Meet the former Philly lifestyle brand that inadvertently became a hit among some Eagles fans this season

Seun Olubodun has always had this thing for bulldogs.

Ask him, and he’ll tell you it has to do with “fighting spirit.”

It’s a love that aligns with his entrepreneurial spirit, one that spawned the creation of his dog-centric lifestyle brand Duke & Winston in 2010. At the height of Duke & Winston, Olubodun had a one-story brick and mortar facility along Chestnut Street in the heart of Rittenhouse, where he sold T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and more bearing homage to both Philly and his favorite guy, his bulldog Duke, who was a fixture at the store.

But as fast as was the rise of Duke & Winston came a fall that hit Olubodun and his business hard. Inventory wasn’t moving while Rittenhouse rents were rising, which caused the creator and his company to go into a tailspin. In 2015, when he finally bid farewell to the business, Olubodun told Philadelphia Weekly in 2019, it sent him into depression.

In the midst of all that, his beloved Duke had died.

“I broke down after that because he was the face of my brand and my best friend for all those years,” Olubodun told Philadelphia Weekly. “So when I disappeared, it’s like he just kind of like disappeared. I was hoping that he would still be with us to see this second launch and watch us try to make it into a success, but you know, it’s just the way things go sometimes.”

Today, let’s just say Duke would be proud. An e-commerce-centric relaunch in 2019 has proved profitable for Olubodun, but this year might be one of his best after an inadvertent design of a bulldog holding a football became a line that has taken off for Duke & Winston. It has caught the attention of a few Eagles, namely Birds rookie Jalen Carter, who most recently was spotted wearing one of Olubodun’s signature bulldog hoodies as the team boarded the plane to Dallas last week.

Even before the hoodie found its way to Carter, who is one of six players from the University of Georgia on the Eagles’ roster, Olubodun said the collection was already creating quite the buzz, to the point where he wasn’t even thinking about trying to get merchandise in the hands of some of those former Georgia Bulldogs. On the first day of launch, Olubodun said he sold about 250 pieces, ranging from T-shirts that start at $36 to sweatshirts at $72 apiece.

Enter Jason Brewer, the owner of Philly-based marketing agency Brolik, whom Olubodun credits with putting the bug in his ear.

“Like a year ago, I’ve been looking for just different opportunities to grow the brand and the product line, in addition to the support I get from my regular bulldog customers,” said Olubodun. “I’m working on licensing right now with a lot of the bulldog-themed colleges, like Yale, Georgia, Georgetown. But a friend of mine [Brewer] reached out to me about two months ago and said, ‘You know there’s like six Georgia Bulldogs players on the Eagles, right?’ And so, that got my wheels turning.”

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For Brewer, a self-proclaimed “big-time Eagles fan” in his own right, to him, it was just a move that made sense.

“I’ve known Seun for probably close to 15 years,” Brewer said. “We’ve done some fun projects in the past, he’s an entrepreneur and I’m an entrepreneur, so it just made sense for us to work together. When I saw he was doing his whole bulldog thing, I felt like there was something there with this Georgia Bulldog thing because [Eagles general manager] Howie [Roseman] has been pulling in these big names from Georgia. And it’s not just like one or two. I can name like five or six right now [Carter, Jordan Davis, Nakobe Dean, Kelee Ringo, Nolan Smith, and D’Andre Swift].

“I was like, hey, I know that it isn’t perfectly like in the wheelhouse of Duke & Winston with the bulldog owner kind of thing. But hey, you’re everything bulldogs and the Eagles just happen to have several, so this could be a cool little spin-off.”

Olubodun also found the stars aligned as the idea came roughly around the same time Eagles fans were going nuts for the return of kelly green to the Birds’ style guide. He views the line as game-day attire for fans who want to look a bit more refined at tailgate parties.

“There’s a lot of Philadelphia [Eagles] merch out there, but, you know, because Duke & Winston is kind of like a more higher-end brand, I think that there are certain types of Eagles fans who gravitated towards it because it’s not like your typical $20 Eagles T-shirt,” he said.

Well, that and Joe Perry, the other half of the Skinny Joey Merlino podcast that has more than 30,000 followers on Instagram. Perry wore one of the Philadelphia Bulldogs hoodies on the show, and Olubodun said the next day there was an order frenzy.

“When I initially launched the shirts, they were doing really, really well,” Olubodun recalled. “But one morning, I woke up to a lot of orders, like in the hundreds. I didn’t know where it had come from. I traced everything back and I saw that [Perry] had posted something on Instagram wearing that shirt, and it just led to this, like, just explosion of orders online, from specifically Philly addresses.”

At the end of November, Olubodun said Duke & Winston had sold over 2,000 units and counting — specifically the Philadelphia Bulldogs collection. Now, his goal is to get pieces from the collection into the hands of the other five Georgia Bulldogs on the Eagles roster.

For now, he’s just appreciative that so many Eagles fans chose to support Duke & Winston with this latest — and as Olubodun would admit, greatest — design.

“The support I get from Philly is like so crazy,” said Olubodun. “I’d say that maybe 60% of my customers are still all from the Philadelphia area and these are people that have essentially been supporting the brand for 12 years. This Philadelphia Bulldogs thing, like, scaled past everything else that I’ve ever done. It’s just nice to see that from influencers, Eagles players, and my customers that the support for what we do is still there.”

The Eagles will visit the Seattle Seahawks in a Monday Night Football showdown. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lumen Field in Seattle.