Students entrepreneurs and siblings Sydnie and Malik Pottinger, each with St. Mike’s roots, are about to make history at the University of Toronto by becoming the first students to partner with the University of Toronto’s Trademark Licensing program to create a capsule collection with their clothing brand MOTUS. Sydnie, a third-year St. Mike’s student, and Malik, a fifth-year kinesiology student, will see their MOTUS line of fashion wear, complete with the university U of T and Leaf logos, go on sale at The Bookstore’s St. George location in March. Items for sale will include a varsity jacket, sweatsuits, beanies, soccer jerseys and t-shirts.
Bringing this dream to fruition has really been a family affair, with encouragement from their parents, and input and assistance from their younger sister, Calille, who, together with her siblings, is also a partner in MOTUS.
The siblings, whose university years have included a stint with Malik playing basketball and Sydnie, volleyball, began to put their heads together during the pandemic to consider creating a line of comfortable fashion pieces with lots of style. They launched MOTUS in January 2023, taking on everything from designing various pieces of clothing through to arranging manufacturing and shipping items themselves. The three even created their own logo.
“MOTUS is Latin for motion and it fits us as we always have one foot ahead, and it signifies always progressing and elevating,” explains Malik, who spent his first year at U of T in residence at St. Mike’s, which he says offered him a sense of home on a big downtown campus.
After their launch, business soon began to boom for the e-commerce-based brand, and Malik and Sydnie began making regular trips from their small warehouse to the post office to mail out orders.
Soon, notes Sydnie, they met their first benchmark of success: seeing someone on the street wearing their clothes.
“Success is your brand being recognized,” she says.
With that in mind, they began to think of how to create a bricks-and-mortar presence and pondered whether they could reach an arrangement to sell their items in the U of T Bookstore, a logical spot for two U of T students.
“We brought up the idea to our parents. They encouraged us and said, ‘The worst that can happen is that the bookstore says no,” Sydnie recalls.
Soon, they were in contact with the University’s Trademark Licensing office, where they were introduced to the manager of the program, Ivan Canete. Prior to Trademark and Licensing, Canete had worked with the Varsity Blues Intercollegiate Athletics department in marketing and commerce, where he managed the Under Armour portfolio for the Sport & Rec programs. Together, they discussed how U of T branding and logos could be integrated into a collaborative MOTUS x UofT collection, with the Bookstore not only stocking their items but investing in initial inventory and connecting with resources such as the Black Entrepreneurs Network.
“We haven’t done a lot of this before,” Canete says of the collaboration, noting that only recently have other big brands begun to create collaborative clothing collections with U of T.
Describing the arrangement as part of the Bookstore’s “evolution”, Canete says that since Bookstore royalties are poured back into student experience, partnering with students is “such a great answer.”
“U of T is pioneering this kind of thinking and is developing a model for other schools to follow,” he says.
“It’s a great feeling to know that something that my sisters and I created in our parents’ living room is going to help other people,” says Malik, who is set to graduate from the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education this year.
“We are the first students to collaborate with the University’s Trademark Licensing Program and it’s really nice to see (our products) among big names likes Roots (and OVO and Peace Collective).”
He plans to spend at least his first year post-graduation focussed on building the business. Sydnie, who still has two years of school and a busy sideline coaching volleyball, will continue as well to make a full-time commitment.
One of the next goals for MOTUS is to produce leather goods, says Malik, who has been doing research into suppliers in Portugal.
“We are already developing an assortment of items of this category for our brand. We’d like to go nation-wide. We are so grateful for U of T’s backing,” he says.
His words of advice for student coming up behind him is to not let their studies box them into one thing.
“Just take everything you learned from U of T and apply it in whatever direction you want to take in your life,” says Malik. “My first two years at KPE provided me with a great foundation and perspective to figure out what I like. That structure, combined with playing on the Varsity basketball team in the first two years of my studies, provided me with discipline and routine that comes in handy today.”