They say that pressure produces diamonds and this definitely shows through with Rae Mendoza and I'll Call You Tomorrow, his clothing brand and artist collective based out of Edmonton, AB that has been working hard to put their city on the map amongst the heavy hitters of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. We got the opportunity to chat with Rae about the growth of his collective, how it opened up new doors with his agency Tomorrow Works and tips he has for creatives looking to get noticed.
Read some excerpts from the conversation below!
Rae on Building Things His Way
Being housed and running everything from our home city of Edmonton, Alberta is really freeing for us. It lets us build our community how we want to do it and not as a reflection of something else.
We just love this challenge of building new infrastructure and new opportunities for people that resonate with our platform where they don't typically exist. It also just lets us be a bigger fish in a small pond.
Rae on Working With Friends
I was very fortunate from the start to just always be around just super talented people, whether it was photography, design, music, now tattooing and illustration. Once I started working with them though, I really quickly realized where now as a business owner working with my best friends, it's up to me to set those boundaries of like, "in this space we're professionals working together and I'm holding you accountable for deliverables, and we have a specific function we need to do, and then we can go back to being friends outside of that space."
In terms of finding the right people, a lot of it comes down to that gut feeling of knowing that we see things eye to eye, whether it's like good product, good design, taste levels, community, or you just knowing that this person's honestly just a good person.
Rae on Finding New Opportunities
Tomorrow Works as an agency has this living portfolio that is always constantly putting out new work in the form of I'll Call You Tomorrow. The bulk of our business just comes from people seeing our brand and then knowing that they can do something similar for their brand and their business. It's such a small circle these days of who is interconnected, putting your work out there and just showing that what you can do and how you deliver it at a very high level is the most important thing. Most of those things will kind of just sort themselves out and come to you. Then as a consultant and on the agency side, it comes down to you being ready for those looks as they come.
Rae on Passing The Torch
We started noticing it happening now as me and my team, we're getting a little bit older, where young kids will come up to our events and our parties and they'll be like, "I'm 22 or 21 and the first pop up or cool art party that I ever went to was one of your events and now I'm starting my own t-shirt line or I want to do certain things in the streetwear and arts community because of that event" and seeing that grow outside of us is some true 'pass the torch' legacy type shit. That's the stuff that keeps me up at night that I love.
Make sure to follow I'll Call You Tomorrow and Tomorrow Works on IG for news on all of their upcoming events, projects and clothing releases and keep it locked to Pier Five for more conversations with entrepreneurs coming soon.