Joel Ramirez used to count in English to impress his Spanish-speaking relatives in the Dominican Republic. At 5 years old, he would rattle off numbers until reaching 49. Then he gave a long pause before saying 50. That pause earned him a nickname: “49.”
Ramirez embraced it. Years later, he would ask a football teammate to borrow his number, 49, for practice. And now it’s the namesake for his fashion brand, 49archive.
The origin story
49archive was conceived three years ago when Ramirez was getting ready on the morning of his 20th birthday. “I remember just looking at my closet and just feeling like, ‘this is not what it’s supposed to be,’” Ramirez said.
He realized his “go big or go home” character wasn’t reflected in his wardrobe. Up until then, he had inherited hand-me-downs from his two older brothers. But these pieces lacked his creativity. “Sometimes clothes is a shell — but I feel like you should also be able to portray yourself, even if you have a shell to the world,” Ramirez said. “It felt like that was the wrong shell for me.”
Ramirez tossed on a pink button-down with cargo pants. He had few options for his shell then, but he would start designing more soon.
He had already had his first taste of entrepreneurship in the seventh grade. Since students weren’t allowed to leave the building during the day, he’d stock up on different flavors of gum from a nearby deli. Buying them in bulk and reselling each stick for 25 cents gave him a hefty profit margin. Ramirez soon became known as “the gum guy.”
The same year he learned how to fill a gap in demand, Ramirez got a serious sit-down from a teacher, who told Ramirez he didn’t put in enough effort at school. While Ramirez didn’t start earning A’s, he paid attention. He realized later that his brand was the first time he truly applied himself. He was learning, experimenting and giving the brand 100% effort because it felt meaningful.
Filling his own fashion void
Ramirez was now meeting his own demand for fashion. His first 49archive piece was a hoodie that, when fully zipped up, displays a heart.
“I just wanted a hoodie that really represented who I was — I’m always showing my heart and my love to everyone,” Ramirez said. “I’m gonna help you out — help too much sometimes, but I love helping, I love community, I love collaborations.”
Ramirez was also literally wearing his heart on his hoodie’s sleeves. These hearts read “Lover” instead of his typical “49” logo. He encased his nickname in a design partly inspired by Comme des Garçons (CdG). CdG, a Japanese fashion label founded in 1969, developed a sub-brand, PLAY, known for its iconic heart logo. It’s also a brand that subverts gender norms in fashion and uplifts streetwear.
For Ramirez — who has been known to detect early trends a year before they go mainstream — it was a perfect inspiration for his first design: “It was more street wear-esque; it was definitely of the times,” he said. “Back in 2022, there was very much a lot of streetwear going on, especially in my generation.” He sold out his first drop in two weeks.
However, Ramirez also learned an early lesson: “it’s really hard to sell hoodies in the summer.” He had made 100 hoodies. While he did sell 80 of them, the last 20 were a tough batch.
Building the business, stitch by stitch
Three years after launching 49archive, Ramirez is finally turning a profit. But it didn’t come easy — or cheap. The sweaters are the costliest part of the business, with online marketing a close second. Ramirez sources high-quality fabric from vendors he has met at the MAGIC New York fashion convention at the Javits Center. His lower-priced items like tops, caps and cameo shorts are priced in the $50 range.
Ramirez does much of the production himself, especially when it comes to his tops. He often visits the Garment District, sources blank T-shirts, prints his own designs and presses them on in his apartment. He has outfitted one room in his apartment with a screen printer and another with a sewing machine.
For more intricate pieces or bulk orders, Ramirez will make a sample piece and send it to his partners for the rest of the production. This frees him up to focus on other aspects of the business.
Seamless collaboration
Ramirez’s first official brand collaboration started with a chance encounter at a birthday photoshoot. One of the women who attended was sporting Ramirez’s debut hoodie, and it caught the attention of Laisha De Leon, a student leader at Baruch College.
De Leon, president of student affairs for the Undergraduate Student Government (USG), eventually helped Ramirez transfer to Baruch from Buffalo. And afterward, she approached him with an idea: collaborate on a Baruch-branded collection through his label, 49archive.
Ramirez brought in Milton Gordon, a designer he knew through Baruch’s creative circles. Milton was the graphic chair for USG, regularly producing design work for student government campaigns and CUNY-wide media. Ramirez had worked with him before on small graphic projects and knew Milton could handle the visual direction. While Ramirez focused on stitching, fabric and fit, Milton led on graphics. They exchanged input on placement, design choices and layout.
“That’s where me and him both were like iron sharpens iron: ‘Where should this go? Where should that go?’” Ramirez said. “We just kept going back and forth, and it was a beautiful experience.”
Ramirez often worked until 3 a.m. to finalize details. He and Gordon pulled together the collection in just a few days, just before graduating from Baruch. Merchandise from “The Baruch & 49archive Knitted Collection” has been available since May 8.
Entrepreneurship lessons as a “social nomad”
While the collaboration with Gordon and the USG was organic, Ramirez wasn’t part of the USG, or officially any student groups, when the opportunity arose. He’s a self-described “social nomad,” who finds it stifling to commit to just one or a couple tribes or identities.
“I have different friends for different things,” Ramirez said. “I don’t think I put myself in a box.”
Ramirez has made these tendencies work for him in business. He has built a broad network of connections, carved out flexibility in his schedule and learned through osmosis by popping in and out of club meetings.
One of those sources of osmosis: the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA). His student chapter had a club room where Ramirez would hang out. “I’m chilling with future accountants and future financiers — I’m just the entrepreneur, just the designer, chilling with them,” Ramirez said. “It opens the mind sometimes.”
This kind of diversity in ideas and student demographics was one of the core reasons Ramirez transferred to his second alma mater: “It’s like I’m traveling the world when I’m in Baruch, because I’m meeting all kinds of people from all different kinds of places,” he said.
One friend from NABA helped Ramirez get business credit. And just by hanging around, he gained contract negotiation skills and financial literacy he could apply to 49archive. Ramirez needed this grounding; when he was first starting out at 49archive, he wasn’t thinking about the margins. He was pouring money into marketing — mostly on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. He’s planning to also start running ads across other social media platforms, like Twitter and Reddit.
Other learnings were more about gaining perspective: “Right now, college graduates have the worst position to get a job right now — I find that absurd,” he said. “But NABA’s showing me how hard it is, one, for the other people in this world, and how no matter how hard you try, you have to put yourself in a position to succeed.”
Ramirez saw the hours NABA members put in at meetings, practicing for interviews and learning interpersonal skills. And he watched them win the Eastern Chapter of the Year award. While he realized corporate finance or accounting wasn’t necessarily for him, Ramirez knew how to account for their work ethic.
“They also showed me how resilient you have to be,” he said. “I’m talking about people submitting 200 applications, getting denied 200 times, and then [landing] that one, 201.”
Taking the shots
Later this summer, Ramirez is releasing another collection — this time, of hats, shirts and reversible shorts. He had seen another designer make reversible shorts and thought: How can I make this better? Tapping into his trend-spotting talent, he added a camo style for fall and winter.
This mix of instinct and experimentation is a big part of the ethos for Ramirez, who invokes the famous quote often attributed to Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan: “I’m taking all the shots,” he said. “I’m trying new things.”
He has learned patience when the shot doesn’t pan out — and to help ensure it does. When potential customers kept asking him for sweats to go with his hoodies, Ramirez rushed to put out flared sweats. They didn’t take.
“Do I think they could have sold in a different time era?” he said. “Yes, but at the time, flared was considered popular — but I didn’t like how mine came out.”
Ramirez realized he needed to take his time with his drops. After all, it took him three months to design his first hoodie, then three years to collaborate on the Baruch collection.
And while Ramirez sees the power of TikTok trends, his personality is more geared towards ‘old ways of marketing,’ he says. Ramirez has cultivated most of his social media followers through word of mouth in and outside pop-up shops.
“My father said I have an old soul,” he said. “‘So in the 90s,’ he said, you would have been perfect.”
Pausing has also honed his powers of fashion observation. Part of learning the industry has been heading into large department stores and checking out their material, how it’s stitched and sold. It took a lot of studying at “YouTube University” for him to master Photoshop and learn how to graphic design. And it took a while to meet all his mentors.
“I consider myself a sponge,” Ramirez said, and the key has been “understanding this is gonna take time, and you won’t see the fruits of your labor until God allows you to.”
–
Shop online here
Follow on Instagram at @49archive
