“Hello! My name’s Lee Spence, I’m 19 years old and I am the founder of channel-3 – a new lifestyle clothing design company born in the city of Plymouth, UK. It’s just me, for now, but a lot of people have helped out and have shown support along the way, too many to mention, but to all those people, thank you. It takes teamwork to make the dreamwork.
After leaving PCAD where I studied Graphic Design, in Summer 07 I knew that University wasn’t the route I wanted to take. I planned to break into the industry and find a placement within a local Graphic Design company. But it didn’t really work out that way due to my lack of experience, on paper, and my fresh out of college status. Around Christmas 07 I came up with the idea to go it alone and develop my own creative business. I was already running a personal side project under the name of “channel-3” which at the time was just a website and a way of showcasing some local snowboarding, skateboarding and design talent. Side note, the name channel-3 came about in 2005 when I dislocated my knee playing Frisbee! I started playing around with some designs on my home computer and then came across a website design program. It’s basically because there were 3 of us that used to snowboard at the local Plymouth dry slope, so 3 different styles, 3 different people, 3 channels, as if you were switching styles through a TV or something. And from there 3 has just been the magic number so the name’s stuck. I found clothing to be a real good outlet for my designs and I was just getting into fashion at the time, plus I had already touched on t-shirt printing when I was back in college, so it all pretty much came together from there.”
“Channel 3 is inspired by a lot of things from a lot of different places. For actual personal inspiration and motivation my main source is music. I’m into a lot of inspirational music with meaningful lyrics that really connect with me, and just lifestyles of people who have done the whole from nothing to something thing, all that inspires me. I’m also into a lot of movies! As for the brand, and the designs, there are a lot of other brands out there that inspire me and I have a big list of favourites on my web browser for fashion blogs, cool hunting sites, streetwear sites, brand websites etc. I like to keep up to date with what’s going on in the industry. I think, when you can take different influences from a lot of different places and then combine them all together and put your own spin on it, that’s when it works.”
Lee tells us about his green plans…“For now I’m just using 100% cotton t-shirts but when I get to the stage where I can start manufacturing, fair trade and eco-friendly clothing materials is something I definitely want to get involved in. Beside the clothes, channel-3 uses recycled and recyclable materials everywhere possible. All papers are 100% recycled, the card too, and the flyers are printed on recycled pulp board using vegetable based inks. Recyclable poly-mailers are used for the packaging and sending out the shirts. It’s definitely something that I stick to and feel quite strongly about.”
On starting your own independent brand
"It’s always hard when you try breaking the norm because people don’t see how it could work but if you stick at it then it will be worth it.That’s what I keep telling myself anyway!".
“As for the future, I’m looking to steadily expand the range of clothing to the point where channel-3 is a full clothing line that is selling worldwide. I definitely don’t want to define what channel-3 is and close any doors so the future is pretty open right now. There are endless amounts of designs in the pipeline that are eager to blow and a lot of crazy ideas lined up (crazy good). There are loads of tradeshows that I want to attend, and the dream is to be able to travel with the channel-3 brand and introduce it to new people around the world. It’s something that I really believe in so I just want people to be able to connect with the project and like the clothes! So, stay tuned!”
No comments:
Post a Comment