Monday, November 17, 2014

Delano Brown by Louis Mendoza

During the last few years I have been following the work of an artist named Delano Brown, although that is not how he would refer to himself. Delano Brown like to describe himself as an ARTrepreneur. He has been featured on various magazines as well as the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/fashion/delano-browns-painted-clothing.html?_r=0). Essentially he has applied his artistic vision to various luxury products and pieces ranging from clothing, furnitire, and cars. The design that got his brand off the ground and into the public eye is his simple rose pattern. Specifically, his custom rose Timberland boots are his most well known product and sell for thousands of dollars because he has managed to keep his products and brands highly exclusive and desirable through his line of clothing "Lano for Public". You can't get what he makes in a store, there needs to be a relationship made with Mr. Brown.
#HANDPAINTED by Lano. Featuring @mrclassyfied

Delano Brown has achieved this by appealing to both admirers of art and fashion by blending the two together. He has customized clothing pieces by Givenchy, Balmain, Chanel, and Louboutin. He has customized luxurious cars like a Ferrari and Rolls Royce. His portfolio contains custom pieces made for celebrities like Kevin Durant, Chris Brown, and Wiz Khalifa who post the custom art he has done on their instagram's. He's also held exclusive art shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami.  His New York show featured him painting his famous rose pattern onto a model wearing a white dress. This type disruptive innovation is changing the way most people view high end fashion. He begins with luxury clothing that he knows is already exclusive and adds his own twist to it and lets these high end brands know that he can make them better. Delano has inspired many imitators to the fashion industry but none compare to the quality and exclusive art of Delano. 




When I first learned of Delano Brown I noticed he had just hit a very important point in his career that is essential to any artist, entrepreneur, or creator. The point I am referring to is the point when a creator finds his 1,000 true fans. By true fans I mean Kevin Kelly's definition of a true fan, a person willing to drive 200 miles to see you live, who buys the super deluxe re-released hi-res version of your work even though they already have the low resolution copy. These are the type of fans that share your work through social media and spread the news and keep alerts to keep them updated on new posts. These are the fans that artists can make a comfortable living off of. Kevin Kelly describes this phenomena best in his article "1,000 True Fans" (http://kk.org/thetechnium/2008/03/1000-true-fans/). These fans will gladly pay $100 a year on your products because they love them so much. This essentially gives you a $100,000 of income per year coming only from your true fan base. This day in age social media and the internet has made it the greatest time for artists to find their 1,000 true fans and make a comfortable living through their fan base. This can be applied to various careers such as musicians, photographers, craftspersons, performers, animators, designers, videomakers, or authors. This concept is very important because it gives an artists an important goal to hit instead of waiting for their breakthrough art to catapult them into the mainstream which hardly ever happens and is extremely unlikely. Delano Brown emphasizes this also by constantly writing short inspirational blog posts describing the grind he had to go through to reach this point in his career. He is a very smart artist and businessman and I think observing his art and career trajectory will be very inspiring to watch as his designs have only been getting better and he is still only 23 years old.

Links to Delano Brown:
http://yeahlano.tumblr.com/
http://www.lanoforpublic.com/
http://instagram.com/yeahlano

Questions:
Delano Brown focused on exclusivity, luxury, and customization to reach his 1,000 true fans, what qualities would you emphasize to your target market if you were looking for your 1,000 true fans?

Have you become a true fan of an artist that you discovered through social media? If so then who is that artists and what cause you to become a true fan?

Given the chance, what would you like for Delano Brown to customize for you? (Shoes, Shirt, Car, Watch, Furniture, etc...)

6 comments:

  1. To reach my 1000 true fans I would probably like to be personally involved in the design, creation, and delivery of my product. It would posses the prime features only available and only desired by the true fan. It would also be very expensive! Something only the true fan would pay for.

    I don't follow artists on social media. However there are a few local people I do follow. One of my favorites is Michalovic Wood Art. He creates wood based facades and art for local businesses and venues.

    I might have Delano do something I can put up on a wall. Like a painting or something.

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  2. Tight post Louis. I love art and have always been inspired by it. I used art as an escape when I was a kid. I sincerely relate to artists who take the struggles of life and turn them into visually stimulating pieces or lyrical masterpieces.

    To answer your question Delano Brown focused on exclusivity, luxury, and customization to reach his 1,000 true fans, what qualities would you emphasize to your target market if you were looking for your 1,000 true fans?

    The qualities I would emphasize to reach my target market of 1,000 true fans would be:

    *Keeping it real: if I wanted to target my true fans I would keep it real with them 100% of the time and not change it up because of industry demands.

    *Keeping true to my brand: In order to stay true I would not change because everyone else was changing. To be true to my 1000 true fans I would have to stay loyal to the brand that got me to success, I would owe it to my fans. I think main stream artists struggle with this today, losing sight of what put them on in the first place.

    *Incorporate the opinions of my fans into my future goals: To keep my fans happy I would definitely listen to their input, what they want and what they expect from me to remain a loyal fan.

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  3. Very cool entry. In order to reach my first 1,000 true fans, I would find similar areas to focus on for my specific product/service. Some of these may overlap with that of Delano's. The qualities I would emphasize would depend on what I was offering.

    Social Media has helped me become a fan of an artist. I first discovered the UK artist Will Prince on Instagram. He mainly does works of artists within hip-hop and entertainment. I then realized we had a mutual friend and now we are working on putting together events/galleries in the United States. I became a true fan of his because his work really spoke to me and shared many of the same common interests.

    I would have Delano customize a pair of shoes or watch. I am an avid watch and sneaker collector. I love owning one-of-ones and as long as they matched my style either one of those items would be pretty awesome to own.

    - Jeran S.

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  4. This was a really cool post! The qualities I would emphasize for the target market would be focused after doing some research on what customers love and what would they like to have. In some way, I would create the desire for having the product offered and making it real so customers will know the true quality of it.

    Social media has great influence in every person around the world nowadays. It is impressive how because of social media many different new artist have became famous and are now superstars. The artist I think it would be the best example in my case is James Arthur. I have never followed talent shows on TV because I do not watch too much TV, but I always loved to watch videos online about these talent performances. Browsing on the Web I found some videos about the initial performances from James Arthur and after a few months he won the show and became the growing superstar that he is now.

    I think I would have Delano customize my shirts. I always look for some new style in shirts that can show the way I am and something that makes me look different from others, so I would be nice to have a different style than the rest of the people.

    -David Arismendy

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  5. 1) Delano Brown focused on exclusivity, luxury, and customization to reach his 1,000 true fans, what qualities would you emphasize to your target market if you were looking for your 1,000 true fans?
    I think this question depends on the business that you are operating; it will be different for each one. If I wanted to sell shoes for example then I would focus on promoting the brand, customization, and comfort. It is so hard for me to find shoes that I actually enjoy. For instance the shoes that I have on now, I really like. However, I wish that one of the small details such as the blue tag on the back wasn’t there. I’m too lazy to care about it though and I buy the shoes anyways but other people are very particular of what they wear. If shoes could be more customizable and also comfortable then it would be perfect. NIKE actually offers something similar to this already.

    2) Have you become a true fan of an artist that you discovered through social media? If so then who is that artists and what cause you to become a true fan?
    No, I am not a ‘true’ fan of any artist.


    3) Given the chance, what would you like for Delano Brown to customize for you? (Shoes, Shirt, Car, Watch, Furniture, etc...)
    I think that a watch would be really cool and maybe a shirt of something that interests me

    - Derek D

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  6. 1) I agree with derek on this question, i think this is largely dependent on the business you are trying to create. Art is the type of business you can afford to narrow down a very specific demographic (1000 people passionate about exclusive art) but other business that focus on mass sales might not be so smart to switch to this method. If i were to try to obtain 1000 true fans i would try to do it in a similar way, through exclusivity and luxury.

    2) I would consider myself a true fan of few artists but theres definitely a few musicians i have discovered through social media that i make the effort to follow and buy their music.

    3)Im not too sure how much Delano Brown's work interests me personally because I am not really into flashy extravagant clothing but i know there is a large demographic of people into that so I am sure he is doing well.

    -Alejandro Joya

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