Electric Styles

Nick founded Electric Styles with two co-founders to create light-up clothing for the booming electronic dance music and festival scene. The company was built on a simple but novel idea: sewing LED wire into fashionable garments like bras, hoodies, and ties to help ravers and festival-goers stand out at night.

The team started by listing light-up bras on Etsy. When Nick joined the operation, the apartment-slash-office was lined with 300 bras ready to sell. Etsy proved ideal for initial traction because it's a marketplace known for handcrafted, one-of-a-kind items that people wouldn't find in traditional stores. They started small—selling roughly one bra a day—but the marketplace's built-in trust gave early customers confidence to buy from an unknown brand.

While light-up bras were the flagship product, Nick quickly realized they wouldn't scale to a million-dollar business alone. The breakthrough came with light-up hoodies, which became their best seller. A hoodie cost $17-20 landed in their Santa Monica warehouse (using Amazon fulfillment centers for logistics), and they initially sold them at $70, then dropped to $60, and finally settled at $50—finding the price point that maximized volume while maintaining healthy margins.

The company's marketing strategy evolved alongside growth. In 2012-2013, Facebook ads were dirt cheap at 10-15 cents per click, and Nick leveraged this early advantage to build brand awareness. As the company grew, they shifted toward a two-pronged approach: Facebook and Instagram for brand-building and customer education (since they were creating a new market), and Google for capturing existing demand as customers began searching for "light up hoodies" by name.

Revenue distribution across channels shifted dramatically. Early on, 65% came from marketplaces (Etsy, eBay, Amazon) and only 35% from their own website—primarily because customers trusted established platforms more than an unknown brand. By year three, this had evened to roughly 50-50, and their website was beginning to exceed marketplace sales. This shift required obsessive attention to shipping speed and fulfillment quality to compete with Amazon Prime.

By year three, Electric Styles had crossed $1.25M in annual revenue (last year) and was on track for $2.5M the current year. They'd sold over 100,000 units to 65,000 customers. The company had expanded to multiple SKUs including light-up ties, LED flower headbands, and premium "electro hoodies" made from shiny fabric—allowing them to optimize margins across different price points. Nick transitioned into a CEO role and brought in Don, his business partner, to take over ad spend management. The company was valued at over $10 million.