MICHAEL KUSHNER’S PORTFOLIO
02 Stefan’s Head
Jul 2018 — Jul 2023
Stefan's Head from Lauragorun on Vimeo.
A text message retail shop — Stefan’s Head was labeled “a drug dealer for clothes” by Dazed Magazine in 2015.
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Trey Sisson and I started Stefan’s Head with the simple insight: mystery sparks curiosity. Our company consisted of two best friends from middle school and an overly ambitious intern. We worked for free out of generous offices like UsTwo and Neo in NYC. We spent all day coming up with “drops” and then building a story around it, and then in the evenings we would pack and ship orders, stuffing boxes in various USPS mailboxes until they were full.
We started by printing 100 T-shirts and selling them by way of a text link. It sold out within hours. We went from 100 people on the list to 10,000 in a year, collaborating with artists like Wu Tang Clan and Futura to billion dollar companies like Urban Outfitters and Samsung. Stefan’s Head got funding from a major fashion brand and we ran it for 3 incredible years, learning a lot about starting a company from scratch. Stefan’s Head was the catalyst to many stories, lots of highs and lows, and lifelong connections.
*It should be stated that as of January 2015, brands hadn’t yet exploited SMS as a marketing channel, therefore there were no off-the-shelf mass SMS services. We spent half of our time building and hacking our way to a backend CRM from scratch, working through network limitations to allow us to use a 10 digit phone number. Today, SMS marketing is so commonplace that services like Shopify, Klaviyo and Mailchimp have it baked in.
Trey Sisson and I started Stefan’s Head with the simple insight: mystery sparks curiosity. Our company consisted of two best friends from middle school and an overly ambitious intern. We worked for free out of generous offices like UsTwo and Neo in NYC. We spent all day coming up with “drops” and then building a story around it, and then in the evenings we would pack and ship orders, stuffing boxes in various USPS mailboxes until they were full.
We started by printing 100 T-shirts and selling them by way of a text link. It sold out within hours. We went from 100 people on the list to 10,000 in a year, collaborating with artists like Wu Tang Clan and Futura to billion dollar companies like Urban Outfitters and Samsung. Stefan’s Head got funding from a major fashion brand and we ran it for 3 incredible years, learning a lot about starting a company from scratch. Stefan’s Head was the catalyst to many stories, lots of highs and lows, and lifelong connections.
*It should be stated that as of January 2015, brands hadn’t yet exploited SMS as a marketing channel, therefore there were no off-the-shelf mass SMS services. We spent half of our time building and hacking our way to a backend CRM from scratch, working through network limitations to allow us to use a 10 digit phone number. Today, SMS marketing is so commonplace that services like Shopify, Klaviyo and Mailchimp have it baked in.