When wide-eyed business owners walk down the corridor of the hit TV show Shark Tank, there is only one investor they will stand before who created a $6 billion enterprise that gave birth to a new wave of black entrepreneurs: Daymond John.
Russell Simmons has said that if there were no FUBU, there’d be no Phat Farm—and, while he’s at it, no Rocawear, Sean John or any other clothing line that the superstars of hip-hop’s golden era peddled as an extension of their music brands. John began selling his FUBU T-shirts to his rapper friends in the 1990s while he was waiting tables at Red Lobster. He leveraged that into a multibillion-dollar franchising opportunity that allowed him and his business partners to slap their logo on other entities, like women’s clothing, a suits collection, eyewear, perfumes, hats and shoes.
Image: http://daymondjohn.com
To read the original article: The Root Recognizes: Shark Tank’s Daymond John on Black Business and Entrepreneurship - The Root
