The Legendary: The Crew

“The Base of all Groups” is what they are. “A Team of True Legends” is what they go by.

The Crew is one of IMVU’s most legendary creator groups, formed by Michigan in 2009 as Gear Breakerz. By 2012, Michigan revamped and re-branded to The Crew; but what's his story? VXM sat down with his brother MrMarz, who tells all on his behalf.

The History. MrMarz says the reason behind the founder starting the group was to have a place for creators to go to have a place to learn and enhance their skills. The group has always been an open door policy for anyone that wanted to join. He said that no one is under any obligation to be the best at anything, they just have to be willing to learn and follow the rules.

MrMarz started learning how to create at the very end of 2009, back when they had a separate creating program that you had to use just to create anything for shop. According to MrMarz, nothing was going on in shop and he was broke, not wanting to spend any real money to buy clothes on IMVU that he didn’t really want to wear. Someone he was close to knew that he wanted to create and was generous enough to buy him the 99 cents VIP deal for a month. Since VIP was 99 cents for the first month and $8 for the following months, he made sure that he worked extremely hard to make something of his IMVU career and not waste the gift that was given to him. Soon after, Michigan came up with the idea to create the group ‘Gear Breakerz’. He saw something in MrMarz and asked him to join the group. It was not easy for the group; they struggled a lot especially with their leader having things going on in his real life. He had to put someone else in charge but they slowly began to fall apart. They continued to fall apart the entire time their leader was gone because he said that no one knew how to lead the group, but once the founder came back, things started to fall back into place.

When he finally came back in May 2012, they wanted a fresh start; thus began ‘The Crew.’

The Members. With talents ranging from clothing, accessories, hair, avatars, rooms, graphics, and more, they have done very well making a name for themselves. There are quite a few members of TC, but the first members are the ones who paved the way. Due to MrMarz’s absence, he did not get to witness it but some of the first members of TC were Naima, Motif, Raee, Prince, and Technique. There are still members in TC that were there from the very beginning when it was called Gear Breakerz, one of which is Jeanevivee, and a few others, but they do not create as much as they used to. MrMarz is the founder’s right hand, the one that sends out the messages to the group members for meetings, events, or updates on the group. He said that at one point he was in charge of new members telling them the rules and would watch their shop to see if the rules were followed. Now that there are a lot more members, more people have the chance to do those jobs that he used to do and he gets to take a break from them.

Every year, TC opens the group for new members to join and this year Michigan decided to put people on trial for two weeks to see if they could prove to them that they could listen to the rules.

They have a person that monitors them during this trial period and if their monitor feels that they have passed within the two weeks then they are allowed to join the group. Sometimes they give people more than two weeks to prove themselves if they see something great within them and they just have yet to show those skills. There are currently 35 members and 4 of those 35 members are alternate accounts. When it comes to managing all of these members, he says that, “Sometimes I question how Michigan does it how he keeps in touch with everybody, but as for what I’m wearing is a big TC chain which shows you the top dog of the team, meaning you worked really hard to earn it. Anybody who earns it can keep track of the team and if anybody is not listening to the rules they are allowed to tell them what to do.”

TC has had its experience with loss. A lot of people who were a part of the team were kicked out or wanted to leave the group and go solo. Some people came in just to use them to get the pro status and then left. He said that with the new trial it will help them to retain more people and weed out the ones that are just there to get the pro status. It has been agreed across the board that everyone needs to just stick to the rules and remain drama free. They don’t kick people out unless they are not following the rules, stealing, or fighting between members. One thing they don’t kick people out for is if they have real life problems. He said that if there are real life things going on then there will always be a spot for them to come back to.

When asked what being a part of the group is like, MrMarz states, “It’s really a family. I had new members say they heard TC is like a family and it really is. We love to help others get better at what they do as in it could be in creating, art, and any other ideas others bring to us. Most of the girls do like to stick together and do crazy things with the boys, like brother and sister gang up on each other, but we really all support each other on everything. We have parties and we always keep in touch via kik. We are bringing a whole lot more to keep everybody involved and such.”

The Legacy. TC calls themselves “The base of all groups” and they believe after four years, upcoming groups look up to them because, according to MrMarz, a lot of other groups titles and logos are inspired by TC. “A lot of people don’t know where my brother really gets his ideas,” MrMarz states, “or how he runs the group and you would be pretty shocked if you found out, but I put money down that they don’t know where he gets it from.” However, when TC sees other people take their ideas and style, they don’t stress on it because over the years they have had such huge support from people on IMVU that they know that TC was there first and as long as people can see that for themselves then the other groups will be stuck with a bad reputation. It is obvious that TC just tries to keep everything positive and always keeps it moving.

The Future. Looking forward for TC, there are a few projects that he is unsure of, but there are group members that are working hard together and they have been working on their magazine for which he hopes can help a lot more people learn about IMVU. He says that there will be a lot more contests and the possibility to see new changes within TC, but they will slowly start to come to the light. MrMarz offers a bit of advice for new coming creators: