MADE YOU LOOK A Tastemaker Spotlight Series Ed Soares

When Anderson Silva bested Dan Henderson to unite the UFC Middleweight and PRIDE Middleweight belts, Ed Soares made sure his joy wasn't lost in the Portuguese translation.

As fight manager under his Tough Media, Inc., Soares guides the careers of The Spider, UFC Heavyweight Champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, WEC Middleweight Champion Paulo Filho and Lyoto Machida. With a roster like that it's hard not to take notice but the grind was a shared effort that began in Japan and coalesced in the Americas.

1. What are your company names and any brand extensions?

My corporate company is ESP Clothing, Inc., that's my clothing corporation and the brands underneath are Sinister Brand clothing. We also do a lot of private label business which we manufacture and design clothing for a lot of different ' we pretty much have manufactured clothes for just about all the major MMA clothing brands out there. You name them, the major ones; we've designed and manufactured something at least for them if not a majority or their apparel. We also manufacture and design for a lot of the organizations, big organizations to some of the smaller organizations we've produced their product lines. And then our management business is called Tough Media.

2. How did you first get your start in the MMA Business?

Being Brazilian I've always been a big fan of MMA. With my clothing brand, back even before MMA was what it is today, we always like hooked up fighters and gave them clothes; we sponsored a lot of jiu jitsu fighters and stuff like that.. Basically the way I got into really making a business out of this was I went over to Japan with Chuck Lidell when he fought Qu inton Jackson for the first time and when I was over there I ran into a friend of mine that's been a friend of mine for many years which is my partner in Tough Media; his name is Jorge Guimaraes. And what he did in Brazil is he had this television show out there called Passing the Guard and at that time I went over there and saw him. He used to always wear my clothes on his T.V. show in Brazil so when I was there in Japan we were just hanging out and he had a camera and I was talking to him about T.V. and just doing different stuff and he asked me, 'hey would you like to film my show? Would you like to be the camera man?' I said sure. So it ended up that I filmed all the backstage post-fight interviews for him in Japan and while I did that I was kind of working with him for a few days out there. So at the end of the whole deal, just being entrepreneurial, I was like man this was pretty cool doing these post-fight interviews and I asked him, 'hey who handles all this stuff for you in the United States?' And he turned around and told me, 'well nobody we don't really have the budget for that and I told him, 'well you know I'm at these events most of the time any ways, maybe I can start doing your post-fight interviews for you.' And he said, E2yeah we'll see.' Then on the way home I just kept thinking how could I turn this into some sort of a business so I called him when I got home back in Brazil and I said, 'hey I'm going to try to bring this T.V. show out to America.' That was in November of '03 and when I got home I started going after it and seeing what I could put together and in April of '04 we launched our first T.V. program, our first show on a local regional channel here in southern California. It was on Saturday nights at midnight, we did that show for like 11 seasons, the ratings got really good but through that I started building really good relationships with all the organizations because we were one of the only T.V. shows out there that was actually airing MMA on free T.V. So we would go and we started building really good relationships with guys at UFC and the WEC, the WFA, with Pride, with all these different organizations because we were out there covering their events and giving them free promotion. So we started building great ripore with the fight promoters, great repoir with all the fighters because we were doing the interviews so it eventually turned into we started representing fighters and here we are today.

3. What were you doing before this?

I took over Sinister March 10th of 1998. From like '94 to the end of '97 I pretty much did some of the biggest nightclubs in Hollywood. I was the Friday night promoter at the Roxbury. I did the Century club, Billboard Live all types of nightclubs and I also worked with some bands, with some hip hop artists and worked in the music business. At that particular time I kind of wanted to get out of the nightclub business, I was kind of getting burned out; my girlfriend at the time got pregnant and I was like, 'you know what I don't want this nightclub scene any more for me because I wanted to be a family (man) so I got out of the nightclub scene. Started working in the apparel business and a few months later I took over Sinister and that was ten years ago.

4. So you started first with Sinister Brand then became a manager of fighters?

Before Sinister brand I managed some hip hop bands and was a tour manager for some hip hop groups. They were called 'Da Neighborhoods.' They were on a small independent label called React Records. The biggest act that was on the label was Rodney O and Joe Cooley; there wasn't too many hip hop artists. It was more of an acid jazz compilation, they were really known for their compilations and they started finding some hip hop groups. We were one of the first groups in the early nineties that was playing with a live band. We were out right when The Roots first started coming out getting some attention.

5. As the only merchandiser manager in the game do you think your blueprint will be duplicated?

I don't know, man. It could be I'd be flattered if it was but I think there's some other people out there that are trying to do it. We were fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. With me being Brazilian and speaking Portuguese we happen to find a niche that was really needed in the business.

6. How were you able to solidify your client management roster?

A lot of the recognition and the reputation I got was instantly because of my partner. My partner has basically been involved with this sport from the beginning. He's been here since the beginning of this MMA stuff. He came to the United States with Rorion/Jorges Gracie, who created the UFC, back in the late seventies, early eighties and with his relationship and with his television show of 11 years in Brazil he was the guy that was in Brazil telling these gu ys, 'hey man we've got this management company, I've got my partner in the United States, he's got all the T.V., all the media, all the promotional outlets on lock down in Brazil and with us having the T.V. show here in the beginning we were able to create a lot of media and a lot of marketing for our fighters in the beginning. And through his relationship with all these guys, his reputation of being a solid guy and my reputation as being his partner we were guys that they could trust and we just went out there and just did what we could do for them.

7. Where is Sinister Brand currently being sold?

We're being sold in retail stores worldwide. We're being sold in Japan, Brazil, all over Europe, Canada and the U.S.

8. Biggest challenges as a merchandiser?

Probably controlling growth. There's so many from dealing with the growing pains of a business, controlling cash flow, there's so many moving parts that on any given day'I'd say the biggest challenge overall though is learning to delegate and learning to trust the people that are working because when I started this company it was me by myself and now you start to acquire employees and acquire people to have responsibility and it just always seems that people don't do things exactly like you do them sometimes and when you don't have the corporate infrastructure when your company grows you don't have all these operating procedures. Overall, learning to delegate and having employees, good people around you that you can trust.

9. How do you plan on using your merchandising business to brand your clients in the MMA global marketplace?

What we've done is, in the beginning a lot of our clients weren't really well known in the U.S. so what we did is provided them an outlet with using them in our ads to help promote them as athletes and in return to help promote our brand. We work with a lot of athlete's even ones that I don't manage. We've been with Chuck Lidell for a long time, as a matter of fact I was the guy who created the icicles on Chuck Liddell's short's, I was the guy who designed that. I was the guy who designed the flame beanie that Tito has, that was my flame beanie that we did for Sinister and he said to me, 'hey man I really like that can we put Punishment instead of Sinister on it.' With a lot of our fighters that we work with we've created a partnership with them where we create branded product for each individual fighter that we work with. We create a line based around those fighters and we're basically partners with them for those particular items.

10. Do you think the mainstream rise of MMA will carry merchandising at the same speed?

Yeah I definitely do. The bigger the sport gets, the bigger the lifestyle of the sport gets, the bigger the brands involved in it get so I definitely think the merchandising is following for sure.

11. As the MMA landscape continues to grow how will you continue to standout from the pack?

We're just going to keep pushing the envelope, we try to incorporate what our lifestyle is about; we try to incorporate that Southern California lifestyle. As a quote MMA brand, we are an MMA brand but we're really also a big action sports brand. One of our slogans has always been, 'what the fighters wear when they're not fighting.' So now we do have some fight shorts that we make and we do have some fighter tees that we make but really our whole image of our brand and the whole lifestyle of our brand is to incorporate the Southern California lifestyle. As we all know Southern California is a huge market for MMA but there's also a huge market for surf, skate, snow, motocross and I think our brand really just incorporates all those types of activities that incorporate the southern California lifestyle. For all the traveling that I've done around the world it just seems that the whole world really tries to emulate this southern California lifestyle and you just happen to live here and basically we're just trying to come up with the products and everything that incorporate our lifestyle here in southern California. That's one of the differences with our brand in comparison to the rest of the MMA clothing brands out there; those MMA clothing brands are really based all around MMA where our clothing brand didn't necessarily start in MMA our clothing brand was really more of a club wear line that basically turned into more of a lifestyle brand and us being into MMA we incorporated the MMA lifestyle but we also incorporate surf, skate and all the other type of action sport activities that are out there.