A teenaged Charles Mangan became transfixed for the first time by the concept of branding when he attended Kanye West’s 2008 Glow in the Dark tour, and it’s a passion that has since served him well in key roles at Bravado and now as the founder and CEO of TITOL™, the biggest independent-artist merchandise and brand company in the world.

At that West concert, Mangan recalls “not being able to completely put my finger on it, but knowing I wanted to do ‘that,’ whatever ‘that’ was. From the very first single [‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’], the song, the single cover, the video and the clothing all felt totally interconnected. How Ye and his team were able to thread the needle through that and then into the tour admat, the stage design, the show concept and of course the merch was a total masterclass in brand narrative. The ‘that’ I couldn’t place was ‘world building,’ which is now commonplace in the industry, but Ye’s Graduation created the playbook for elevated, cohesive album rollouts with a strong focus on art direction, styling, product, brand and collaboration.”

Those are the pillars of TITOL™, which Mangan founded after working directly for Ye’s YZY and Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack in a variety of roles encompassing branding, product and marketing. This year, the company has worked on D2C campaigns around numerous major LPs, including Ye’s Vultures 1 and 2, Future’s run of three #1 albums in six months, André 3000’s New Blue Sun, Yeat’s LYFESTYLE and Don Toliver’s Hardstone Psycho. TITOL™ has also expanded into the non-music-creator world through partnerships with Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy â€¨podcast (which recently welcomed VP Kamala Harris) and Alix Earle’s Hot Mess vertical.

“I worked for some pretty inspiring artists directly, and I saw the writing on the wall early that artists that believed in themselves and wanted to build meaningful businesses in-house would ultimately seek other partners outside of the typical merch-â€¨licensing business to help them do so,” Mangan says. “We specialize in working with artists where the storytelling components around an album are almost as anticipated as the actual music itself. When you have an audience that is as excited for the marketing rollout or the merchandise release as they are for the actual album, that is a ripe fan base to deliver a really high-touch experience. Not every artist really needs the attention to detail we strive for, but we prioritize taste level and find that artists appreciate it.”

In an era of social-media-fueled short attention spans, Mangan stresses the importance of considering branding and merch from the earliest stages of an album campaign.

“Everything matters,” he insists. “The artists who drive the most engagement, which in turn drives sales, have holistic, 360-degree worlds they exist in 100% of the time. Artists who win in a meaningful way in the brand and product space consider every detail of their lives, so when you buy in as a fan, you aren’t just buying into the audio output but the entire lifestyle. I’ve seen plenty of artists come in with large follower counts and not understand why they don’t have a merch or brand business, and they don’t see—or want to see—the disconnect between them and the audience.”

Quoting a lyric from JAY-Z and Kanye West’s “Made in America,” Mangan notes, “‘This ain’t no fashion show, motherfucker, we live it’ is just a fun way to say, ‘Invest in your art practice.’”

Photo: Ray’s Corrupted Mind