SPERGO Entrepreneur, 15, Opens Pop-Up Shop In Pentagon City

ARLINGTON, VA — Trey Brown was only `12 when he used his birthday money to launch SPERGO, a luxury-lifestyle clothing brand in his hometown of Philadelphia.

"The reason for me to even want to start a business in the beginning is just because of the violence in the city of Philadelphia," he said. "There's just so much violence. Kids killing kids. Kids killing each other. I just wanted to show the youth, 'Look, it's possible. You can have a business. You can be successful.' That's the reason why I wanted to start."

The name SPERGO comes from a combination of the words "sports" and "heroes."

"I added 'Go' at the end because SPERGO is for the go-getters," Brown said. He also chose the lion as the symbol for his company. "The lion represents power, strength, and courage. The lion is the king of the jungle and I'm a young king."

It was the lion logo that appeared on the company's first product back in June 2018. Brown spent $178 of his birthday money to finance 16 lion T-shirts.

"I sold-out that week and constantly kept reinvesting," he said. "So, from 16 T-shirts sold-out to family and friends, then I started going out to every business and barbershop in the city of Philadelphia. It was from 16 shirts to 32 shirts, hoodies, sweatsuits, and I kept moving on."

By July 2o2o, Brown had earned enough money to open a three- story headquarters in Philadelphia. On the top floor are the company's offices, the middle floor is a storefront, and the bottom floor is the warehouse where all of SPERGO's inventory is kept.

Thanks to the company's continued success, SPERGO will be opening a pop-up shop Thursday in the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City Mall.

"The city of Philadelphia has been showing us some love, but we also get people from the DMV area always coming through, driving all the way down to the shop," he said. "This is our first physical location. We did pop-up shops before, but this Pentagon City pop-up is really special."

All of SPERGO's previous pop-ups were only open for two or three days at a time. But the Pentagon City location will be open for the next three months.

"We're super excited," Brown said. "We get so much love from the DMV area, D.C., Baltimore. We're ready to take over with the drips, Virgo, for sure."

Although SPERGO's Pentagon City doors are opening to the public on Thursday, the pop-up will be hosting a grand opening Saturday. The event starts with a ribbon-cutting at 11 a.m., followed by festivities at 12 p.m.. DJ D-ill, Dylan Curtis, will be spinning from 1:30-4 p.m. In addition, limited edition SPERGO products will be on sale.

"We're releasing our new spring collection for SPERGO, so a bunch of new, exclusive products that nobody has ever seen yet," Brown said. "I'm going to be at the SPERGO pop-up in Pentagon City, meeting different customers and meeting everybody who rocks with us all over the world. The experience is going to be amazing."

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