Daryl Sneed With SOUNDOFF

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois, it’s time for Chicago Business Radio brought to you by FirmSpace, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to Firmspace.com. Now here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:20] Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Cantor. And before we jump into today’s show, I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor. Today’s show is sponsored by firm SpaceX. Thanks to them because without them, we couldn’t be able to share these important stories and we have a great guest today. He is the CEO and co-founder of SoundOff Design. So please welcome to the show, Daryl Sneed. Welcome to the show, Darryl.

Daryl Sneed: [00:00:48] Thanks very much. Glad to be here.

Max Kantor: [00:00:50] So we’re going to jump right in. Tell me a little bit about sound off. What do you guys do?

Daryl Sneed: [00:00:55] So we are a lifestyle apparel brand based here in Chicago. We got started in 2016 in terms of kind of creating the foundation for the brand and really kind of took off, I’d say, in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen with, I would say, a collection of everything from T-shirts, sweatshirts, snap backs. So the category of items that would typically fall into lifestyle streetwear based garments and our design ethos is very much grounded in bringing bringing voice and statement to style and fashion. So we very much look at a lot of what’s happening in in our current landscape and how to translate that into graphic design and art and kind of married into lifestyle essentials.

Max Kantor: [00:01:44] Now has this been a passion your whole life? Or did something like an event or something in your life happened that made you get into this business?

Daryl Sneed: [00:01:54] No. So I would say sound off was a an opportunity that came about kind of haphazardly. So I my background is predominantly been in health care. So I started off actually as pre-med in college and then ended up going the route of MBA and ended up in management, consulting and health care, and then ended up in a couple of various different izak roles and professional advisory based companies in the health care space. I had always had a a passion and interest in more visual creative spaces, so I started a design brand of its style called Rick Corso back in 2012, which is very much it’s a women’s hire in luxury brand, and I had a break in 2015 in between health care careers and through a conversation with one of my co-founders, Drew Ferguson. We we decided this idea of there’s the space of in the T-shirt realm of T-shirts, graphic T-shirts that really didn’t really suit kind of more. I would say a thirty five and above crowd. So we decided to fill that space with a potential brand, and we brought on our third co-founder, Brett Grafton, who is the art director for the brand, and we decided to create a brand that filled the space of, you know, really having something that brought more visual statement and voice to modern issues and topics. And it was right also at the beginning point of the 2016 elections. So when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were running for president and we just saw such an increase in voice and statement and and just kind of like, you know, beginning to really put more emphasis on people finding their own voice. So it was kind of a good timing to create this brand ethos because we just saw culturally in in America, particularly during that time, people were looking for more statement oriented type of things so that what that’s kind of what what haphazardly kind of became the beginnings of the brand.

Max Kantor: [00:04:25] Gotcha. And I think that’s so cool that you all kind of identified a missing need in the market and then you filled that need. One of my favorite things about your designs as I went through your website is just the simplicity of it. I mean, the the sweatshirts, the hoodies with like just the singular mustache on it or a singular chess piece. Like, I thought they were so cool. So I got to know. How have your designs evolved since founding to now?

Daryl Sneed: [00:04:53] You know, it’s interesting. When we started the brand, I would say it was very honorific, very focused on. Reflecting on individuals icons that kind of paved the way for voice, so Malcolm X. Nina Simone and Josephine Baker, you know, individuals who we kind of always identify or figures. Joan of Arc, for example, you know who we identify as very much representative of voice. And then what we found through the first couple of years where people wanted to see themselves as having their own voice. So it’s like we always recognize Malcolm X as somebody who really, you know, paved the way and really does emulate this idea of sounding off and creating statement. So but people really kind of responded to emblems and icons of things that reflected who they were. So things like the mustache where it symbolizes the recognition of health promotion, health awareness is very much tied into the the November Mental Health Awareness Month. We moved more to graphics that really do augment people’s individual style and communicate something about themselves rather than just being, you know, I’m aware of T-shirt with Jack Kerouac on the front, which, you know, there are people who love Jack Kerouac and love that whole beat generation and love the movement and what that stood for. But I think, you know, in today’s world, people are much, much more akin to wanting to share something about themselves and wear something that’s visualized like, I have a voice and my voice is this. So that’s like, you know, I would say, that’s where our design ethos has really evolved to.

Max Kantor: [00:06:43] Definitely. And I like I said, I love the simplicity of it and hearing you talk now. It’s so interesting now that I’m thinking back to all the designs I saw I’m now seeing. Oh, all the subtext that is there with each design. So it’s super cool. So you did start, you know, this brand is totally original. You created it. What do you think the hardest thing about creating a brand is?

Daryl Sneed: [00:07:09] Finding audience, you know? You know, it’s funny, you know, when we when we started the brand and started the idea ideation of the brand at 15 and started putting some true concreteness to the brand in 16, it was still on the precipice of building. They will come in. In the online world because it was still online shopping. What’s what’s very much still in its beginning phases, but it had matured and it matured much faster than than as we kind of got our kind of anchors built into the brand. So, you know, the challenges today are very much still kind of similar. It’s like, you know, finding it on, it’s just because you have an online store and have access to a lot of people through paid campaign and Instagram and Facebook. You know, it’s still very much is like, who’s your audience? How do you find them? Because there’s just even more competition now. So the barriers are like having to build a store or having a storefront or less because you can do it in a much more economical fashion of building an online store. But the competition for that same person is even harder because we’re all inundated with ecommerce now and everyone’s very adept to buying online. So which is great, but it’s still very much. How do you how do you create your own ethos and voice and get in in front of enough people to make it more charitable to be a sustaining brand?

Max Kantor: [00:08:46] Now when did you all realize you were getting traction and people were really liking what you were putting out there?

Daryl Sneed: [00:08:53] You know, it’s been a combination of increasing some awareness through through through online and through the various different online levers. And it’s also having a bit of a physical space. So we have a studio space in Chicago. It predominantly sits, predominately situates as our, you know, where we where we where we ship out of where we design out of. And then in 20 late 19, 2020, we started to really kind of open on a regular basis on like weekends and Saturdays, as we have people who are like in particularly in Chicago and in our in our neighborhood who are, you know, hey, can I come over and try something on and I really love it. And the more frequent we’ve been able to do that and have kind of that live interaction and live conversation, you know, it really has begun to kind of help us really design much more to what people are reacting to when they see it and touch it. So it, you know, pure online, it’s great. But I think finding the hybrid in the middle of having something that is both still tactile, where people can still come in touch experience and just even get a conversation around the brand. I mean, the number of people who come into our studio on the weekends when we’re open and just ask like what sound off about and in that two minute spiel and when they look around, they get it. And, you know, in some instances, they become online customers because now they know the brand, they know the quality and they know what it is. Some they still like the store experience to being something they can tangibly kind of look at it and touch it. So, you know, we’ve seen a couple of different ways of how, you know, we’ve we’ve captured some audience and really beginning to build, build some headway in that space.

Max Kantor: [00:10:46] Now what kind of retailers are the best to carry your brand?

Daryl Sneed: [00:10:53] Ok. So retailers who we’ve talked to, we’ve we’ve predominantly still been solely through our online or store. But we’re beginning to expose ourselves into some of the wholesale space. I would say retailers that are much more akin to independent brands, you know, you know, brands that are not typically on Amazon. So you know, the the uniqueness of we have a very retail oriented product that people people love the feel of it. They love the the overall quality of the product and then they love the story behind it and they love the graphics. So you know, those stores and retailers where they can really kind of complement and be able to talk about like, here’s what this design is about. This whole brand is about this. You see it and not only the quality of the goods which peers us against, you know, very, very, you know, anchored brands in the streetwear space in terms of quality. But then also we have a very consistent design ethos in a very consistent voice and people really can see it come through. And I think that’s where retailers who have that consumer conversation in direct retail conversation has been really be something where this brand is going to really anchor more towards.

Max Kantor: [00:12:14] Now have reality TV shows that are fashion centric, like Project Runway making the cut. Have they affected your industry in any way?

Daryl Sneed: [00:12:27] Not I would say not, not directly on those those shows are, you know, if you talk about Project Runway in that genre, they’re much more geared to what I consider kind of more end to end. So from cutting so all the way through where sound off is much more anchored into the graphic and art and kind of design space. And you know, we tether into, you know, based product that that definitely fits our ethos. But we don’t we don’t have to compete on the nature of, you know, having to cut and sew and create the base design. So which is a very different, very different space if you’re going to get into into that part of brand development.

Max Kantor: [00:13:11] Do you have any advice for a young person who wants to get into the design industry?

Daryl Sneed: [00:13:17] Go to it. Go into it with open eyes. And I think we all tend to get very starry eyed of the success stories of the brand that, you know, they they overnight they became an instant success. Or, you know, the random opportunity where you get something on somebody like a Kardashian or an influencer and it becomes, you know, the immediate hot thing. And those are those are the one percent out of the ninety nine to convert to the 99 where it just takes it just takes a lot of hard work. And just kind of you have to keep pushing it and keep pushing and keep pushing it. And the brands that really do sustain are those that kind of like over time, build their audience, build their build, their build, their design ethos, continue to kind of build out their overall strategy and grow it. And if you find that anomaly where you do become that overnight, it can also be a challenge if you’re not operationally prepared. Because if you get dumped on a thousand orders and you don’t know how to get a thousand orders out, it could also be a big challenge, you know, sustainability as well. So it’s like go in, go in with as much open eyes as possible of if you get to spend 20 percent of your time doing the creative, which is the fun part. That’s a lot.

Max Kantor: [00:14:44] So, Darrell, if someone’s looking to start ripping sound off, how can they find you guys?

Daryl Sneed: [00:14:49] So obviously we’re online, so we have contact information on our website, sound off, design all of our social media handles Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, it’s at sound off design. And then, you know, direct. Our studio is in Chicago and the Edgewater neighborhood. So we’re we’re usually there on Saturday afternoons and then through me directly through my email, which is Darrell Sneed at Sound Design. Dot com.

Max Kantor: [00:15:19] Awesome. And you can get the same products at both your in-person store and online. Yes. Great. Well, Darrell, thank you so much for being on the show today. It’s been so fun talking to you about sound off. Like I said, I was going through your website and I was really impressed and I really liked what you guys are putting out there.

Daryl Sneed: [00:15:35] Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Max Kantor: [00:15:37] And thank you all again for listening to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Cantor, and we’ll see you next time.

Intro: [00:15:47] This episode is Chicago. Business Radio has been brought to you by firm SpaceX, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to Firme Space.com.