Recently, we had a chance to catch up with Spencer Goetz of Imperial Motion, who is a part of one of the radest and truest clothing companies to come out to date. Their unique blend of one-of-a-kind graphics and cool laid-back feel is transforming the action sports industry. Take a look see what Imperial Motion is all about in the following interview.
1. What inspired the latest line? The inspiration came from our campaign for this year, Style + Substance, which was formed on the basis that our brand has quality aspect to each piece on top of great style. I try and base the graphics in each collection on what is happening within our company at that time throughout.
2. Who is Jesse Brown? Jesse is an artist from Seattle that we have been working with for a couple seasons now. He has a great style that is different than most of our graphics, but his pieces add a lot of depth to the collection and the response to his work has been really good!
3. What’s your favorite item from the latest line and why? I would have to say our denim. Mostly because it is the newest category in our collection and we have put a lot of time in developing it. We will have two fits in a raw black denim coming out for spring.
4. My favorite shirt from the latest line is ‘The Two Princes’, is there a funny or interesting story for how that concept developed? That shirt was actually a painting done by our good friend Shane Deegan, who gave us a canvas painting of that artwork which we turned into a tee. He has a whole series of paintings that are focused around a play on famous people’s names…this one was our favorite!
5. What has been the response to the ladies line? The ladies market has been tough for us…lets face it, does anybody know what women want!  We have actually backed off for a couple seasons and are working on releasing a collection for Spring/Summer 2011 with a new direction and full line of cut N sew.
6. How does it feel being sold in such large and unique retail stores such as Urban Outfitters? We feel so fortunate to be working with retailers like Urban. It has been a great way to broaden our customer base and step outside the box of our traditional design. The biggest part is having a good relationship with our accounts, and the people at Urban have been great to work with.
7. What type of individual do you look for when sponsoring athletes? We look for athletes that are blazing their own path in the sport that they do. This is the foundation of our brand and it is important that our athletes have the same approach. We don’t have the budget to throw money at our athletes at this time, so we help them out where we can and look to find those who believe in the future of the brand.
8. How important is art to Imperial Motion? Art has been a great way for us push our boundaries graphically. We work with a lot a really talented artists that have completely different styles but are still able to communicate our overall message.
9. What’s a day like in the Imperial Motion office? haha just about everyday is different around here. There are a lot of different personalities here which makes it a interesting environment to work in…there’s never a dull moment thats for sure! One thing that is unique about our brand is we actually do a lot of our own production in our warehouse. We have a couple screen presses where we do all our T-shirt and sweatshirt printing. We are able to be more flexible with sampling and production this way.
10. What can we expect from Imperial Motion in the next couple of months? Over the next couple months we will begin shipping our Spring/Summer collection which will include, tees, light weight fleece, headwear, walkshorts, boardshorts, denim, and other knit tops. We are also really excited to be teaming up with some different musicians for 2010.
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