Earlier this year at the Carbon forums, Acclaim Magazine’s Alex Weiland sat down with Ironlak boss man Levi Ramsey to talk graffiti, building a brand and taking risks.
How did a paint company out of suburban Australia become one of the international graffiti world’s most prominent brands? Well, that’s the question we posed to Levi Ramsey. As the mastermind behind Australian aerosol paint company Ironlak, Levi started the brand in 2002 with zero knowledge of the paint industry. A speaker on the ‘Building a Brand’ forum at CARBON festival earlier this year, Levi is a testament to following your passion – having built a successful company out of a love of graffiti writing and a simple desire for the availability of cost effective, high quality paint in the Australian market.
What was your first motivation to start your own brand?
I think paint here used to be so expensive, I think that was the primary thing. I wanted to paint more but I couldn’t afford to pay $17 a can and I used to spend all of my time mixing cheap paint to get as many colours as I could so I just hit a point where I basically went up to some paint manufacturers and said “Hey, look, I think you guys need to make a few changes here. Can we do something together?” And they all kind of blew me off so I was like “Right, I’ll just try start my own paint company.”
Read more of the interview here
Photos by Sebastian Petrovski