Humble beginnings...

#71 brand - From an apartment in the village to world-wide conglomerate success…#71 brand had humble beginnings. Sparked by protesting students in Union Square, New York City, and a nation waking from an unfulfilled hazy dream, in late Spring 1971.“I was living in Greenwich Village at the time and things were getting heavy”, recalls current CEO and founding member, Joe Morrelli, in an interview with Time Magazine in 2004.“The artisans and poets were leaving the village in droves, and it seemed like the dream was over. America was in a state of unrest. Unemployment was on the increase, heroin was rife on the streets, and the war in Vietnam was troubling the minds of the nation”.“I was a no good novelist and poet, scraping my rent together with money made from writing articles for college magazines and tending bars and waiting tables for the city boys in the cafes and restaurants on 14th” laughs Morrelli. “Yeah, they sure were tough times”.How those times changed though. A chance meeting with Lee ‘Peachy’ McGeachie whose father ran what was then a small print business off 153rd, (eventually becoming the infamous Blue Collar Press Printing Company Inc., another US success story in its own right), helped one of the most fascinating stories in American business history take its course.“I had just started bar-tending in this classy joint just off 14th” recalls Morrelli “When one night Lee walks in, looking a little worse for wear. You could tell he wasn’t a regular, just by the way he dressed. Man he looked way out of place in that joint!”.“I think he was supposed to be meeting a girl there, but she never showed, which was probably just as well. I don’t think she would have been too impressed with Peachy that night. There would have been no second date, that’s for sure!” jokes Morrelli.“Anyway, we hit it off pretty much straight away I guess, and one thing led to another and we got talking about the fiasco of Lam Son, the kids down at Union and how we felt so helpless about the whole goddamned thing. I would say we had a lot of common ground in those days. Still do as a matter of fact! At the end of my shift, Lee gave me his number. He said his father was looking for a guy to help him out in the office and he thought that maybe I could use the extra bucks. I wasn’t interested but kept the number all the same.” “The next morning I went on my usual rounds in and out of the student senates at City and Queens and then down to Union Square, where those kids were making one helluva noise. It was during the Fullbright Hearings, and they were going crazy”.“I really sympathised with them and the cause. It was a complete mess” said Morrelli. “I was feeling pretty bad as I was somewhat restrained in my writing for the college press, as I couldn’t be seen to sympathise with the students, inciting even more cause for revolt. Some pieces I had written early in ‘71 had caused a bit of a stir in the dorms and my employers had called me in on more than one occasion and told me to tone it down. It seemed somewhat hypocritical I guess and I felt very, very uncomfortable with it. I wanted to do something to help”.“Anyways, later that day I headed back to the village to write my daily and when I got back to the apartment I found my room mate (artist Philly Carew) in the bathroom, dying her clothes this crazy bright orange. Boy, did Philly like orange. There wasn’t a day go by when she wasn’t dying something in orange!”.“Sometimes she used to paint these protest and anti-war slogans on the fronts of her dresses or shirts, you know like “Stop The War”, “Ban The Bomb”, that kind of thing”.“”And then suddenly it hit me. It all came together right there in the bathroom of that little apartment in the village. The students, the t-shirt, the message, and old man McGeachies print firm. I suppose it was one of those Eureka moments you hear about, but it never occurred to me at the time”.“So I immediately called Peachy and asked him to run me up 50 shirts with ‘Get Out Now!’ on the front, and he sent them over to me that very same evening. He was amazing. Nothing is ever too much trouble for Peachy”.“I used to take these shirts down to Union Square and round the dorms with slogans printed on with whatever the flavour of the month may have been. Whatever they wanted really. It wasn’t my intention to use it as a money making scheme, just enough to cover my costs and a few bucks to help out with the rent. In fact I usually gave most of them away. It brought me closer to the kids, made me pretty popular with them, gave me more time with them, so I could get a good story”.But it wasn’t all smooth running. Morrelli’s employers at Queens and City colleges soon realised that he was supplying their students with anti-establishment material, and they were having none of it.“Well, it wasn’t so much as an ultimatum. I didn’t get that much choice really. I think they felt that they had given me enough chances before, and now I was supplying the kids with protest material. I think their minds were probably made up already, and I couldn’t really blame them”.The matter went to a tribunal and it was decided that the colleges could no longer work with Morrelli, and he was released from his duties with immediate effect.“It was a relief to be honest” recalls Joe. “I suppose it kinda made my mind up for me. You know I never felt comfortable with my articles being screened and restricted in that way, never. But when you are trying to scratch a living, you know sometimes you have to do things that you don’t wanna do. The money was good and the work was regular, so I did it. Writing is what I did”.As it turned out, it was also in Morrelli’s best interest too, for he was now in a position to supply the students without any repercussions or restraints.“The college kids saw me as some kinda hero I guess, but it wasn’t like that really. They saw me as one of them and it probably looked to them like I got fired for rallying the cause”.“I continued to write for a while, mainly for the student magazines, which I loved working for, but of course there was no money in it.”Within 3 short years, however, #71 brand had some of Americas top stars endorsing their products. So what happened? Morrelli continues the story.“I had made some good connections from my days in the village and in some of the classier bars on 14th street. Lees father also had some good connections through the print business by then, so things came together pretty quickly as I recall”.“The first thing I noticed was a gap in the market for branded uniforms, mainly for factory boys. You know I used to go and collect my orders for shirts down at the Blue Collar Press and whilst I was waiting for them to load my order, I would notice the guys working the machines, and think how smart a branded shirt would be for them, you know give them a sense of pride and identity. Not to mention a much more professional outlook from Blue Collar’s perspective”.“So, after selling into local factories and warehouse units, I approached the delivery guys, the truck drivers for grocery stores, gas stations, tobacco companies, drugstores. Then the staff of the stores themselves, and one thing leads to another in business, you know how it goes”.Less than 12 months after that first order of protest shirts for the kids on Union Square, Joe was hitting the numbers in a big way with local businesses. But not even Morrelli himself could have dreamed of what was to come next.“I suppose you could say the big break came through when one day I bumped into Larry Fratelli down town. Before he hit the big time, Larry used to be in real estate and a regular in one of the bars I worked in on 14th, and he was a real straight guy. He was just starting to make it big as a promoter and agent, and I told him I wasn’t doing so bad myself. Well we went for a few drinks together and we got talking about this new range of sportswear I’d designed, but wasn’t having much luck with. He said he had just taken on the interests of several major sports stars in town, and said that maybe he could do something for me and suggested I sent him over the designs to look at”.“Next day I did just that and Larry called me to say that he had shown them to some of his clients and they had gone crazy for them! He sounded real excited! I went over to Larry’s place in the evening and we smashed out a deal there and then, over a bowl of pasta and a few beers, just like that. I think we both knew it was gonna be big. Within the next 3 months we had all the big names in NYC endorsing our sports wear, and within 6 months, most of the major players on the East Coast covered too”.