CRKD GURU: A Perfect Partnership

Sami Alamoudi and Firas Bawazir discuss the importance of working with people who share the same vision

In 2012, Sami Alamoudi and Firas Bawazir met through the introduction of a mutual friend on Facebook and discovered just how much they had in common – they’re both half Saudi Arabian, half Asian; they both spent time in the UK and they both love hip hop.

“We met before Saudi Arabia opened up, and we both felt that our lives were a constant cycle of going to work and coming home, which wasn’t the lifestyle I was used to because I was in the UK for seven years. Sami and I both wondered what to do with all our spare time. We had a couple of spray cans and one day, we had the idea to create graffiti somewhere as a way to deal with frustration.

They started planning their sketches before spraying full pieces. They discovered that Alamoudi isn’t good at starting drawings and Bawazir isn’t good at finishing them and between the pair of them a full image would get completed and then created on abandoned buildings.

By 2014 they started getting commissions in restaurants and stores, but they also felt that they started graffiti quite late, Bawazir at 25 and  Alamoudi at around 30, and constantly climbing scaffolding was taking a toll and they could see themselves doing it for another five years max.

In 2016, the creative agency where Alamoudi let them use a digital printer to put their artwork on T-shirts, and they were able to sell them at a gallery. After selling half during the event, they wanted to see if they could take it further. In 2017, they attended ComicCon in Jeddah, where they sold shirts for three days.

Their next step was screen printing and couldn’t find anyone who did it in the Kingdom, so they used some of their savings to buy a screen printer in the latter half of 2017 and spent the next 10 months perfecting their technique and pausing graffiti. They entered a cycle of working their regular nine to fives and then screen printing from six to 11.

Once they had a small collection, they took their shirts with them on a holiday to Los Angeles to show some store owners to get their feedback, which was all positive. Saudi Arabia was also starting to open up and hold music festivals and events and Alamoudi and Bawazir were able to get CRKD GURU out to the public. In 2019 they decided to pursue the brand full time.

As they built their brand and attended more events, more creatives started coming together in a community. Then COVID hit and the world shut down, so Alamoudi and Bawazir used that time to develop their website and learn how to use Shopify to grow the brand. Since the world has started returning to normal, CRKD GURU is seeing an increase in interest which is the culmination of years of work where it is no longer considered an underdog brand and they have started doing collaborations.

“We are so similar – we don’t belong to a specific culture because we grew up in Saudi, but we’re not Saudis. We don’t completely belong to Saudi. But when we go back to Indonesia or the Philippines, it’s not really home for us either, and we don’t look Indonesian or Filipino and we also spent a few years in the UK. We’re able to tap into different cultures because it feels like we have multiple backgrounds and histories and experiences. It allows us to express our creativity in many layers,” said Alamoudi.

Finally, Alamoudi and Bawazir believe that artists need to realise that what they create will not always be for everyone, so it’s important to create what you love and put it out into the world.

Get in touch: @crkd.guru

This article appeared in Issue 002 – the Men’s Edition