Why start a new brand

Our first T-shirt design, “I Used to be cool”

If you dive down into the world of T-shirt design, you’ll find a lot of stuff on “passive income”, and “how to make money”-fast schemes on apparel design. Let me be clear. Lowbrow is not that! I started this brand about a year ago, because I wanted an outlet where I could put some stupid ideas to life, without having to run them by clients and others before they hit internet. I work day to day with graphic design for brands and artists, and through a lot of that work I generate some ideas that never finds it place in the real world. Thats were Lowbrow comes into play.

Now let’s be fair. Starting a T-shirt brand in this day and age, with an extremely over saturated market of cheap design, low prices, and low quality print-on-demand shirts, might not be the wisest of ideas. But I still think Lowbrow Apparel has leg to stand on. The brand itself came out of missing a more thoroughly illustrated and high quality apparel brand in Norway. As I can do all the design, website and illustration myself, it is fairly easy to actually get this thing of the ground. The tricky part is always to hit the right audience for your stuff.

A lot of the Lowbrow stuff is targeted towards climbing and bouldering. The thing I’ve noticed over the past couple of years being active in the bouldering community is that there is a lack of illustrated and frankly, good designs on the apparel. Sure, you have the big brands like Patagonia and North Face doing some very fine stuff. The thing I was missing was the aesthetic from the skateboard or music community. Bouldering, being a kind of social solo activity has a lot of the same kinds of people active, and I feel strongly there is room for a specialized, indie apparel brand in that world.

On the note of passive income, I haven’t quite figured out the formula for this small brand, but a couple of things is worth noting. It will remain a hobby and an outlet, and will exist as long as its fun.