Brand Owner: Ryan Barrass, 20 year old

Brand Initial Release Date: 28th October 2017

I got a chance to speak to persistence owner Ryan Barrass, to see how he has made his brand so successful at just 20 years of age this is what he had to say: "I initially set up the brand when I was 16 years old, as a gym wear brand called "Persistence Clothing. I sold stringer vests, t-shirts, swimwear

and tracksuits."

I then wanted to get more details into the inspiration behind the clothing lines. what kind of idea's do 16 year olds have that could sell this well? Ryan told me "The inspiration for the business came from my newfound love of the gym and the name came from the fact that persistence is a big part of training and you can apply it to so many other aspects of life.

We then spoke about how does a 16 year old start a business. In todays modern world you've got 3 or 4 different types of 'Teenagers', You've got your sixth form stayers, Your school leavers, your stay at homers and then probably the smallest group the entrepreneur, this is the group that probably gets laughed at the most because they are so young people don't Believe they have what it takes to make a successful business, so my question to Ryan was did you know much about business before starting your brand? He responded "I didn't have a clue about business at this stage so it was really just a hobby I was doing in my part time during college. I was using a cheap supplier that had low minimum orders, so the quality wasn¹t great but at 16 I didn't know any better so the cheapest and quickest was the best for me! I was ordering around 30 products at a time and enjoyed launching new products regularly and seeing people wearing my designs. After doing this for a couple of years I realised I had bigger growth ambitions so I decided to put the business on hold and save up some money to learn and invest in my ideas properly. The brand was completely inactive for about a year whilst I was saving up to re-launch Persistence."

"At 19 I met my investors, Andrew and Mandy, who have helped me massively to get Persistence to where it is today - I now have a great team behind me to help push Persistence London out into the world."

After hearing how well he's dealt with his business I wanted to move on to the type of clothing and materials Persistence uses, after hearing to begin with it was fairly cheap materials, we wanted to find out whether this had improved since the relaunch, Barrass replied, 'After reviewing samples for over a year we finally had the product we had envisioned and more. In September we shot our Camden range in Camden, London, with Alex Cannon and Nathan Hopkinson and used the amazing Steven Mayatt and his team from Steven Mayatt Creative for the photography and videography. This created some amazing content which has helped us to build an instagram following of over 50,000 to date. We launched on October 28th 2017, seeing our products sold all around the world and worn by top celebrities and sports stars. We have had great feedback on the fit, quality and overall brand experience so far, with almost no returns which has been amazing. Our Delancey tracksuit is our best seller, worn by males and females.'

Its clear to see the changes this brand has been though, but the brand seems to have greatly benefited from under going the changes.

In wanted to find out about the future collections for the brand not much was given to me but Ryan did say this, "We are excited about the future! We have got lots of plans in mind for future collections including a female range. But that is top secret I’m afraid!"

Persistences clearly has prominent place in mens current fashion, at at just 20 years old owner Ryan Barrass has achieved mammoth success in just a short time. I believe the brand will just go from strength to strength and the next stage would be out sourcing to department stores, whether this is something that will be done in 6 month or over the next 4 years is only something the brand's owner can decided. For me is Ryan keeps being 'persistent' then I don't see why this brand wouldn't be globally recognised within the next few years.

Curtis Hinton