Daymond John: Streets ahead of the rest

Ten years ago he was selling home-made hats in Queens, now the founder of the urban streetwear company Fubu is worth millions. Josh Sims finds out if success has changed Daymond John

On the surface, Daymond John is like many other young urban Americans: he dresses in sportswear, listens to hip-hop, goes clubbing. Apart from his watch. That, he says, is much the same watch he was wearing 10 years ago – only now it's studded with diamonds. His social circle has changed slightly, too: he still hangs with the old crowd, but now it includes Will (Smith) and Sean ("P Diddy" Combs). And his office is no longer his back room but on the 66th floor of the Empire State Building in his home town of New York. Daymond John is 30.

"Success hasn't changed me really," he says. "It has in as far as I finally know that I could accomplish something. And the money, or is it age, calms you down a little bit. But my lifestyle is essentially the same, only bigger. I used to go fishing off the rocks, now it's off a boat. I used to party in New York. Now I can party in California or Miami. We've really all been surprised at the success. At most we thought we'd have a shop we could run. We didn't think we'd get so big. But every day is a pleasure. It has to be. We came from pretty humble beginnings."

Daymond was a waiter at a lobster restaurant when, aged 21, he decided to start making and selling home-made knit hats around Queens. When he found himself selling $800 (£500) worth a day, John decided to mortgage his house and turn half of it into a factory to make T-shirts, baseball caps, rugby shirts and other elements of the urban sportswear that has come to dominate the fashion sensibility. He recruited his close friends Keith Perrin, Carl Brown and J Alexander Martin, who threw $5,000 (£3,200) from a car accident settlement into the pot. Together they came up with a graphic, memorable and revealing brand name – Fubu: For Us, By Us.

And 10 years later – a mere stitch in the fabric of brand building – they have a $400m (£250m) business, shops from Japan to Ireland and the makings of the first black global lifestyle brand on a comparable scale to those of Calvin, Donna and Tommy. Only there's one accolade none of these other designers are ever likely to win: in John's home borough of Queens, where he is the businessman with the movie-star credibility, 6 October has been proclaimed "Fubu Day".

The company founders have recently been immortalised in Baltimore's Great Blacks in Wax Museum. "That really hasn't sunk in," says John. "It's a great honour but, I mean, how can we be deserving to be standing there next to the likes of Malcolm X and Colin Powell? The wax will probably melt and they won't replace us. It has to be a dream, you know?"

John needs pinching. Last year an LA Times survey concluded that Fubu was the fastest growing fashion line in the world. It is worn by every leading black star, from Mary J Blige to Busta Rhymes, from sports-stars Magic Johnson to Lennox Lewis (Fubu is his sponsor). And it keeps on growing: a children's line; loungewear (including ghetto-fabulous silk pyjamas and robe, naturally); accessories, shoes and watches; bedding and bath items; babywear; that benchmark of fashion brand arrival, a fragrance; and even a market-savvy outsize clothing range, Fubu Ladies Plus, have all been recently added. Fubu now offers the sophistication of Lady Fubu and, for the men, sharp $1,500 (£1,000) suits, pulling perceptions of black designers' fashion talents out of the ghetto of the baggy trousers and big logos of streetwear and into a serious broad-appeal lifestyle proposition.

John's proven business skills – Fubu was the first brand to utilise MTV as a vehicle for product placement, persuading LL Cool J to wear Fubu in his videos (he would later even slip in a reference to "For Us By Us" in a rap for, ironically, a Gap television ad) – have recently seen Fubu become the first apparel company to be awarded a licence with the National Basketball Association. This is predicted to add up to $50m (£32m) to the company's annual revenues. A backing deal struck with the American arm of the giant Japanese corporation Samsung ensures continued growth, and Fubu has set up an international headquarters in Amsterdam in order to lead their planned drive into Europe. Some 22 flagship stores are set to open over the coming year as far afield as Tokyo, Capetown, Athens, New York and London. Then there are the internet, record and film projects. Ralph Lauren? Who's he?

It is possible to pin down the secrets of John's phenomenal success: one is the product's authenticity – it is driven and designed by people who live the life, and lifestyle, of those who buy their clothes, rather than by the brand strategies of boardroom big-wigs. Fubu was launched to fill a market gap that was largely ignored. Strange to think, in retrospect, that Fubu's initial efforts were met by manufacturers' disbelief that there was a demand for this newfangled thing called "streetwear".

"It was all about making clothes for us, just because we liked them," says John. "But there was a resistance because people didn't understand it, just as I might not understand Japanese manga now, for instance. If you're not from it, you don't get it, or see how huge or significant it is, or that it's an attitude more than a colour. People simply didn't believe that there was a market for urban clothes or that our generation had understandable spending habits. It wasn't until the goods started moving that financiers all took notice."

Fubu has also overcome no small degree of latent racism. Many misread Fubu's name as confrontational or gang-related. Some, especially the 20 banks John approached with $400,000 (£250,000) of orders, just saw four young black guys and locked the doors. Fubu has since won two awards from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and two Congressional Awards. "Banks, retailers, buyers must now be thinking 'Jeez, I wish I had been in on that from the beginning. I could have made so much money'," says John, with some justified glee.

A growing ethnic and cultural mixing and diversity also means the likes of Fubu, just like hip-hop before them, are genuinely crossing the colour divide. Black culture has always been, and is more than ever, the root of all cool, its look the uniform of international youth and middle youth, appropriated by Waspier brands to give both their product and image an edge. Indeed, while African-Americans have dominated sports and music in recent decades, Fubu's success represents a turning point in both black business and fashion standing, arguably giving it a cultural significance that the likes of Lauren would be hard pushed to match.

"It's no overstatement to say that Fubu really is one of the greatest success stories for a black American brand," says Keith Clinkscales, the marketing consultant and chairman of New York's Vanguarde Media, the leading publisher of African-American-oriented magazines. "Fubu is up there with Motown, for instance. It reflects a passion for the urban aesthetic. And as urban culture expands, and it is being embraced world-wide, from sports to Eminem, Fubu too will be embraced."

"Fubu really is larger than life. It's the American Dream, isn't it?" adds the black British designer Wale Adeyemi. "And although the US and European lifestyles may be different, clearly Fubu has the potential to be massive. It's well on the way to becoming a Ralph Lauren already. And I think part of their appeal is that they're all young. They can relate and haven't gone too commercial. They've kept it raw, which is amazing for a brand of that size. It's been inspirational for a lot of people and forced a reconsideration of black designers generally."

Indeed, John now sees Fubu less as a clothing, as an entertainment brand. Just as fellow urban clothing labels have successfully spun off into new categories – Russell Simmons' Phat Farm label extended to launch Def Jam Records, for instance, while Karl Kani plans to launch a furniture line – now Fubu will too, even though John's ambitions are somewhat grander. He has recently signed deals with the Artists Television Group (co-founded by ex-Disney and CAA bigwig Michael Ovitz and ex-Columbia Tristar president Eric Tannenbaum) to create "Team Fubu" productions, launching with 12 pilot shows, as well as a 50/50 joint-venture deal with Universal Records to create Fubu records, a platform for new R'n'B and hip-hop acts. Its first compilation, The Goodlife, is already out. Their first signing, 54th Platoon, will be heard on your radios shortly.

"I don't know how big we can get," says John. "It'll just get as big as it gets. We're already global and if it only stood still I'd be happy. Will we be as big as the Hilfigers? I'd love to be. I think we can do it." East Side or East End, expect Fubu to become a household name soon.