Interview with Matt Young of Deth Kult Clothing

Today on the blog I am sharing another written interview with Matt Young of Deth Kult Clothing.

deth kult clothing

Check it out!

What gave you the idea to start Deth Kult? Share your story.

Well, DETH KULT kind of started about 4 years ago at some point in 2010. I was working full-time as a graphic designer for a clothing/merchandise company and it began as a personal project that I tinkered with in my spare time. Something that I could call ‘mine’. It was initially started a website and blog with the idea that I could showcase some of my personal work anonymously and completely separate from the day job. It wasn’t until the Summer of 2013 when I heard that the head designer of Johnny Cupcakes, Chris Delorenzo, was starting an online course on the Skillshare.com website based on ‘T-shirt brand design’.

As I was already doing this with my job, and I was a fan of his work, I figured it would be fun to sign up and see what new things/tips I could learn. As I mentioned, I already had the name ‘DETH KULT’ in use and I just applied it for use within the project for this online course. Before this point I hadn’t actually thought of DK as something that could go on tshirts and certainly not something that could become a ‘brand’.

I really got stuck in to this course and started developing lots of ideas. However, once I had had that ‘eureka’ moment of putting the 2 things together I never really looked back. I developed the logo and some new illustrations with the intention of uploading them to this course but I quickly realised that this was something that, potentially, could actually work.

I decided to put my money where my mouth was and started the brand from my bedroom with a few hundred quid and a website. The small run of tshirts printed at this time were based on some of the designs I had developed for this course. And armed with 2 tshirt designs, 2 beanies and a load of stickers, DK officially launched December 1st 2013. And since then it has been a continued platform for my artwork. In the end I never submitted any work to the online course, and still haven’t completed it!

What are your favourite sales channels for selling online, do you sell outside of just your shop website?

We only use our online store. I didn’t want to over complicate things by having multiple channels. We have had a retail stall at several UK music festivals this Summer, including Takedown Festival, FestiVile just to name a couple, and certainly plan on doing more events like that in 2015.

How have you used social media to help grow your brand?

Social media has been vital for the growth of DETH KULT. Without Instagram and Twitter, especially, I don’t think we would have managed to get this far. Essentially, I have used social media to launch, promote and tell people about the brand. DK can now can afford to do advertising in other mediums because I think that’s important too, but I definitely couldn’t have got to this point without using these mediums.

What are you doing to attract new buyers to your store and what’s working for you?

Apart from now having a bit of an advertising budget for print,etc, we are keeping things pretty much the same for the time being. DK will be 1 year old in December and I never thought things would get this far, so it’s probably best not to rock the boat and just keep doing what we are doing. Ultimately, what seems to work is that we have strong designs (something that a lot of brands don’t have), a brand that customers have really supported and a huge amount of luck. The loyalty and support from the customers is truly humbling and it has helped things grow exponentially over this last year. It’s that positive, word-of-mouth reaction that’s really ‘worked’ for DETH KULT. A kult is nothing without it’s members.

What are your future plans for 2014 and beyond?

Immediate plans are for the new Winter 2014 Collection. The first handful of designs will be online at the start of November, so I have been focused on promoting that release along with our ‘End Of Summer’ clearance sale. Getting this new line of clothing out is hopefully going to push DK up to another level. There will be a second release of clothing for the Winter Collection, which will hopefully be out before Christmas. But if not, that’ll definitely come out in January 2015. Apart from that, and plans for stalls at the 2015 Summer Festivals, I’m just taking things one day at a time. Who knows what’ll happen? Global domination? Bankruptcy? All I know is that I will be having fun!

Matt Young – Owner/Designer

DETH KULT:

www.dethkult.co

www.facebook.com/dethkult

www.twitter.com/deth_kult

www.instagram.com/dethkult

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