Jon Jon wants to leave his mark on the Black community. The 16-year-old entrepreneur from Florida has relocated to Georgia and wants everyone to look through his TrueEyez.shop lens.
Recently, Jon Jon stopped by rolling out to talk about the brand and give advice to anyone who has the desire to start a clothing line.
How long has your brand been around?
My brand hasn’t even touched a year yet. I’m only 16. I started in September [2022].
Where are you from?
I’m from Pompano Beach, Florida, but I moved up to Georgia not too long ago. So I’m based in Douglasville, Georgia.
What message do you hope to promote through your clothing line?
Positivity and real dudes. Not real dudes, real N-words. I’m not trying to cuss on here, but you know what I’m saying. When you think of TrueEyez, you have to see through everything. You have to see through the lies, you have to see through the future. You have to see through everything to make sure you’ve built a good foundation for yourself. You have to make sure everything’s good in your path. See through the people that are around you, see through everything. [There are] a lot of people out here that can be around you and break you down, just so they can build themselves up. There are a lot of people out here who will bring you down just so they can get money from you. As soon as you go up, they’re going to try to bring you down.
What are advice do you have for someone who wants to start their own clothing brand?
My first one is to be different because everybody, right now, the waves are all flowing together. So like Virgil [Abloh] said, make sure you add up 3% to whatever you do. Make sure you make everything unique, make sure it’s all yours. Don’t copy off of anybody. They can all come back to sue you and everything will go to crap. Stay on your own wave, be yourself.
Be compassionate about what you do. Always believe in yourself.
Don’t try to downgrade anybody to build yourself up. When you bring somebody else down … it’s like the brand [says] “A Black Man is Not Your Opp,” make sure you get one of those T-shirts, they gave one to my dad and me. I really like their message with the T-shirt because in this world right now, [there are] a lot of Black men going against each other. … The reality is all Black men deserve to live a long life. As we go against each other, we don’t get to live a long life because we kill each other as the cops are also killing us. What are you doing for yourself if we’re all killing off each other instead of building each other [up] and making something better for ourselves?
