Daymond John

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Daymond John is an American entrepreneur and investor, best known as the cofounder of FUBU and a longtime investor on ABC’s Shark Tank.

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Daymond John is an American entrepreneur and investor. As the cofounder and chief executive officer of the apparel company FUBU, he helped bring styles associated with hip-hop into the mainstream fashion industry. Since 2009, he has been a longtime panelist on ABC’s Shark Tank, where he evaluates and considers backing early-stage businesses.

Daymond Garfield John was born February 23, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Garfield and Margot John. His parents divorced after his 10th birthday, an event that pushed John and his mother out of the middle class and into poverty. To keep a roof over their heads, they moved in with his maternal grandmother in the Queens neighborhood of Hollis. John’s mother held numerous jobs, including handling luggage at American Airlines and working as an executive assistant at Lehman Brothers.

After graduating from Bayside High School in 1986, John experimented with a series of short-lived business ventures. He bought and resold used cars and later operated an informal commuter van service in Queens, transporting passengers for a small fee. Some of these efforts operated in legal gray areas, and John later acknowledged that he also dealt crack cocaine during this period.

By the late 1980s, he was working as a waiter at Red Lobster and looking for a more stable way to earn a living. In 1989, after his mother taught him to sew, John and his childhood friend Carl Brown used a $40 bolt of fabric to make 80 modified wool ski caps, which they sold for $10 each at the Colosseum Mall in Queens. They sold out in a single afternoon.

In 1992, John and Brown formally founded FUBU with two other childhood friends, Keith Perrin and J. Alexander Martin. The name stood for “For Us, By Us,” reflecting the founders’ aim to build a Black-owned clothing brand at a time when major apparel companies profited from Black consumers while avoiding visible association with them.

Operating with little capital, the partners began selling hats and screen-printed shirts at street fairs, concerts, and trade shows, and they persuaded small retailers to carry their products on consignment.

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Rapper LL Cool J was an early and prominent supporter of FUBU, helping bring it national visibility.

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With little money for advertising, the founders relied on personal relationships and improvisation to promote the company. They produced a small number of FUBU shirts and persuaded hip-hop artists to wear them in music videos, retrieving the shirts afterward so the same pieces could appear repeatedly on-screen. Over time, the strategy created the impression of a much larger label and helped FUBU gain recognition within the hip-hop music industry.

The plan paid off in 1993, when rapper LL Cool J, a childhood friend of John’s, wore a FUBU shirt in a promotional photograph that became part of a national advertising campaign. The exposure increased demand for the company’s products and helped FUBU move beyond street sales and consignment into orders from national retailers.

At a fashion trade show in 1994, FUBU received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of retailer orders—far more than the founders could fulfill with their limited resources. Seeking financing to scale production, John and his partners applied for loans from more than 20 banks, all of which turned them down.

Unable to secure financing elsewhere, John’s mother took out a second mortgage on her home, providing roughly $120,000 to keep the business operating. The partners converted the house into a makeshift factory, using it both as living space and as a production facility to meet early orders, allowing FUBU to expand its output.

Despite growing demand, the company struggled with cash flow, as production costs far outpaced the money coming in. In 1996, FUBU nearly collapsed. With little money left and mounting obligations, the founders spent their remaining funds on a classified ad in The New York Times seeking a financial partner and noting that the company had more than $1 million in outstanding orders. The ad caught the attention of Samsung America’s textile division, which soon entered into a distribution agreement with FUBU. The deal stabilized the business and enabled it to move from survival mode into sustained growth.

With financing and distribution in place, FUBU expanded rapidly in the late 1990s. In 1997, the company reported roughly $40 million in revenue; two years later, sales rose to an estimated $350 million. The business moved beyond hats and T-shirts into denim, outerwear, footwear, and accessories, and its products appeared in thousands of retail outlets nationwide. By the end of the decade, FUBU was one of the most visible apparel brands associated with hip-hop.

As the company grew, it increasingly relied on licensing and mass retail partnerships to reach a broader audience. That expansion helped drive scale, but also placed FUBU in a more crowded market as competing brands—many founded by artists and entrepreneurs drawing on similar aesthetics—entered the same niche. By the early 2000s, shifts in fashion trends and intensified competition slowed the brand’s momentum.

Although FUBU’s prominence declined from its late-1990s peak, the company continued operating through licensing and periodic revivals. By the early 2000s, it was no longer driving fashion trends, but remained in business as a recognizable brand name.

In 2009 John joined the cast of Shark Tank, ABC’s reality television series in which entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to a panel of investors. Although skeptical at first, he signed on as one of the show’s original cast members alongside Mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, and Robert Herjavec. The show became a ratings success and introduced John to a much wider audience than he had reached through fashion.

On the program, John focused on businesses that sold directly to customers and on founders who demonstrated a clear understanding of pricing, costs, and demand. His investments were often in food, apparel, and consumer goods. He became known for pressing contestants on how they’d sell their products. Among his more successful deals were investments in sock company Bombas and Bubba’s Q Boneless Ribs.

Shark Tank marked a shift in John’s career away from building and operating his own company and toward investing in and advising start-ups. It also raised his public profile, leading to work as an author, speaker, and business adviser outside the show.

Beyond Shark Tank, John has continued working as an investor and business adviser and has written several books on entrepreneurship. In 2020, he launched Black Entrepreneurs Day, an annual event focused on supporting and promoting Black-owned businesses through access to capital, visibility, and practical guidance.

Although FUBU remains the foundation of his career, John’s later work has focused on investing in other businesses and on promoting small business ownership through television and live events.