Introduction
Discover the inspiring scaling ecommerce business journey of Fameez Haroon, co-founder of OT, a men’s wear brand that went from selling neckties in their parents’ basement to generating over $40 million in global sales. In this revealing interview, Fameez shares how he and his brother built their business from nothing to reaching $100,000 a day at peak, with their products being worn by celebrities, politicians, and featured in hit TV shows like Better Call Saul and Saturday Night Live.
Founder Success Story QnA
You’ve scaled OT from $2,000 to $40 million in sales just selling ties. Talk me through that. How did you get into this?
I like to say that we got the story was we were walking on the beach one day. We got inspired by some ocean blue sea or something like that. But the truth is we were just flat broke. We needed to do whatever we could to pay the rent. This is going back 14 years ago. The situation for ourselves was actually incredibly difficult. My parents had migrated from Fiji Islands to Melbourne and we just did what we could as a family to pretty much just survive. So, OT was born out of nothing. It’s been bootstrapped from the get-go. The origin story is myself and Shane got invited to a wedding and we worked out that instead of buying a brand new suit every time you get invited to a wedding, it’s actually cheaper if you just buy a brand new neck tie because it makes it look like a brand new outfit.
What happened when you went to buy a tie?
We walked into the department store together and back then there was such limited choices in ties and they were so expensive. It would be like $150 for a big grandpa tie or $98 for a shoestring tie. It would be placed next to a bin that kind of smelt funny. We’re like, “Okay, we’ll go with the shoestring tie.” The department store person came over and there was just this level of pretentiousness that was kind of seeped into the fashion industry. The guy said to us, “Oh, you want that one?” We’re like, “Yeah, we’ll grab that one.” We walked out of that experience and we both looked at each other. It was almost like a Larry David Curb Your Enthusiasm moment. I was like, “Was this real? Did that just happen?” Me and Shane looked at each other and we’re like, “We can do better than this.”
This wasn’t your first business. You and your brother tried other business ideas.
Yeah, I think we again to get ourselves out of the situation, we tried anything and everything. We tried to source kitchen wear and we bought that in. It was like 30 units and it cost like $300 and we tried to sell them on eBay and we’d send them out and then it would break. We tried anything and everything to just get ourselves out of the rut that we’re in.
Can you tell me more about that rut and that situation? Where were you at?
I was working 13-hour night shifts trying to just do what we could as a family to pay the rent. We would pay the rent in cash. I remember getting those red letters in the mail and we’d drive to the real estate agent to pay it. It was just tough. Shane, my brother and co-founder, was working at an architecture firm. We wanted to do and try anything we could to get ourselves out of that situation. We were just used to failing. Failing was just a regular thing because we never knew what success was. I remember we bought a book “How to Start a Business for Dummies.” That’s the nature of our skill set in the industry. We knew nothing, but we just said, “Okay, well, we have to learn. We’re not going to be stuck here forever.”
How much did it cost to do the first run of ties? How did you find your manufacturer?
We didn’t know anything about the fashion industry whatsoever. I think that naivety was probably a good thing. My brother Shaheen is probably the world’s best product developer and sourcer. We said, “Okay, we’re going to do this seriously. We’ve got to put our big boy pants on.” We looked at our bank accounts and we’re like, “Okay, we’ve got about 400 bucks in our bank account each. We can put together our money and we can buy a plane ticket to go to China.” My brother, going back 14 years ago, totally naive to the situation, never been to China, couldn’t even get a visa, booked a one-way ticket there and he just figured it out. Once he landed, he just got to talking. He did a bit of Googling, kept the book with him. He went through the first factory and we partnered with them. The first batch was really good. We managed to get the initial order through of about 30 bow ties.
You launched a Shopify store. A couple days in, still no sales. What happened next?
We launched it and we were waiting with bated breath. Zero traffic, zero orders. Day one. Day two, same thing. We put all our money in. How are we going to get rid of this stock? The initial order was maybe like a thousand or $2,000. That was everything to us. We had to sell it. So we did what we could to bring traffic through. We participated in forums like Reddit forums and anything to bring traffic to OT.com. If someone had told me 14 years ago, I would say, “You idiot, just run Facebook ads. You know how cheap it is.” But we didn’t know. We just did not know, so we were doing things the hard way.
How did you get your first sale?
The first order we got was by partaking in forums like Reddit forums. When we got the first order through, it was like, “Oh wow, this is success. We got something here.” To sell the other stock, we started doing PR outreach. We got a write-up on the Huffington Post calling us the “cheeky clothing.” When that article came out, that got us initial traction and sold out the first batch. It was like $2,000 revenue for that period. The long-term strategy was doing YouTube tutorials on how to tie a tie. There was a big arbitrage in these series on how to tie a tie that would get millions of views. We produced our own series and at the end was “Go to OT.com.”
How did you get millions of views on your YouTube tutorials?
We bought this encyclopedia of how to tie ties and there’s like 50 different ways to tie a tie. We said, “Okay, we can do a YouTube version of every single one of these and at the end have a call to action: Go to OT.com.” We got a film crew, we got a model. Even the model was like, “Dude, I’ve never tied any of these ties before.” To his credit, he tied every single one on camera. We put them online and at the start it was like a thousand views, 2,000 views, but now they’ve gotten millions and millions of views between all of them.
When it comes to investing in brand content, what’s been your approach?
The whole strategy shifted when we wanted to build a brand. The fashion industry as a whole really did take itself extremely seriously. When we came along and wanted to invest in these high production funny parody commercials, we invested in a commercial that we shot in Hollywood that cost the brand like $50,000. People said we were insane for doing it. They said you could get so much UGC for that price. We always said it’s impossible to tell the quality of the product online. You need to communicate the benefits of the product through positioning the content. We tripled down on producing premium branded content that’s funny and humorous. The big commercial we did had an alien in it dropping his iron and saying “ironings is ancient technology” for our non-iron shirts.
What’s the most that you’ve spent on a campaign?
We did an adventure like Indiana Jones-esque one. That one was about $30,000 USD, which obviously Aussie dollars was double because the dollar tanking. Sets are expensive, actors are expensive, but we want to position the brand that way. Every single time we get inbound because we’ve got lots of wholesalers contacting us. It’s positioned the brand in a more elevated way. It’s allowed us to communicate the benefits of our sustainably made ties made from recycled plastics or our luxurious shirts. The working theory is I would rather invest in content that makes people laugh. If you’re driving down the road and you just see regular cows, you’re going to keep driving. But if you see a pink cow, you’re going to stop and tune out.
Why are celebrities and politicians choosing your ties? There are plenty of places to buy ties.
There’s a bit of a maverickness that comes to people who wear OT. Those people align with just being a bit more rebellious. The cost of content is going down to zero, especially with AI. We’re going to see mass-produced content. Taste is going to be the defining skill and how you’re able to create the taste for your brand. You can literally prompt and get any image that you want and put that in a Facebook ad. We did one recently where we used an AI model wearing an OT shirt and it just looks photoreal. In the past, that would cost upwards of $5 or $10,000. Now it’s all within a prompting engine.
What’s working now for you guys? How are you growing the brand?
I remember listening to Mr. Beast and he said if you’re doing something, get a mentor and ask them how they did what they did. You can get essentially the cheat codes and implement it within your own business. I heard about David Fogerty who started a crazy e-commerce business doing hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. I drafted an email and said, “I know your time’s busy, but if we can have an hour meeting with you, we’ll pay $10,000.” We got on the meeting with him and I was saying, “Yeah, we’re doing Tik Tok, Snapchat, Pinterest.” He looked at me and said, “So, what’s your Facebook look like?” I said, “Oh, we’re doing a little bit of that.” He said, “Scrap everything. You guys just focus on Facebook. It’s the most efficient marketing machine in the history of humankind.” That phone call, we switched off all the other platforms and focused on Facebook. We got our money back from that one lesson.
Are you able to share how much you’re spending on ads right now?
We spend upwards in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. It depends on the month, the season because neckties and shirts are pre-seasonal depending on the country we’re trying to go for. A lot of times you put an ad up and it’s like a 1.5 return on ad spend. It’s just a series of getting hit in the face over and over again. I think e-commerce is glamorized. It’s like getting punched in the face over and over again and waking up with a smile. When we first started, it was just about how do we pay the rent. We used to calculate the rent and how many neck ties we could sell. Then year five, it’s like, how do you build a team? How do you build a brand? The goals were simple at the start and evolved.
Has it been worth it for you?
100% it’s been worth it. I think there’s a naivety when you start a business. You don’t know what you’re getting into. It’s allowed us time freedom, location freedom, but when I say time freedom, is it really freedom? You’re always on. I think there’s a glamorous aspect to people who found businesses that gets painted, but it’s good to talk about the reality as well. It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Even when we did the big alien Hollywood commercial, people said don’t do that. We’re hoping it was going to perform well as a Facebook ad. It didn’t, but it worked well as a YouTube ad and a brand piece. It’s always a constant cycle of learning.
Can you take me back to a time where you felt like giving up?
All the time. When we initially started, the initial traction is the hardest part. When we first sold the first batch of stock, it was exciting, but then the next step is we put all that money back into buying more stock and starting over. The most difficult time for OT.com would have been COVID. There were no weddings, no events. No one wanted to wear shirts and ties. People were wearing pajamas working from home. At that point, we said, “Okay, what can we do to control this?” We tried to shrink down costs, keep our staff, do what we could to sell and get us through. On the flip side, when COVID ended and weddings came back, there was a massive push. Everyone’s getting married, weddings on Monday to Friday. There’s a flip side to that darkness as well.
What about your highest moment where you thought, “Oh, yeah. This is fun”?
So many. This is why we stay in the e-commerce game. It’s like going to the casino. When I see orders come from big TV shows that are going to wear OT like Better Call Saul, The Boys. OT being tagged on Instagram. We’ve had Nick Cannon tag it. We’ve sent parcels to the White House. We’ve had Robert F. Kennedy wearing OT ties. OT ties being parodied on Saturday Night Live. My brother and Shane designed these animal ties that have turtles on them and RFK wears them. Then Alec Baldwin decided to parody those ties. It’s surreal. We came from nothing. We’re not fashion dudes per se. When you see it parodied on a national live stage, that’s cool. We’ve had Fox News anchors say we’ve got the world’s best ties on live television, causing 30,000 people to swarm the website at the same time.
What’s been your biggest outsized return thus far in the OT journey?
My bet on investing into big branded commercials and the brand in general and also great quality products. If you Google our reviews, they’re all like 4.8, 4.9, 15,000 five-star reviews. The outsized returns come from doing things consistently over a long time horizon that compound in themselves. We’ve been doing for 14 years. When we tell people we started as neck ties, they almost kind of laugh. Then when we say we’ve been doing it for 14 years and it’s grown, they’re impressed. The biggest return comes from building the brand and great customer product over the long-term. E-commerce is pretty simple. You’ve got product, price, your website which is your funnel, and how you execute on each of those levels dictates your success.
Talk to me about retail. What’s been your play there from a branding perspective?
We’ve been fortunate that because we’ve built OT.com, we’ve had a lot of good inbound. This is the bet on building a cool brand, investing into product and quality, and then they’ll come to you. It’s a very inverse approach. We’ve been stocked in the big hotel chains. In terms of the retail position, we did the trade shows as well going back just before COVID. It’s a big financial outlay to do those trade shows. I remember one trade show we did in Denmark and it cost like $20,000 and we had zero people walk through. We all got depressed. But the retail aspect, I’m thinking what’s the best digital approach because my skill set tends to go to digital first. I love storytelling, building fun parody content, writing scripts. Let’s invest into the brand and maybe they’ll come to us. If we started contacting people in the White House or politicians or big TV shows, they’re not going to answer our emails. But if you build a brand that’s cool enough, they’ll come to you. That bet has definitely paid off.
What can founders do to make sure they’re getting more wins and making less mistakes?
We live in the best time ever to start a business. You could just YouTube things, Google things. If you’ve got determination and willingness, you can work it out. I wouldn’t follow what I did. If someone said they want to do a big commercial like us, I’m betting the house on it, I’d say, “Don’t do that.” I’d be telling them what the mentors told me: “You’re an idiot. Don’t do that.” Everyone’s success is individual. There’s no one formula. Start small, bet small. E-commerce is the easiest business to start, but also the hardest business to get real customers to part with their hard-earned cash. People take it for granted with the big numbers, but these are real people. Bet small, figure it out, don’t bet the farm. Have conviction, think long term, take care of customers. When we founded the brand, it was built on the premise that the fashion industry generally just hates people. We had an answer to that.
When should people know when to invest in themselves with a mentor or coach?
First, you need to be self-aware of what you’re good at and what you’re not and what help you need. Being able to articulate the right question is the secret. When I sent that email to David Fogerty for $10,000, the business was doing the revenue to justify it. One decision within the business would save us tens of thousands and it did. I prepared for that meeting like a job interview. I wrote down all the things about OT and said, “If you were me, how would you grow the business by 10%?” It’s like when you go to a personal trainer and say, “How do I get healthy?” That’s nebulous. But if you say, “I got a wedding in 6 weeks, how do I lose a few kilos?” They can give you specific advice. Be humble, be coachable. I’m still to this day trying to learn every single day.
Why did you believe that it wasn’t possible to build a big e-commerce business from Australia?
I think growing up, my family came from a background where we ran a milk bar. My parents migrated from Fiji Islands and we used to sell $2 Mars bars. I was 9 years old selling cigarettes in the ’90s. The scale of a business then was 500 bucks a day. You unconsciously adopt a limiting belief like this is as far as I go. When we started an e-commerce business, although we’re selling online and internationally, I thought, “Okay, a good day is a couple grand. That’s awesome.” A $600,000 business per year, that’s amazing. That’s as far as we go. Then you hear other founders doing 50 million, 100 million, 200 million. It just breaks the belief system. Breaking beliefs is a big part of growing any business.
How did you identify those limiting beliefs?
When you hear stories. This is why the podcast is so interesting. When you see a thumbnail on YouTube and you’re like, “Whoa, this person’s done what $80 million, $100 million, what’s their story?” You hear that again and again and you’re like, “Okay, well if they could do it, what are the series of things that they did to grow their business?” Reinforcing the stories is so important. It’s the most important thing you could do if you want to grow. Comparison is a dangerous thing. Don’t compare your story to mine. We’ve had sleepless nights, anxiety. We thought during COVID the business was gone. Do not compare stories. If anyone only talks about successes and not the reality, they’re lying to you.
How many SKUs do you guys have? Tell me about the manufacturing side.
We’ve got over 10,000 SKUs. Definitely Australia’s largest necktie range. In terms of managing that, I’ve got a degree in logistics supply chain management, but I clearly missed the uni class on SKU management. There’s a strategy behind the madness. When people get married, there’s a certain shade of purple they want to match to the bridesmaid dress. We’ve got that color purple. If you want a certain tie color, we’ve got it. The reason behind the large range is we’re here for the long term. The flip side is if we were to explore setting up another warehouse in a different country, we’d pick the top selling SKUs. 80% of revenue comes from 20% of stock. We haven’t done everything perfectly, but from a customer perspective, it’s really good because they can find what they want.
What about the Trump tariffs? How’s it affecting you and your business?
It’s impacted every business on the planet globally. We’re just working out what the next moves are. We’ve done small production runs in Australia to make the ties here because making ties aren’t complicated. We’re exploring that as an option. We’re also exploring local 3PLs. It’s an interesting and tricky one to navigate. We’re just waiting to see where it all settles. The biggest brands on the planet are trying to figure this out. Most people had moved their manufacturing from China to Vietnam to hedge against it, but the whole world is being tariffed now. We’re just waiting to see where it all lands and then make the best possible decision. All we can do is focus on what we can control.
For entrepreneurs listening who are in the early stages struggling to get traction, what’s the number one piece of advice you wish someone had told you at the start?
Just stay consistent, stay at it, think long term, don’t think short term. It takes time. It’s not an overnight thing. We’ve been at it for 14 years plus. Be optimistic. There are definitely dark days, but the light definitely shines through the dark and it’s all worth it. It’s an adventure as well. Have fun. Building business is fun. It affords the opportunity to build teams, meet people. It’s the most rewarding thing you can do. It’s the best personal development exercise on the planet, building any business from the ground up.
Fameez Haroon Business Stats
Fameez Haroon and his brother Shane built OT from scratch into a thriving scaling ecommerce business that has achieved remarkable milestones. From their humble beginnings in their parents’ basement to generating over $40 million in global sales, their journey showcases the power of persistence and smart branding. Here are some key business statistics that highlight their impressive growth:
- Started with just $400 each from personal savings
- Grew from $2,000 initial investment to $40+ million in global sales
- Reached peak sales of $100,000 per day
- Acquired over 400,000 customers worldwide
- Expanded product range to over 10,000 SKUs
- Products worn by celebrities, politicians, and featured in major TV shows
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Initial Investment | $2,000 |
| Current Monthly Revenue | $3,000,000+ (at peak) |
| Total Global Sales | $40,000,000+ |
| Customer Base | 400,000+ |
| Product Range | 10,000+ SKUs |
| Years in Operation | 14+ years |
Fameez Haroon Method
The success of OT as a scaling ecommerce business didn’t happen by accident. Fameez Haroon and his brother developed a specific method that combined persistence, strategic branding, and customer focus. Here’s a breakdown of their approach to building their necktie empire:
- Solving a real problem – making affordable, quality ties without pretentious service
- Creating valuable content – YouTube tutorials on how to tie ties that drove traffic
- Investing in brand – high-production parody commercials to stand out
- Focusing on customer experience – excellent service to differentiate in fashion industry
- Strategic mentorship – paying for expert advice to shortcut learning curves
- Long-term thinking – building a brand to last decades, not just for quick profits
Fameez Haroon Tools
In building his scaling ecommerce business, Fameez leveraged various tools and platforms at different stages of growth. From simple beginnings to more sophisticated systems, here are the key tools that helped OT become a global brand:
- Shopify – E-commerce platform that powered their online store from day one
- YouTube – Content marketing platform for their tie-tying tutorials that drove organic traffic
- Reddit – Early community engagement platform for initial traction
- Facebook Ads – Primary advertising platform after mentorship shifted their strategy
- AI Tools – Recently adopted for creating photorealistic product images at lower cost
- PR Platforms – Used for getting featured in publications like Huffington Post
Key Notes
The journey of building a successful scaling ecommerce business like OT is filled with valuable lessons. Fameez Haroon’s experience offers crucial insights for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make their mark in the e-commerce world. Here are the key takeaways from his remarkable story:
- Naivety can be an advantage when entering a new industry – not knowing the “rules” allows for innovation
- Focus on solving a real customer problem rather than just selling products
- Content marketing can create long-term, sustainable traffic sources
- Investing in brand building pays off over time, even if it doesn’t show immediate ROI
- Willingness to seek and pay for expert mentorship can accelerate growth significantly
- Success requires tolerating pain and persistence through difficult times
- Long-term thinking beats short-term gains for building a lasting business
Get Started in Just 5 Steps
Inspired by Fameez Haroon’s scaling ecommerce business journey? You too can start your own successful e-commerce venture by following these five essential steps. While the path won’t be easy, these foundational principles will set you in the right direction:
- Identify a genuine customer problem in a market you’re passionate about
- Start small with minimal investment to test your concept before scaling
- Create valuable content that solves problems for your target audience
- Focus relentlessly on customer experience and product quality
- Seek mentorship from those who’ve achieved what you’re aiming for
Conclusion
Fameez Haroon’s journey of building OT into a $100,000 per day scaling ecommerce business demonstrates that with persistence, strategic thinking, and a focus on solving real customer problems, extraordinary success is possible. From their humble beginnings selling bow ties from their parents’ basement to becoming a globally recognized brand worn by celebrities and politicians, the Haroon brothers’ story is a testament to the power of long-term thinking and relentless execution. Their experience shows that while e-commerce may seem glamorous on the surface, the reality involves countless sleepless nights, failed experiments, and moments of doubt. Yet for those willing to embrace the journey and learn from both successes and failures, the rewards of building something meaningful can be truly extraordinary.