making a hat, getting time to make the hat, or sometime my back,
you know, we're doing the hat, so sometime your health will be a little messed up and
you wouldn't be able, you know, to produce as much as you want to, making time to get
into certain fabric stores, you know, managing time to, you know, go to the Bay, or go to
San Diego, or go to Arizona to find unique fabrics that nobody else is going to have.
It's a lot to go in to making, you know, hats, and, well, it's a lot to go in to making
UTM hats, I should say, and people don't really see that, they just see the masterpiece
when it's done, but they don't see, you know, they don't see the behind the scenes before
that masterpiece.
In business, you have to have your paperwork in line.
I had several companies reach out to me to pick my brain, Long Story Short, New Era is
one of them.
We sat down, we had a discussion about some things that they wanted me to help them design.
I came up with those designs, I sent the designs back to them.
The rep that I was talking to, who basically reached out to me when it was time to come
to pay, Long Story Short, the guy John said they didn't know if they wanted to pay me
one lump sum amount or if they wanted to pay me royalties, like three months before that
I was listening to Kanye West talking about getting royalties and getting his just due
and not just selling out for the quick check.
So me, as soon as he said that, I already knew like I want royalties, so I told him
like, well, I'd rather take a small amount of front and royalties and he was like, yeah,
that's the thing, they don't really give royalties to this and that, they only give it to certain
athletes and basically he said I didn't meet the criteria.
So Long Story Short, I mean, it went from they saying they was going to give me a check
and trying to figure out what they was going to do to, they're not even like, I'm calling
them, they're not hitting me back and that's one of the things I can say about being an
entrepreneur and doing what I'm doing, everything is a learning experience.
I was so new in the game, I was only doing the hats for like nine months that I didn't
know about contracts and making sure I signed a disclosure before I talked to these people.
I'm just thinking they thinking I'm dope and I just really want to work with them because
I'm dope, but realistically, they looked at me as just a person who has ideas and I gave
them some of the ideas and concepts and they, you know, mean I haven't any paperwork I got
the bad end of the stick, but going forward, that's the key.
I would say man, in business, you have to have your paperwork in mind because at that
particular time, that was a mistake that I made.
To be honest, I didn't see nothing like mine, my hats at the time, you know, when I went
there, prior to when I went there, but a couple months later, you know, people was hitting
me up and letting me know that these hats kind of like are trying to be like your hats.
So people was pointing out to me that they're trying to do it basically what I'm doing and
I would take it in stride, I would just be like, oh, it's cool, it's whatever, but people
are not even knowing the back story that I even met with them.
They just randomly hit me up like, man, these hats are looking like your hats.
So I mean, it is what it is, a sister, the American, big fish, little fish, I'm dope,
they see it, they like it, they might use it and they use it, but me going into the
situation, I never thought that that would happen, but it is what it is.
The big companies, what they do is, they do 30 designs, at those 30 designs, they try
to narrow down to 12, and then out of those 12 designs, they put a hundred thousand of
each of those 12, and then now it's saturated and now after the first 50,000, everybody
figures out it's saturated, now you got to decrease the price, and then now it didn't
really work nothing.
Now you don't want to wear it because it's a hundred thousand people got the same stuff,
but what we do is, it's one hat, you like it, you buy it, you wear it, you never seen
anybody wear it.
In the course of four years, I probably met anywhere between 10,000 to 13,000 hats.
All unique, all one of one, never duplicated, either the rope was switched or how I laid
the fabric was switched, but all, every hat has been a one of one, and when I'm gone the
brand is gone, because I'm the vision.
It's only going to grow, and until I'm gone, it's going to grow more and more, and the
demand is going to be higher, because they're all one of ones, and the pieces are going
to get better, and that's just the vision, man.
It's not about really getting rich for me, I mean, I had opportunities before to make
a jump, to get rich, or put myself in a position to be rich, but it's not really necessarily
about the money, it's about moving the way I want to move, and seeing the brand go where
I kind of want to see it grow, and that's just keeping it limited.
I do make good money, but I mean, I'm not pushing out a hundred thousand units, so that's
the difference, the big company from UTM, and you know, what we do, we might not never
get rich, but at the end of the day, the legacy will always live on.
