In 2010, George Heaton and his brother Mike took the sewing skills their grandmother taught them and launched their very own brand of streetwear graphic tees called REPRESENT. Fast forward to today and the proud British brand has expanded its offerings and reach enormously. In 2023, REPRESENT boasted sales of $100 million, and in 2024 it opened its first store in Los Angeles, everlasting shop at Harrods in London and opened their first UK flagship store in Manchester, their home city. Not bad for a brand that began as a university project.
Entrepreneur spoke with George Heaton to learn about the brand’s origins, the strategies he and his brother used to realize such monumental growth, and his advice for aspiring style entrepreneurs trying to bring their vision to life.
First piece
“It was originally a university project. For my design degree, I had to create something that would sell in the field of graphic design. At that time, as in 2010, there was a huge boom in American streetwear. We set up this website, went out to a local screen printing shop and had 25 T-shirts printed with the word REPRESENT on the front. I sold them to my friends and my friend’s family, and then their friends came and bought some, and then we printed 50, then 100, and so on. I wanted to be that British brand that was entirely made in the UK, to get out of the print T-crowd. shirts. Then I wanted to go much further and create my own jeans, jackets and waxworks. And so it happened, I really like the first four or five years of REPRESENT.”
Brand naming
“I used to be sitting in a college class and I wrote a list of 10 names on a piece of paper and one of them was REPRESENTATION. And my friend looked at me and said, ‘Just take it off and it looks good.’ And that is really what happened.”
Family passion
“My brother, who is my partner, was also involved in graphic design. My grandmother was a seamstress and she taught us how to sew, cut and sew. So as a teenager I sewed all my clothes and understood how clothes fit and fit and fabrics and how to arrange things. My first employee was a real fashion student who knew how to create and cut clothes, and then we used me and my brother as models. This is how we created our first tailored products. not just ready-made T-shirts and hoodies.”
Standing out in the crowd
“We introduced a cut of denim that was not available on the market and which became our daily bread for many years. It was quite narrow, stretchy and very flattering at the bottom. I made this with my grandma from a pair of jeans that were called “monkey jeans”, we just fitted them and sent them to a random factory that I didn’t know about that I didn’t have the money to use a known factory that would require an order of 5000 or something in this style. I received this sample back and thought, “These are the jeans I need and want. So let’s see if everyone else does it.” We put it online and it just worked. We were selling 100 pairs a day without any marketing.”
Source: REPRESENT
Going beyond jeans and T-shirts
“I didn’t want to become just a denim brand. I wanted to be a fashion brand. I wanted to be able to attack all categories and provide our customers with a full wardrobe – we simply made clothes for ourselves. So we moved into shoes, we moved into trousers, we moved into leather jackets, we moved into waxing and leather goods. And that’s why we are where we are. We are known as a brand that can chop and change into different categories without getting lost in it. Today, jeans are probably 4% of our business. In 2015, this represented 95% of our business. So if we had remained a denim brand, we probably wouldn’t have been able to do this. See this in the difficult times that denim has gone through.”
The importance of brick and mortar
“Having a store is extremely important for promotion, especially if you are a luxury brand and trying to sell at a high price. People want to be able to touch and feel, to know what the fabrics are like and the quality of the work, they need to understand how much work and effort went into it.”
Source: REPRESENT
Advice for future fashion entrepreneurs
“It’s really important to know what you’re strong at and what you’re weak at. Over the years I realized that my creativity was pushed to the side in order to deal with the business side. It was terrible for the company because that’s what I was good at. Once I was able to hire a CEO, I was able to focus on creativity, content and product, which I love. So I think finding the right people to work on your weaknesses and then relying on yourself for your strengths is extremely critical and that’s been the case for us in our industry.”