Vokal Clothing

Vokal clothing brand. Yomi Martin the creator of Vokal clothing.

Nelly in a Vokal Campaign

In April of 1997 Yomi Martin, Cornell “Nelly” Haynes Jr., and Nick Loftis founded Vokal clothing. With the teamwork of those three, along with Vice President Ian Kelly, the company began selling t-shirts, jerseys, and custom clothing from their homes and car trunks. The group was also retailing themself without the help of stores, malls, or outlets.

At the time, Vokal’s team of Yomi and Nelly were creating pieces that were inspired a lot of times by their home town of St. Louis, Missouri. The brand began selling successfully within the county limits after a short period of hustling their clothing throughout the streets of St. Louis. While official sales are not released, it is said that at least a few thousand pieces were sold at the time.

Over time, they officially began creating custom jerseys for co-founder Cornell “Nelly” Haynes Jr., as well as his cousin’s Hip Hop group, the St. Lunatics. With the group’s name growing in popularity, Vokal’s business saw the opportunity to provide the group with clothing while on tour as well as selling their products after St. Lunatic’s concerts and events. Vokal essentially grew right along with the career of Nelly and the St. Lunatics.

With a regionally diverse compilation of clothing marketers, Vokal’s business group brought a wide ranging background of flavors to the Hip Hop Fashion market as one by 2002. The groups partners, executive officers, and designers hailed from all over, from such cities as St. Louis, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and New York. The team used their creative diversity as an advantage to develop a new, edgy and national urban fashion brand. Vokal clothing was also highly seperated from most other lines at the time because their celebrity founder, Nelly, took an active role in helping design, edit, and create clothing.

Vokal's famous Jerseys

However troubles began to rise in June of 2004 as the company was forced to shut off all production due to a legal dispute with the ALM International Corporation; a company that manufactures and distributes Vokal products. By the end of the same year, the brand was able to separate themselves from ALM and were able to begin production.

Now the clothing line is one that rivals many of the urban apparel companys out there in the market. By 2007 sales reached nearly $30 million dollars. Also in 2006 Vokal expanded their market to Europe, in hopes to gain popularity in a relatively untapped market.

With all that is said and done, Vokal has experienced a number of ups and downs since its debut in 1997. But it hasn’t stopped Nelly and his team to keep Vokal a relevant line in the urban fashion market.