Meet Jasmine & Vincent James | Founders of Fira X Wear

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jasmine & Vincent James and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jasmine & Vincent, why did you pursue a creative career?
We feel that the creative space has always been what we are the most passionate about and is ingrained in the fabric of our business as well as throughout our lives. Jasmine, Fira X Wear’s Chief Creative Officer, is mostly known for her cosplay and costume making online as @CutiepieSensei and has been featured on Disney+, SyFy, and Prime Video’s social media channels for her costume designs. By day, she is a concept artist that creates skins for the video games SMITE and Paladins at Hi Rez, a local Atlanta video game studio. Being the Chief designer for all of Fira X Wear’s clothing was a natural next step, combining her design skills for both video game characters and costumes with her love of pop culture. Vincent, the Chief Operations Officer and other half of Fira X Wear, has a background in Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech, but has always had a passion for the intersection between technology and art. While his experience mostly lends itself to managing the customer experience, manufacturing, and web design aspects of Fira X Wear, he is able to let his creative side shine through his management of Fira X Wear’s social pages. While he excels in engineering and technology, nothing exceeds his passion for creative writing, cosplay photography, and pop culture. His passion for pop culture led him to introduce Jasmine to cosplay and conventions when they first started dating. This eventually started them both down the path of creating both CutiepieSensei and Fira X Wear. The two founders, now married for over four years, knew that Fira X Wear was the perfect culmination of their skills and passions.

What should our readers know about your business?
Fira X Wear is the very first premium, pop-culture fashion brand. Think Ivy Park meets Funko with a healthy dose of body positivity and ethical business practices. Up until now, pop culture clothing has more-so been merchandise that only appealed to hardcore fans of a franchise, but Fira X Wear puts fashion forward principles and quality first, creating beautiful pieces that anyone would love to wear, but hold a special place in the hearts of true fans. We are extremely proud of our launch as we’ve been open a month, but have already rank in the top 1% of Shopify e-commerce sites created in 2022. Our first swim collection, the New Challenger Collection, has also been embraced by women of all shapes and sizes for both beach trips and cosplay photoshoots. Getting positive feedback on our quality and customer service in addition to seeing all the beautiful pictures our customers share really keep us going and reinforce our passion for our business.

Running our business could only be described as a wonderful challenge. It is wonderful in a sense that we as a married couple have full control over the design, look, feel, and operation of every aspect of Fira X Wear. We get to dream up designs, sample them, test them, produce them, and then get them into the hands of people all over the world. But therein also lies the extreme challenge for a two-person company who also have their own day jobs. Jasmine is a Concept Artist by day and Vincent is an Engineering Manager in the energy space. Managing both of those demanding jobs in addition to building and running a fashion company have been a whirlwind. We actually began building the business from scratch a year before launching in the Summer of 2022 where we had to design our collection, select an ethical manufacturer, refine clothing samples, build our website and social media pages, design packaging, and complete a promotional photoshoot among the typical business responsibilities. Once we launched, we took on new challenges with managing marketing and customer interaction.

We definitely have a top 5 lessons learned from both starting the business and launching the business to the public:
 1. Most of the time, people who are extremely vocal and opinionated online are not paying customers. Listen closely to your paying customers and filter out the noise.

2. Networking is not only important in the corporate world, but also in the entrepreneurship world. We’ve gotten so much wisdom and advice from mentors and friends who are entrepreneurs as well. Also, a big part of our marketing push has come from friends who are influencers on social media.

3. You will never be able to predict which of your product offerings or services will be a best seller until you sell it. So get your idea to market as fast as possible and start selling so you can learn what your customers want.

4. The customer is not always right, but they always have a point. Always listen to your customers. Even if you don’t agree with their opinion, there is always something of value you should take from customer compliments and complaints to improve your product and business.

5. Temper your expectations and never give up! It sounds cliche, but it’s true. You can’t be a super successful business on day one, no matter how great your product is. Building a business is a marathon and not a sprint. It takes time to build a customer base and it’s best to create lots of smaller goals leading up to big goals instead of dreaming about only the big goals. We’d love for our business to be so successful that we could take it full time, but we’ve learned that doesn’t happen overnight. And in order to reach that 4,5, or 10 year mark where businesses truly shine, you can’t give up and you have to be creative in your marketing and message.

Overall, we just want the world to know that we are here and we have a super awesome product. Our swimwear has been reviewed well by women of all sizes and we are excited to move athleisure later this year, including gender neutral options as well. If you are a fan of ethical/sustainable brands, body inclusive brands black owned brands, pop culture inspired brands or all of the above, we are absolutely the small business for you!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We love to eat out, so our itinerary will definitely be food heavy:

Day 1: Brunch at Le Bilboquet or The Southern Gentleman and then window shopping at Buckhead Village. Head over to the Painted Pin for bowling and fun Lastly, finish with an amazing steak and drinks for dinner at Hal’s Steakhouse.

Day 2: Lunch and hanging out at Krog Street Market(Split a burger or cheesesteak from Fred’s Meat and Bread, A pizza from Varuni Napoli, and some dumplings from Gu’s with ice cream for dessert at Jeni’s between friends!). Afterwards, take a walk at Piedmont park and then hit up the botanical gardens before showering and getting dressed for the very, very best meal EVER…The Consulate! Get treated like royalty by Wesley and the entire Consulate staff before sampling lots of delicious food on the rotating, international menu.

Day 3: Starting off with lunch at Politan Row in Colony Square(Either Pizza from Tandoori Pizza & Wings or Tacos from Pretty Little Tacos) before catching a movie and grabbing drinks at IPIC. Then, finishing the night with more drinks and a vibe at Jojo’s Cocktail Lounge.

Day 4: Starting off the day in Marietta with a chicken sandwich from The Marietta Local before walking it off in the Marietta Square. After walking around and checking out the shops, the ladies would get their nails done at Nail Culture while the guys got fresh line ups at Square Cutz. After the square, we’d head to The Battery whether or not it was a game day to walk around and enjoy the atmosphere before getting pizza at Antico. Afterwards, we’d end the night by getting drinks at the very best speakeasy in Atlanta, Eleanor’s!

Day 5: For the final day, we’d start by grabbing lunch in Ponce City Market and heading to the rooftop before checking out the Georgia Aquarium. Finally, we’d end the week with yet another round of amazing drinks and food at Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours!


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ther awesome food places we’d consider: Spring, Heirloom Market BBQ, Fox Bros BBQ, Chattahoochee Works, Desta, Slutty Vegan, BoccaLuppo, La Grotta, Busy Bee, Bocado, Jinya Ramen, Food Terminal, and Seed Kitchen & Bar

Yes, we like to eat!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We couldn’t have launched successfully if it wasn’t for Dru and Toshé Phillips(Founders of 1Fourteen Media and The AMP Image), Corey and Kiara Johnson(Founders of AtlKula), Allison Brantley(@alliecatcosplay), and Kelly Leveille(@xKiraKelly). They are not only our best friends, but helped us with photography, modeling, and traveled all the way to Miami with us to have a full promotional photoshoot. We are so blessed to have each and every one of them in our lives and love them dearly! Dru was the lead photographer for the collection and taught Fira X Wear founder, Vincent, everything he knows about photography.

Website: https://firaxwear.com

Instagram: http://instagram.com/firaxwear

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firaxwear

Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@firaxwear

Image Credits
Lead Photographer & Videographer: Dru Phillips Photographer & Videographer: Vincent James Models: Jasmine James, Toshé Phillips, Kiara Johnson, Allison Brantley, Kelly Leveille