UNLABEL

This is a book for you would-be entrepreneurs, artists—or both. UNLABEL is a groundbreaking guide to channeling your creativity, finding the courage to defy convention, and summoning the confidence to act and be competitive in any environment.

Marc Ecko is one of the most provocative entrepreneurs of our time. He started Ecko Unltd in his parents’ garage and turned it into a media empire. In UNLABEL he reveals his formula for building an authentic brand or business.
Marc Ecko began his career by spray-painting t-shirts in the garage of his childhood home in suburban New Jersey. A graffiti artist with no connections and no fashion pedigree, he left the safety net of pharmacy school to start his own company. Armed with only hustle, sweat equity, and creativity, he flipped a $5,000 bag of cash into a global corporation now worth $500 million.

UNLABEL is a success story, but it’s one that shares the bruises, scabs, and gut-wrenching mistakes that every entrepreneur must overcome to succeed. Through his personal formula for success—the Authenticity Formula—Ecko recounts his many innovations and misadventures in his journey from misfit kid to the CEO. It wasn’t a meteoric rise; in fact, it was a rollercoaster that dipped to the edge of bankruptcy and even to national notoriety, but this is an underdog story we can learn from: Ecko’s doubling down on the core principles of the brand and his formula for action over talk are all lessons for today’s entrepreneurs. Ecko offers a brash message with his inspirational story: embrace pain, take risks, and be yourself. UNLABEL demonstrates that, like or not, you are a brand and it’s up you to take control of it and create something authentic.

n 2006, Ecko was named one of Details magazine’s “Most Powerful Men Under 38.” New York magazine listed him as one of the city’s most “Influential.” He is a master at corralling publicity and creating a personal brand in a strategic and targeted way. He caused a national scandal—and briefly had the government worried about national security—when he videotaped himself sneaking up to Air Force One and spray-painting a rhino on it (his brand's logo). The plane was a fake; the publicity was real.

Like Jay-Z’s bestseller Decoded (Spiegel & Grau, 2010), UNLABEL will be a highly desirable object and enormously usable. The book will have an arresting, full-color modern design featuring Ecko’s signature artistic style that doesn't just tell the reader what a personal authentic brand can mean, it shows them.

Marc Ecko is the founder and CEO of Ecko Unlimited, a brand that extends to 5,000 stores in eighty countries. One of Details magazine’s “Most Powerful Men Under 38,” Ecko is the youngest member ever inducted into the board of directors of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He is also the owner of Complex Media, a network of fifty websites featuring content on music, style, sports, and pop culture. Visit his website at MarcEcko.com.