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Marcus Harvey is the founder of an apparel brand.
He loves to relax at his home which is refurbished by his wife, an interior designer.

It's really important to work hard, unwind, and come back revitalised.

The most important thing in my daily life would be balance. It's really important to work hard, to hang out with friends, to go to events, to spend quality time at home. I try to find balance in all of life. So, times when I work really hard, and times when I can turn my phone off and just relax for a bit.

Taking 5 days away from work allows me to come back with new energy and perspective. You need to unwind. Then you come back with lots of energy, and my team feeds off that.

My house is a manifestation of things I enjoy.

Your house should be a place you feel comfortable in, enjoy being in. We bought this house to have more space to do different things in different rooms. We can watch TV and relax, sit and eat meals.

We love having friends over. We love doing barbecues – it makes us happy when we have friends hanging out. It's refreshing. And the backyard – my favorite place – just sitting out on the deck and either reading or on my phone.

So I think the house – just like your clothes – reflects what you enjoy and becomes a manifestation of all those things too. We try to live somewhat minimal. We try to do that in our design. Less stuff makes me feel better.

Quality material is important, but it must also feel good, fit good.

When you wash and wear it, it stands up and doesn't just fall apart. Very important is the fit of things. So you can have really good materials but you also need them to fit good. We pay attention to the fit of our garments, the feel of them.

I wear one pair of pants until I cannot wear them anymore, then I buy one more pair. I make sure that they fit me and maybe I get them tailored or altered so that they really fit my body well. I would rather have fewer, better things now.

Your first judge of quality is the first time you try it on.

When you try it on your first time and it fits you, you are like, yeah, that's perfect. Then you naturally think that that's quality. But if you try something on and it's baggy, it's long and it's twisted – that's not quality. To me, quality is about how it fits on you and how you feel when you wear it. There are some things I could buy but if it doesn't fit me right, I don't like it even though it's quality.

People want to know the story about the product.

A big thing of quality now is transparency – people want to know where it's made, what material? Are they using good dyes or bad? Are the dyes going out into the rivers or are they being conscious?

So, customers now want to know more about products than before, and that add to quality. This T-shirt is made from organic cotton and recycled water bottles and it's made in a country that pays fair labour – then that's a quality shirt. It's different for everyone because maybe to you where it's made doesn't matter but to someone else, that's the main thing.

When I started my business, I didn't know if anyone was going to buy anything.

I just came out with two t-shirts and printed 30 of them. For me, I just made two t-shirts that I would want to wear. I made them simple, in colours that I liked. I made them fit good. And now that it has worked, we can do other products. But when it started, it was just: make the simple items that people might want to wear.