East Coast Lifestyle goes from class project to the hoodies brand for rappers, celebs

In March 2013, Alex MacLean was a 21-year-old student at Acadia University studying marketing when he was given a project for his entrepreneurship class. The assignment was to create a business concept.

Wanting to create a product that would represent what he loved best about Nova Scotia, he bought 30 hoodies and emblazoned them with a sleek, hip-hop-inspired nautical design meant to represent the surfing and snowboarding lifestyle of the east coast. His initial $800 funding came from his father.

Those hoodies sold out immediately and he used the proceeds to immediately buy another 60. When those sold out, he bought 100 more and began hawking them out of the trunk of his car and from his mom’s front lawn in Halifax.

Within a few months he had deals to sell his clothes in national chains like Pseudio and Below the Belt.

Along the way, the class project to sell 30 hoodies to friends transformed into East Coast Lifestyle, a fast-growing fashion brand that has sold more than 500,000 units, received countless celebrity endorsements and recently opened a flagship store near the Seaport Farmers’ Market in Halifax.

Among the celebrities known to be fans are Sidney Crosby, Ed Sheeran, James Taylor, Skrillex, Kim Coates and A$AP Ferg.

MacLean has a number of high profile collaborations underway, most notably with original Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah. Ghostface noticed the brand when he was in Newfoundland last year playing at a festival that East Coast Lifestyle sponsored.

“Ghostface really liked the clothes and when he went on tour across Australia, he wore East Coast Lifestyle gear at every show.”

MacLean invited the rapper back to Nova Scotia for events and shows, and since then the two have collaborated to make East Coast Lifestyle the exclusive provider of merchandise for Ghostface’s current tour.

Other collaborations include a tie-in with Alexander Keith’s for the second year in a row, New Era and Trouble Gang.

Meanwhile, the awards and accolades seem to keep rolling in.

In January East Coast Lifestyle was named 2015 Halifax Business of the Year, and on April 17, MacLean was named first runner-up in the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards held in Washington, D.C.

As part of his prize he was able to meet with President Barack Obama, a moment he called “one of the biggest accomplishments of my career so far.”

More recently, he learned on July 9 that he is a finalist in the Ernst & Young Atlantic Entrepreneur Of The Year Award. Socially conscious, East Coast Lifestyle also runs a community outreach program that works with homeless shelters and organizations that advocate for children with disabilities.

What’s next?

Only 23 years old and already founding CEO of a multi-million dollar enterprise, MacLean is clearly excited about the future. He currently sells sweaters, tank tops, T-shirts, toques, caps and socks, and is hoping to move into jackets and bathing suits soon.

He’s also eyeing new markets in the United States, Europe and Asia — anywhere there’s an appreciation for the east coast state of mind.