Now what is MTRL.NYC?
A year ago, Ted and I decided to lean into our father’s idea of continuing the family business. For context, our parents have been serial entrepreneurs. We grew up being picked up from school and ushered to our parents’ fabric store (in the 90s), then candy store (late 90s), restaurant (early 2000s), hair/beauty supply (2000s - present) and convenience store (2000s - present). We flew to Atlanta, met with our dad’s supplier, got a full education on the hair business (more to come on that very fascinating world) and returned to New York with a little bit of stock to get set up. With no real promotion or effort we got support from friends that proved this could be something successful if we put our minds to it.
Cut to the end of 2025. We’re feverishly working on what could be a real build out of the website, the brand and the business in general. That’s when I had an “a-ha” moment, I hated the name of the hair business we created and needed it to change immediately. A night owl by nature, I was up pondering and googling words that resonated with the hair industry. Nothing was sticking. I searched high and low on Instagram and Google for other brands that sell hair and then it struck me, MATERIAL. Immediately, like a true 90s baby, I took the vowels out and realized what was left were our initials, MTRL.
I dug deeper, everything is made up of material, this could be anything. When we’re working on podcasts, the content is material. When we’re making clothes we have to create them with material. With this in mind, I chatted with Ted, who had previously had an idea to create a blog and told him MTRL can be an umbrella for everything we do; all of our interests can sit under this one name and we just break it down into categories. I didn’t want to create a digital presence boxed in by one thing but I also wanted it to make sense. As a (not self proclaimed) dot connector, I wanted a hub to connect the dots. He was game and just like that, we renamed our hair business MTRL Hair and started this site.
MTRL isn’t about any one thing in particular, you’ll find a range of things here - it’s about all the things we’re thinking, experiencing, doing, feeling, buying, providing; it’s for the intangible and tangible - everything is MTRL.
-Marlon (@marlontorel) + Ted (@tedrlaw)
