Daymond John Biography & Net Worth

Daymond John Biography & Net Worth

Daymond John is an American businessman, television personality, fashion designer, and author. He earned his wealth as the founder, president, and former Chief Executive Officer of the urban clothing brand “FUBU“, and also as an investor and host on the television show “Shark Tank”. Daymond John net worth is $300 million.

Daymond John’s Early Life

Daymond Garfield John is the son of Garfield and Margot John. He was born on 23 February 1969 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, but grew up in a neighborhood in Queens called Hollis. He was 10 years old when parents divorced so he prepared to start working and supporting his family in the ways that he could. He began handing out flyers, getting paid paid just $2 an hour.

In high school, he engaged in a work program which allowed him do his schoolwork and hold a full-time job on an alternate schedule. When he graduated, he waited at Red Lobster and also began a commuter van service.

Daymond John’s Career

Founder of FUBU

John started a clothing company, FUBU, an acronym which stands for “For Us By Us”. He founded this company when he was age 20 at his mother’s house in Queens. Combining love for both fashion and hip-hop, his idea was made toward young, male, urban customers. His mother encouraged him, and taught him how to sew. She let him take over the house so as to grow his business. Seeing the potential and passion in her son, Daymond’s mother mortgaged her house to raise a $100,000 worth of startup capital. He continued to work at Red Lobster on a full-time scale so that he could make ends meet while trying to grow his business. His first significant project was sewing knock-off wool ski hats. He considered the popular-at-the-time hats too costly at $20 apiece. He sewed around 90 hats with Carlton Brown, his next-door neighbor and future business partner. They sold each of the hats they made for $10 and made $800 in one day.

Their next project were screen-printed T-shirts which they sold on consignment at large gatherings in their area. John and his partner Brown recruited their friends Keith Perrin and J. Alexander Martin to their business, and they partnered to design T-shirts, hockey jerseys, and sweatshirts with the FUBU logo. They loaned some clothing items to rappers to use for their music videos with the goal of endorsing their products, and eventually ended up getting product placement in more than 30 music videos. In 1993, their neighborhood friend LL Cool J wore a FUBU T-shirt for a promotion campaign, and a FUBU hat in a commercial, instantly boosting their brand name and popularity. At one point in the early 1990s, Daymond John received $300,000 in orders. He had to another mortgage on his mother’s house to be able to fulfill them. He was turned down by 27 banks for an extra loan and used what was left of him to advertise his brand in the New York Times, and the result was a deal with Samsung Textiles.

Within six years of being established, FUBU was generating over $350 million every year in revenue. The popularity of the brand has since declined. However, FUBU has made over $6 billion in worldwide sales to date.

Other ventures

Daymond John is also famous as a television personality. He appears as a judge on the popular television show “Shark Tank” starting from 2009. He has invested over $8.5 million of his personal money in businesses on the show.

Daymond is also an author of several motivational end educating books. He is the executive producer of the 2005 movie”The Crow: Wicked Prayer”. He is a brand ambassador of Shopify.

He is also the founder and Chief Executive Officer of “The Shark Group”, a brand management and consulting firm. He co-founded the program Daymond John’s Success Formula in 2015. The program dedicated to educating entrepreneurs on ways to start and grow their businesses. He changed the name of the program to Next Level Success in September. The program collaborates with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, which gives $1,500 scholarship to aspiring entrepreneurs yearly. To add to this, he also runs an online training program for entrepreneurs, called “Daymond on Demand”.

Awards & Honours

In 2015, Daymond John was appointed by then president of the United States, President Barack Obama as ambassador to promote underserved entrepreneurs. His books have been on the best seller lists of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. His book “Power of Broke” was awarded an NAACP Image Award.

Daymond’s company, FUBU, is featured at the Smithsonian’s Museum of African-American History and Culture.

He John has won several awards including two time Congressional Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship, Ernst & Young’s New York Entrepreneur of the Year, and NAACP Entrepreneur of the Year. For the show “Shark Tank”, he won four Primetime Emmy Awards consecutively from 2014 to 2017.

Personal Life

The self-made millionaire is married to Heather Taras, with whom he has another two children.

Daymond John is dyslexic. In 2017 he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, but the tumor was successfully removed via surgery.

Daymond John Net Worth

This millionaire businessman made his wealth as the founder, president, and former Chief Executive Officer of the urban clothing brand “FUBU”, and also as an investor and host on the television show “Shark Tank”.

From an initial $40 investment to a company worth $6 billion, one would wonder how on earth he was able to amass such a huge amount of fortune. It all boils down to the efforts and dedication that was put into this business by Daymond John in all those years. Within six years of being established, FUBU was generating over $350 million every year in revenue. The popularity of the brand has since declined. However, FUBU has made over $6 billion in worldwide sales to date.

Daymond John net worth in 2020 is estimated at $300 million.