Trial by fire - Jasper Mutimer, Founder of Mutimer
An Open Source Archive interview with Mutimer.
Founded in Naarm, Australia, Jasper Mutimer has built one of the biggest clothing brands to emerge from Melbourne in recent years. With no prior knowledge of the fashion industry, his journey to amassing a 100k+ following is truly inspiring, yet it's not just about the numbers. Mutimer has resonated with thousands of people worldwide, and that’s no accident. From cowboy themes to jazz clubs, the brand continues to make waves with its storytelling through short films and a unique approach to contemporary fashion, bridging the gap between formal menswear and streetwear. Hope you enjoy the read.
Jasper’s background:
My name is Jasper, I’m 24 and I'm from Melbourne. My background in clothes started when I was around 12. I was really into shoes at the time and that naturally progressed into clothes. I was obsessed with reading up about different brands like Palace and my interest continued to grow from there. When I finished high school, I studied Commerce at University which I really hated. And that was what made me start the clothing brand. I wanted something creative to do at University because, a bit like Massimo (Founder of Observe), originally I was going to study architecture but got turned off by learning more about the realities of what work would be like. So I thought if I'm going to do a really rigid degree in finance, I wanted something creative on the side and I'd (sort of) tried to start a clothing brand when I was 16, but I was 16—it was shit. I took that as me testing the waters before I really went into it.
Brand story:
My first year out of school was 2019 and I spent a lot of that year conceptualising the brand—things like what it would look like, my influences and what the name should be. I struggled with the name for a long time because everything just seemed to sound cringe trying to name my own thing. “Mutimer” was a nice blank slate to work off and something that I could mold the brand out of rather than shaping the brand based on the name. Late 2019 to early 2020 is when it was founded. The brand has now been molded into a representation of “refined straight wear”. I've wanted it to be something that you can wear to a nice restaurant on a date and still feel cool and not look out of place, but then also to go to a grunge artist concert with your mates and look the part. It exists in the intersection of formal menswear and streetwear–Mutimer bridges the gap between the two.
Struggles in the early days of the brand:
Starting the brand is probably one of the hardest things I've done. I didn't go to school for fashion and had no prior experience in the industry. I’d reach out to a supplier to have something made, and they’d require a tech pack and I had no idea what that was so I had to Google it and find out—it was a lot of trial by fire. I remember I spent weeks making a plaid pattern that I was really happy with and I was gonna put it on a jacket so I contacted a supplier to have it made and they told me they could find a pattern similar to mine which really confused me. At the time I thought I could send them an illustrator file for the pattern and they’d be able to make 30 of them. Little did I know, for a custom pattern, the minimum order was 10,000 yards of fabric. I was 20 years old at the time working a part-time job so money was also a challenge. It meant I had to do all the marketing and photography myself. I went full-time into the brand in 2022 and I’d say that’s when I started to feel much more in the swing of things and had a good understanding of the industry. Going full-time allowed me to dedicate a lot more hours even just to a tech pack for example. Rather than spending a couple hours on it, maybe I could spend 10 to really get it how I wanted or to go through three samples to get it exactly right and I can do that in a month rather than six.
Growing the brand:
When I first started the brand, I would come home from uni/my part-time job and put on a movie and I’d look for brands that were similar to Mutimer and go through their following list to find people to follow and message. I’d comment on those people’s posts and tell them to check out my brand one by one and I’d do that for about 2-3 hours a day. I couldn’t do that now so it baffles me that I put in that work. The progression from there was me hitting up archive pages and paying them some money to feature my products on their page. 2022 is when I really started to see the brand take off. We only had nine to ten thousand followers at the start of the year which I knew wasn't gonna be enough to sustain full-time. I made a rule to myself that I had to make a Tiktok every day, which I really didn't want to do, but it was cheap and it was free. I just knew it was one of the only ways to grow the brand. It forced me to learn how to make short form content and what the algorithm likes. If you throw enough shit at the wall, something will stick so I eventually had a video get a lot of likes with a hoodie, and then after that had a lace shirt, that got a lot of traction.
Creative process:
Because the brand was supposed to be a creative hobby on the side, I also wanted to develop new skills so I’d spend time doing all the collection videos and photography myself. Obviously, they weren't anywhere near as good as they are now but it was a creative exercise for me. I was mainly finding clips and chopping them up to create the vibe of what I wanted for the videos. Now I’ve got more of a structured take on how/when I create the videos/campaigns but how I find my ideas isn’t very well defined. For example if I want to make a flight jacket bomber with a lot of zips on it, I’d work backwards from there. I’d think about what type of character would wear that (I'm a bit of a movie guy) and Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines might be a good example for that scene. He might be riding a motorbike in the middle of the night and I’d continue to expand on the idea. That might be the creative process for a collection and another example is the recent Jazz Club release—I recently visited Japan with my girlfriend and we went to a few jazz bars which really piqued my interest. I worked off the idea of moody lighting and picturing what people in that scene might be wearing and the characters/personalities that you’d likely see in that scene. I’d use these ideas to then expand on the garments and feel of the collection. It’s basically all an amalgamation of my experiences. I might even be in the shower one day and a great idea would pop in my head.
Biggest challenges:
One of the biggest challenges I've faced is marketing. It’s become easier now but when you have 80,000 followers, getting one follower is much easier than when you have five hundred or a thousand. People are more likely to follow a brand when they see the social proof of a bunch of other people following them. At the start, getting one follower is hard and then you tap on your analytics and you'd see that 20 people unfollowed and that would be devastating. It’s hard to find the right marketing options when you first start out, especially when you don’t have much money to spend. You might decide to send some clothes to an influencer for free but they might not even post and there’s no guarantee that their followers would resonate with the brand. It’s much easier now, but that was a big challenge for a long time. At the moment, managing growth is a challenge we’re facing. Things like forecasting stock and how much we should order to have enough for our customers but not too much that it means we have to hold onto unsold stock for a long time. There are other questions such as what’s next in store for the brand, should we hire more people, should we open up a permanent store, what might it look like to be a boss of someone, etc. It’s a challenge because there’s no playbook to follow.
How to market tastefully the brand:
I've talked to Massimo about exactly that and I’ve now found a balance in posting the things I want to post but I've also had to put my ego aside. At the end of the day if you want to sell a product and grow your following, people need to know what you’re selling and exactly what it looks like. They want a flat lay, they want model shots, they want detail shots and they want to know when you're selling it. They want to know the mood of the campaign and the target audience and then they need to be hit over the head with it. I've had to realise that whilst I know everything about the brand, other people don't. And they need to be reminded, so that means posting a bunch of stories about the product releasing and though it feels overkill to me, it might not be to the consumer. It would be amazing if I could post like a big brand such as ACNE and have an esoteric model shot that doesn't even show clothes and still sell millions of dollars of products a year but we aren’t ACNE. ACNE were big before Instagram and they're big without Instagram which is a huge difference for our brand.
Question for the next brand:
In a time where it feels like there's a new brand popping up every day, what makes you pursue your brand and how do you feel like it's different from the others?
To conclude, here’s a little summary of our thoughts and feelings:
Jasper Mutimer's approach to the fashion industry is what some might call unconventional. While many branding and marketing agencies emphasise the importance of honing in on a brand identity and creating a story that adheres to a narrow niche, Mutimer has thrived as an international brand without strictly following these guidelines. Why did Jasper take a different path? For one, Jasper expressed his lack of finances when founding the brand and working with branding/marketing agencies can be quite expensive. More importantly, it was simply how Jasper wanted to do things. Mutimer is/was a “creative hobby”—an expression of the things that Jasper is passionate about, ideas and expressions that give him energy and that’s exactly what Jasper pursued. Take NOTHING away from Jasper’s hard work and dedication to get him to where he is today. Perhaps his work ethic is more and more inspired by his passion for what he does.
Where you can find Mutimer: Website | Instagram
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