Have you heard of Santos London and Clarity? Riverside is home to many creative and outgoing people; one individual took those skills to create a clothing brand. Clarity is a clothing brand by a grade 10 student at Riverside, Santos London, who has succeeded with his entrepreneurial skills by creating a clothing brand that offers great quality at a competitive price.
London started Clarity in 2020 during the first covid quarantine. The inspiration for the brand began in 2019 when London was in grade 8 and was doodling on his iPad, which eventually led to the creation of his logo.
“I was drawing a lot on my paper, and I saw something that stood out, I liked it and I took it home. I then started drawing on my iPad, from there I realised that this [the logo] is what I want,” said London.
Other clothing brands inspired London as well, such as ‘underground’ brands like Crash Vancouver and Divide the Youth. The ‘underground scene’ consists of entrepreneurs that haven’t broken through the surface yet with their brand. London saw these brands putting out their clothes in a “drop” method. A drop is when companies sell the clothing one time and one time only, which makes the clothing rarer and more ‘hyped-up.’ “I took inspiration to do drops from other street brands which creates more value to the product because of the limited amount of product released,” said London.
The growth of Clarity has been successful, but London is not satisfied yet. Clarity started out on TikTok where London published videos to gain awareness of his brand. He started off with just a few views on his videos but then his product and videos went on to attract more people.
However, one video with over a million views was all it took to rack up the traffic through his page. After just one video, everything he created would average 10’s of thousands of views. “Starting off on TikTok was hit or miss for the first videos which would only get a couple views, but then once you get one hit video, all the other videos gain the momentum of views and attraction,” said London. Clarity’s TikTok only had 100 followers at the time of the first drop, but now, after his recent production, he has around 50,000 followers.
Clarity produces great quality clothing while maintaining an affordable price. Clarity’s newest clothing item is the “8-bit Star” tee shirt and zip up. The zip up had a bigger impact than the shirt because of the hype behind zip ups in street clothing.
“The full zips do very well because it was a more unique product and full zip are in demand. Both products sold out, but the shirts took longer,” said London.
London started out by ordering a few shirts on his first drop and now orders larger quantities for a higher demand. “At the beginning I would order around 15 shirts to sell, but now for each drop, I order around 60 shirts and 35 zip ups,” said London.
Clothing is a great way for teens to learn about economics and start out in business. There are a lot of steps that must be completed before being successful. “Skills with advertising and marketing is something I have benefited from. Business communications is another thing that I gained from putting this brand together,” said London.
Starting a business isn’t an easy task to complete, but if enough effort and patience is contributed, there will be a positive outcome. If you want to check out London’s TikTok….. Clarity TikTok
