Meet junior Angela Jin, co-founder of the 1950 Collective

While most currently Boston College juniors are frantically applying to internships with companies worth thousands of dollars, Angela Jin, along with her best friend, University of Texas student Nishiki Maredia, is already the CEO, CFO, CMO, and several other titles of one.

It’s her own company, 1950 Collective.

This apparel startup features merchandise of every fangirl’s favorite artists, such as 5 Seconds of Summer and (of course) One Direction.

Ten percent of the company’s profits go to womens’ empowerment and mental health charities every month.

Angela, a CSOM student, founded 1950 Collective in January.

In just ten short months, the startup has acquired 39,000 Instagram followers and 16,400 Twitter followers, employed four interns and shipped to 36 countries.

Did I mention they’ve also raised over $100K in revenue?

The Tab chatted with Angela to hear the inspiration for 1950 Collective, her advice on starting a business, and her plans for the future of the company.

If you could sum up 1950 Collective in one sentence, what would it be?

“Two 1DAF best friends designing apparel.”

It’s in all of our social media bios. Obviously our company stands for more than that, but at the end of the day, it’s as simple as that. That’s why we started 1950, and I’m proud that while expanding, we stayed true to ourselves.

When did you start 1950 Collective, and what gave you the idea to start it?

In January 2015, 10 months ago. My best friend Nishiki I were going through severe mental health issues. We always come up with side projects to distract us.

Last summer, we tried to to meet One Direction through back ways and channels, like faking research projects and getting random connections. As you can tell, we’re very extreme, and love doing weird stuff. When we were going through our issues, we wanted a project to distract us, so we decided to start a T-shirt company.

Your Instagram has over 39,000 followers – how did you get Insta famous?

I would attribute it to our brand ambassador program. We used to do hashtags such as #likeforlike and #tagforlike on Instagram. Slowly, we would ask accounts to give us shoutouts. As we gained more followers, we could get bigger accounts to take us seriously.

We’ve grown to 2,400 ambassadors in a worldwide network, and we have a reach to over three million people through those ambassadors.

How can someone become a brand ambassador?

They can sign up here. By clicking and getting their own referral link, every time someone purchases through them they get a notification. Getting 5 sells wins them a free shirt. It’s a really simple process that allows anyone to be an ambassador regardless of how many followers they have.

Did you ever anticipate growing to your current scale?

We used to joke about it. We said “we’re gonna be a 100K company” literally the second day after we launched, but we were half-kidding. That type of growth was not at the forefront of our minds. When became a  $100,000 company, it was really surreal.

What aspect of 1950 Collective are you most proud of?

The overall branding. A lot of our competitors are figureheads; no one knows who runs the accounts or where they ship from. Our competitors have no personality.

We want everyone to know that this is Angela and Nishiki’s project. Our personal branding that carries a fangirl tone because we know how absurd we need to be so people can relate to us. It probably would hurt us to sound professional.

We include a personally hand-signed packing slip with every order that thanks customers and tells them why we started the company. It also makes the customer feel good for donating to womens’ empowerment organizations.

Can you tell me more about that, your “This Month’s Organization” feature?

We’ve always been really into volunteerism, so before we even started, we knew charity would be a huge part of our project. Each month, we choose a different organization with a really good reputation. A lot of them deal with fighting human trafficking and mental health issues.

What’s your team like – are there other BC students involved?

There are 4 interns total, our printer Jeff, and my co-founder Nishiki. One intern is Gabby from Florida, who does social media research to find anything we can make relevant merch for. Josh in New Hampshire ships out all of our stuff, and then we have two on-campus interns, Rose Anderson and Meredith Reilly.

What’s your favorite thing you sell on the website?

We just came out with a flannel collection. One of them says “GIRLS BITE BACK,” which is a famous feminist line. I also love our 1800-Hotline Bling collection; they’re parodies that say 1800-Harry Styles, etc.

What are some challenges you have faced since starting 1950 Collective?

People taking us seriously. At first, we spammed so many of our friends from high school and college, but everyone laughed, so we didn’t expect a huge amount of traction to come from our immediate circle. As it grew, people started to take notice and become very on-board, so I want to say, “okay, but where were you when we started?”

Also, we’re two minority college students running a pop culture brand startup that started as a One Direction clothing company.People didn’t think it would be lucrative because it wasn’t high tech.

At the end of the day we aren’t coding or doing something that changes society, but we are fulfilling a need in a niche market. We’ve done every role you can do in our company, like designer, CFO, CEO, co-founder, philanthropy relations, etc. A lot of what we’ve done speaks volumes, but it doesn’t get the acknowledgement we deserve.

What’s the single most important think you’ve learned since you started 1950?

Know that when your company gets too big, you need help and you need to outsource. It was a huge struggle when we started blowing up without interns. Know when you need to expand your team. Although that’s relinquishing some power, it’s of managing a company.

Also, the customer should be priority, but learn to stick up for yourself. Customers have tried to take advantage of us because they think we’re a huge corporation.

Describe the whole 1950 Collective experience in one word.

“Feminist.” This company has made us realize that the start-up environment is a man’s world. Women are encouraged to participate, but it’s different when you realize you’ve actually made a mark in it. Also, at the end of the day, this wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t who we were, had our beliefs, and did it the way we wanted to.

What is one piece of advice you would give someone who is trying to start their own business?

Make sure you’re very of aware of your brand identity, because it has to be consistent throughout your social media, website, etc. We’ve been good about that, which makes us unique.

Our website is sassy right down to our product descriptions and includes inside jokes within the fandom. It surprises the customer, because they don’t expect to find funny stuff within the website.

What are your goals for the future of 1950 Collective?

To continue to make personal relationships with customers. A lot of e-mails we get are from people needing help with school projects, or people asking for cute notes to help them feel better on bad days. We e-mail back and forth asking why people had bad days, and try to just be there for them. That’s what makes it rewarding.