Today we’d like to introduce you to Remington McFadden.
Remington, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Urban Gorillas also known in short as UG, started back in 2010 when I was in college at East Carolina University. My friend, Clayton, actually came up with the name. We would always play the hit game Call of Duty and run it as a team. One day we were killin’ it and he just blurted out “We’re running this like a bunch of Urban Gorillas!” I was in the School of Business at ECU and I’ve always been a bit of an entrepreneur since I was little with my owning my own mowing and car wash business. But when I heard “Urban Gorillas” I knew immediately that it should be the name of a brand! So I started researching for a graphic designer that specialized in brand logos. I knew the first major thing a brand needs is a recognizable logo. So we paid a designer out of California $100 to do the logo; he said it would take five days but he sent it back in about 4 hours with a note about how much he loved the idea and vision we had for the brand. Urban Gorillas, the vision, is to spread love and peace. And the unique way we do this is by bringing together creative freelancers from all around the world and building a community of reliable trustworthy supporters. Urban Gorillas foundation is built on the principles you would likely see in a loving family. In fact, all of our creatives and anyone within our network should know by now that we call our community the “UG Family.”
After we got the logo drawn up, we went to a local print shop and had about 40 shirts printed up. In order to get the name out around town and the college scene we started to throw “UG Parties” where we would wear and sell the UG Shirts. I do want to note that a lot of our come-up days were also before the days of Instagram. However, we did join twitter in 2011. UG originally started out with five founders – Clayton, AJ, Edwin, Sean, and Myself. Collectively between us we knew a good number of friends and connections throughout ECU so we were able to bring together a decent number of people every time. We also aligned and networked with local musicians both in the area and back in my hometown of Fayetteville, NC. Over the years, we partnered with a local club/venue called Still Life that was more of an urban style club that fit our image as well. We would help market and promote pool parties or tailgate games around Greenville, NC at local apartment complexes. As IG came around we began to showcase the things we would do around the local community – whether it was just going out as a team, taking pictures, making music videos, or going out to support other creatives and networking events; we would always roll with a camera or cameraman so we could showcase our content and our family bond across social media.
Fast-forwarding a couple of years, I moved the base of operations to Raleigh, NC. This allowed for me to build more around the city atmosphere but still have a good local presence and UG vibe. In Raleigh, we were really looking to tap into the underground music scene of things and local businesses. Tapping into the music scene was pretty easy since we already had a couple of our own artist/musicians involved in the scene. From here, we basically just took it step by step and repeated the process that worked so well in Greenville — and that was to show genuine love and support for other local creatives. When entering a new city, we like to start of by watching the overall scene and locating the key players making moves in the underground scene. I like to look for key individuals that are really driving towards results and have a “bigger picture” in mind. Connecting and working with these types of creatives and individuals allows for a lot of good ideas to come forth that we can then convert into smaller realistic local goals.
I’ve grown to understand that you must work with people that are either as hungry as you or hungrier for success in order to make real traction in the entrepreneur world. So after a couple of years cultivating and growing both an online and in the community fan base, we started to target bigger organization and festivals/events that we could align with or market/promote via Urban Gorillas social media outlets and/or being on the scene in person to work the event. With the power of social media and our on-boarded Creatives, we’re able to participate in various events and networking opportunities even outside of Atlanta…even outside of the U.S….which is by far the craziest feeling to me. I still have a hard time digesting the fact that UG has essentially gone global without us (Owners) really leaving the eastern part of the U.S. A big part of us developing a global fan base came with the ability to tag pictures on Instagram and Twitter.
The “Photography Boom” of everyone looking for outlets and places to showcase their work drove a lot of online traffic our way. With this also came the boom of the use of hashtags. One of the other remarkable and unbelievable things to me is the fact that we have not one but two trending hashtags, #urbangorillas and #wearegorillas, that thousands of creatives and supporters are using to highlight their work and be included in our online community of threads. It’s wild to see an idea transcribe through social media. But as we’ve grown we’ve been able to land a couple of amazing opportunities; like this past year working with J.Cole’s Dreamvillefest and being a Dreamvillefest Ambassador is an indescribable feeling when you’re getting to work with and promote for not only one of the biggest Artist in the game but also someone I’ve looked up to over the years, especially since we’re from the same hometown of Fayetteville, NC. A good number of our creatives also regularly photograph artist and musicians that come to venues in their own local cities or towns.
So it’s truly amazing to get to see our vision reach and touch other people that are chasing their dreams like us! Because at the end of the day, that’s all we’re doing too! Chasing this vision of building the most supportive community, not just online, but in-person; To change how freelancers get jobs and recognized via social media. We’re about ten years in the making but we have so much further to go! Atlanta is the new chapter! We moved the base of operations around March to the East Atlanta area and will be looking to make our presence felt in 2020 on the local underground scene! Looking forward to new adventures in the bigger city and more opportunities with everything that the city truly has to offer! So be on the lookout for some events from us soon! As always, Much Love. – Remington
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has definitely not been a smooth road…by far. But that’s expected when we’re doing something different and new. When you’re paving a new lane, it’s to be expected that you’re going to hit some rough patches along the way. Right from the beginning, our first big obstacle was learning how to print t-shirts ourselves. We ran into the issue of the ink not staying on or peeling off after a couple of washes. I believe we printed our own shirts for maybe about two years before outsourcing our entire shop to spreadshirt.com. This allowed us to cut down on the shirt cost and also have the ability to have shirts purchased whenever, and shipped wherever in the world! And since we were wanting to have shirts on backs in various cities and markets, this became the solution for our current infrastructure. Keep in mind throughout most of the time of the building of UG, my business partner Sean and I both work full-time jobs as well. So everyday is a long day haha.
Some of the more recent obstacles we’ve had to overcome and work through would be IG algorithms and maintaining a social media presence in the “Freelance/Photography” online communities. A lot of the creative communities and outlets online have a far bigger fan base and reach than we do…but the wildest thing and most humbling is that when you look through the “tags” of who these freelance creators are tagging…we make the cut. There’s only a handful on collective online communities that we see tagged on a repeated basis, and to be among the top elite and respected online communities, is just an indescribable feeling. Truly blessed and thankful for all of our creatives and supports for making that happen! I believe the obstacle we face now is establishing a presence in Atlanta. Spring 2020 will be our first real push to start breaking into the creative freelance and music scene. Luckily, over the years, we’ve on-boarded a good number of creatives that are in the Atlanta area and plan to start having some events and meet-ups as 2020 unfolds.
Please tell us about Urban Gorillas.
Urban Gorillas is a Creative Agency with the mission of bringing freelance entrepreneurs together forming a reliable community and network of ready-to-hire individuals. We use our website and social media outlets to market and promote our network of Creatives. We also promote and sponsor local events ranging from art shows to underground music/bands. I think we’re most proud of our community and the people it encompasses. We’ve connected and been connected with so many different people around the world; it’s truly amazing to see where we’re tagged in pictures and events. Watching like-minded creatives come together and support each other has definitely made us proud of all of our UG Family. I think the family aspect in itself is what sets us apart from the competition. Most brands are mechanical and systematic feel. When it comes to our brand, we want you to feel like family and be a part of a bigger vision and community built around love.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I think my favorite childhood memory would be when I lived in Colorado and we had a blizzard one winter. It was the most snow I’d ever seen! 13ft over the course of 2 days! But I just remember having just some of the most epic snowball fights and building tunnels in the snow. I think the highlight of it all was my dad taking us out to my school’s empty parking lot and doing doughnuts in his old Jeep.