DX: Nowadays, are you guys primarily doing skins for iPods, or are there other devices?
VB: Sure. At first it was iPods, but now it’s more of a focus on personal devices. We have all the iPods, the Razor phones, Sidekick II and III. We have three different models of Blackberry. We have the [Playstation] PSP, Nintendo DS, a couple different Guitar Hero skins. We make every size in laptop. That’s what it is right now. In the next 10 years, you’re gonna essentially have the computer in the palm of your hands. Being able to customize that and stylize yourself, whether having your favorite artist, band, musician, streetwear, that’s what Music Skins is all about – music and the culture behind music.

DX: You showed me your Barack Obama demo skin on your phone. The technology of these things have come such a long way. Logistically, how far have skins come from the days of those scary rhinestone Sidekick skins that they were selling years ago…
VB: The technology took over a year to develop and close to $100,000 before we printed a skin. That was me working hands-on with these two gentlemen who created the product. It’s a 3M patented product. You can’t buy this from 3M and go anywhere else in the world, other than North America to use this product. The technology behind it, the patents that 3M owns on this material make it very difficult. It’s not cheap to make, but again, the quality of the artists who’s putting their artwork on it and the customer who’s buying. You’re not gonna be disappointed. When you’re ready to switch your skin up or do what you do, it’s not gonna leave any residue on your device.

DX: Is this a technology and promotional vehicle that you find speaks moreso to Hip Hop than other genres?
VB: Not only is it balanced in genres of music, it’s balanced in all different types of entertainment and fashion. Anywhere where someone wants to show their personality, this product makes sense. Other than your clothes and your wallet, your devices are essential to leaving the house. This is the wave of the future. It just depends on who you’re talking to. We’ve had a lot of success with Rock music, Rap music. The best seller on our site is Exploding Dog. He’s this artist who has this site. You can write him a daily one-line email sentence, and he has four or five different characters, that he’ll actually take what you wrote him, for instance “I hate my job,” and he’ll put his own twist on it. The two designs that we sell right now are “I hate technology” and “Red Robot leaves the city.” He does this daily. He gets 50-100 emails daily and 100,000 people to his site daily. Really, the cool thing about him is, you look at his art, it’s very simple. But at the end of the day, the head of marketing at Def Jam has one on his iPhone. The art transcends things. Music Skins capitalizes on that.

DX: If I’m an artist reading this interview and I have decent buzz, a lot of MySpace friends and can sell CDs in my neighborhood, can I work with Music Skins?
VB: Sure. We want to be the one-stop for any artist, musician or band. We’ll work with anyone. Our minimums are low. Pricing is the same place as everybody else in the industry, if not, lower. But you really can’t go anywhere else and buy 10 units. If you want to design ‘em and send ‘em over, basically, we’ll print ‘em.

DX: You have in-house design as well for higher end projects too though?
VB: Oh yeah. We can help you with all that. We have a full design staff here. Most major labels send us their full imagery and we do all the layouts. It really depends where you’re at. If you know how to use Photoshop, we’ll send you the templates and you can lay them out yourself and we’ll print them.

DX: What’s your day-to-day like?
VB: It’s…[Laughs] I’m up at nine, and I’m basically working until I go to sleep, and that is 12 or one o’clock. In all, the money we’re making is going right back into the business. It’s a long road. These things don’t happen overnight. We have licensing deals that have taken a year to get done. It taught me a lot about patience and hard work. We signed some big deals in the last couple weeks.

DX: My next question exactly. What’s coming up?
VB: We just signed a deal from VIBE. You’ll actually be able to purchase Music Skins from Vibe.com. We have an ongoing relationship with Koch, so we have a Clipse [click to read] skin coming out with the [Re-Up Gang] CD. [Sighs] I wish I could give you more info, but we have deals on the table with two of the major management companies in the Hip Hop world. It would almost be everybody that anybody really cares about these days. It could actually happening before this hits the site. [Laughs] We have big projects with clothing companies like L-R-G, Mishka NYC, Lemar & Dauley, Money Clothing, Greedy Genius Sneakers. Those are projects that should be off the ground very soon. It’s really a continuing thing. We have 147 licensing deals that are on the table right now.

DX: In all the devices you have, what are your skins right now?
VB: Gotta go with the Barack Obama. I’ve got a Mishka NYC iBall that you can’t get. My iPhone has a skin that nobody will ever see [sighs] of Michael Jordan, a portrait by Virtual Mo. It’s elaborate, all one line that makes up a portrait of Michael Jordan. He was commissioned by Jordan, and went on the back of one of his customer jerseys.

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