Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

Marc Ecko. It started with a Jersey.

Rutgers has some brand names on it’s list of alumni.  Paul Robson, Milton Friedman, James “Tony S”  Gandolfini, Marty Baker and now Marc Ecko. In the early 1990s, Ecko dropped out of Rutgers , where he was studying pharmacology, to launch a clothing line with six T-shirt designs, employing his twin sister and a hometown friend. Fast-forward 15 years and Marc Ecko Enterprises includes not just a dozen lines of clothing and accessories but a magazine, a production company and a videogame that centers on a graffiti artist's fight against authorities who want to suppress freedom of expression.

Last year, global sales came to more than $1.5 billion. That's not bad for a Jersey boy who started out airbrushing designs onto shirts and jackets for his school friends, and who almost folded his company when, after five years, it was $6.5 million in debt.

In all his endeavors, he says, "the common thing that has always been in my formula for success is finding the right balance between what makes me creatively content and selfishly happy and a practical business that others will be able to appreciate. It's finding that balance so that you're not just designing for an elite or selling out, but doing something a little more populist and accessible that still makes you and all the people around you happy."

"To reflect on it now from the vantage point of   today, you realize that so many things happened in the '80's – the democratization of media culture, the boom of cable television, the narrative of street culture becoming accessible, the cities going into the suburbs, the war on drugs, Reaganomics, the first MTV megastars, surf wear and skate brands, the emergence of video gaming as the pastime of young males," Ecko says. "Hip-hop was the new rock and roll. We put down the basketball and picked up the remote control. There was a hyper-awareness among white people of the narrative of people of color."

All of these elements would come together in Ecko's clothing designs and his other businesses. "There's no one definitive voice for what's cool or what's next. It's a convergence of elements for you to perceive what's next or what's coming in line and what might tip."

. To help those less fortunate, he founded the Tikva Children's Home, an orphanage in Ukraine, as well as Sweat Equity Enterprises, a design and innovation laboratory that aims to redefine vocational education.

"I don't measure success in my life or at the end of the year by my sales figures," he continues. "The struggles in the early years – getting in debt, making business mistakes – gave me a great sense of groundedness," he says. "I'm doing what I can to try to get a little bit of insurgency going among my peers, get them to think about the larger issues."

At today’s BIF Summit, he’ll probably be wearing his trademark t-shirt. On the other hand, he may not.   Everything Ecko does is a surprise.

MB