Powatt founder and designer Kevin Watson brings the “pow effect” to Urban Outfitters, and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
“In your face, like, ‘pow,’ you know? It’s powerful. And I knew the positioning based on how it would be in the market would be powerful,” Watson tells BLACK ENTERPRISE of the meaning behind his brand enterprise.
Watson’s latest line of Powatt wearable art is unapologetically unconventional in its style, comfort, and quality. From bold pattern cotton shirts and backpacks to compelling baggy joggers, Powatt drips in Watson’s prideful roots.
Sold out every season, Powatt is a global sensation at the lifestyle retail giant and the next collection is on its way.
“I’m the only 100% Black-owned manufacturer and designer that’s on the shelf. And I’ve never discussed that, but these kids need to know now,” Watson says.
Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Watson is a masterful product of an area called Hyde Park, where he witnessed a thriving culture of creativity and entrepreneurship.
“My parents had me in that community of multiculturalism,” Watson says. “It’s a real creative community of people and artists.”
The humble beginnings of a hustler
Watson’s early childhood was immersed in the process of developing, organizing, and running businesses. From landscaping to selling baseball cards and clothes with spray paint, he had always been an entrepreneur whose fate didn’t meet the hands of Chicago’s violence.
“There’s a real world that’s open for creative thinkers in our urban communities,” Watson says.
Hip-hop culture was the catalyst for this creative mastermind until he came face to face with his superpower.
From the late ’90s to the mid-2000s, Watson’s journey led him to Razorfish, a New York-based media company. He served as a director and was instrumental in creating concepts for brands like HBO, Toyota, and Coca-Cola.
Later, he was recruited by Attik, an award-winning broadcast design agency, as the chief technology officer. He launched its San Francisco Design Army.
By this time, in his late 20s, he was faced with the big question: “What do you want to do?”
“So I’m learning all the best design tools, all the techniques of print design, all the techniques to visual communications,” Watson explains.
“I knew that I wanted to do something where you wanted to automate the delivery of a product that consumers can repetitively buy, but you want to be able to change the design so the delivery of that seems less automated.”
After working on award-winning campaigns, like Ed Hardy, he yearned to move back home and start empowering the culture with the seeds that he had sown.
“My dynamic started changing when I realized that I need to be on the ground floor in my city. So I literally moved to Chicago, set up a whole creative headquarters,” Watson says.
The rest is history.
A chance with Urban Outfitters
While working at a trade show, Urban Outfitters approached Watson’s booth with an interest in his jogger designs.
“A week later, I looked at all my orders that I had accumulated at the actual trade show, and I realized that, ‘OK, let me call back my companies that I had then outsourced my printing of my ink and materials to,’ because I had to basically buy the fabric, buy the materials, and basically pay for all that stuff,” Watson said.
However, a financial challenge presented itself.
“They tell me that, ‘OK, cool, well, you might have an order for 100 pieces, but your minimum quantity you can order would be literally 10,000 yards, 5,000 yards, or that’s the minimum. You have to buy a large roll at $25 to $35 a yard,'” Watson recalls. “Supremely expensive.”
“You mean to tell me I need to literally spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get my first rolls, even though I don’t have large quantities of these orders, but I have a lot of orders from three days of the trade show? I’m like, ‘How am I going to be able to do that?'”
But what if he only prioritized Urban Outfitters?
“Once they approved my pattern that I made with them, and the prints, they ordered the first five set of prints for their entire chain that I worked with them with, and they ordered the one silhouette jogger, one product, in multiple colorways,” Watson explains.
In three months, Watson made his own printing presses for his fabrics, rented his own factory space with equipped workers, and accomplished a mass assembly production line. The joggers were folded and ready to go.
“And the way it works is, the company sends you the UPC codes, the bar codes, the price tags. You literally ship it to them to their location net 30,” says Watson.
After four years, Urban Outfitters wanted more: a button-down shirt collection and backpacks to match the shirts and joggers.
“I have embraced the love of the passion of the journey, not the destination,” Watson says
“My skillset is a product of learning. My team that I have, we all learn together. And I think that’s what keeps me passionate. I’m not motivated by money. I’m motivated by learning, putting myself in unique positions to learn. I love learning. I love self-teaching myself cool things.”