Beasted founders: John Chapple and Sheel Davé

Now that their shirts sell like hot cakes at Karmaloop.com and other retail shops, it was about time folks get familiar with Beasted Clothing. The relatively young company, founded by longtime friends John Chapple and Steel Davé, are known for their hip-hop inspired shirts with straight from the shoulder statements.

"Before Beasted came about, I was working on a surf and skate style apparel project called Sweet Time. Sheel and I met up and talked about the possibility of starting up a second project geared more towards urban streetwear and the hip-hop life style. Sheel had been working in customer service for Karmaloop, and he and a few of the other employees there used to throw around the word 'beasted' and it started to stick. Sheel came to me with his idea of starting another apparel project called Beasted and his ideas for the first few tees and we just had a good feeling about what we had and ran with it and it’s led us to where we are now," Chapple says of the birth of Beasted, based outta Boston.

"Boston is heavily populated with college kids that seem to be getting more and more into street wear as opposed to your typical college dude get up. Boston is home of boutiques like Bodega, Karmaloop, Laced, LAB, and AWOL, which are definitely worth checking out if anyone reading is ever in the Boston area," Davé explains.

While Davé handles the majority of the creative end, the two-some obviously collaborate on everything before it goes into production. Chapple is responsible for most of the behind the scenes tasks -- such as inventory, working with the printer who does the Beasted tees, shipping and all of the other mundane office stuff that needs to get done. While sharing responsibilities is definitely a key to success, it's their longtime relationship that keep things running smoothly.

"Sheel and I grew up in the same neighborhood, so we've known each other and been friends since we were real young. We used to sit in Sheel's parents basement all the time while his band jammed out. We’ve been pretty tight for as long as I can remember," Chapple shares about their pairing. They also working alongside two of their friends, Nick Richard and Louie Collado, who pitch in and pick up the slack that Davé and Chapple can't always get done.

New brands trying to find their place in the fashion industry have a list of barriers to overcome, especially with the economical crisis going on. For Beasted, it was a tough job trying to find inspiration for new ideas, and trying to differentiate their brand from everyone else in a market, especially since the growing streetwear category continues to grow every year. "We knew we needed to do something different that would put us on the map in the streetwear and hip-hop world, as well as assemble a strong first line of tees with a decent amount of stock, good customer service and gather a few ideas we knew were straight fire," Chapple explains. Wise advice from Davé to upcoming brands would be to just have fun and make sure to have already built a solid network of friends, fans, general people that are willing to help out, display, distribute and represent before spending too much money on the brand.

The first Beasted collection sold extremely well on their main selling hub, Karmaloop.com. Most of the designs are currently sold out; a wake-up call to prepare the next step for new key accounts.  "We are making the transition now to get into clothing boutiques throughout the US where we can, and we've had some inquiries from some international boutiques as well. Our gear is available in a few shops right now and in the next few months we are making a big push to get into stores all over the place," Chapple says of their immediate growing spurt.

The Rap's Grateful Death collection features prints of Biggie, Pac, Big Pun, J Dilla and Ol' Dirty Bastard and was inspired by a Jay-Z bar that goes something like this:  "I'm Young H.O., rap’s grateful dead / Back to take over the globe, now break bread." Both Davé and Chapple have always been hip-hop heads in their own sense. Whether it influenced their personal style or Davé's music career, the guys have both always been big fans of hip-hop (Davé's band, Bad Rabbits, is the backing band for Slick Rick when he tours on the East Coast) No wonder one of the first shirts Beasted created was the "I Own America" shirt, obviously inspired by Rick's track of the same title.

Not only does Davé have a passion for hip-hop, he also plays in a metal band. "I have been playing in Irepress for over 10 years. It's a band that is hard to explain, but it's predominantly a metal band. It has elements of dance, R&B, electronica, drum n bass, and soul in it as well," he says. In February, the band put out a new record called Sol Eye Sea on Translation Loss Records and just completed touring heavily since March of this year.

Bad Rabbits collaborated with Beasted for one of their latest shirts, the "AIR MJ RIP" tee, which is a tribute to the late King of Pop. "Collectively, we are all huge Jackson fans and originally didn't want to do a tribute shirt because everyone else was, but after thinking about it and knowing how much Jackson meant to the Bad Rabbits and Beasted family, we decided to do it as a collab. I don't think any of the other brands that did Jackson tees, have done a unique team up/collab like we have, bringing a band and a brand together like we did," said Chapple.

Besides the "The Rap's Grateful Death" collection and "AIR MJ RIP" shirt, their current collection includes a Rick Ross inspired tee titled "The Boss", and a Kanye West inspired one called "Emo Is Dead,"which is the brand's best-seller to date. Is it a diss or a plug? Chapple says a diss, but either way, both EMO and hip-hop fans alike loved it. "The goal of the design was to take a stab at Emo style music starting to creep it's way into hip-hop. The message behind the tee was really left opened ended though, and I think the mystery behind its message is what really gave it the success it saw and is still seeing now.  It got the attention of hip-hop heads and Emo fans alike," Chapple says.

Looking forward to for the Fall/Winter 2009, rumor has it that Beasted is planning to do more ty-dyed tees. At this point, not much is being revealed about the upcoming line. However, the Beasted duo are keeping tight-lipped, simply stating to "keep your eyes open."

The future looks bright for Beasted. Davé and Chapple are having a blast doing what they love and seeing where it can take them in the future. When it stops being fun and becomes a chore for both, they will have to re-think what they are doing. But as of now, that point is very far off.

For more info on Beasted Clothing, go to Karmaloop.com.