FAKER SUPPLY: FAKE IT TIL YOU MAKE IT...
From bedroom shipping to international exposure, Faker Supply is anything but...
Max Carpenter & Harriet Rose John
‘Winging it’ is something we have all done at one point in our lives – for some, it is an everyday necessity, like those running the country or Uber drivers.
But it is amazing just how many stories you hear of people metaphorically closing their eyes and taking the plunge to be the catalyst of something brilliant.
“So what am I? What is the brand going to be?” says Max Carpenter, the brains behind urban/country/outdoor/stuff-he-likes brand Faker Supply (we will come on to this in a minute).
“At that point it’s me on my own, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I don’t have any art qualifications, I don’t know how to do screen printing. I don’t know how to embroider clothes. This isn’t real, I’m pretend, I’m fake.”
No, this isn’t Max having a personal crisis over a pint at The White Horse Inn in Bridge, Canterbury, it was purely his method of coming up with a name.
“The name is one of the most important things. If you don’t have a good name, you’re fu**ed, really,” he continues. “I liked the two letters F and A together. ‘Faker’, look it up in the dictionary and it means pretender – it fits me. I was pretending to know what I was doing and winging it.”
Originally from Deal, Max moved his life to Canterbury, having been scouted by the city’s high school to represent them at basketball, competing against the top schools in the UK and making it to international competitions as Canterbury Crusaders and playing in and around the national team.
But, after breaking his back in a horror injury during a match against Italy (it really does sound horrible), Max found himself at a crossroads – one made out of a passion for clothes and Office (the shoe shop).
“I was spending a lot of money on clothes at the time, like £50 and upwards on a T-shirt from Palace and brands like that, but I was still working at Office,” he explains. “I felt like I could make T-shirts like them. I started designing some with my own drawings – and was selling them to friends.”
Having devised the name and created the all-important Instagram account – which now has more than 6,000 followers – items started selling.
“There were loads going to America, but I wasn’t shipping much to the UK,” says Max.
There is now a US influence within the clothes, such as the star-spangled banner motifs, kindled from Max’s love of basketball, and American culture.
“When we started in 2016, big designs on the back of clothes was huge in America, but you couldn’t really find that much in the UK. But that’s what I liked, so that’s what I made.
“I drew this panda design on the back of my second T-shirt and everyone loved it. It blew up and went massive.
“It started with 25 T-shirts and my last £90 in my bank account.”
SHIPPING FORECAST
Faker Supply featured in the November 2019 edition of GQ magazine, having been spotted and asked to supply items for the products pages, showing just how far recognition of the brand had come in such a short space of time.
Having headed off to university to study business management, Max launched the Faker Supply website featuring a few caps and T-shirts to let the brand grow organically – but unfortunately someone didn’t tell the fertiliser company who gave these proverbial shoots of fashion success a dowsing.
“I tended to run the brand during the summer, go back to uni and sit on it for a few months,” explains Max. “Partly because it was my parents having to ship the products out of their house. I couldn’t have them in my uni house as I had no space – you can’t just have a stock room in a student house.
“At the beginning I was travelling home from uni at weekends to do all my shipping – around 15 to 20 orders a week. I was teaching myself Illustrator, Photoshop and how to take product pictures, making a website and running a business while studying.
“There were times when I have released new limited-edition pieces that people would buy on the dot, at the moment of release. Instantly. It was the exclusivity of it at the beginning.
“But really I had to stop doing that after a while because it was putting pressure on my mum and dad to get home from work and ship 25 products out!”
Max has since taken the business full-time and thankfully released his parents from captivity: “The brand wouldn’t exist without them doing that!”
And the growth in interest has seen the brand move from a firmly-rooted fanbase in the US over to Europe, with German, Dutch and Italian customers ordering his designs.
How does he come up with his designs? What is his process? Who is his muse?
Well, Jim from Friday Night Dinner, actually.
“I don’t want to fall into the trap of looking at what everyone else is doing and wearing,” explains Max. “I literally think about what I’m typing into Google right now – it could be Jim from Friday Night Dinner. I will just make what I want rather than going out and buying it.”
OK, so Jim wasn’t quite Max’s muse, but the T-shirt that features an illustration of the famous character, played by Mark Heap, does represent the dynamics behind the brand.
“The designs are very random, they’re based on my tastes at the time. What I like when I’m looking for something. I like to work with international designers and illustrators.
“The Pink Panther T-shirt, for example. I like the Pink Panther and was working with a designer who was making characters with really long bodies or two cartoons meshed together. We used it and we’re going to put it on skateboards and stuff, too.
“The same with the Bob Ross/Bob Boss shirt. It’s not just a photo, there’s an element of design. I don’t want it to look perfect, I want it to look designed.”
There is a very tongue-in-cheek humour about the pieces, for example the co-ordinates under the Faker Supply branding were designed to spark customer intrigue – only to reveal they are the numbered location of Disappointment Island off the New Zealand coast.
Having started the brand anonymously, Faker Supply has grown to take on a dedicated following, and that has become very important to Max.
“In the beginning, I didn’t want anyone to know I was doing it because I wanted to be that brand in Canterbury and Kent, that no one really knew who was behind it,” he says. “I wanted people to wear it because they liked it, not because they knew me. It was weird seeing people wear it around uni because I never expected anyone to buy any of my clothes.
“I appreciate everyone whoever buys it and wears it because it started as something for me and my friends. It still blows my mind every time someone makes an order.”
For more information on Faker Supply, visit fakersupply.com / Instagram: @fakersupply