We have always thought about taking time out of our day to give people the shine they deserve, and this clothing company is by far trendsetters in their own right. Recently we sat down with Patrick McCarney ½ of masterminds behind Akomplice and decided to dig deeper than anybody else did before. The definition for accomplice is an associate in wrongdoing, especially one who aids or abets another in a criminal act, either as a principal or an accessory. Yet in this case Akomplice means much more. Welcome to the Future…..Enter Akomplice Clothing.
illRoots.com: First Off I want you to thank you for taking the time out of your day and sitting down with me.
Pat: Thank you
illRoots.com: So how did Akomplice get started?
Pat: Basically me and my brother were doing hip-hop, beats, rhyming and people liked it we just burned 25 copies of the cd or 35 and gave them to friends and one of them ended up getting played for Slug of Atmosphere and he said he liked it so that pumped us up besides that kids were just like playing it and listenin to it all-time because it sounded different it wasn’t like every kids cd where you recorded with Pro Tools, we did it on Akai 16 track. But we thought you know white rapper that’s kind of hard, and the beats would be the easiest thing and this was right before every kid was a producer. So my brother said “Yo I’m gonna start making some t-shirts and some clothing that means something” and I say “man, don’t waste your time, people like what were doing, their liking our music, lets keep pushing forward on this”. Because I was like you know you don’t know photoshop you don’t illustrator, you don’t know the programs about how to do this. And he was like “ man I’m just gonna do off it” and I got frustrated and like 3 months later we had our first catalogue and the reception of it was like real strong as far as like locally were like “Yea, I like that, I like that, I like that”. And most shit these days is wack, that’s just how it goes and people just liked us. And after that we came out and sent 100 catalogues out across the country and at the time we were targeting skate shops because at the time we didn’t know any other shops. This was before we knew about boutiques this was about 4 years ago. And then all of sudden we sent one out to “TRUE” and that was the only one that wasn’t a skate shop it was more like I don’t know the dopest shop I had ever been to and so they pick us up and so there was 62 shirts and so we did 1000 shirts and we’re freakin because we had to take a loan and we produced the same design in like a billion colors so we could sell it to all to of our friends because I’m thinking “How is all of my friends going to be wearing the same design”. Only thing I could think is well different colors is going to help otherwise no ones gonna want to do that. So after that we just ended up getting more stores and every season we started doubling or tripling and know we’re sitting at like 160 in stores. So yea that’s kind of like how it happened and also its important to note my brother started a t-shirt company when he was like 13 or 14 also where he was just ironing on stuff you know. He was always hustling as a kid he started selling candy at school he would buy like a box of warheads and sell each, just making his loot. Whether it was on lemonade stands to all sorts of shit, going around the block doing magic tricks for people, and smiling with his cute little face when he was kid and parents couldn’t help to give some loot.
illRoots.com: What’s the main thing you would tell somebody that wants to start a clothing company?
Mike: I would tell them the same thing is like us. I mean for us we were like oh “I’m not going to get into this to make money”. We got into it because we were into making dope things and thought this would be cool let’s get into this as sort of like a game. Because if your going to get into this game to make money then there is a lot better things to do with your time that are probably going to turn out a lot more profitable than this. So I’d say you just gotta do it because you love it.
illRoots.com: Your in your 7th Season what outlets are you looking at now other than regular traditional advertising?
Pat: We starting to do outside of the box collaborations kind of outside of our market. For instance we got hit up by X Game Gold Medalist Peter O’Lenec and Simon DuMont, these are the extreme skiers that have been winning a lot at the X Games and introduced their company Empire which is starting and basically said you know love what your doing we’re rocking your clothes we would love to have you guys do a t-shirt with us. So we did Akomplice times Empire shirt so we’re building with these guys. We come from where skiing is snowboarding is but that’s not really what we were focusing on the high end boutiques and the rap stuff and so basically stuff like that just bridging out. Right now there’s no ski brand that is like a “Dope brand” that says “hip-hop, I into these type of things” its always just the snowboard people have that on lock but theres no Ski company so there’s really an open market. So they want to team up with us to get that feeling that we got and for us it’s a good thing because we can bridge over and do all the stuff with X Game Gold Medalist and the other dope thing is some of the kids are from where we grew up like one of the kids is from our hometown my brother grew up with him so.
illRoots.com: So obviously hip-hop has played a real big influence on what you’ve done how did the name come about?
Pat: You going to get this my brother was going through the dictionary and what does the dictionary start with “A”.
illRoots.com: Wow, he didn’t get very far [laughs]
Pat: Yea, exactly he didn’t get very far [laughs] and he says “Accomplish” I go “Yo that’s hot, “Accomplice” lets spell that with a “K” and we liked the vibe because it was smart was felt strong and harsh and had like an edge to it and it felt like math you know. So it had the feeling of what type of hip-hop I like, I like Jedi Mind Trick for a while and you know the kind of music that was like smart but at the same strong and harsh.
illRoots.com: As far as like the newer brands I noticed that you had gotten placement in XXL. You had a hoodie in XXL, but can you ever see yourself branching off and doing say a sneaker or something like that?
Pat: Oh yea, I mean we got all sorts of plans about teaming up with certain people, I keep a lot of them secret but sneakers is something that we wanna be doing and you’ll see if they come out I never want to say nothing till its finish. You know you’ve got different sneaker companies teaming up with, you know just different kind of stuff like teaming up with a company that does backpacks and all sorts of stuff.
illRoots.com: Right, brand extensions.Pat: Right. We’re also working on a glove because you know Empire is a glove company, its just the more little things we do the better and for us we always did it for ourselves so all of sudden I’m rocking Akomplice from head to toe but I don’t have jeans so we made jeans, okay I’m always rocking fitted hats, so now I have an Akomplice hat, now we’re like fuck it we need boxers and socks and shoes. So yea and sunglasses and necklace and we’re everything you could possibly imagine.
illRoots.com: Wow, that’s great.
Pat: So actually we’re working on getting a coat, we want a dope winter coat
illRoots.com: Whats the most important part of coming out with clothing?
Pat: Its got to be the hottest thing you’ve ever seen. Because here’s the thing somebody is going to go into a store and buy something that’s like 25 or 35 that’s decent its gotta be bananas, that’s basically if you’re a new jack on the block your not going to be selling it because you’re a new name or essential or whatever your calling your brand. Most likely your selling it because its super hot because most likely FreshJive is out there with the same design and people are going to choose FreshJive over yours because it’s a name that they know and you gotta be better than FreshJive to get in and get that piece of the pie. If not better than different.
illRoots.com: You know I see so much of the “mainstream” clothing industry the LRG’s and Marc Ecko are mimicking the underground scene you know if you want to call it underground. Whats your opinion of that?
Pat: For sure, I would love to speak on that we have a new t-shirt this season called “Blood Sucking Biters”, referencing that you noticed what we noticed that the Marc Ecko’s and the Sean Johns are doing what we would have done season’s ago being that they see it at the trade shows then they have to copy that and seeing all this copying going on. Its not only these big hip-hop brands its also brand like these skate brands, like 10 Deep and there logo was the brass knuckles now I saw Circa come out and act like there logo is the brass knuckles. So and then 10 Deep and Crooks and Castles did the chain hoods and I’ve seen so much chain hoods that they’ve made as well. Basically they started doing these bright colors and now you can go and see other brands with all over hoodies with bright colors so the shits dead its wack.
illRoots.com: Yea like know you can probably get a Nautica Jeans with print on the back pockets and shit….Pat: Right and basically its underground people you guys and us over here that for the second we got that market but then the corporations get behind that an say “We can’t loose out on all that money, we gotta get on it”. Like Underground hip-hop it was flourishing. Then they made it unpopular to be underground, and so you have underground people saying that they don’t want to be locked into this box and labeled as underground so now they say no I don’t want to be underground, yea “fuck the backpack I don’t want to be a backpack rapper”
illRoots.com: What artist have you guy endorse in ad campaigns?
Pat: Um ad campaigns we’ve done Main Flow, Cunninglynguists, 7L & Esoteric, Black Pegasus and some others. We work with a lot of artists and a lot of people as well have been seen rocking our clothes like the Game was in Spin rocking our stuff, Big Boi rocked two different Liberty shirts, two nights in row at the NBA All-Star Weekend, We got a picture with him and Magic Johnson together and Magic Johnson is like 10 feet taller than Big Boi and he’s leaning over and Big Boi is rocking the liberty shirt so that was real dope. Rich Boy’s rocking the liberty shirt in one of his videos, funny enough Yung Joc is actually rocking one of our shirts in the Buy You A Drink video with as well as other cats.
illRoots.com: Definitely hip-hop has played a bigger role in fashion and vice versa these days.
Pat: Yea I haven’t thought about it like that, but one of the reasons for that is because a lot our brands like us and we are at all the hottest shops you know shops that look like spaceships there so cool. And a lot the crazy ballers want to be the first in the fashion industry to rock the hottest stuff. One of the things that’s great is that I get hit up by store after store and I turn down so many stores, if I show you the folder of stores that tried to buy my brand and no you can’t buy my brand is the reason being I’m keeping my brand at a higher premium. You know it’s the type of thing you can only find at these specialty shops, if a shop calls me up, I say naw I can’t mess with you because we keep our stuff at a premium. But there is smaller companies like ourselves that will sell to everybody and then theres brands that will sell only in specialty shops and its crazy because a lot the movers and shakers can get the next thing at these specialty shops and not at the little hood shops.
illRoots.com: Thanks big homie your welcome over hear anytime. Check out for our official beat contest with main flow and akomplice.For more Akomplice check out www.akomplice-clothing.com
