Portland Gear

Mason Gray

I chose Portland Gear as my “Hot Topic” because of the unique way it was started an marketed. Marcus Harvey a University of Oregon graduate started the company after he purchased the Instagram name and solely used Instagram when he first began marketing his business. Portland Gear has since made significant steps from being only online to now being a brick and mortar store.

I interviewed Harvey and asked how he gained exposure for his brand to which he replied, “Just started posting lots of good photos and staying consistent. I’d do lots of photo shoots to make sure everything was relevant and fresh.” I also asked Harvey how he spends a typical day managing the store and he stated “Wake up at 7:30 maybe go on a run or work out, but probably not. Emails computer work until 10. Breakfast then go and open the shop at 11 and work till 5. Usually have a Blazer game or event or something.” Marcus has also seen an enormous amount of change since starting the company and when I asked he stated that the biggest difference is “The amount of emails and people wanting and needing things has changed a lot. It used to be a couple a week but now it seems to be several a day and its tough just keeping up with all that.”

Marcus Harvey has done great work with Portland Gear but he hasn’t done it all alone. I interviewed Harveys right hand man in the company Eli Abromovitz to see what he does for the company and where he sees it going. Elis has been friends with Marcus since college and asked to come on board once Portland Gear became to big for just one person to run. I asked Abromovitz what his official position in the company is and how he helps run things and stated that “My official title is “operations “ but what it comes down to is I’m Marcus’s right hand man. Marcus ran the company essentially by himself for a year and I always told him that as son as it came to be more than a one-man operation I wanted to be his guy. So I cover everything that requires a Marcus decision. I do everything from managing the store to dealing with screen printers, deal with our fulfillment/ shipping, customer service, and other minor details that Marcus doesn’t need to worry about.” Abromovitz Gives two primary reasons for the success of the brand which are “ A) Marcus just knows the market. He saw that no one was fulfilling the need of Portland inspired apparel when everyone loves the city and he took advantage of it. He’s selling to his own demographic and people love it. B) The use of multiple social media channels and creating a story behind it. He uses Snapchat, Instsagram, Twitter and they are all wildly successful. People know the man behind the design and his team and people like that they can connect with that along with a dope product.” Eli is excited for the future of Portland Gear and sees it developing in new ways in the future. I asked Eli where he saw the brand going and he said, “ I see Portland gear growing and building sub brands from it. We’ve talked about potentially expanding to one other store but we don’t want it to get too commercial. We don’t want other wholesale accounts we want it so that you have to come down to the shop and have an experience when you buy Portland Gear. I also see us getting more into events. Throwing Portland-y get together that coincide with the brand and the community. We’re all about bringing people together. We also have several other side projects in the works that relate to Portland Gear but for that you’ll just have to wait and see.”

I am not the first person to report on the success of Portland Gear and to interview Marcus Harvey about his process. The Oregonians Anna Marum interviewed Harvey where she was able to gain some insight into where Portland Gear Began. In her article Marum writes Marcus Harvey unveiled his clothing company, Portland Gear, on Black Friday 2014. He hadn’t spent a dime on advertising. His clothes weren’t carried in any store. No one had seen his products or heard of his company. Yet, when he posted two photos of the apparel to Instagram with a link to his e-commerce site, his followers scrambled to get their hands on T-shirts branded with the Portland logo Harvey had designed. He did $5,000 in sales that first day.” This article does a great job showing how Marcus started the company from the ground up and how what he was doing resonates with the younger demographic he’s trying to reach. The article also gets at Marcuses idea of Brand consistency that he mentioned earlier stating that The thing with social that you were just explaining is what I live by, and it’s called relevant consistency. Basically if one photo is a really cool photo of Portland with one of my shirts, and one photo is super pixelated of a dude lying in his bed, that’s not consistent. I just keep everything clean. That’s branding.”

Portland Gears pricing ranges from ten-dollar Bottle openers to forty-eight dollar hooded sweatshirts where they have young people in their demographic wearing their gear in different environments around Portland. They use their page as a way of reflecting their brands image as ell as showing who they want to appeal to. Their page has links to their various social media accounts as well as a blog that they use to post about events. They also have their tweets featured on their home page to help expand their social media exposure.

Portland Gear is a young company that is fueled by the millennial use of social media and the idea that your experience while purchasing your clothes is one of the reasons you keep coming back.