Miller McCoy and Steve Mangini – both of whom grew up in small towns – chased a dream by moving to Los Angeles in 2020, but their dream of creating a popular streetwear brand seemed like it was slipping away.

They made rent for their East Hollywood apartment by working side hustles such as delivering food for DoorDash. After months of rejections and working in fashion styling for free, an opportunity dropped in their laps. Hip-Hop DJ Igor Mamet asked if the two could design trucker hats with his logo, promising to pay for an order of 300 caps that he could sell to retailers. Once they were delivered, Mamet raved about McCoy and Mangini’s work. The two sensed they were on a new business path.

“We kind of looked and each other and thought, ‘Oh wait, there’s a business here?’” McCoy says. “That was kind of a light bulb moment,”

Fastest growing company

In the following weeks, McCoy and Mangini fielded calls from music managers and record labels – all requesting the two to develop fashion lines for their musical artists.

They put their own design ideas on hold and started in 2020 a new music merchandise venture based in Woodland Hills – creating T-shirts, hoodies, caps and accessories for performers to sell at their concerts. They named their company Limitless Manufacturing – because in their minds, there was no limit to what they could make.

And in 2023, they added a third co-founder, Brett Schwers, a close of McCoy’s from Iowa.

Last year, Limitless was ranked among the top 150 fastest growing companies out of 5000, thanks to skyrocketing revenue, according to Inc. Magazine. In 2024, the company earned $3.2 million in revenue, compared to a mere $100,000 in 2021, McCoy says.

Not bad for a group of co-founders younger than 30 who didn’t graduate from four-year colleges. McCoy now confesses that to some surprise his Los Angeles dream finally came true.

“Myself and (Schwers), we are just kids from Iowa. What we know are cornfields and small towns. My other business partner, (Mangini) is from Rochester, New York, basically from the Canadian border. What he knows is small towns and heavy winters,” McCoy says, adding that they’re now in close contact with record labels and music managers. “We almost accidentally stumbled through this kind of door, right?”

The hustle continues

Schwers says they’re always learning on the job. “There were no big investments and funding,” Schwers says. “There was nobody to really coach us. It was about (the) willingness to work hard and saying yes. People would say, ‘You guys already printed my T-shirts. Can you do the fulfillment on them?’ We said, ‘Yes, we’ll figure it out.’ It was boots on the ground, trial and error, seeing what we could do.”

Currently, Limitless produces merchandise for up-and-coming music businesses such as The Ogunlesi Group, a Hollywood management company that works with singers like Reyna Roberts, who gained critical acclaim for her performance with Beyoncé on the Grammy Award-winning Cowboy Carter album released in 2024.

Limitless also works with Mike Seander, a musician who goes by the stage name “mike.” and whose album The Lows had ranked No. 3 in Spotify charts when it was released in April 2024.

All three Limitless co-founders credit some of their success to being at the right place at the right time. Streaming and digital delivery of music has changed the business end of the music industry since the early 2000s. After more than 15 years of relying on revenue from compact discs – in 2000, more than 940 million CDs sold in the U.S. market – the market has collapsed. Less than 50 million CDs sold last year, according to research group Statista. Streaming royalties have not replaced proceeds from CD sales, McCoy says.

“I can make more money off selling a hoodie than I will make all year from my music streams,” McCoy remembers his clients telling him.

Limitless makes contracts where they take anywhere from 15-40% of profit from a venture.

The Limitless showroom offers 20 different brands of blanks which wholesale from $3 to $18. The company uses a wide array of blanks vendors from Los Angeles Apparel to Gildan Activewear S.R.L. Limitless’ T-shirts typically retail from $30 to $60. Mangini says his company seeks to offer a point of difference by working with higher end blanks of T-shirts and hoodies. The company also seeks to make any sort of product a client would request, ranging from fragrance to furniture.

“Limitless also will work with cheaper blanks if a client requests less expensive wares,” Mangini says.

In the near future, the company might raise fund raise to finance an office in China to be closer to their manufacturers, McCoy says.

They also won’t forget their dreams of running streetwear brands.

“It would kind of be what we end up falling back into,” McCoy says. “It’s taking what we’ve learned, taking the connections, the relationships, the network, the partnerships, all of that, and being able to enact those into our own endeavors.”