Wole Biyi
Who are you?
This is Wole Biyi I’m from Dallas, Texas, born in Nigeria, but I've been in Grand Prairie for 20 plus years now. So it's definitely the city we rep. I majored in accounting, but retiring at 60 was never it. I’ve always been an artist, drawing and painting. Now we've got the clothing brand, me and my nigga Ozzy, an elite duo trying to go crazy with it, trying to crash the scene just off quality street wear.
What was the inception of Fall Above?
I fuck with music heavy. I thought about the whole rap shit before, too, but at the end of the day, I don't necessarily want all the fame plus touring seems like too much of a hassle. Lupe and Kid Cudi were my two favorite artists. You got the super rap dude and then you got the weirder dude, but they both have skater type vibes. So like on different shit, like rocking different shit. To a degree that’s kind of always been me. I spent hella late nights in the studio, making beats, doing all types of shit. I would always have my sketchbooks drawing, doing whatever. I thought about putting my art on clothes. You can get messages through your clothes. I thought that was hard. So with that, we just started talking more, got the LLC going and then just worked on multiple different things. We've been growing a lot.
What is the message of fall above?
Ain't nothing perfect. Nobody has a perfect life. We hear it all the time. It's a roller coaster. You got your ups and downs, but the goal is to keep pushing, keep moving forward no matter what. So it's an oxymoron. Even when you fall, you still gotta be above, keep rising. Even when you fall, don't let life take you down. You’re gonna have your ups and downs nonstop. It's life. Ain't shit perfect.
How has 2020 set you up for 2021?
2020 was really a great branding year for us. We solidified the quality of everything we do and learned social media presence. People get their outfit off with the gear, send it to us, we repost, we tag them. All of that. And that helps drive awareness. It creates an environment where people buy the shit and feel like, “Damn, I got to get a clean fit off in y'all gear, because look at how y'all coming and look at how everybody else comes.” So it continues that thread. We're gaining new followers and new fans, people who fuck with it. So for 2021, we keep up the consistency. We did our first drop in 2017 and it was basically like over a year later for us to drop again. And then yet again, over a year before we really started ramping up, but then we just started dropping consistently and shirts are selling out.
What are three most important things you've learned on your road to being an entrepreneur?
It's cool to do it online, but you really have to get out to the people. Showing people that you really appreciate the support. Do a giveaway occasionally. You really have to get out there physically. That's huge. The other thing is you can't be discouraged. When Elon Musk was in Clubhouse, somebody asked something about motivation for us, how to stay motivated. And he said, “If you need a push to stay motivated, don't be entrepreneurial. If you need encouragement, don't do it.” And that's 100% real life. Don’t lose your sense of self doing shit for the people. Sometimes that would be an issue for me. The moment you're trying to change other people's appreciation, it loses all its finesse.
What was the transformation from that first drop into what it is now in 2021?
As a new clothing brand, just learning where you’re getting your materials from, the sourcing, using different people. The first one we used was somebody local, the first couple of jobs. We were just ordering the shirts ourselves. The quality wasn’t bad. It's cool. We learned that white shirts move harder. It's going to get dirty faster. From there we did a drop of a collection of three different shirts, one white, one pink, and one tan. The quality on those I wasn't the biggest fan of. We just bulk ordered like a couple of different shirt colors. Then we took a break to get the quality in order.
