MY NAME: Chrispen




AGE:29 years old


LOCATION: Toronto, Canada (you can make it here you can make it anywhere in North America!)

Project name: Upenyu Artwear Clothing

Purpose

Upenyu Artwear Clothing was founded by two young entrepreneurs with a vision of creating a clothing line that expresses all the positive and joyous aspects of life. In the African language of Shona which originates from Zimbabwe, Africa, Upenyu means Life.




Upenyu designs and garments capture the spirit of finding joy through adversity and holding onto moments that evoke emotions of peace and happiness. All the designs of the Upenyu Clothing collection are created with the sole purpose of reminding us of what is beautiful about upenyu (life).

Upenyu Clothing’s mission is to spread the message of positivity through our designs. Our designs reflect moments of joy, love and passion captured and expressed through our collections

History



Goals
As the planners of the business, our goal from the onset is to successfully convey the message and uniqueness of Upenyu clothing to our targeted demographic and beyond.




We are confident that once our positive message, original design concepts, quality clothing and professionalism is successfully conveyed to our target market and beyond, Upenyu will achieve great success.

Objectives
The goal will be to successfully convey Upenyu’s image to the public. We will align our brand with other individuals or companies that also represent positivity and social awareness in the same vein as Upenyu.

This will all be in an effort to connect with our target market on an emotional level as well as to compel them to become more interested in our brand.



Pic’s





URL to website

http://www.upenyu.com

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Toronto-ON/Upenyu-Artwear-Clothing/145200115567?ref=ts


ABOUT Chrispen

Last concert attended

Man this one is really memorable, although my best all-time concert is The Lost Boyz when they performed in Zimbabwe like 13 years ago, it was the legendary Roots crew. ?love, Black Thought and the rest of the band. Those guys know how to move a crowd with live instruments and Black Thought as the MC, they can never go wrong.

They had a lot of surprises too by bringing out Lupe Fiasco and De La Soul. It was such a diverse crowd there you just had to love it.

Last CD purchased

The last CD I bought was the latest from my favourite rapper, NAS. It was originally supposed to have the controversial title of NIGGER but he folded into the pressure to censor and so he called it UNTITLED. Yo, that album is crazy! The theme of the entire CD is the way some black people are still prisoners of their own minds and thus still acting like NIGGERS instead being more empowered.

From the almost acapella intro to the finale crowning the then to be elected President Barack Obama, this album is what mature hip hop fans should be on! You can tell I’m a conscious dude but I still realize where I came from so NAS is like my storyteller!

Favorite TV show as a child

Ah, taking it back! Well there was nothing like Saturday morning cartoons when we were growing up. From Thundercats to Voltron, He- Man and all the OG ones man, you already know what it is!

For non-cartoon shows it was actually action ones like Knight Rider, A-Team etc. The type of person I am I never look backwards (believe-it-or-not) so I don’t fret too much on old things lol


Most anticipated 2010 event/CD/movie.
Let’s see, off the top of my head, I can only anticipate the 1st ever musical festival that Upenyu Clothing is putting together with Upendo Sounds. It will be called the Upenyu/Upendo Festival and literally translates to the Love/Life festival. It will be a huge event held here in Toronto, Canada and will be a fusion of different sounds and performers but mostly with an afro centric theme. We are bringing in artists and DJs from all over North America, Africa and beyond to make this a truly successful festival!

I get excited even talking about it.

Keep checking for updates at http://www.upenyu.com

YAMBUKA THEME: Life (and Business) is tough: summarize an incident(s) you had to OVERCOME a challenge or an obstacle.

One very challenging situation was dealing with a PR person for an event planner that I had entered into a simple cross-promotional arrangement with.

The PR person had not been mentioned to me as being a go-between but she just contacted me about the event in question without a formal introduction and came in guns blazing with misinformation and an amazing lack of professionalism. She was bent on destroying a business relationship that had been months in the forming.




It took all my strength to OVERCOME this challenge but being faced with the challenges of just being who I am and wishing to succeed in business, I had to keep my eyes on the prize!


YAMBUKA salutes Chrispen & Upenyu Artwear Clothing

Championing purpose, hard work and social growth. Building community wealth.