I Bought Something (Kinda Expensive) off the Internet Cause I like the Founder
Marcus Milione and Minted NYC
I bought this hat on the internet. It was priced above average, but I was happy to pay—all because the founder seems like a chill guy.
Marcus Milione is the founder of Minted NYC (thus the M on my hat), and his content strategy makes me bullish on the idea of a founder-centric consumer brand.
Minted New York is a bootstrapped clothing brand based out of NYC. You may recognize Marcus as the face of the brand on Tikok, YouTube, or Instagram. Minted NYC is a team of 3 (I think) that design athletic clothing, menswear, and jewelry. They have hugely successful collaborations with the incumbent running company Saucony. While the gentleman you see in the photo above looks like quite the sophisticated lad, I can assure you he hasn’t always had it figured out. I stalked Marcus’s internet presence and tracked down his first 2 viral videos, back in 2020.
It’s alright Marcus we all posted cringey stuff online during covid. These videos (while entertaining) were nothing more than a flash in the pan for him. The next several dozen clips he put out garnered less than 5K views apiece. He tried many things to satisfy the algorithm: more shirtless vlogs, duets on viral clips, and replying to comments with dedicated videos. The key was consistency, as he was posting stuff online several times a week.
And it kinda worked, slowly but surely his stuff started to pop off.
Workout reviews, unique fashion finds, and eventually promoting his own products, the first of which was a 4 Pack of Chains that came to be a staple in his videos. They ran multiple drops all of which sold out at a blistering speed.
More videos, more fashion reviews, more workout routines, more errand vlogs. Eventually, he hit 30k followers, and hitting 50k views on a video wasn’t out of the ordinary for him.
But TikTok is just one part of the story. As Marcus grew his audience, he seemed to build expertise in the fitness/fashion space. While I’m unsure of exactly what was going through his head, I can safely assume that making Tiktoks reviewing clothes, helping people find clothes, and making OOTD vids drilled in him an intuition to what looks aesthetically pleasing on the male figure.
He experimented with the “Marcus Milione Show”, which he shut down after a few episodes. He started consistently making running content, which was perfect for marketing all the running gear he was designing for Minted. And now he’s kinda snowballing his content and his products into a business success. He has more to talk about in his videos than ever before, more free cash flow than ever before (presumably), and it seems like he’s investing it all back into the business.
Minted has an office/storefront in SoHo, a professionally shot weekly YouTube series, and a dedicated warehouse that his products ship out of. Impressive, considering that this all just stared off as him making shirtless TikTok.
A few things about Marcus stand out to me; I’m gonna be bold and attribute them to his success.
He’s a jacked dude selling clothes.
I don’t know that much about marketing but I know that he’s probably a better mascot than most of us fatties.
He was consistent, yet tried new things.
Dozens of TikToks a month, weekly YouTube videos, intermittent blogs on Substack, and even a short-lived podcasting stint. He put out content in multiple formats and wasn’t afraid to deploy resources on the formats with the highest ROI.
A lean team
Clothing brands are expensive, and most people waste money on fancy models, PR firms, magazine ads, and posh storefronts. Marcus seemed to use himself and his brother as models, the internet as a storefront, and TikTok/Instagram as his top of funnel. He avoided raising funding and maintained control of his company by being fiscally responsible and keeping costs low.
Content Product Fit
Marcus didn’t sell his audience productivity software or financial services, he sold them clothes. Which makes perfect sense, since he made videos about clothes. Don’t be like Hawk Tuah, don’t release a product unrelated to your content.
He is a good person (I think)
He frequently gives out free merchandise, donates to causes he believes in, is always kind on camera, and urges people not to go into credit card debt to buy his products.
We can learn a lot from Marcus. Go ahead, put out cringey content on the internet. As long as you are consistent and have a relevant product, the world is your oyster.
Cheers,
Rajveer