Meet DeAndrae Douglas | Firefighter & Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with DeAndrae Douglas and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi DeAndrae, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I came up with it on a rainy day when I was leaving to pick up my son from preschool. I had a brand new waterproof jacket but it didn’t have a hood on it. I had a sweater with a hood but I couldn’t fit my arms in the jacket, so then I started to reflect on a piece of safety equipment at work that we call a “flash hood” which helps protect our neck and ears when we go into fires. We wear it under our turnout coat so I thought if I can wear that and it cover my head, why can’t I wear a regular hoodie in the same way ..and then boom, Andahoodie was born. I then started realizing that there were hoodies everywhere, hoodies at school, hoodies at church, hoodies on the movie screen, hoodies all over social media, hoodies being worn even in the summertime. Literally everywhere I looked I saw hoodies. They call this the Baader-Meinhof effect, but not only did I just notice people wearing hoodies, I started noticing how many people were wearing them under their shirts and under their jackets. Seeing this only served to confirm that I invented something that was not only innovative, but practical. The company was originally called Hoodeenys because “Like magic, you can turn any outfit into a hoodie” but my patent attorney informed me that a company had already owned the rights to that name with a type of hoodie they called a Houdini jacket, so I had to change my name and logo, and all of my labels I had already made for the first batch of my product. I then named it Andahoodie because it describes the fact that you can wear any outfit And-A-Hoodie. My dream and my vision for Andahoodie is to walk into a stadium one day and look around and see my hoodies on all the fans cheering for their favorite team.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

Absolutely, and you know the best way to learn about us is to understand our journey and our mindset because it will show you what sets us apart from others. Andahoodie wasn’t an idea that I bought off someone else nor did I have tens of thousands to start it with. I built this on sweat equity by working overtimes at the station. Every one of those days I was gone was a day not spent with my kids and I felt terrible about that but my mission was to leave them with a legacy, and I knew the sacrifice would be temporary.
Where I am today was born out of set backs and roadblocks, and figuring out a way to persevere, but in order to persevere you have to be willing to take a few risks. As a firefighter, most of my career has been a risk, But as it relates to my business, and in any serious business, there is a certain level of risk you have to take in order to be successful because you don’t know what the future holds. For me it started when I had a sample made of my product and then ended up running into a waiter at a restaurant who used to be in the fashion industry of whom I talked into making me a paper pattern. I then took that pattern and went to Los Angeles with a buddy and walked around the garment district looking for fabric. It took hours until we found sweatshirt fleece. We then bought it and proceeded to walk around downtown with these huge rolls of fabric on our shoulders looking for someone to cut it. We used google to find one, walked up to their door and cold call knocked on it. They opened it and looked at us strangely. I said “ we’re here from out of town and are looking for someone who could cut our fabric”. The two people looked at each other and then asked if we had a marker. A marker is a giant piece of paper the width of your roll of fabric that has all the pieces to your product drawn on it and tightly spaced so the cutters can cut as many pieces as you can get out of that roll of fabric. At the time I didn’t even know what a marker was so I said “No but I have a pattern”. They looked at each other again and said “Ok, we can use that”. Then we asked, “Do you also happen to know any sewers?” They said they did and would send the pieces and the pattern to them after they were done cutting. 2 weeks later I had my first batch of Andahoodies. Had I not taken the chance of going down to LA on a wild goose chase looking for fabric and then going to a random fabric cutters shop with no appointment or marker in hand, this special product may have never come to market.

The story isn’t about just the risks though because along with all risks, there is also struggles and times that make you want to give up. We’ve had our fair share of this on our journey as well. In fact, the first time I spent major money on my company was for an event that put my hoodie in front of thousands of schools. In my opinion it took a lot of money to attend that event but I thought the return was going to be so much greater than the risk. When I returned from the event I had gotten so much positive feedback that I thought I was going to be a star. I thought “This is it, this is my moment” and then 3 days later Covid hit and every single one of those schools closed for the rest of the year. I only ended up getting one school sale from that. I couldn’t believe my luck. I then contacted my fabric cutter to get a timeline on how long it would take him to cut more hoodies for me because I had another possible prospect that was inquiring. He informed me that during the pandemic no manufacturers were allowed to make any apparel unless it had to do with safety equipment to help combat Covid. This was tough news for me to hear because I had just started investing money into my hoodies and now I couldn’t even make them anymore. Do I just call it a day and wait out Covid? Nope, I wasn’t going to just sit in idle. I then asked my cutter if he could at least cut masks since it was Covid related and he said yes. After his response I immediately went and found a sewer that could sew our masks and started selling Andahoodie masks until the manufacturing industry shifted back to fashion.

The stories associated with just the mask process alone could probably be put into a book but I believe some of the ups and downs and dealing with so much disappointment in that process built a stronger version of me and helped me withstand disappointment. I have had so many ups and downs and so many opportunities to give up but I could not because I felt like if I quit on this then I would be quitting not only on my children’s future and quitting on all the people that has helped me and rooting for my success and their time and efforts, but also quitting on myself and I couldn’t live with myself knowing I didn’t put in the best effort I could to make it happen. I grew up an athlete so I’m competitive and walking away from any beat down was never easy for me to do. Some people would look at that as a problem but I see it different, especially in the world of business because every beat down you take in business is a lesson or an opportunity and the learning never ends, even when it comes to the true meaning of success.

It took people wiser than myself to teach me this and now my definition of success has evolved. While I was a young brand new entrepreneur, and my definition of young isn’t age based but time spent as an entrepreneur, success was based on sales. I felt like I was doing terrible because I had close to no sales coming in for the first year,  then one day I had a booth set up at an event and a guy named Malik Lee showed up to check out my booth. Malik Lee used to be Snoop’s bodyguard but now he’s a powerful motivational speaker. Now he shows up to the booth and says how are things going for you? I put my head down and I tell him things haven’t been going well. I tell him that I’m sitting on this million dollar idea and everyone that sees it is amazed by it, but I’m a nobody and because I’m a nobody, I have no reach and these hoodies aren’t flying off the shelf like they should be. Malik sat there for a second and told me not to worry about that, things will turn around. Then he walked away. Of course I was still sour because I have heard this “be patient” thing often but I’m not a patient person. Then Malik came back to the booth and told me “I was given a word and I need to share it with you” I replied “ok” and then there was a moment of awkward silence while we just looked at each other and then he says “It’s not about the numbers, it’s about the impact”. I sat there for a second trying to process this and my first reaction in my head was like “what is he talking about, I have a business and business is about the numbers”, but then he repeated it again, and something strange happened. I started to reflect on all the hoodies I had given away to others for free that were enjoying it, and I started to reflect on all the hoodies that I had already given to my homeless brothers and sisters during the winter months to help them stay warm as they slept outside, and the gratitude they were showing me. That feeling felt better to me than the feeling of selling any hoodie. Those words he said brought me back to what was really important at the end of the day. Would you believe that ever since he told me that, from that day forward, I started selling more hoodies than I ever had? All I had to do was to not focus on the numbers, and focus on the impact. So in my opinion, the definition of success is based on how much of a positive impact I am having on society.

Along with my definition of success, I have also found that the things that make me happy in this is business has evolved. I specifically remember telling a good buddy when I first started this that if I could get one person to buy my hoodie that didn’t know me, I would be happy..and you best believe that when that first sale did come in, I was ecstatic, but even though I will never forget that moment, it wasn’t going to sustain me. What does sustain me consistently every time is what happens when I’m telling someone for the first time about my hoodie while I’m wearing it. For instance, and this is my last story, but one day in Santa Monica California while walking towards the pier, I happen to cross paths with the great football legend Michael Irving. He had just come out of a restaurant. Now in the past I had an opportunity to show my hoodie to one of my favorite soccer players at an Arsenal game, but I was too starstruck to speak to him so ever since then I had made a vow to myself that I would never let that happen again, so I see Michael and I say “ Are you Michael Irving?” He replies “Yes” and I then begin to tell him how much I appreciate what he’s done for the game and how much I highly respected him. He said thank you, and then I look at him and ask “Hey man, do you like hoodies?” He says “Hoodies?” trying to confirm what I asked him. I replied “ Yeah, hoodies”. He said “Yeah I like hoodies”..In that moment another person who happened to be a long time Cowboys fan comes up and recognized him, but while the true Cowboys fan (I’m a Titans fan) was raining praises on him, he was engaged with me trying to figure out why I’m asking him about hoodies and before his attention got pulled away by the cowboys fan, I pull the Andahoodie I was wearing off of my head and out of my shirt and give it to him while telling him, “You can have this one”. Now when you talk about joy and what makes me happy, this particular moment is where it hits, and it does this every single time whether it’s Michael Irving or the high school kid in front of a restaurant. As I pull the hoodie out, both Michael Irving and this Cowboys fans jaws drop and their eyes get big and both let out a long  “Whoa”, I mean the Cowboys fan was mid raining down praises on Michael and he stopped what he was saying just to observe this new style of hoodie he had never seen. Michael took the hoodie and immediately put it on and says, “Hey man, you should patent this thing”, of which my reply was, “It is” and then says, “You should put NFL logos on it” and I said “Been my vision from day one”. He gave me his email address and although we haven’t spoken since (Not for lack of trying), he did like the hoodie and that was even one of my first versions of the hoodie. They are so much better now than they were then, but I tell you that story because of the moment that stood out to me. I always tell people that I wish I had a video camera to record everyone’s reaction to it every time they see it. It’s happened hundreds of times and every single time I get the same amount of joy out of it like it’s the first time. You can literally see the lightbulb turn on in their head, I call that their “Aha” moment. That moment is why I do what I do and  what separates us from others. Our journey is unique to Andahoodie and only Andahoodie. It can not be replicated.

Everyday the mission is to make our process more and more efficient and every single setback has resulted in improvement. Today I am proud to say that we are even more efficient than we were last year and each year prior. I personally touch every hoodie that has been sold because that is my commitment to the consumers and there are so many other improvements we have made to ensure a particular quality and standard. We also understand that there is plenty of opportunity for us to outsource our manufacturing overseas, but we choose to keep it local because we believe the sewers we have here are just as talented if not more talented and the increased cost in manufacturing is worth it, not only for you, but for our economy as a whole.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If my best friend was visiting me the itinerary would go like this Falcons game day 1 if we came in on a Sunday, and dinner at Frankies
Day 2. The Flying Biscuit, Olympic Park, Georgia aquarium, Food at Nanas Chicken n Waffles
Day 3. Atlanta Breakfast Club, Olympic park, Civil Rights Museum, Food at Kroger Street Market
Day 4. Pocne City Market for Ice skating and shopping, follow up with a performance and some appetizers at City Winery and if we want more than wine, we go to Bar Vegan for some great food and classic ATL vibes
Day 5. Breakfast at Barneys for a phenomenal meal, Delta Flight Museum, and follow up with some shopping at The Forum and dinner at Mojitos for some Cuban food
Day 6. Egg Harbor Cafe, MLK’s house Tour, Hawks game in the afternoon/evening, and Roof top LOA for Drinks/Dinner
Day 7. Stage in peach tree corners for espresso martinis, Do some more shopping at Avalon, then come back to the High Museum of Art or the College Football Hall Of Fame, then The select ATL for dinner and drinks

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

Website: www.andahoodie.com

Instagram: @andahoodie

Other: andahoodie@gmail.com

Image Credits
Photo 1. Myself DeAndrae Douglas, Working for the Fire Department Photo 2. DB Josh Wilson (#20) wearing a Bear themed Andahoodie during a playoff game for Buchanan High School Photo 3. DeAndrae Douglas Displaying what the Andahoodie looks like in it’s entirety Photo 4. Cherene Johnson Displaying a Custom AKA camouflage Andahoodie that was made for her Photo 5. DeAndrae Douglas wearing a Andahoodie with a business suit to prove how multifaceted it is Photo 6. DeAndrae Douglas Displaying the art of one of the most popular Andahoodies (Hoodie King) Photo 7. Priscilla Ellerbrock Sporting a White on black Paisley Andahoodie on a bike ride on Catalina Island Photo 8. DeAndrae Douglas Displaying a Red on Blue Paisley Andahoodie to match the Jersey at a Fresno State University Football game at Bulldog Stadium Photo 9. Christian Whitmore of Tucker High School sporting a custom Tucker High School while also holding the same Andahoodie in a. different color