Meet The Community College Dropout Who Made $22K Selling Gold 'Grills' Online

Brian Roberts isn’t fashionable. But his friends are. So when they wore gold-plated “grills,”—basically mock dentures worn as jewelry in the hip-hop world—to a Flosstradamus concert in New York last December, he paid attention. “Everyone kept coming up to them and going, ‘Damn, those are sick. Where did you get those?’” remembers the 22 year-old native of Sayreville, New Jersey.
When he returned home that night, Roberts typed “wholesale grills” into Google. After trying out a pair found on eBay and testing the reaction of some friends in the accessories business, he made arrangements with a wholesaler days later. He posted the product live on his website, Refinement Co., on January 7th. By January 31st he had made $22,000.
“I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur since I can remember,” says Roberts, baffled. “It finally works out and it’s like, ‘grills?’”

Grills.

The quick success of Robert’s January venture was about three years in the making. After graduating high school in 2009, he attended Middlesex Community College in Edison, New Jersey to study writing and liberal arts. When he told a professor that his goal was to become a successful entrepreneur, the professor told him that he should settle for something more realistic. “I got offended by that,” says Roberts. “I said ‘I’m going to show this guy.’”
He dropped out in 2010 and started a series of ultimately failed businesses. There was a record label, a dieting book, and a “commercial writing” company. He supplemented the projects with “dumpy side jobs” at Best Buy, Dunkin’ Donuts and Burger King. Those uniforms still hang in his closet.
Finally, in the summer of 2011, he landed an unpaid internship at Profound Aesthetic, a startup clothing brand where his friends worked. He learned the ropes of the clothing industry and met young executives, designers and buyers. For his own fashion line, he decided to focus on accessories since he couldn’t design clothes. The low production costs and high margins of the accessories business offered an added bonus.
He made a series of bracelets with elaborate–if not always grammatically correct—write-ups explaining their designs. The Roses of War bracelet, for example, crams in allusions to Georgia’s Rose Revolution, ancient Rome and the Garden of Eden.

He tried desperately to get the designs accepted by Karmaloop, a popular alternative clothing website that last reported $130 million in annual sales. Company reps kept delaying or denying his requests, so in December 2011 he e-mailed Karmaloop CEO Greg Selkoe with some mockups. Selkoe responded five minutes later with a terse response instructing an employee to send Roberts the right paperwork.
“It was so brief and memorable,” says Roberts. “It’s the reason I use ‘tnx’ now.” His bracelets didn’t appear on the site until March 2012. He made $200 that month. “I thought I hit the lottery,” he says.
He used the same trick to get a booth at the Agenda Trade Show, a popular streetwear industry event. After getting rejected in 2012, he emailed Agenda founder Aaron Levant directly in 2013. “I just kept it real with him,” Roberts says. Levant called him minutes later and spoke to him for 30 minutes. He gave Roberts a booth in a highly-trafficked location at the show, along with tips for making the most of the event. “That, like, changed my life,” Roberts admits.
Still broke, he convinced his girlfriend to charge his booth and flights to her credit card, then left for the show in Long Beach, Calif. that July. Even with his booth set up in a coveted location, few attendees stopped to check out his products. By day two, Roberts had his head in his hands. Mark Hansen, the founder of Topo Designs, wandered over see what was wrong. After a couple minutes of commiserating, Hansen asked Roberts who he’d like to meet at the event. When Roberts said “Urban Outfitters,” Hansen quickly brought over a buyer for the company, an old friend.
“He said our stuff was perfect for Urban,” Roberts remembers. “I was like there’s no way this could be that easy.”
It wasn’t. He bugged the Urban Outfitters buyer for months before making any progress. It began to look as if he’d never recoup the thousands of dollars spent traveling, marketing and sourcing his products. Finally, in December, he received an email from the company setting him up with a vendor ID for the spring season. “I realized I was going to be in Urban, it was just a matter of when,” Roberts says. “But what the hell am I going to do to put food in my stomach and keep the lights on at this point?”
That’s when the grills epiphany struck. Though his friends’ mouthpieces drew attention, Roberts found that those interested in buying grills couldn’t find any reasonably priced options. The only choices were cheap, plastic knock-offs or $5,000 custom-made pieces.
He found a suitable mid-range product on eBay, then traced it to HipHopJewelryWholesale.com. He placed an order on December 12th, then put the product up for sale on his website and Karmaloop nearly a month later. The popular fashion blog Hypebeast wrote an article about the product, which quickly shot to #1 on Karmaloop. He ended up selling hundreds of the grills within days. When the vendor at Hip Hop Jewelry tried to increase the wholesale price, he made a direct arrangement with the Korean manufacturer, cutting his product costs in half.
The attention attracted customers who bought other items in his line, like hats and bracelets. ”There are NFL players wearing my stuff now!” he gushes.

Jacksonville Jaguars guard Will Rackley wears a Roberts-designed hat.

Though sales have since eased up–he did closer to $10,000 in February–his bracelets are now available in Urban Outfitters. It’s a small order–just 500–but he’s hoping the credibility will translate into more opportunities.
“Ultimately I want to hit the high school and college circuit,” Roberts explains, to tell students about his experience as an entrepreneur. “These kids all have dreams. But they got professors saying, ‘No.’”
His fashion label, Refinement Co., meanwhile, is expanding to leather bags, shirts and, of course, more grills.