Sophomores Alex Cheney and Ethan Cardillo have created their own clothing brand, Take Note.

The duo launched the brand last November, but they had been thinking about the idea for a while.

“We talked about it for a few weeks, but it was more of a hypothetical idea like ‘woah, what if we started a business? That’d be sick’ and then we were like ‘hey, we might actually be able to do this,” Cheney said.

Cheney described their collaboration when creating designs.

“We both make the designs,” Cheney said. “We both give ideas and we both give an attempt at it and get ideas from each other…It is a commutative effort as far as the creativity aspect of it goes.”

Although Cardillo described their target audience is mostly people that are into skating and that style, Cheney and Cardillo have different style inspirations, and combine both to create their unique style expressed in Take Note clothing.

“I have more of a couture high fashion taste, that’s what I’ve always liked more,” Cheney said. “And with Ethan’s streetwear, kind of skatewear style, I feel like we created our own kind of sense.”

In terms of selling and promoting their brand, they utilize social media platforms.

“We have a website, ‘takenoteshop.com’, and we have an Instagram account, ‘takenotebrand’,” Cardillo said.

They use ads and promotion through friends to grow their following.

“We run instagram ads sometimes,” Cardillo said. “We have friends on Instagram like Jacob Crain, who has over 1,000 followers.”

“We’re trying to expand our exposure, whether it be through Instagram ads or people that we know that have a following, like Wylie Ith for example… So basically through advertising and word of mouth and through people we know,” Cheney said.

Cardillo described their upcoming special release.

“The next release is February 16th for lunar new year,” Cardillo said. “We decided to do that because I celebrate Chinese New Year every year with my family, and Alex finds Chinese culture to be very interesting.”

“I just love learning about different cultures so that’s why I thought it was really cool to get some sort of insight on the lunar new year culture and to produce something with that kind of a message behind it and would actually cater to people who celebrate lunar new year, along with regular clientele, I just thought that was really cool,” Cheney said. “So, it’s like a specialty release.”

In terms of the future of Take Note, Cheney and Cardillo have a lot planned.

“Summer/spring is going to be coming out, we’re not really sure when, that’s just in the works, but we have a lot planned so far,” Cardillo said.