Building a Clothing Empire: Managing Multiple Eight-Figure Brands with Frankie Quirroz | DSH #65

One thing you crushed it with was your influencer marketing.

Yeah.

You like straight dominated because you weren't even charging the celebrities that you were partnering with and you worked with some of the biggest names.

How did you pull that off?

So we worked with over 1500 influencers and celebrities and like hundreds of them per day.

We did like shoes for Logan Paul, Charlie D'Amilio, you name it, Ruby Rose, like Selena Gomez, whoever.

Like it didn't matter who you were, we pawned you some shoes.

Blackberry, I remember him sending me like an album cover, and he's like, Yo, you should use this on a shoe, it'll sell.

Like, are you giving us the rights to

use you on our shoe?

100K, 200k profit doesn't really like impress me no more.

And he's in not even millions.

All right, we're back on the digital social hour.

I'm here with my co-host, Christiana Hurt.

Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Frankie.

Keros, Kiros.

Keros.

Yeah.

I always know Keros.

How we doing?

Good, great, bro.

I love Vegas.

So glad to be here.

Thanks for having me on.

Of course, man.

What you been working on lately?

A lot.

So, I mean, obviously, growing my brand.

Soon in Tokyo is my number one.

We're working on different collaborations with like Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, just getting as many licensing deals as possible.

Growing my coaching community, too, that I just started.

So that's something that I'm very passionate about right now.

Awesome.

Let's go one by one.

So Tuned in Tokyo, you've done over $10 million in sales.

You've licensed with some of the biggest brands like Yu-Gi-Oh!

How are you able to get these huge licenses?

So

Tuned in Tokyo, we've been around since 2015.

So we're eight years old, which is dope, bro, because I've always wanted to have a 10-year run, and I'm almost there, you know.

I got a couple more years, and we've crossed over the tens and tens of millions of dollars with Toonedin Tokyo.

It is my livelihood, that's where I make all my money, and it's really dope because I started this passion at a very young age, and it kind of just like intertwined with my passion for cars and street wear and clothing, meshed them together.

And eventually, like, we crushed it enough to get in front of the right people.

But I got the licensing deal from Yu-Gi-Oh!

I was connected with, like, Dan Fleischman and Damon John from Shark Tank, helped me get the licensing deal.

But they made the connection.

When people are looking for licensing, basically, our first one was with Yu-Gi-Oh!

When people are looking for licensing, they're looking for...

They're looking for longevity.

So when Yu-Gi-Oh!

doesn't just want to collaborate with any random brand, they want to stay consistent over time.

And in order to like trend with the new kids and the new school and Gen Z, they need to bring the classics back into hype.

And the way they do that is through brands like us because they look at our customer base, our demographics are 16 to 24.

So we're introducing the classics of Yu-Gi-Oh!

through our brand.

And because of that, they're willing to do that.

But we had to show them like our customer list and that we actually can built something big.

Do you guys

have store accounts?

Yeah, we do have store accounts.

So, we've been in a few zoomy stores.

So, you do trade shows, or are you no, I haven't really gotten too crazy into a wholesale, but we've tested like Zoomies and Tillies in the past.

Yeah, that's dope.

One thing you're phenomenal at, I don't know many people better than you, honestly, is Facebook ads.

How did you get so good with those?

Because your return on ad spend is the highest I've ever seen in the clothing space because the clothing space is very hard to have high ROAs.

Yeah, so like the average ROA as usually people get is like 2.8.

I get like 7.9.

Pre-iOS like 14 update, it was like 20X

consistent.

Of course they changed it.

So the way I do this is I've mixed hype drops, which is like releasing limited collections to basically overexpand the entire month.

So we'll do a drop like February 5th and we'll do like $80,000 on that day.

And I'll roll over that 80 grand throughout the entire month and that's all organic so customer list SMS list so when I'm launching ads on the overall 30-day span I'll have like a six or seven X because of that but the way I launch ads like versus agencies agencies try to bundle up as many campaigns and like or as many ads in like three four campaigns what I do for if you look at tuning in tokyo's account I have over a hundred active campaigns and they all have like 10 to 20 different ad sets in each campaign.

But every budget on those campaigns is $20 to $30.

We don't really spend more than $100 per campaign unless it's like absolutely crushing.

But that's my secret sauce is I spread my ad spend my budget throughout many campaigns.

Yeah, exactly.

I was doing that in 2016.

That's just scaling horizontally, basically the $2 budget back in the day.

Damn, two budgets.

Yeah, $2, you could do that back then.

Back then, now it's a little bit more.

Yeah, now it's a little bit more expensive.

Yeah, that was the 2016 sauce.

You just changed with the trends.

That's really cool.

So it's always worked since day one.

Like, I started running ads in 2017.

Technically, I started running ads on MySpace, like in 2008 or 9.

Use Big Cartel, and I used to run MySpace ads.

And I had a MySpace spot that would auto-like, auto-comment on people's posts back in the day, follow them.

Yes.

Has Facebook ever like banned any of your ads?

That's a good question.

Of course.

I think anybody that's ran ads has gotten disapproved, ads, disabled accounts.

Like, that's part of the game.

How many merchants have you ran through?

Merchants?

Not a lot because I have like a really great customer service and team that mitigates chargebacks and shit like that.

I've never drop shipped.

I have a different model of drop shipping, but because we take care of our customers, we never had any issues with our merchants.

That's good.

Let's dive into drip creations because you run two eight-figure brands at the same time, which is really impressive.

So, how did you get started with drip creations?

So, I got to be careful with what I say because I'm in a Nike lawsuit, but a big one.

But

so, with Drip, I can say what's public already.

So, with Drip,

I started, basically my business partner and I in 2019, we were talking about release, or 2018, we were talking about releasing a sneaker company.

Because I'm not the biggest shoe head, but I did clothing, the t-shirts, the hats, and the hoodies.

But I wanted to do shoes.

And the reason why I wanted to do shoes is because sneakers usually cost anywhere from like 70 bucks to $200.

And at the time, my sister was living with me.

And I had this casita.

And one day i'm coming like home and i just start seeing a bunch of like custom clothes and shoes and i'm like what are you doing with these shoes she's like oh i'm customizing them i'm painting them and doing all it was like bands at the time

and light bulb goes off of my head i'm like holy this is crazy next thing i know i look at her etsy account and she sold over a hundred thousand dollars without even telling me

without even telling me bro

but the reason why is because i was working like six to seven days a week 10-hour days.

So I didn't really see her.

But this one time when I was actually home, I saw enough boxes to really pay attention to what the f was going on.

And yeah, from there on, I told my business partner who tuned in Tokyo, yeah, I got our sneaker company.

And then we started releasing customized vans.

Eventually, we got into like Air Force Ones, and then we created our own sneaker.

And yeah, it's till this day.

So did you guys use the Nike silhouette?

that's the um no we didn't use the nike silhouette but we used air at first we started customizing air force ones so that's the reason why nike wasn't cool with so because you guys were customizing air force yeah we're touching which my my full thing is like well i just bought an aventador right and i'm changing the color of it and the wheels is Lamborghini gonna come knocking on my door because I just changed the color of my car no so we're buying these shoes retail from my customizing them, yeah, and customizing them.

So, we had, I mean, we're good to go in my eyes, but I guess, like,

Nike's coming down on everybody right now, they are, they are, for sure, but Nike will take your, they obviously have a streetwear element to them.

Nike is the biggest thief in the industry, they'll

make them come afterwards.

No, no, no, what I'm saying is they'll look at his design, the customization, and then they'll drop an Air Force one that looks just like it.

Can you patent a shoe design?

You can, you can patent it.

So they do have trademarks that they just got recently, but I don't know.

I just feel like I have to be careful with what I say.

So I'm trying to think before I say, but

look, I didn't obviously didn't.

I feel like I didn't do anything wrong, and I know I didn't do anything wrong.

It's just they kind of press you, they throw allegations, they accuse you, and basically bleed you dry, swallow you, and throw you out on the street with nothing.

They're doing that with Kool Kai

and John Geiger too.

Really?

Yeah,

yeah, who

like

huh?

Who else too?

Omni and a hillcup.

Yeah, oh, I'm in a huh.

Oh, they came up.

Oh, yeah, because he's using

he just had court today.

Yeah, what is he doing?

He's like going to prison for like three years, not off that, but off some other

wait, was that the scam or something?

No, no, no, he's not.

It's definitely a scam.

Nike, he got in trouble for other stuff, but he also got in trouble for a sneaker.

Yeah, Nike's coming after everybody for using a silhouette.

So, like you said, they got some new trademark stuff coming through.

So it allows them to just come after everybody, bro.

Even if you change the shoe a little bit, they still don't even care.

Really?

It's like, no, I have to change a certain percent.

Well, it was like one to ten, but Nike's still like, no, because they reissued a lawsuit against Bape.

Against Bape.

Yeah.

They allowed Bape to actually use the Air Force One silhouette, which Bape showed proof of that.

And they still like, nah, suing you.

It was like

14 years.

Nah, they tried to like do a collaboration.

I guess the licensing deal didn't work.

But like I don't want to compare like them to what we did because what we did, we did everything correctly.

We came out with our own original shoe and we were also selling Air Force One.

So it's like they actually, all they did was replicate a shoe and slapped a lightning bolt instead of the swoosh.

It's a little different.

And it's like, come on, it's like spade a spade, bro.

It's a

knockoff straight up.

Yeah.

So going back to licensing,

you listed off a lot of heavy hitters.

Why not Pokemon?

Well, we are trying to work with a lot of them.

It's just kind of hard to get them to work with us, you know?

Yeah, like there are many people like selling anime, like streetwear, all these type of designs, but it's one day Pokemon or whoever owns that licensing is going to knock on their door and come with like a huge fat.

And if they really want to, they can come through with the lawsuit, but they can file a complaint versus a cease and desist, so they can go straight to the point.

They got the money for it.

So, what we're trying to do is we're trying to do everything legit versus trying to scheme behind certain ways because we don't want to get in trouble for it.

Well, don't they take like what, like 30

sometimes, maybe 60, 40?

They take a year.

No, they don't.

It depends on your deal, but like 15% of sales, something crazy.

Yeah, and they ask for an advance depending on what licensing, like with drip, we were talking about, okay, I almost said something, but with Drip, we were talking about licensing.

I'm not going to say which ones, but we were talking about several licensing and

they were asking us from anywhere of $75,000 to $300,000, depending on

the NFL is taken out of the sales.

No, yeah, it's an advance taken out of the sales.

One thing you crushed it with was your influencer marketing.

Yeah.

And the you like straight dominated because you weren't even charging the celebrities that you were partnering with.

And you worked with some of the biggest names.

How did you pull that off?

So we worked with over 1,500 influencers and celebrities and like hundreds of them per day.

We did like shoes for Logan Paul, Charlie D'Amilio, you name it, Ruby Rose, like Selena Gomez, whoever.

Like it didn't matter who you were, we probably made you some shoes.

So very similar to your model with like jersey champs.

We wanted to make them custom shoes.

So we asked them, can we make you a custom shoe?

And they were totally down with it.

For some reason, like we got big enough to where our messages were like automatically at the top of their DMs, probably, and they read every single one.

But what was really interesting,

it became like a snowball effect.

Eventually, we had influencers and celebrities reaching out to us.

I remember Machine Gun Kelly and Black Bear messaging me personally because we weren't responding on like drip.

Like, yo, can I get some custom shoes made?

And Jake Paul, too.

And Black Bear, I remember him sending me like an album cover.

And he's like, yo, you should use this on a shoe.

It'll sell.

I'm like, are you giving us the rights to

use you on our shoe?

So it got to that point where it was like a very personalized

relationship versus a business deal.

And we were able to like sell a lot of different collaborated shoes without having to go officially through like licensing and advances.

I think because you had a trusted brand and you weren't really asking them to post, you were just naturally just, yeah, definitely.

Like, we didn't ask for anything.

It's like very similar to what you did, bro.

Yeah, do you want a pair of shoes?

Cool, I can customize anything that you want on them.

What's send me your logo, send me a picture of your dog.

I got you.

And eventually, like, when you got these pair of shoes, you opened them and it was like the coolest thing ever because it's unique.

Everyone gets t-shirts, hats, glasses, socks, but no one gets shoes.

And when they get shoes, it's game over.

They automatically posted it because they love this.

And that's part of what my formula is of success when it comes to brand building.

Collaboration is definitely key, but it's high barrier to entry collaborative products.

Meaning he doesn't do shoes.

He just does clothing.

I do shoes.

and he can't do it or I do jerseys because nobody can do jerseys, but I do jerseys.

So getting into that high barrier, what stopped you from getting into the kids' niche?

I never thought about it.

We were making like kids' shoes, we were getting into that, but with clothing, I never got into it.

I just didn't know about it till right now.

Yeah, like you literally, you know what, you literally,

when I did tell people, like, I'm like, Yeah, I'm starting at baby line, people were sort of like, What?

And I'm like, Yeah, get close.

We all start off at best babies, so yeah, like because you know, like the first thing that happens as a baby is you're growing right so your return your return customer rate is much higher right because and siblings you want your kids to match and things like that wow that's actually a good tip there because you're right like they're gonna outgrow the clothes so they have to come back like how many people you have a sister how many people you know only have one child right yeah

most people have multiple children i have siblings you have siblings i was like the only only child in my town

you don't have no brothers and no everyone I knew, we had like 3,000 kids in my school.

I was like one of the few only children in the whole school.

Oh, wow.

Oh, that's crazy.

Most people do have multiple children, and at one time in your life, you probably matched that sibling in one way, shape, or form.

They dressed you guys the same.

So it became a really easy way to create a higher AOV with clothing.

So I was going to ask you with the profit margins, how did you stay afloat with clothing?

That's so that's easy.

That's easy for me.

And the reason why is because my average order value on every brand that I have is over $100

because I create mystery boxes.

So the reason why, and I'm not afraid to be completely open,

the reason why Toonin Tokyo, my clothing brand, is almost 10 years old is because we've survived off this $120 mystery box and it's like 60% of our sales.

It's 10 items for $100.

So a deal that you can't refuse.

And our CPA is about $20 to $30.

We still make about 65% margins on the cost of good.

So we're walking away with anywhere from $25 to $35 per order on those mystery boxes.

So at scale, when we're selling 300, 400 of them a day,

we're selling 1,000 shirts or pieces a day.

So that's exactly how we did it.

Yeah, I feel like the apparel space is tough.

And like, I just launched my own jersey company, but it's for Disney people, like theme park goers.

It's called Park Friends, so you kind of did it, but I did it for theme park goers.

It's called Park Friends.

And before I even started this brand, I knew I needed to stay over $150 average order value.

So I wanted to do not a mystery box but a bundle deal.

So like BOGO, 50% off, buy two jerseys for $150.

What style jerseys?

It's hockey, baseball, all of them.

But they're

uh that the theme is for the theme park or what yeah yeah so like if you go to universal like i don't know if you've ever gone to disney but everybody rocks like

yeah

exactly so that's what we're doing we're take we're i don't know how the proper like terminology but we're making parodies of

we're getting inspired and we're making parodies of like your favorite movies of disney and universal

and you get to put your family's last name on the back yeah and your favorite number

the customized fully Fully customized.

Oh, that's fire.

Yeah, that's why you're bringing in that over $100 price.

So, high barrier to entry, plus my, yeah, it's BOGO, so it's $150 ticket.

And I'll pay like $30 for cost per acquisition at scale.

I'm still making $30 to $40

per order, and I'm happy.

How do you balance all of this?

I mean, you're doing a lot of businesses.

So I do have a team.

I have, so my money comes from Tuned in Tokyo, Life of an outsider which is this brand i like that um thank you and uh park friends and then i have a master class where i make like 30 grand a year from

which is like nothing

which is bad

profit yeah you're gonna have to hit her up 10 million sellers so i'm new to the coaching space but uh i have like investments that build compound interest like over month to month so i have that too but the way i manage manage all of them is definitely like with partners and a team.

So I've noticed that I'm not a great, I could be a good CEO, but I'm not a great like consistent CEO.

I'm really good when it comes to marketing.

So if I can just be the CMO of every business, which takes about 10% of my time, and I'm just like structuring, making checklists every day, and I'm able to knock everybody.

You have a good CMO.

Yeah, I don't really like being a CEO.

So what industry are you curious about and wanting to get into and haven't just dove into it yet?

The coaching space is something that I'm like diving into.

But other than that, I feel like I've already hit everything I wanted to do.

Except for kids.

Except for kids.

But I don't have kids yet.

So when I do have kids, I'm pretty sure.

Like, I'm at that point where...

I need to actually be passionate about what I do.

It's not about money or dollar signs anymore.

Back in the day it was like pre-2020, I was like really chasing revenue and money.

Now I'm just like

100K, 200K profit doesn't really like impress me no more.

And not even million.

It has to be like 10 million or more.

I feel that.

I'm at that point where if it's not going to make 10 million or more and I'm not passionate about it, I'm not going to do it.

I feel that.

That's where I'm at.

So do you feel like for clothing it needs to be customized to be profitable?

No, I mean there's plenty of people.

It's just you're going to have to work 10 times harder than I do to acquire a customer.

At the end of the day, because everything I do is so custom and so unique, that kind of gets my foot in the door, brings me opportunities.

Like with this brand, Life of an Outsider, we started this as a denim company.

So I found this fashion designer, bad ass fashion designers.

There's two guys, two partners that I have.

And I told them, yo, you guys are really dope from the same city.

Let's build this into like an actual brand and let me scale it.

First year, we do 800K with zero ad spend.

Um, and this year, I mean, who knows what we're gonna do, but we started off as a denim company, and denim is something I wanted to get into, jeans.

So, jeans is expensive, jeans is crazy, yeah.

I mean, we're selling $200 jeans, so my average order value again is close to $200, and I can scale this business.

It's just cut and sew, though.

That's a little bit more difficult.

It's a little bit more difficult.

I remember when you told me about this business idea before you even started last year

now you've already done a million dudes crazy pretty crazy

I know I know it's pretty dope but I feel like I've hit the underground designer I've done the basic t-shirt company the shoe space um

I mean I just kind of want to like exit my businesses and then see what happens from there yeah was there a certain uh level of wealth you hit where you're just like wow i'm set for life i'm chilling 2020 was a great year.

That was like the year where I was pretty much set for life.

But I realized one thing, like, I can stop doing everything that I want to do right now if it was just me and my girl.

But if it was, if I'm trying to take care of my parents and maybe my siblings, I'm not done yet.

I'm set for life for sure.

But that's me being selfish if I say that.

So right now,

I feel like I still need some work to do.

I'm not done yet and i'm young too like i mean i'm not the youngest i'm 31 i just turned 31 but bro i still got like another five to ten years in me to just grind my face off

grind my well i don't want to like work i'm saying so i work six days a week 24

hours that day like the moment i go to sleep to the moment i wake up even in my sleep i'm probably working thinking so i'm saying i'm it's 24.

it's 24.

now i'm not i may i take one day off but i don't know if i can do that after 40 you know like i got i told myself i got another five years to grind my face off like i got 20 bucks in the bank account

after that like i'm probably gonna coast and chill but yeah up until then like i'm just i'm gonna eat as healthy as possible i'll do my best to work out wherever i can

but majority of my time is being spent on my businesses right now

So when people ask me, like, where do you find all the time to do what you do?

Well, I'm doing it full time all day, every day.

And I think that if you're going to be a great entrepreneur, you have to do those things.

Like, there's nothing wrong with, like,

entrepreneurs that work out, look fit, and are good.

But while they're at the gym, while they're watching TV, while they're watching their favorite sports game, I'm working.

So I'm always going to outwork everyone.

I've always outworked my business partners.

I've always outworked my girl and our relationship.

I've always outworked everyone.

And it's not like I'm competitive towards people because I'm actually humble.

I'm just so passionate about winning that I'm willing to do whatever is necessary, including outworking people.

Mumba mentality.

Yeah.

It's like that.

Yeah.

Is your girl cool with you working

six days a week, 24 hours?

No, no woman is.

Nah.

No woman is.

Tiana, you want to chime in here?

Yeah, like I don't.

I mean, you're a hardcore entrepreneur, so you probably are more lenient.

Trips, I got a lot of money.

I get trips.

That's the thing.

Like, my man works all the time, but, like, we have date, like, it's a date for the whole year.

It's a list of this is my time.

And I know, I always, I'm a person that has to have something to look forward to.

Like, if he didn't give me, like, hey, we're going to go out on X day or do this on X Day.

Yeah, we wouldn't have made it.

Like, I have to have something to look forward to.

As long as there's a date that's set aside for me that I can have and I can look at the calendar every single single day, then I'm cool.

But the minute you take that away, oh no, I'm not making it to tomorrow.

I won't.

I feel that.

Do you go on vacations at all with your girl?

Yeah, like once a year.

We just got back from a three-week

vacation.

It was like three weeks, though.

Three weeks ago

in Europe.

How was that?

It was dope, bro.

I mean, it's definitely like inspiring.

But even out there, it's kind of hard to shut off, you know?

Like, I'm looking at all of these different,

we're in the fashion capital of the world, you know, Milan and Paris.

I'm just getting all these different ideas.

Yeah, my brain is racing.

My brain is racing the whole time.

Inspired by it all.

It's the same thing.

You take time.

Like November and December, we stayed on vacation damn nearly the whole two months.

And now we're not traveling at all.

We just, it's just work now.

So, but I know when November comes that we'll be gone the entire month.

So I mean, but you worked the whole year for it, though.

Yeah.

So it makes sense.

It just makes it easy, though, to just set that time aside.

Right.

I feel that.

So where can people find you at?

The best place to find me is Instagram.

So at FrankieQuros with Q-U-I-R-R-O-Z.

Perfect.

And your brands?

Tuned in Tokyo.

You can just Google it.

Drip Creations with the Z at the end.

Life of an Outsider, which is a brand that I'm wearing.

And Park Friends.

Just Google all the four and they're pretty big, so you'll find them.

For sure.

Hell yeah.

Any closing comments?

Nah, bro.

Just happy to be alive.

Happy to be here.

Thank God.

Got to jet back to California.

Oh, man.

I love you.

Happy to have you, bro.

Yeah, it's been a pleasure, bro.

Thank you.

All right, guys, Digital Social Hour.

Thanks for tuning in.

See you next week.

Peace.