In an interview with Complex, Skater Jimmy Gorecki of Standard Issue Tees and JSP talks of his start and how he's built partnerships in fashion throughout the years.
Gorecki was first asked about his origins in business, to which he said, “My first job was being a paperboy when I was 11 or 12 years old, because you could get a route really young. I somehow hustled my mom to help me take on another route, so she’d throw a bag in her car and drop me at this apartment complex, then I’d jump on my bike to the next. The shitty part of the gig is collecting money—you realize how selfish adults are and how they don’t want to pay bills. So you’re spending more time chasing down grown-ass people to get a few bucks. [Laughs.] A friend of ours owned an Italian restaurant, and they started me off as a dishwasher on Friday and Saturday nights, so I’d make good money but missed all the fun shit in middle and high school. Then I started bussing tables, and later anything from dollar stores to gas stations. But when I think about it, those early jobs showed me that the harder you hustled, the more you made, whether it was tips or just taking on more work.”
When Gorecki was asked about how he built partnerships, he said, “Partnerships in business are more than just financial relationships; they’re about where you want to go and how far you take an idea. I love working with people and for people. Having worked for other people’s brands, it was about me being able to express ideas through products that I felt good about and could relate to. Obviously, the money to create and maintain a business is always important, and if you can do that independently and fund your ideas, I tip my hat to you. I also tip my hat to people that build something like a true partnership, like a marriage, because you have to trust and connect with people: the production people, the people filling orders—everyone has to be on the same page, working for the same end result. I’m paraphrasing Kanye, but it’s how he said that he has a plan, he has ideas, but you need the right infrastructure, and for him, Adidas provided that, and you can see how far he’s gone with a multibillion-dollar machine behind him. I’m not a numbers guy, so there’s a lot of give and take with my partner, where he gives me creative freedom but we find the middle ground between creative passion and the reality of sustaining the business.”
