AND1 is an American footwear and clothing company specializing in basketball shoes, clothing, and sporting goods. AND1 was founded on August 13, 1993. The company focuses strictly on basketball and is a subsidiary of Sequential Brands Group. It sponsors NBA athletes, as well as numerous high school and AAU teams in the United States. Company history 1993–2000 In 1993, AND1 began as a graduate school project partnership of Jay Coen Gilbert, Seth Berger, and Tom Austin while they were graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The company name is derived from a phrase used by basketball broadcasters to denote a free throw awarded to a player against whom a foul has been committed while scoring a goal. The brand started by selling T-shirts out of the back of a car. Early advertising strategies included other basketball slogans and trash talk, such as "Pass. Save Yourself The Embarrassment". They marketed their shirts to street basketball players. Foot Locker began to sell the shirts, and within the second year of launching, the business reached 1,500 stores across America. In mid of 1996, NBA star Stephon Marbury became the first spokesman for AND1. With Marbury's signing, AND1 launched its first pair of basketball sneakers, its entry into the footwear category. In late 1998, a videotape containing streetball stunts was delivered to AND1 by Marquise Kelly, coach of the Benjamin Cardozo High school team in Queens, New York. The tape contained low quality camera moves, poor resolution and nearly indecipherable audio featuring a streetballer by the name of Rafer Alston. At the time, Alston was a student at Fresno State who had entered the 1998 NBA Draft. The videotape would soon be known as the "Skip tape", referring to Alston's streetball nickname "Skip to my Lou". Alston later signed on with AND1. In 1999 at Haverford College in Philadelphia, AND1 shot their first series of commercials and print ads incorporating NBA players Darrell Armstrong, Rex Chapman, Ab Osondu, Raef LaFrentz, Toby Bailey, and Miles Simon. When the traditional marketing campaign proved unsuccessful, a strategy was formed to use the "Skip tape". It was edited and reprinted into 50,000 copies, and over the next eight weeks, distributed across basketball camps, clinics, record labels. The tape would become the first "Mix Tape", and quickly made Alston into a celebrity. When AND1 became a product partner with FootAction, this strategy evolved into a national