Anenberg is strictly about having a good time. It all started in 2003 when Wesley Mark and a few friends had the brilliant idea of starting a clothing line. After a few months, a few designs, and zero paychecks, Wesley’s friends dropped off after they realized that, as they say, it takes 5 years to be an overnight success. In the meantime, Wesley continued to take fashion classes at Chaffey College and set up his computer at the corner of his Moms sewing table at his parents’ house.
One cold January night in a garage in 2005, Wesley met his soon to be girlfriend, then ex-girlfriend, and finally, business partner, Flori Cademartori. Flori was in the process of getting her AA in Fashion Design from FIDM in Los Angeles. Slowly but surely she got sucked in and she and Wesley decided to quit their day jobs and devote themselves to Anenberg. Together, and with the help of a few key people, they worked on designs, started getting their T-shirts into more and more stores, and finally were able to buy a screen printing press and all the other necessary equipment… Flori thankfully got a brand new sewing machine when she started FIDM.
Around February of 2006, Evan Mark, Wesley’s younger brother, joined the Anenberg team as screen printer. After waking up one morning and being informed he was about to learn to print, Wesley taught him the little bit he knew, and within minutes he was better than Wesley. What he still doesn’t know is how he ended up getting suckered in to working long, hard hours for free. As Evan perfected his craft in the garage, Wes and Flori continued work in the den, doing designs, getting more stores, and basically making everything up as they went along. Longtime friend and extremely talented artist, Chaz Sullivan, who conveniently lived across the street, steadily dropped off designs and became more and more a part of Anenberg.
One thing lead to another, T-shirts led to Sweatshirts, a Girls Line, and most recently, Men’s Denim. Anenberg showed their line to the general public at their first trade show, Agenda San Diego in January 2006. About a year later, after his parents had been having dinner in their room for several weeks because their house, including the dining room table, had become a T-shirt factory, it was time to get a shop. Once they moved in to their first little shop in March of 2007, Chaz started showing up every day for work and became the fourth member of the team. 3 months later they packed up and moved to a bigger spot across the street because they had outgrown their current place. One fateful day, several months after moving to the bigger shop and after about 2 and a half years on a manual 6 color press, their automatic screen printing press they had been waiting on finally arrived, and its been full speed ahead ever since. This all brings us to the present, where Wesley, Flori, Evan and Chaz eat, sleep and breathe Anenberg all while have a damn good time designing and making T-shirts.
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