How Organic Growth Effects Design
Building a brand with no money changes everything. With no ads or shortcuts, organic growth becomes more than a strategy; it starts shaping the design itself. This is what happens when you’re forced to build something that earns attention instead of buying it.
I started this business with an idea, a pencil and every free version of software you can imagine, from google docs to the first free-website blog.
I haven’t spent anything on ads, sponsorship or traffic. Yet.
It’s been 8 months since I launched the shop and over a year of solid build from websites to caps. I had to do it this way.
Organic cotton, emblematic of our organic growth journey
Socials are not the only strategy
Organic growth on social media, is like swimming upstream.
You are playing for free, in a pay to play environment.
Platforms that are designed to feed you sponsored content, are not going to prioritise unpaid content, that’s the simple version. Never mind algorithms.
It’s also unavoidable if you’re trying to sell something whether that is a t-shirt, a service or your personality. When you have a zero spend strategy, it’s a brutal combination. Unless you happen to have a large…personality.
It means slow growth, minimal distribution and many nights spent looking at every single little thing to make sure that I have done everything I can to move any kind of lever because that is all I can do.
Which also got me thinking…
What if all socials vanished tomorrow?
How would you promote your business?
No Instagram, no TikTok, no Reddit, imagine absolutely everything was gone or this list will get stupid.
What would you do to get the word out?
It’s made me look at what we offer in a different way.
On platforms made to entertain, how do I entertain? And how do I reach people offline?
I started looking for growth opportunity elsewhere, for story, for development, at strategy and landed on something interesting.
Recognise The Canis
This is fragment one. This is the start of what has been a seemingly endless development journey which has led me to characters, tokens and worlds. It’s unfolding and to be discovered. And the reason why I’ve been scribbling down notes at 1am again.
Cryptic I know
And for good reason. Find The Canis. This is an example of what zero spend can do to design, when you’re forced to design your way out of constraints. It’s conceptual and being slowly released but, on paper, almost brilliant.
Organic design is the outcome
I’m not going to lie, although it’s a constant constraint, zero spend is fundamental for another few months, whether that is fortunate, or unfortunate remains to be seen.
What it does to your design strategy, however, is worth experiencing.
What do you do when you can’t buy attention?
It’s an exercise I’d recommend to any founder. If you can handle it. I have started from zero. I have fully formed business architecture, a designer range in development, a sustainable, circular core system that has just morphed into The Canis, and it all started with a blog called The Pavement Special. I don’t mean to blow smoke up my ass, but no one else is so…
I’m painfully aware of how many businesses fail and how many challenges there are ahead. I just can’t seem to stop. Sometimes I think I should…but then I end up starting another design, or mapping out worlds or fretting over dye, or sitting down to write, or making tiktoks (shakes her fists at the sky), or working on strategy, or tweaking the website, or…
P.S Or that’s how you know this wasn’t written by AI. K’ Bye.
What it means to be early.
Being early in a space isn't a flex. It's a fact, and a bet. Here's what it means to build sustainable streetwear before the crowd arrives.
In a space that is arguably saturated, being early is a genuinely annoying problem to have. When I started this business, a single idea exploded into a full-blown world, system and vision.
One person. Infinite space.
Sustainable streetwear is born
There are people doing elements of what I'm building here, but not all of it together. And almost no one doing what I'm developing with the designer range. More on that soon.
Creating wearable art is the first expression of Mongrel Logic. I have never fit in boxes and I'm not about to start now. This is art for people like me, who listen to metal, hip-hop, Opera, acid jazz and R&B, who grew up on surf, skate and anarchy. Colour meets psychosis. But equally important is building something that endures, not just in the wardrobe, but in the world. Systems that are better than what exists today.
Being early is not an ego statement
It's just a fact. We have a long way to go before fashion stops adding to the problem. I'm trying to do things better. Build better, last longer, endure.
Fashion should be heirlooms
Not landfill. I'm the first of a very particular kind of thing, bringing circularity to everyday wear, wearable art and mythology to streetwear, and a designer range built to last a lifetime.
That’s Mongrel Logic
For those who see it before the rest.
Growing pains.
A raw reflection on six months of building Mongrel Logic™ - sustainable streetwear, organic growth, and endurance in obscurity.
Short. Punchy. Honest.
Close-up macro of a sewing needle with threads under tension.
I love building Mongrel Logic. We are officially into our 6th month as a start-up, on zero budget, that’s just a fact. Although, I look forward to it becoming a historical fact one day. Just saying, I still do the day job as well.
Time has lost all meaning.
Work never stops. There is no such thing as a day off. I’m not complaining, there are just many elements to what I am building. Organic business growth exclusively in our first year is just one of them, which is partly why time has lost all meaning.
Social media has taken over my life.
Days are spent agonising over content I have, knowing more needs to be done, having barely any time to do that, but needing to push on even if it’s not perfect. Even if I haven’t got everything I need. Which is an extremely frustrating problem to have, but essential at this point and an on-going process.
The reel story.
Sorry…The real story is I care about all this. I was born in Africa, I live in the UK. I’ve lived both sides of the solution and the problem. But this blog isn’t about waste. Nor about extremely good quality clothing for an exceptional price. (Shameless plug.)
I draw incredibly weird shit, mythical cosmic world builders, sun eaters, South African crime fighting superheroes, lots of eyeballs. It’s about using creativity to build a way forward. Said every artist ever.
I’m not afraid, to t…struggle in obscurity.
Persistence in the dark. Being unseen until the world is ready. The undertow, the liminality. A lone wolf. Gestating in the undercurrent of, ok, I’ll stop. World domination loading.
Endurance.
Not just a tag line. An essential ingredient to the first year, an ethos, a mindset, an inner vision and outward expression of what it means to live where design chaos and craft collide and what it means to think that survival deserves to be worn.