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Course: Entrepreneurship > Unit 1
Lesson 3: Marc Ecko - Founder of Ecko UnlimitedMarc Ecko - Failures are lessons for future success
Marc Ecko, Founder of Ecko Unlimited, tells a story about how being an entrepreneur is always a learning opportunity, and how understanding your ? failure can lead to success. Created by Kauffman Foundation.
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- But isnt business a big risk
like he never added that(6 votes)- Yes, beginning any type of business will always involve risks, and could lead to sizable losses. What Marc Ecko is saying should not be taken to its extreme; just because one has a number of failures does not in any way mean that they will soon turn to successes. Of course, learning from our mistakes will lead to better ways of doing things, but do not always equal success. There may be a reason that a business or service continually loses income and/or customers - perhaps nobody wants what the business offers. One could either completely revise there business to offer something the public wants, or they could just keep on going the way they are going, thinking that all of these losses will someday lead to a success. That is not what Ecko means, in any way. He is trying to stress the importance of learning from the mistakes, and rethinking that business accordingly, not just waiting for the successes to show up will no previous effort to make them happen.(15 votes)
- Many of these entrepreneur interview videos give advice along the lines of “Find your passion and follow it.” But what if I honestly don’t know my passion? As I get older, my passions have changed, and some of the goals I had when I was younger are no longer realistic or even desirable. What advice would you give to someone who is starting over from scratch?(3 votes)
- sit down, make a new plan and goals. then work to achieve them. You may feel like starting over may be a waste of time but think about it this way, you are older smarter and wiser so your decision making will be better so you wouldnt have to start over(5 votes)
- Why exactly is it so much more expensive to make a jacket without seams vs. with seams?(2 votes)
- If you have a jacket with seams you have the same amount of fabric, but in smaller pieces (sewed together) than when it is in one piece. Like sewing a quilt, you often have small pieces left over from the production process, so the more of those you are able to use, the cheaper your production process is (less material wasted).(8 votes)
- Before I open a book, I attempt to ask questions expectations supported "what can I expect, what I can learn ...?"
It's no different when I run a video here. In this video, I was in trouble, I had no idea what to expect because I had not heard of any other artist, not the brand ...
Although he did not say that I have not learned, but much more was revealed to me a number of open questions. The four most important:
- If you are an artist or no chance?
- All prices are known to be?
- To what extent the expectations of others, your offline or online?
- Is there any chance egyémiségnek an introvert like me?(5 votes) - How does drawing bring a idea to a mind?(2 votes)
- Drawing gives you Hollistic view of your creation and allows you to tweak it to make the way you want to, moreover it helps you to create meaningful picture of your imagination. It won't be wrong to say that it helps you to connect one dot to another.
I believe drawing gives you more experiential learning.(2 votes)
- I am interested in your 'go-to' program for first designing the product?(2 votes)
- i would look at ideas of another companies and then do my own different idea of a car or truck(3 votes)
- marc ecko is a very big insporation to many young prople but my question to him is how did he mainly get his insporation for his ideas(2 votes)
- It seems like his inspiration came from his love for hip hop and hip hop culture. He said he wanted a way to be in that scene, but he couldn't rap and couldn't break dance. He liked graffiti and started dabbling in that, and realized a passion for it, which allowed him to begin his journey as a young entrepreneur. So I guess to answer your question, the inspiration from his ideas come from his passions.(2 votes)
- Amazing to me that retail value is x4 production. How to do business responsibly vs humanity? Does regulation helps or hinders in most cases?(2 votes)
- Failures are the best teacher in our life. But, we don't want to fail in life and some people also have fear of failure, What'll happen if we fail & Why we only want success not failure?(2 votes)
- Had no idea Mark ECKO started out has entrepreneur.(2 votes)
Video transcript
- My name is Marc Ecko. I created a clothing
company about 20 years ago called Ecko Unlimited and
have built many different disparate consumer product
companies off of that. If someone's throwing punches at you, you kind of figure it out. You take a couple of shots to the head. You stand back up. You try not to take them so much. You try to figure out ways
to evade them and to return. Right? I think the spirit of
realizing your side hustle, and your passion, and
pursuing your passion is less academic than we paint it. You just have to be prepared to know that the learning is
just never, ever gonna end. I remember a moment when I started to go from just T-shirts,
where it was just my art, screen printing, where
that production cycle was kind of very tactical. I knew it. But the minute I wanted to go
to cut and sew, or outerwear. Now you're dealing with seams. I remember sending my first drawing over to the manufacturer for
the first piece of outerwear. And I remember I based it
on a prototype of a jacket that I had bought for, let's say just for conversation sake, 50 bucks. I get back the quote
from the manufacturer, based on my drawing, and
the price is like $35, like the cost. I'm the wholesaler that's
gonna sell it to the retailer, so 35 times four is effectively what it's gonna cost at retail. So, what's that 140 bucks, right? So, I'm think to myself, I based
it on a jacket that was 50. What's going on? Why is it so expensive? He said, all the consumption. It was a learning moment. Consumption? Consumption, isn't that
something you do when you eat, what do you mean the consumption? Well, you're sleeves, the
way you designed the sleeves, you don't want a seam here. I'd drawn, effectively, a
jacket that had no seam here. And it was in my
naiveness of designing it, I just forgot to put the seam. So it turned out that
the way that they were gonna have to cut the
fabric, in the paper pattern, was gonna consume more of the yardage. So it made production more wasteful. Designing something
without fully comprehending the limitations on the production side, suddenly that became the rabbit
hole to learn production. If you got a dream, go
realize it, alright? And be prepared to have it hurt. And be prepared for the
dirty secret, which is, it's gonna be lots of little
failures that make success. How can you realize your
voice, your passion, and what can you glean from these lessons? And I tell you the gateway,
the pearl to true education is tolerance, and acceptance,
and the embrace of failing and knowing it's gonna be painful. What's there for you? What are you gonna make of it? What's your brand? Look in the mirror, why
don't you ask yourself? So you're not unique in
having those questions. You have to discover that path. It is a self motivated,
self directed journey. And if you don't know, figure it out, even if it's just 10
yards in front of you. And work to get to those 10 yards. Then figure out the next 10 yards. And then the next.