Clinton man designs a better future

With a logo of a looping arrow pointing to the right to represent his life’s journey, Akil Asim is looking towards the future as a fashion designer and entrepreneur.

“It’s fresh, it’s new, it’s different and it just catches your eye,” he said while explaining about the sporty styles of SvN Arrow Clothing.

SvN is his unique abbreviation for the number seven — a significant number in the life of the Clinton-based businessman. It’s the amount of time he served in prison after making wrong decisions that came with time behind bars. In his younger years, Asim said he was moving too fast when it came to life in the streets. It’s a story a lot of men in prison share.

“We had good homes and we didn’t have to be in streets,” he said. “We were intrigued with the streets and the streets just welcomed anybody.”

Asim grew up as a military kid and moved around a lot with his mother. He was born in Virginia and spent a lot of years traveling back and forth from North Carolina. Asim said he went to so many schools, a lot of different yearbooks were collected along the way. Some of those classrooms were in Roseboro, Clinton and Warsaw.

After a few year, a silver lining came through an annoying cellmate and the song “1942 Flow” by rapper Meek Mill.

“When I was in prison, I had a cellmate who used to irritate me,” Askim said. “He would play this song every day. I never listened to the song because he used to irritate me so much that I didn’t even want to hear it.”

After getting transferred to another prison, he heard the song again and began to like it. At the moment, the vision came right to him for the future of SvN Arrow Clothing.

“I heard something in the song and it just came right to me,” he said.

He came home in late August, he started the business after one week. He began selling his clothes in September. Going in to the new year, Asim is working on upgrading his website to provide an interactive experience with customers.

SvN Arrow wasn’t the first name of the business, but with a suggestion from his mother, it changed as a way to appeal to a larger audience. Another close friend also suggested that his brand should be more personal related to serving time as well.

“That’s it, it was perfect because it summed up everything,” he said. “I just ran with it.”

For Asim, the arrow also represents how everyone can have crookedness within, but believes an arrow is still an arrow, no matter the shape. Now, he’s on a direct path with a dream to grow his business through a motto of “No Days Off & The Grind Never Stops.” Through social media outlets such as Facebook and Instagram at @SvNArrowClothing some of the offerings include shirts, gym clothes, sneakers, high heels, masks for the COVID-19 pandemic, and hoodies.

“My clothes are for everybody,” he said about reaching everyone regardless of their background, size or age.

As a community member and business owner, he would also like to spend time talking to at-risk youths with goals to improve their lives. Looking back on his own, he’s stressed not to “let your past hold you back.” He remembered a story from his grandfather telling a story about Moses, who killed a man but was still one of the greatest heroes in the Bible after leading his people to the promised land.

“With that, you can turn something bad into something good and still be great,” he said.