Street Clothing for all! How O.H.A Apparel Came to be

During his first semester of college at the University of Nevada, Reno, Kene Udom was in the process of starting a sports apparel company with his friend Malachi. However, midway through the process, Udom was not seeing the vision he originally had with his then partner.

Udom tried to push away those thoughts and continue to work on the sports apparel brand. According to Udom, he and his friend had already planned most things out, and he didn’t know if sticking with the partnership or leaving the project was a better idea.

”I had the idea in November,” Udom said. “But I kind of brushed it off. I was like ‘I don’t know if that’s my vibe. I don’t know if that’s something I could pull off.’ I was kind of doubting myself.”’

But, come late December, his mind was already thinking about a new idea for a clothing brand, one revolving around street ware. After a bit of thinking it over, Udom decided to break away from the sports apparel business and put all of his energy into making street apparel.

”It kind of kept growing in me,” Udom said. “I wanted to do street wear the more that we talked about Forever Ballin, which is the athletic apparel brand. It kept festering in me that I really wanted to do this as the weeks, the days, the months went by.“

Udom came up with the name for his brand very quickly, that being O.H.A., which stands for “Overcome, Hustle, Achieve.” According to Udom, this is a motto that reflects his upbringing while growing up in both Southern California and Las Vegas, Nevada.

In comparison to naming his brand, Udom had a longer process when trying to design the logo. He went through 15 different sketches, all ranging from potential final candidates to those that were immediately thrown away.

During this time, Udom was also taking in opinions on the potential logos. According to Udom, he tried to make sure that the people giving him critique were fashion-literate, actually liked fashion and were going to give him actual feedback and not just give him praise.

”I think OHA is really unique,” Perez said. “The clothes are good quality and the person behind it is very passionate about it…Attempting to create your own brand takes a lot of work. Seeing what Kene has done in only a few months is really impressive.”

After finalizing his brand name and logo, Udom’s next hump was to go out and find a manufacturer that would help him realize his dream. This, like coming up with a name, was actually very easy for the freshman business owner, as he found a manufacturer overseas on Instagram that was willing to work with him.

“I got lucky,” Udom said. “Oftentimes, with these foreign country manufacturers, it’s easy to get scammed. So I did a lot of testing. I needed to see videos of it being done and being produced…I went through a whole strategic process to make sure I wasn’t getting scammed. But I also got lucky with a good manufacturer because he does great work.”

With all the primary details taken care of, Udom launched a website for O.H.A. and had their first drop in February 2024. In it, O.H.A. had heavyweight hoodies for pre-order in four different colors: petal pink, scarlet red, shadow gray and midnight black. To promote the drop, Udom had various different models, including Malachi, show off the hoodies in a photo shoot done by James Wolfgang Perez, a journalism student at UNR.

“I think the photo shoot went well,” Perez said. “This was my first time being the photographer in a photo shoot. I usually [prefer] outdoor photography, but it was cool trying something more traditional.”

In the company’s first drop, O.H.A. sold out of all of their pre-orders. According to Udom, this sell out netted him a few thousand dollars in profit once he paid off things such as an Instagram ad campaign and shipping/handling fees. However, Udom doesn’t plan on just taking in the profits for himself, but funneling everything back into the company to help it grow.

Udom plans on continuing the trend of dropping clothing around certain times of the year and holidays. For now, he believes he will be able to run the company by himself — taking on the responsibilities of social media, the website and overall product design of O.H.A. while studying to get a degree in biology.

However, Udom said that if the company were to grow to higher levels, he is open to the idea of expanding his team and facilities (which only consists of his dorm room at the time of writing) to keep the productivity of O.H.A. up with the demand for the apparel.