In 2011, Means Cameron started selling streetwear out of the trunk of a Honda Accord. Today, the visionary behind BlaCkOWned Outerwear has the biggest names in sports repping his brand. And he’s got his sights set on going global.
Tell us about the role social media has played in growing the brand.
We realized early on that we didn’t have a lot of money. So the power was going to be in getting the “it” people—the people with clout—to wear the brand or mention it in some way on Facebook, which was much more active than Instagram back then. But that was our strategy. We wanted people to talk about the brand on Facebook. And we knew that our tactics of never being closed and selling shirts out of a trunk were things people could get excited about and wanted to talk about on social media.
It wasn’t just the hunger in us to see that success. We knew these things were worth talking about. We knew early on, without having a big budget for marketing and getting the word out, social media was going to be vital to us reaching the masses and spreading the word about our brand.
Your brand is wildly popular in Cincinnati, but it seems like you’re branching out even farther beyond the city. Do you think the brand’s social media presence has played a role in that?
Absolutely. Our brand is built on community, and that community lives on social media. When you’re a part of a community, you advocate. So although our social media has been very important to our strategy, and it’s been hugely successful in terms of people learning about who we are and just getting the word out there, it’s been the people who advocate for our brand. People advocate for that space. So not only is it the reason we’ve been able to reach people like Joe Burrow and get on BET, [but] people come to social media to verify who you are. That’s your validity.
I think when people come to our page, they see those moments that we’ve had and they see the story, and that allows people to buy into what we do. It has played a major part in our success. And even 12 years later, we still don’t have a huge marketing budget. A lot of what we do is done through social media on our page, of course, but also figuring out how to utilize other people in the community who people trust to advocate for BlaCkOWned. I don’t know how we would have built this brand without social media.
Do you see yourselves as representatives of Cincinnati?
Yes. In fact, when I started the brand, it was intentional to be a voice for the urban core in Cincinnati—specifically those people who never thought ownership was an option for them because of systemic racism and everything else that goes on.
When we started the brand, we would often say that we’re going to work until BlaCkOWned is synonymous with Cincinnati. And we were saying that very early on. We had the idea that when people talk about Cincinnati, talk about the Cincinnati Bengals or the Cincinnati Reds, that BlaCkOWned will be mentioned in the same breath. And we felt like that was important because in our community, if you’re not popping at home, per se, then no one really believes in it.
So it was our thought that if we wanted to have national success and global success, we first had to have impact here in Cincinnati. From very early on, it was our thought that we wanted to set Cincinnati upside down with this brand and force all the hard stuff to happen in order for us to exist a way that we exist today. Because when we first started, it wasn’t easy. It was tough. And people weren’t open to the idea of something called BlaCkOWned. Twelve years later, it almost feels like, How do you have Cincinnati without BlaCkOWned?
Do you see the band expanding outside of Cincinnati?
Yeah. Our core audience is here in Ohio—specifically Cincinnati. But we’re starting to get eyes on us from other places, whether that be Dwayne Wade wearing the brand or Chris Paul wearing the brand, or something as dope as the BET collaboration. We’re starting to get visibility in other places. [That] comes with validity, which is important, because to scale and build a brand, you need hype.
After the UC release, we want to leverage having worked with the Cincinnati Bengals, FC Cincinnati, and now the University of Cincinnati to go out and land partnerships and collaborations outside of Cincinnati to say, This is what we’ve been able to do in our own city. Now it’s time to collaborate with like-minded people in other places to continue to build a brand.
Up until now, we’ve been very, very strong-willed on where we sell the brand. So right now, you can only find the brand through our channels, and then the channels of like nfl.com and other partners with our collaboration. But going into 2024, we’re going to open the doors up.
Now that we’re almost there in terms of being able to manufacture at a cheaper rate, we’re gonna open the doors and we’re gonna allow other stores to carry the brand, which is probably going to be the pathway to having that national notoriety and becoming not just a staple here in Cincinnati, but becoming a staple across the states for Black culture.
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