IT'S ALL CRINGE UNTIL IT WORKS

I’ll always make myself available to help my friends ideas, from letting my DJ/MC friends use the brand name to further their chances of playing or opening doors. I’ll design for my friends businesses whether they are inline with my business or not, I’ve designed for sports teams, from professionals like the Surrey 89ers for my friend Imtayaz or my friends darts jersey or my brothers inline hockey team. I’ve designed for my friends tyre company, the local pizza shop, charities, embroidery shops, bao bun suppliers, countless local artists, promoters, and record labels. The majority, if I can for free because either my name will help them or I just want to show that I have belief in the path they have chosen and they have a friend in a pursuit that is hard. I’m not saying these things for clout or virtue signalling, this is the only place I’ve mentioned doing free work, but just to grease the point that what you do doesn’t always reflect (plus its not a swipe on anyone who I have worked with above, they’re all legends and I eat well, run on good tyres etc etc). But i’ve been in positions where I have people close who could make a difference to Concrete Junglists and they have chosen not to, even when I’ve moved mountains for them. That feeling of being cast adrift because they either thought the idea was cringe or they didn’t believe in the idea themselves. I never want to cause anyone that type of rejection. It’s so important that if the people you know are starting out on a journey, even if you don’t see the point or the vision, to encourage, help and promote their endeavour. The thing with journeys is they twist and turn over the years and into the decades, you can never see the flower by looking at the seed, it’s the journey that makes you stronger and sharpens the vision, the point or the destination will change over time, but thats for the person taking bit the wheel and the responsibility, the friend is to support where possible. The gold is never at the end of the rainbow, the beauty is the rainbow itself. In these uncertain times we need to come together without judgment. It’s only cringe until it works, believe your friends vision even before they see it and definitely before you see it.  If you are that person getting dismayed by lack of support locally, I almost think it’s a universal truth I’m trying to u-turn here. Your people won’t support until they have seen it proven outside of the circle. I have people in America, Canada, Australia and France who have every tee I have produced since 2016, they collect them, some of them buying two at a time, they see the product from a different perspective, they look from afar and cut through all the nonsense and believe, these are the people who I get out of bed for. When I see the names I recognise on the shipping list its gives me a massive buzz, as it’s a fist bump from a local and these moments are rare.  Don’t be put off, businesses like ours are marathons and not sprints, in marathons you have to run far away until you turn around and run back home. You leave a mad man but you return a runner or whatever you said you were gonna be when you left. Good Luck - I genuinely believe in you.