| Here at Urban Industry we're always on the look out for new, exciting clothing brands to bring to our store, there's no particular method ot how we find them and in which ones we stock, it just happens organically. Any Forty is a Great British find for us, all the pieces of the puzzle quickly fell into place. First the designs jump up and grab you by the throat, different from anything else out there and the owner has the right approach and outlook on running the brand, fully behind it, lives and breathes it. We thought we'd give some props to Alan Wardle, Owner of Any Forty. |
 |
Alan Wardle man behind Any Forty, introduce yourself.
All my mates call me Al, I'm a hairy yet baby faced 31 year old Geordie, born and bred in the coal mines until 8 years ago after graduating Newcastle college of Art & Design i packed a backpack full of clothes, a mini disc player full of uk hip hop and a 32 pack box of crayons and headed down south to design magazine's for a living. After a few detours i now reside in Bath, near Bristol, I won't call it home because Newcastle will always be my home!. During the day I'm in charge of all things design on a graphic design magazine called Computer Arts Projects, and when the sun sets I switch hats and continue to run and promote my own brand AnyForty! |
 |
What made you start AnyForty? How long back?
The main thing that made me decide to start the brand was I had a friend about 3 years ago who created a "I Love Manc" tee, and instead of the heart replacing love like the famous NY tee's. he used a cloud, anyway he started to sell a few round Manchester and this got me thinking if he could do that off one spur of the moment design, in a mens and women fit, with some proper planning, sensible investment and raiding my overflowing contact book I could potentially do some proper damage in UK tee sales, so I designed up a few brand identities, got feedback from peers and pals and decided on the logo you see today, So 17 months ago I printed the logo tee up in in 3 different colourways on 3 different colour tee's, grand total of 60 tee's and somehow managed to sell them all like hot cakes, worked the nights away doing freelance and then threw some more money in to do some reprints and 5 new colourways.
About a year in and lots of promotion, the brand started to get a name for it's self, i then got the chance and the funds to push the direction of the brand into graphic tee's with less obvious branding. I felt doing this after the brand had a little following was better than dropping graphic tee's first, there's too many random graphic tee's out there and i wanted people to buy into the brand first of all. So come March 2010, my little beast will be 2 years old! |
 |
Guess we have to ask, where does the name come from?
The name comes from the days kicking a ball and messing round doing kid stuff in the NE40 area of Newcastle, a village called Crawcrook. I'm super proud of my roots and the area I'm from and wanted a name to represent where i'm from without doing anything as obvious that it'd put people who weren't from the area off getting into my brand. So switching up NE40 into words got me Any Forty. Boom! |
 |
What are the brands main inspirations? There is definitely an AnyForty style coming along.
Inspiration is basically all aspects of streetart and the culture that surrounds it, ever since a kid i've been obsessed with hip hop culture, design and colour, design wise, i was never into the artists you had rammed into your sponge of a head at college, so the type of artists that get most designers wet (and this will shock most people in the industry I work in) but the Neville Brody's, the Eric Speakerman's honestly didn't do anything for me, but I was fascinated by the 123 Klans and further back guys like Eric Haze who was a graf head but designed the stuff i saw on all the things i bought, so logo's for Public Enemy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemy_%28band%29> , EPMD <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPMD> ,Tommy Boy Records and lots more, that was my dream job and that's what got me into design. It's only in my last few years on Projects that's opened my eyes to all the talented street art kids out there, there's a massive thriving scene and some really talented kids producing jaw dropping work from all over the world, I want to use AnyForty to serve as a platform to show these guys work on our streets. |
 |
AnyForty loves a collab, any more in the pipeline?
Plenty more collabo's in the pipeline, we'll be coming out with Versus series 2 for Spring time 2010 and that'll be a load more artist collabo's, some well known, some brand spanking new artists most people won't of heard of,won't be naming any names yet. We're hoping to follow up the success of our recent Mbuk collabo with another company but nothing concrete yet, but you can keep an eye on the blog at anyforty.wordpress.com <http://anyforty.wordpress.com> for sneak peaks and up to date news! |
 |
Ok, its mainly t-shirts at the moment, any plans for cut and sew?
Cut and sew is something that massively interests me, but i think that's at least a year or two away, who knows though. I'm a one man machine at the moment and it's a exciting, fun sideline to run, moving into cut and sew might need a bit more research and time and money than i have at the moment, but i'm a ambitious person so you never know, if a opportunity arrises that i get excited about i'll be in there like swimwear! Whatever happens we'll not leave the graphic tee's behind, that's the whole backbone of the brand, so wouldn't be something we'd dump to move into cut and sew, cut and sew would have to be a extension to the brand! |
 |
What have you learned from running your own brand, something you wish you'd known at the beginning?
Only being about 18 months into running my own brand, every days a learning process , but the one thing i wish i'd of done different when i first started was not give as many product away for free. Took a big hit on the wallet on freebies, but it all helped getting the brand out there and seen, if i didn't do that perhaps it might not be at the stage it is today and i'd still be stuck with that box of tee's under my bed, gathering dust! All in all i'm pretty happy with the way it's going, still in early stages but we're on the right track! Ohh no body mention book keeping, don't even go there... I'm a creative and my book keeping/mathematics skills are wack, if you're like me probably good having a partner or someone you trust to handle your books! I'm still a one man band so i have to do it all myself! |
 |
Any else? Shout outs?
Just like to shout out all my mates who've supported me and the brand, my good mate and slimmer look-a-like Joby Sessions who's done all the website and product photography, the brilliantly talented Matt Booth of Flashtemple fame who's built me the most jaw dropping website, Joshua and the White Duck fam who produce the product, Rik and the Ripe Digital boys who do all AnyForty's printing, Dan at Urban Industry for being the first store to believe in what i'm trying to do and last but far from least all the artists who've got involved out of sheer love for what i'm trying to build. So nuff respect to The SickSystems, Loworks, Sereo, McFaul Studio, JamFactory, Waste, iLK & Gorey, Niark 1 & Hydro 74. Couldn't of done it without your mad pen skills fellas. I salute you all! Also thanks to all my team who rep the brand day in and day out, love you all! |
 |
| |