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Chief Underwear Officer
Joe Boxer's Nick Graham talks about changing the way the world looks at underwear.
by Diana Fischer
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 Joe Boxer founder Nick Graham is best summed up in one word: wacky. A self-titled "Chief Underwear Officer," Graham started his San Francisco-based company in 1985 with such designs as "Imperial Hoser": a red tartan plaid boxer sold with a detachable raccoon tail. Graham's spiky yellow hair, bright-white sneakers, and frequent laugh say a lot about his attitude.
His company's image reflects his light-hearted flamboyance, though an early brush with the law did much to cement the Joe Boxer style. In JB's inception year, the U.S. Secret Service confiscated 1,000 pairs of underwear silk-screened with $100 bills because the imprint violated forgery laws. Graham saw the incident for the hilarious news event that it was, and the story wound up on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Graham's subsequent guerilla publicity stunts have become increasingly dramatic and irreverent. In a 1995 joint promotion with Virgin Atlantic ("Buy Five Pairs and Fly"), Graham and Richard Branson hung suspended 100 feet above New York's Times Square -- with Graham dressed as the Queen. Times Square was also the site of "The Zipper," a 6,000 foot Joe Boxer billboard that displayed e-mail messages sent there from anywhere in the world. After one sender proposed to his girlfriend via "The Zipper," Graham officiated along with Mayor Rudy Guiliani at the world's first digital marriage. And, most challenging, in 1997 Joe Boxer flew 200-plus fashion writers to Iceland for a runway show: Graham had decided to co-brand with a small country. Graham says of his marketing style, "The brand is the set-up and the product is the punch line."
The wackiness belies good business sense. Brandweek noted in 1998 that Graham built his company on "an underlying marketing philosophy that connects with consumers more than any product he designs." And Graham has managed to remain debt-free, having never borrowed at all, though he started on a shoestring budget. Today, Joe Boxer is the #1 brand in half of the department stores where it's sold, and wholesale volume continues at more than $100 million.
At his office in San Francisco -- between the racks of lingerie, the Damien Hirst spin-art, and a Joe Boxer underwear dispensing machine -- Graham told ZineZone how he's managed to keep his sense of humor while growing his company.
Next page | Thirteen million pairs of underwear
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Meet Joe Boxer's founder and "Chief Underwear Officer," Nick Graham in this video clip!
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Nick Graham
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