Utmost Co., a clothing store co-owner Jermaine Edwards describes as “youth, design, hardcore and subculture,” opened this past October, and it’s already off to a great start.
Utmost Co., a clothing store co-owner Jermaine Edwards describes as “youth, design, hardcore and subculture,” opened this past October, and it’s already off to a great start.
Walking into the store, located at 115 W. Broad, you immediately get a sense of the great personality these guys and their designs have. Bright skateboard decks line a section of one wall, bringing a pop of color to the store and complimenting the hard wood floors, whitewashed walls and silver steel lighting. It’s a great space, and one the two guys have had their eye on for a while.
“I used to work around here, and we used to fuck around a lot up here,” laughs Edwards. “We used to always see [the space] and one day we were like, ‘We should get that spot.’ Ever since then we’ve just been trying to.”
“I was calling the landlord about this place since June,” co-owner Tom Hart said of their progress in finding the space and making it their own. “And finally we got it back in September.”
Both owners were born and raised in RVA, and knew they wanted their brand to reflect Richmond. They began hand-printing their first two seasons in their apartment in 2011 to keep costs down and quantities high.
This allowed Utmost to spread the shirts out throughout the city within the first year or two.
Around this time, Edwards left Richmond and moved to LA.
“I wanted to be where the industry was,” said Edwards. “I wanted to work in skateboard street industry, so I started working with Frank 151 and I did that for awhile, and then Tom moved to NYC.”
After a brief stint in NYC, living in Bushwick and working for Converse and The Museum of Modern Art, Hart booked a ticket last winter and left New York meet up with Edwards in LA, where the two worked at Huf together.
“We were definitely pushing our brand out there,” said Edwards. “But we weren’t hungry for it. We would make the clothes and sell it around the city and get the word out pretty organically. Eventually, we just decided to come back to Richmond. It was time, it felt like.”
The two knew they wanted to open a store, and moving back to RVA was the catalyst. “I don’t exactly know why,” Hart said. “We just knew we were going to. So that was always the goal, coming back to Richmond.”
The two wanted to take everything they had learned from big cities and bring it back home to RVA. “I feel like there aren’t too many shops around here for kids like us to buy cool clothes for a decent prince, and you can get cool boards here too.”
Hart described business as “really good. Our best days are usually Friday when we release new Utmost designs. We tend to sell out quickly.”
Utmost carries skateboard brands from LA and London, and other clothing brands from around the country.
“All the brands we carry are pretty much like family, we have a close relationships with them,” says Edwards.
An online store for Utmost will be coming soon, and although the two do have ideas to spread to Atlanta next and open another store, as of right now you can only purchase Utmost clothes via their Broad St. store or online.
