The entrepreneur behind Brain Love on building a mental wellness brand that’s turning heads
Archie Clay III has been here before. He built a brand, watched it end, and spent time figuring out what came next. What came next was Brain Love, a mental wellness lifestyle brand that launched in 2023 at Atlanta Fashion Week and now sits on the shelves at Bloomingdale’s, with a DMV activation that drew over 300 people before the doors opened.
What inspired you to create Brain Love?
Brain Love is a brand that is needed, especially in this space and where we are right now. Brain Love was created because we believe that your mindset plays a major role in how you reach success, happiness, joy, love. There needs to be more of a focus on those things. A lot of times, especially with social media, it’s mostly negativity that we allow ourselves to focus on and tune into. We do believe that it should be cool to focus on the things that make you better.
It aligns back to my journey. I had an amazing brand that did a lot of amazing things over the years and because of the end of it, I was a little depressed. Not really knowing where my journey lied, I had to really pull back and find spiritual alignment, but also mental alignment. Me being able to do those things allowed me to really focus on what is true to me and what makes me happy.
God blessed me with this amazing opportunity to really pour into other people through something I love. Fashion has always been something that I’ve been connected to for a long time. I think it’s important to be able to leverage fashion as a vehicle of change. Fashion is that thing that kind of starts conversations. It allows us to talk about things that are important, which is our mindsets, our brains, that allow us to evolve and get better every single day.
More than 300 people showed up at Bloomingdale’s Tysons Corner before you even opened the doors. How did that reception make you feel?
I feel like it’s a divine alignment. We’ve been doing the work, the necessary work and strategy to connect the dots. But you never know who’s gonna show up. You can do all the things, put all the amazing things in position, but you never know who’s going to support you.
It’s not your average fashion brand. We truly care. It was just a blessing to go into a city that I’m not from and see the support and love that was poured back into us. It makes us want to go harder, to continue to evolve and grow and learn each and every single day of creating the best product, but also how can we continue to pour into our communities?
Mental health is a daily task. We’re working through these every day. Life is still happening. Regardless of the success you have, there are gonna be situations that come your way that may hurt, may make you unhappy, that may make you sad, but that’s just a part of life.
It’s important to equip ourselves with those tools to be prepared for that. People want something that is inspiring them, not just from words, but they can actually put on their body to say these things and speak life into other people, but also show it with their fashion.
Why Bloomingdale’s? What made them so special?
They chose us, but also God chose it too. When we first launched in 2023, we launched at Atlanta Fashion Week. Angela Watts is the founder of Atlanta Fashion Week. She gave us an opportunity to showcase at Bloomingdale’s that first time, and that was the foundation of us building with Bloomingdale’s.
Bloomingdale’s may like you, they may love you, but at the end of the day, it’s about the money. It’s all about business. If the product’s not moving, that doesn’t mean they’re going to continue to foster a strong relationship with you. It’s because of my great energy, because we were consistent, because of Angela Watts and Atlanta Fashion Week, because the product is good.
We still got a lot more work to be done. We’re not in all the doors yet. Because we have a good partner and good relationship with Bloomingdale’s, they have motivated us to continue to push the narrative.
A lot of wellness brands fade over time. How do you plan to keep Brain Love feeling real?
It’s focused on community. Anybody that comes into the pipeline, we truly care. How can we give you the best experiences possible? Even when we mess up, if there’s a shipping error, if we send you the wrong item, how do we make sure you understand that we care about your hard-earned money? We value you as a customer, but you are a part of our family.
Every Monday we have an email series called Brilliant Monday. It’s not focused on any sales, it’s just inspiration and motivation. That’s just showing our customer that yes, we are grateful that you buy our product, but here are some tangible tools and resources that you can use for the week. Our main goal is truly community. We don’t want it to feel like a transaction. We want it to feel authentic and organic every single time.
What was the hardest part of building this brand that most people didn’t see?
I think it’s the doubts. This is my second time doing it. It’s always fear. Will it fail? Would it be a trend for most people, and would it just die off? You can have these doubts, you can have these fears. I think it’s all a part of the journey. If me having faith and belief in what we’re doing, I can truly tell you that we are very passionate about what we’re doing, what we’re building.
I believe that if God is on the journey with us and stewarding this journey for us, that even the bad things that happen, or the uncertainty, is supposed to be that way. It’s supposed to continue to learn and grow as a company. Business is hard. Within this short time period, two years, five months, being able to launch in three doors at Bloomingdale’s, it ain’t all me. There’s spiritual energy in the space that’s allowing us to navigate that way.
We have learned from our mistakes from our past business. We are super focused on Bloomingdale’s. If we’re in a particular city, we’re only focused on that particular city. We’re not doing any boutiques within the area. It’s important to have a strong community around you and continue to build the right network. Being okay with saying no, picking the right opportunities and being intentional. We know Bloomingdale’s works, so we’re going to focus on Bloomingdale’s.
Where can people find Brain Love, and where can they connect with you?
You can find Brain Love on our e-com site, www.brainlove.store, and you can shop Bloomingdale’s in Tysons Corner in the DMV area, and soon you’ll be able to shop at Bloomingdale’s.com. You can find me on Instagram, @archieclaythe3rd.
We work with KIPP, we teach entrepreneurship to middle school students every Thursday. We’re just trying to ensure that we are doing our job and pouring back into our community, and giving the tools and resources to leverage the importance of business and entrepreneurship, and how that can play a major role in your life.
