How My Internship Inspired Me To Create My Own Brand

My name is Jack Janson and I’m an Advertising major with a concentration in Art Direction. I’m currently interning at one of my favorite clothing brands, Cream by Eighty, here in Philadelphia. This experience has not only taught me so many skills from product photography and promotional videography to clothing design and manufacturing, but it has also given me the confidence to start my own brand, fulfilling one of my biggest dreams.

I’d known about the clothing brand Cream by Eighty for a while through buying their clothes at skate shops and watching their videos online long before I thought of reaching out to them to see if they needed an intern. To me, they were always the coolest streetwear brand in Philadelphia and beyond that I had no idea who was running it or making the designs but I assumed that it was a tight group who gate kept their business and only worked with professional designers and skaters.

When I decided to take my chances and hit them up I was surprised to see how open they were to the idea of me getting involved with the brand. I’ve now been interning for them for about six months and the knowledge and inspiration I’ve gained from this experience has given me the confidence to start my own brand.

For a long time before this experience I dreamed of launching a brand that would bring artists together and give them a shared symbol of their unity. I had come up with a name, a logo, as well as numerous concepts for how it would operate and the services or products that would fund it. However, none of these concepts came into fruition until I began interning at Cream by Eighty.

Through this internship, I was able to become close with the owners and learn from their experiences starting brands of their own. I was able to see the various processes that allowed their business to continue growing after being around for over eight years. Most of all I learned how their brand went beyond the products that they sold and into building a world around a lifestyle with which people can identify.

After only about a month of working at Cream, I was able to re-conceptualize and release my own brand, Sunseek, to the public and it has already been very successful. Through my brand I interview artists around Philadelphia and post the interviews on Instagram and now YouTube. The reception that I have already gotten for the work that I am doing has amazed me. I have already seen the ways in which this brand has brought people together and it makes me so happy to see that what I’m doing is good for building and promoting a community (Sunseek is not a competitor to Cream by Eighty and currently remains a non-profit organization).

I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunities that this company has given to me and I’m excited to see what the future holds for both Sunseek and Cream by Eighty. My advice, which I now share to people all of the time, is to just reach out no matter what. You might think that there’s no chance that you could get that internship or job but it’s always worth giving it a shot.