Brand Profile: Crooked Jaw

Regardless of your stance on the issue, the lines between action sports and MMA continue to blur. An increasing number of brands are testing the water of the different markets’ pools and retailers are increasingly embracing new labels as they search for solutions to stagnant sales.

Born five years ago on Long Island, Crooked Jaw Fashions launched as a skate, surf, snow, and MMA focused streetwear brand. While the brand’s momentum was slow to get rolling, the last few months have kicked it into overdrive with orders from Zumiez and an appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank. We caught up with Co-founder Craig French to learn more about the brand and his take on the future of the blurring line between MMA and action sports.

Tell me about Crooked Jaw’s roots.
I started the company when I was 22. We started making a couple T-shirts and have been plugging away working two to three jobs to keep it afloat and I think we might have caught our break with this TV show and Zumiez all happening at once. It’s pretty exciting. The quick back-story is I broke my jaw playing lacrosse in college, had crazy surgery on my face, and that was a pretty big turning point in my life. After college I went to work for my dad who builds sunglass displays. I was doing sales so I was cold calling all sorts of brands and looking for them to buy displays from us. In the process, of hitting all the brands in the city, I decided I wanted to get involved as a brand. And my initials are CJF so that’s where the name comes from for Crooked Jaw Fashions. I took that to my partner Deniz Tanbasi who designed the logo.

Over the years as you’ve been slogging it out, what has been most important to getting it rolling?
It sounds cliché, but perseverance. All along we felt we had something and we were very cognizant that we built the brand to compete with the big boys, Hurley, Metal Mulisha, TapOut, and we knew you couldn’t do that over night.

We knew we couldn’t start a company out of the basement of our buddy’s house and be in Zumiez, PacSun, and Tilly’s the following year. We started with very little capital and we knew it would be many years. We still have a long ways to go, but I think perseverance is the most important thing that has kept us going.

I was working a full time job probably about two years ago and left the company to pursue Crooked Jaw full time and get a lot of shit done – overseas manufacturers, rebuild the Website, go to trade shows, finalize the new line. I spent about a year and a half doing this full time and then probably eight months ago I said screw it, and went to go work at Zumiez as an assistant manager making $10.50 an hour. Within a month or two I met the district manager, then the regional manager. I told him my story, and he passed me along to Ford Wright, who’s the VP of operations. He asked me for my line sheets, then a couple months later I got an email from a buyer who told me she got my information through Ford. It all happened pretty quickly after that.

Sounds like a good foothold. Tell me about Shark Tank.

Crooked Jaw Partners Craig French, Deniz Tanbasi and Michael Prahalis.

I got almost like a spam email from the Go Big Network, which sends out emails all the time about workshops, how to raise funds, and this particular email was “Do you want to pitch your business on national television?” I almost deleted it but I checked it out and Googled it and it seemed legit. I emailed the casting director a headshot and bio of the company and within an hour she said she loved the way it sounds. The results of Shark Tank were revealed the night our pitch aired.  Unfortunately, America now knows that we did not receive the investment dollars, but that the exposure and experience were priceless.

As far as distribution, are you in core stores as well?
Yeah, I used to focus on that a lot more. I had a lot of difficulty getting paid by some of them even though they’re selling our gear. These are some stores I have great relationships with. I was giving them gear on consignment and going back and it was gone and I couldn’t get a check out of them. I’m pretty laidback and borderline Buddhist. I let it go. The relationships and being in the stores and the exposure were actually more important to us than the paychecks at that point. 
But, we’re in Xtreme Surf and Sport, Bungers, Bricks Action Sports, Special Sauce, Reciprocal. We have a bit of a core shop following, but we shifted to online and the bigger guys.

As far as your roots, I saw you have a skate, snow and fighting team. Is that your background?
Yeah, we started the company as being a skate-streetwear inspired company from New York and just natural progression kind of roped us into MMA. Not intentionally at all, but our name, our look, we started getting phone calls from agents and fighters. It started on MySpace actually. My partner Deniz is huge into it, but I was wary about it at the very beginning, but I also knew it could be really beneficial. We kind of feel like we’re creating something a little bit new out there. There are definitely companies out there like Metal Mulisha and Osiris that are doing MMA along with other action sports, but we are one of the first to come along out of the gate blending it all together.

How do you see those two worlds interconnecting?
I see them interconnecting with us because of our branding and our image. If our graphics and style looked more like TapOut or Affliction, if it had more of that feel, I don’t know if you would be able to transcend the different sports as well as we have. I think our look and feel allow people to buy into it. Our line in the MMA world looks very skateboarder-ish and streetwear, and then vice versa on the skate side.

I’m hoping we’re blending the two worlds well, where both sides see the appeal of the other. Our customers are the ones who enjoy both.

You’re bound to get a lot of hate on the action sports side.
Believe me, I know. We did the Virtue Trade Show last September and it was a complete failure for us. We didn’t get any orders. There was a lot of hate from the ASR side knowing that it was an MMA inspired show. I’m well aware of the haters in the action-sports industry when it comes to MMA. It’s unfortunate to me, but it’s life.

Why do you think that is? What would you say to somebody in the hater camp?
It’s kind of the mentality that “you’re entering my world of clothing, trade shows, girls, entertainment – you’re entering my world but you’re not really like me so I don’t like you.” But in reality there are a lot of similarities. There are plenty of meat heads in MMA, don’t get me wrong, but there’s also plenty of guys, for example, Hawaii is a huge MMA hotbed, as well as Florida, and a lot of these guys are surfers too.

At the same time, though,  it seems like that niche is growing?
I haven’t seen that many companies out there that are hitting the exact niche we are. We’ll see if it winds up being successful. I don’t think we could really change course at this point. We’re too involved in the MMA community and experienced too much success to run from it because we want to get more into skate. People won’t really believe us, it won’t be authentic anymore. We’re doing something that’s a little bit uncomfortable to some people and that’s what makes it appealing to others.