KINGSTON, Jamaica — What started over 15 years ago with friends and teammates from the Meadowbrook High School basketball team in St Andrew chilling under a tree has mushroomed into SoChill Clothing, an apparel brand that Akeem Cohen believes has the potential to make a big impact on the global market.

Cohen, who is a co-founder of SoChill Clothing, told Observer Online that the journey of the business which started in 2011, has been tremendous.

“From Meadowbrook High School to the world. When we just started, we were just locals printing shirts. From then till now we have expanded overseas. Our network spans almost every continent. The only continent we have not shipped to is Antarctica,” he said.

“This thing can get as big as our minds want it to be. The possibilities are endless,” Cohen added.

Akeem Cohen and a model showcasing Sochill oversized jerseys (unisex) and crop top jerseys for women from their Sochill Jamaica Jersey collection.

SoChill offers lifestyle clothing for women and men. They also offer swimwear and accessories, among other things.

“Other than just lifestyle clothes for going to parties, we started to branch off into sportswear. We now have some SoChill football jerseys, we have a tennis collection that just dropped with tennis skirts for women. We offer sweat tops, t-shirts, long sleeve jerseys and bikinis. Yes, we do swimwear as well. We also do accessories and from time to time you will see us with fanny packs, bags and you would see us with branded bottles and things like that.

“We are one of the first brands to collaborate with Dancehall artistes. We have collaborated with Aidonia, Jayds, Quada, and we have had multiple artistes wearing our brand in music videos, from Daddy 1 to Squash. You might see our stuff in music videos by Popcaan, Chronic Law and Jahshii. All of them have interacted with the SoChill brand at some point in time. Most times, people contact us and say they see our stuff in music videos and sometimes we really don’t know how it got there,” Cohen shared.

This model shows off one of the sun glasses in Maisonxbycohen’s collection.

He smiled when he reminisced on the genesis of the business. He shared that back at Meadowbrook High, his friend and teammate Akeem Marriot was the one who conceptualised the idea for the SoChill brand. He said that from there, he bought into the idea and the rest was history.

“He had the concept for SoChill and we as friends started to jump around once he hit us with the idea and we saw the logo with the palm tree. At that time, we were basically the basketball team, so we used to play sports and hang out every day. The brand really formulated from us chilling and having good vibes every day at school. We were exuberant youth who decided to turn an idea into a brand,” Cohen said.

Cohen also shared that he is pushing a designer sunglasses brand of his own called Maisonxbycohen.

“We sell sunglasses. The term mason in French means house of fashion or fashion house. So it’s ‘fashion house by Cohen’. That is how the name came by. What is special about these glasses is that it is branded and made by Jamaicans and is being sold to the world.

“If you check on the scene, we don’t know the history of these products and we are paying premium dollars for these. This is a brand by a Jamaican for Jamaicans and the world. I have tailored it to suit the Jamaican people in terms of how we dress. We have the colours that the Jamaican people like so that is why we have the ones with blue, green and orange lenses,” he said.