Ebunoluwa Akinola
JT Holmes is an entrepreneur who went from selling candy as a kid to owning a clothing brand that has made 6 figures.
While in secondary school, Holmes tried to make money and in second grade, he bought candy from Sam’s Club and packaged it to sell at school.
“One day I left with $150 dollars,” he said. “I was always asking, ‘How can I make more money legally?’
In fifth grade, he started designing T-shirts for his classmates to make some extra money. When he got to the university, he took on other side hustles in order to pay for his tuition and expenses, one of them was organizing parties in college
The idea came to him when he went for a spring break in Minnesota and saw his friends DJing and throwing parties. He became interested and learned from his friends how to organize parties.
He dropped out of college soon after in order to concentrate on planning parties with his partner Luis Basilio. The two made waves on the metro Phoenix party scene. Holmes became the name behind some of the biggest parties in town.
In 2017, he was contracted to organize the afterparty for the University of North Carolina basketball team’s NCAA post-championship bash.
When the Lakers won the NBA championship in 2020, he was contracted to organize a private party for the team and he had the privilege of meeting LeBron James and taking pictures with the championship trophy.
However, when the pandemic started, he couldn’t organize parties because many states in America were under lockdown. In order to survive, he went into setting up his urban streetwear brand Modern Rockstars. He dropped his first hoodie featuring a skeleton with a quote that read, “Only the strong survive”.
Since then, he has sold more than 5,000 shirts with 45 different designs and collaborated with the Suns and Modern Warzone. In addition, he has made six figures two years in a row.
In February this year when he collaborated with the Suns for Black History Month with a limited edition design, his 300 Phoenix Suns shirts sold out within the month at the Suns Team Shop in Footprint Center, according to AZ Central.
Holmes now sells in different locations, including Third Degree Heat in Scottsdale, Prime Kicks and Cuts in Chandler and Glendale and Legal Trap Clothing in Phoenix as well as in Minnesota in the Mall of America at LMNTS.
