Black Intel

Leandrew Robinson

I arrive at the University of California at Berkeley to meet Leandrew Robinson. We had met before, but this time was a little different, I was a little nervous. Although this meeting was about business I was meeting with a guy who produces his own clothing line so I dressed as such: blue weathered jeans, a punisher t shirt, olive green army blazer, with multi-colored Creative Rec shoes to tie it all together. Robinson greeted me in the hallway of the science building. He was wearing loose navy blue pants, a gray sweater jacket over an aqua blue “Mama Africa” tee. The African continent was written in a silver metallic except for the word Mama that is outlined in the middle of the continent. As usual he seemed pretty comfortable but I was a nervous wreck holding my first interview for The Black Intel.

The Black Intel: “Hey man that’s a nice shirt.”

Leandrew Robinson: “Thanks, I created this shirt Spring 04.”

TBI: “What made you choose this outfit today?”

Robinson: “I thought the aqua blue would look well with the confetti sprinkles on the ice cream.”

Leandrew Robinson

He was preparing an ice cream social for a handful of teenagers that he co-tutors with students from Berkeley’s campus. He started working with these underprivileged teenagers while they were fifth graders, showing academic potential, now they are exceptional teenagers preparing for college. Robinson helps them complete college essays and prepare for the SAT exams in order to make them competitive for colleges across the country.

At first thought this doesn’t seem to be the person I am supposed to be interviewing for an urban clothing line, an urban clothing line called Ragamuffin. Since it’s debut in 2004, Ragamuffin Clothing Line has achieved some incredible feats from being a brand you can find on KarmaLoop, an online clothing distributor, to having an article written on the company by Essence Magazine. Ragamuffin’s story is a unique one that needs to be told to display how alike he is to people that might share his same background.

It would be normal to wonder if a company would be hiring in today’s environment, Robinson was no different. But instead of dwelling on the question, he took matters into his own hands and started his own business, Ragamuffin, a clothing line for men and women in his senior year in college.

TBI: “But why? So what you get turned down, go to the next company… what made you say nah, let me start my own business?”

Robinson:  ”I knew I had the talent to be my own boss so I became that at 23 years old.”

Born on the 1500 block of Ashby Avenue in South Berkeley, he attended Berkeley High School. Graduating high school with a 3.56 GPA, his top choices for college were University of California Santa Cruz, St. Mary’s and Berkeley. Janel, Robinson’s older sister attended Berkeley so naturally, it was hist first choice in colleges. Needless to mention her affiliation with a particular set of male friends from her dorm floor elevated Berkeley as his top choice. Janel stayed on the Afro floor along with Monroe Howard and Alphas Jamil O’Quinn and Morris Davis. Often times after finishing up his day at Berkeley High, he would go to his sister’s college just to hang out with Howard, O’Quinn and Davis in preparation for attending there himself in 2001.

Robinson: “It was during the end of my junior year. Uche Ude , a member of my fraternity and close friend and I had the entrepreneurial bug and had started scouting locations for possible barbershops. We never went through with the barbershop idea but during my senior year I was the chairman of the “Represent” campaign where Alpha Epsilon, Berkeley’s chapter of Alphas representing Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. designed shirts that represented the disproportionate number of Blacks on Berkeley’s campus compared to other ethnic groups. When we put those shirts out I recognized how people needed these shirts, how the shirts meant more to people then just a t-shirt. I said to myself okay you can mobilize people off a t-shirt and that was my segue-way into creating Ragamuffin.”

Ragamuffin began in Fall 2004 his senior year. In the spring of 2004 Uche and Robinson were tossing around ideas to start a business. Some of their ideas were to start a barbershop which they had even begun scouting potential facilities for. The “Represent Campaign” symbolized the small presence of African Americans on Berkeley’s campus is what really brought Leandrew’s dream to fruition. The tees were all black with the word REPRESENT on the front of the shirt. On the back they displayed the percentage of  Blacks that were on Berkeley’s campus which at that time was about 2%. The marketing campaign was very simplistic but he learned that people needed those shirts. The shirts meant more to his clients, he learned that he had the ability to mobilize people by designing a t-shirt that carried a message. Looking back at the “REPRESENT” campaign he connected the dots and out of the picture he saw Ragamuffin. The idea behind Ragamuffin wasn’t supposed to be just a T shirt company but a company presenting t-shirts carrying a message.

During the 2004 elections, his first design was inspired by the popular Vote or Die campaign by Citizen Change, a group brought together by Sean “Puffy” Combs. While the campaign created a response amongst the society Robinson wasn’t interested in the message it put across. He thought it was kind of harsh to offer citizens death for not voting so he came up with a message of “Why I Vote,” which featured a prominent picture of a Civil Rights protester being bit by a police dog while protesting peacefully. It was a shirt to get people excited about the coming election because he wasn’t interested in having Bush re-elected into office. The shirt did so well within the first week of production, the company sold 124 units. After the amazing first week results Robinson knew he was onto something and from that Ragamuffin
came to life.

TBI: “Since the creation of Ragamuffin, tell us what has given you your biggest break and what was your biggest obstacle.”

Robinson: “Our biggest break was when Essence Magazine did an article on our Obama shirts and from there our online sales picked up dramatically. The events leading up to our Essence Magazine article was the biggest obstacle I have encountered so far.”

TBI: “How could the Essence Festival be a part of the biggest obstacle and break for you?”

Robinson: “That was a weird time for me personally, it was 2008 and that’s the summer I was transitioning from Berkeley to Boston. I didn’t have a job lined up and I made a decision to really focus on Ragamuffin that year. It was a leap of faith and I really felt like God was telling my to go for it. So Essence was my test in a sense. We produced 900 shirts and I flew myself, my wife Kacy, a frat brother and a church friend to go out there as a sales team. We had “Obama”, “Mama Africa” and “Why I Vote” shirts and we were going to move all 900 shirts.”

It was day one for the sales crew and they noticed they were doing fairly well. They were doing so well that at about 11:30am Robinson had to go back to his hotel room to get more product because they were selling so many units. As he arrived back to his booth he found out that two of his sales people had been detained by the police. Shocked in amazement Robinson went to get information pertaining to his sales team. He was informed that he didn’t have a permit to sale in the state of Louisiana and because his team wasn’t from Louisiana the police couldn’t issue a ticket so his team would have to go to jail as a consequence. To add flames to the fire the Louisiana police, whose values consist of “putting the welfare of the nation, the State Police and others before your own,” were tossing his shirts around the booth. The police then asked Robinson why he didn’t have any McCain shirts since he had plenty of Obama shirts. The police decided to confiscate all the shirts he had in the booth and told him “he could kiss his merchandise good bye.” Although he still had product in his hotel room the police took a costly amount of merchandise. The Essence Festival, which was supposed to serve as a gateway for more exposure resulted in two of his sales people being placed behind bars and an estimated loss of $2,500 dollars. Suddenly a trip that he planned on making roughly $10,000 dollars turned into a nightmare dealing with politics of the nation.

Robinson found himself at his lowest point. Now in a different state with two people behind bars and product that had been confiscated, he did what any other young Black person would do, he found himself falling back on his faith asking God to provide a path way through his troubles. Fortunately his spirit was never broken, as he continued to sell his goods out of his hotel room. Robinson witnessed just how Blacks operated in the South, he was surprised at all the support he was receiving selling shirts just out of his hotel room. He said, “they couldn’t get enough of the Obama shirts.” Later he found out that it cost $600 dollars to bail his friends out of jail. After they finished with court the next day he and his wife walked into a restaurant with no visible signs of the battle he endured with the city officials of New Orleans. Wearing Ragamuffin’s Obama t shirt Robinson and his wife noticed a group of Black patrons that seemed to be buzzing about his shirt. A gentleman from that group walked to their table and asked about his shirt. He explained that his shirt was his design and was a part of his Ragamuffin clothing line. He went to the car to grab some shirts and ended up selling four to that group.

As he was selling his shirts he noticed one woman from the group wasn’t paying him much attention. In fact she was typing away on her cell phone. He ended up giving that woman a Mama Africa shirt and casually walked back to his table to finish his meal. After about ten minutes that same woman approached his table and introduced herself as Angela Burt-Murray, the editor in chief of Essence magazine. She explained  that she was impressed with his product and that she was busy emailing her writers about him and his clothing line because they planned on doing a piece about his company Ragamuffin Clothing. Three weeks later they finished the article about his company and he couldn’t have been any happier with the results. From then on he was receiving on average 300 hits per day on his site, about 10% percent were converted to actual sales which equated to about $800 – $1200 dollars a day. Needless to say the Essence Festival turned out to be a blessing in disguise that helped shine more light onto Ragamuffin Clothing.

TBI: “Who makes up the Ragamuffin team?”

Robinson: “It started with myself, my fraternity brother Uche Ude and my friend Vince Brown? They eventually went on to pursue different things and I was by myself for a while until the Summer 2008, when Lal-Bey Jones came on board as a business partner to get our operations in order. I also have my wife Kacy as a business partner who is super helpful as well. The last part of our team is a graphic design artist, Ras who is based out of Los Angeles.”

Currently his father, Jerome Robinson is in charge of shipping his current product line. His current production design is made up of 25 to 35 designs. This current year they have focused on creating exposure by attending different events across California. Events they have attended include the UCLA jazz festival and Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival. With a new hot designer located in LA, they are currently in production of their new line and are pushing to enter back into stores in order to promote their line.Revamping designs and pushing entrance into his own local market Robinson is also keeping himself busy producing a brochure for Ragamuffin. While customers can purchase their product at one store in Berkeley most of their business comes from online sales from their website and Karma Loop, which is one of the last standing online streetwear retailer.

TBI: “Wait wait wait your on KarmaLoop? I know what KarmaLoop is, how did you get on KarmaLoop?”

Robinson: “Well this was during the time I was in Boston with my wife Kacy as she completed her degree at Harvard. I was talking to this dude who was over after school programming for the Cambridge District. I was telling him about [Ragamuffin Clothing] and he explained how he went to school with the guy who created KarmaLoop. After receiving his contact information I reached out to him originally to get Ragamuffin on the website. When I first started to contact him I told him I would do anything, I kept emailing him and told him I would even pass out flyers, just put me in the game coach! He’s one of those people that after talking to him for fifteen minutes he said I want you to run our new website. He literally took me around to everyone at the KarmaLoop headquarters and introduced me as the person who will be heading up KarmaSwap, which is like Ebay but for clothes. It provides a platform for small boutiques to present their product to clients online without having to worry about maintenance that comes with creating their own e-commerce website.”

While working on promoting KarmaSwap, he is trying to figure out strategic initiatives to elevate KarmaSwap’s web presence. Robinson sees the Internet as a tool that can be used to create a bigger footprint for your company because the Internet literally links people around the world. KarmaSwap aims to give smaller boutiques a platform for their fans across the world to have access to their products. This business opportunity combined with him having Ragamuffin sold on Karma Loop and bringing on his new team members means he doesn’t plan on stopping with his success. Other than working with KarmaSwap, Robinson is already looking into the future with Ragamuffin. Not only is he working to create a bigger local presence, he is trying to create a bigger presence on KarmaLoop because he wants to be a featured line. Being a featured line on KarmaLoop means he will be displayed as a premier product on their line, he won’t need to do shipping for his line on KarmaLoop’s website because they will house his line in their warehouse. Another benefit to being a featured line is that it will be easier to find his line because now a customer would have to search for his clothing line instead of it being presented in one of the drop down lists on the home page. Establishing his web dominance in combination with his brochure production and including his graphic artist in his design process only time will tell how bright this star from South Berkeley will shine, and I don’t see his light going out anytime soon.

TBI: “Why the name Ragamuffin?”

Robinson: “We are trying to put something positive in the world, that’s going to change people’s minds. Ragamuffin when you think of that phrase you think of a dirty raggedy person and I feel that’s how America looks at Black people and I feel we will redefine ourselves.”

A line from Robinson’s favorite poem, I, Too, Sing America, by Langston Hughes describes what Robinson feels is the tale behind Ragamuffin.

“Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.”

Robinson: “The point is: there is racism in America. They send me to eat in the kitchen but eventually America is going to see how beautiful I am as a Black person. That’s essentially our story. With Ragamuffin I really try to highlight that beauty so people have no choice but to recognize how beautiful Black people are.”

Important Leandrew Robinson Links:

Ragamuffin Clothing

Karmaloop Store front