How B.B. Simon Became the Flyest Belt in Hip-Hop

“When I first got them, Genesis was the only store that had them in New York City. That’s why it was so exclusive,” remembers Jones. “That’s why I was really able to get it off the way I did, because no one really knew where they were at for some time. I remember Weezy [Lil Wayne] started dressing in the vein of how we were dressing. He began asking where we got certain things and eventually asked us about what kind of belts we were wearing. He took it to the next level and actually went to the B.B. Simon factory in L.A.”  Tavassoli acknowledges how foundational rappers like Jones, Wayne, and Juelz Santana were for the brand’s growth. He remembers when they all visited his factory in 2008, with each spending $54,000 on 180 belts for themselves, friends, and family. At its peak in the late 2000s, Tavassoli says B.B. Simon manufactured as many as 15,000 belts a month and the label brought in nearly $15 million in gross sales by decade’s end. But after his belts blew up, counterfeits flooded the market; gross sales were down to $2.5 million in 2011. “By 2009, Chinese bootleggers were already making...