Fall 2011

• previous
• Fall 2011
• next

In 1992, an Uptown Records intern with a dream needed new threads. His name was Sean Jean Combs. Farther uptown at Columbia, Sharene Wood ’94, a 20-year-old junior, had just opened a custom clothing company that lacked clients.

The pair met at a music industry event. Nineteen years later, 5001 Flavors, a Harlem-based company, outfits some of the biggest names in entertainment. Combs, the megastar who has won three Grammy Awards and today goes by the name Diddy, still wears 5001 Flavors.

The company website (5001Flavors.com) unfurls like a showcase of who’s who in hip-hop: singer Alicia Keys in a one-shouldered purple unitard, singer Chris Brown in a Boy Scout-inspired top, the late Notorious B.I.G. in a 5001 Flavors outfit featured in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Yet the company’s diverse client list also includes Elmo, the fuzzy red Sesame Street character; NBA stars including LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal; and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was featured on an August 2010 cover of Newsweek wearing a 5001 Flavors black suit with a crimson tie.

Together with her husband and business partner, Guy Wood, the sociology major has racked up continued success despite a sharp downturn in music industry revenues starting around 2000, when the Internet made downloading music cheap. Singers don’t spend as much on custom digs when their earnings drop, but Wood’s business still is humming.

With up-and-coming artists emerging “almost quarterly,” there’s a never-ending supply of potential clients, Wood says. “If an artist like LL Cool J, whom we dressed for 15 years, doesn’t have staying power, then we have [a new singer-songwriter star such as] Jason Derulo,” she says.

Sharene Wood ’94, CEO of 5001 Flavors, browses fabrics at Mood in Manhattan’s garment district while wearing one of her company’s dresses. PHOTO: KAREN KELLER ’05JThe company has spent exactly zero marketing dollars — every customer comes by word of mouth. Prices range from $100 for a pair of jeans to $10,000 for a snakeskin coat, depending sometimes on whether the person is already famous or up-and-coming.

“We hear a lot of, ‘We’re working with this cool guy. He doesn’t have a lot of money but he’s going to be huge,’” Wood says. “Sometimes it turns out to be true ... Then, since we create their look, we ride the wave with them.”

A pre-law student whose favorite class was criminology and who credits Columbia with teaching her discipline, Wood originally planned to become an entertainment lawyer. But when the Harlem native looked at law school students, “I noticed nobody seemed happy,” she says.

Her future husband, who had connections in the entertainment industry, asked Wood if she wanted to start a venture instead.  “I was always super-organized and he was really creative,” she says. “I didn’t know it would turn into my career.”

When the company started in the early 1990s, Wood didn’t have an office. She had a dorm room and a lot of class work, plus a part-time job at a business consulting firm in Midtown. She made phone calls on the go to drum up business while Guy designed the clothing and outsourced manufacturing to vendors who made the glitzy frocks in their shops.

Kemba Dunham ’94, who has known Wood since their time at Columbia, says Wood’s trajectory was not a surprise.

During college, “Sharene always was very sophisticated about financial matters and how things operated, things not on any of our radars at the time,” says Dunham, a longtime Wall Street Journal reporter who now works in corporate communications.

5001 Flavors soon flourished, despite no outside funding to start, Wood says. During its first year, the company made “more than I had dreamed of making in five years.” 

The company soon bought the lower level of a Harlem brownstone to serve as an office. Top stars such as Mary J. Blige and LL Cool J kept rolling in. But then around 2000 came a sharp decline in business, and the company expanded to sports stars, especially NBA players. Now athletes account for about 40 percent of the company’s clients. “Music and sports are so intertwined,” Wood says.

The economy wasn’t the only thing in the business that had its ups and downs.

Sharene and Guy Wood stopped dating for more than a decade, though they continued to work together. Things eventually became romantic again, and they married in 2007. The couple lives in West Orange, N.J., with their daughter, Sydney (2).

Recently Wood started a separate company, The Wood Agency (thewoodagency.biz), which connects wardrobe stylists with clients and helps celebrities with personal shopping.

Next Wood hopes to make 5001 Flavors a household brand. This year she plans to hire a full-time publicist and attract a major investor.

The company hasn’t started any major branding efforts because Wood believes fans will quickly connect with 5001 Flavors once they recognize the hundreds of outfits worn by their favorite artists.

Plus, her company’s name already appears in millions of plastic jewel cases.

“A lot of people do read the CD liner notes,” she says.

View a slideshow of celebrities wearing 5001 Flavors clothing.

• previous
• Fall 2011
• next