We sat down with Kirill Bichutsky, an unlikely lovable character, and we just wanted to know how a Russian Jewish immigrant that grew up in New Jersey has transformed his life into an orgy of dark humor, gorgeous women and a cult following that spans the whole globe. He is the founder and owner of a clothing brand, Assholes Live Forever, that he started in his NYC apartment in 2017. He recently just sold that same company for 8 figures and so we felt it was time to get the scoop!
So you started by being a photographer, then a party organizer and now you sell t-shirts. Connect the dots for me on how all these reinventions of your brand happened?
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I got bored going to parties and having no purpose, so I decided to borrow a camera from a comedy club that I worked at and bring it out to parties. I would document everything I saw and would upload it to my website before social media was even a thing. I mean, Facebook existed, but other than that. Nothing. My photos took in the local New York City nightlife scene and I slowly got more and more attention from outside nearby cities who wanted me to document their scene and give them exposure. You see, my site at the time was doing like 100,000 page views a day. This is 2009. Once Instagram and Twitter became a mainstream tool, my brand really exploded and I started traveling around America just throwing wild parties and documenting them. I think I was like 35 years old and contemplating where my life was headed because I had a great job, but what was the shelf life on it? How much longer could I kill my body for money. I remember hearing that a few DJs were making a killing on merch. Just selling like $10,000 worth of merch a month. I knew I could do that, too. That’s a lot of money. I had no idea that it would grow to be anything like what it is today. If we did $10,000 in sales in one day, we’d be bankrupt tomorrow.
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Was it difficult to stand out with so many influencers attempting to have their own clothing brand? It’s the posh thing to do right?
I was never threatened by anyone around me. I actually was inspired. My voice on social media has always been particularly distinct and with the success of being in Netflix’s “American Meme” and having over one million Instagram followers, it felt like I could definitely do this. So we through our hat in the ring and I became an influencer. I never sold one thing on Instagram before starting the brand. It was terrifying honestly.
We understand that you’re selling the company. What’s that process like?
Legally I can’t tell you much. Until I have a check in hand, I’m not saying shit. Let’s just say a lot of lawyers, accountants and people trying to get a piece of the pie and it’s quite nerve wracking to deal with what is essentially a full cavity search of your life. They vet you. HARD. I’m not the most lovable human, so you can imagine how many hoops we had to jump through to make this deal go down.
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This is clearly one of the happier moments in your career? What was the most difficult or darkest moment in your brand history?
Yeah this is all pretty surreal. Oooof. Losing my Instagram. I was riding high from being the most loved person in a documentary that everyone who had Netflix saw. I had so many business and social opportunities in the works and one day it was all gone. Instantly. At the time the merch brand had 100 employees and our main source of marketing and traffic was just me. And I had just lost over one million eyeballs that I could talk to anytime I wanted to.
I have to admit that I spent some time perusing the comments on your social media pages and it seems like a lot of your fans are rather upset with you changing the name of the brand and “selling out” — Is it safe to say you’ve made enough now to never work again? What does the future hold for you?
I always said this. Anyone that calls you sell out has never made anything worth selling. It’s my baby, but I’m also a child of immigrants. I’m an immigrant, too. But my entire family gave up their way of life in Russia to make sure I had a better life in America. So I’m cashing out for more than just because I can. It’s because I want to. It’s my time to pay everyone back.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHO
