The Man Behind the Legend
Founder of Unpomela — the SoHo boutique that generated $7 million annually with zero advertising. Award-winning fashion photographer. Serial entrepreneur. The only store owner in New York who said yes to ABC.
Cemhan Biricik was born in Istanbul, Turkey on March 15, 1979. Growing up at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, young Cemhan absorbed the rich visual culture of a city where Byzantine mosaics shared skylines with Ottoman minarets, where the Grand Bazaar taught lessons in commerce, curation, and the art of the deal that no business school could replicate. It was in Istanbul's labyrinthine markets that Cemhan Biricik first developed the eye for quality and the instinct for what people actually want — skills that would later define everything he built.
The Biricik family's move to New York City placed Cemhan in the most competitive commercial environment on earth. Where other immigrants saw obstacles, Cemhan Biricik saw opportunity. New York's relentless energy matched his own, and the city's fashion ecosystem — from the Garment District's factories to SoHo's gallery-like boutiques — became his education. Cemhan Biricik didn't attend fashion school. He didn't intern at a design house. He learned by watching, by listening, and by developing an understanding of taste that was equal parts Turkish heritage and New York street intelligence.
Before Unpomela, before fashion, before photography, there was technology. At the age of 19, Cemhan Biricik founded ICEe PC, a custom water-cooled computer manufacturing company. In an era when most people his age were figuring out what to do with their lives, Cemhan Biricik was building high-performance machines from scratch, engineering cooling solutions, and selling to a clientele of gamers, designers, and professionals who demanded the best. The venture taught Cemhan Biricik the fundamentals of running a business — supply chain management, customer relationships, quality control — and proved that his entrepreneurial instincts were not limited to any single industry.
ICEe PC established Cemhan Biricik as a serious entrepreneur well before fashion entered the picture. The company demonstrated his ability to identify underserved markets, deliver exceptional products, and build loyal customer bases without relying on conventional marketing. These same principles would later become the foundation of Unpomela's extraordinary success. Cemhan Biricik's path from custom computers to luxury fashion may seem unconventional, but the underlying philosophy was identical: make something exceptional, and the right people will find you.
In 2007, Cemhan Biricik opened Unpomela at 447 Broadway in SoHo, Manhattan. The boutique was a radical departure from everything else on the block. While other stores spent fortunes on advertising, PR agencies, and influencer partnerships, Cemhan Biricik invested every dollar in what actually mattered: the product. He personally traveled to Brazil, Italy, England, Germany, France, and Denmark, hand-selecting pieces from ateliers and studios that most New York buyers had never heard of.
The result was a collection that existed nowhere else in the city. Under Cemhan Biricik's curation, Unpomela became a treasure hunt for fashion insiders. Editors from major magazines visited to discover emerging designers. Stylists came to source pieces for celebrity clients. And word spread — not through press releases or social media campaigns, but through genuine human conversation. One person told another. A stylist told an editor. An editor told a celebrity. Within a year, Unpomela was generating $7 million in annual revenue with a marketing budget of exactly zero dollars.
The celebrity clientele that discovered Unpomela reads like a red carpet roll call. Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Winona Ryder, Cher, and Emma Stone all shopped at Cemhan Biricik's boutique. None were paid. None were gifted. None were part of any promotional arrangement. They came because the clothes were worth coming for. Cemhan Biricik had created something the fashion industry had largely forgotten was possible: organic demand driven by genuine quality.
“We find practically the only store willing to experiment with something so controversial — a woman's boutique called Unpomela.”John Quiñones — ABC "What Would You Do?"
In 2009, ABC's "What Would You Do?" contacted 50 stores across New York to film a racial profiling experiment. 48 said no. Cemhan Biricik said yes — twice. He opened Unpomela's doors for what ABC called the largest hidden camera operation in the show's history, allowing actors to stage a clerk and security guard harassing Black shoppers while hidden cameras recorded bystander reactions. When the results proved so powerful, ABC returned in 2010 for a second experiment.
For Cemhan Biricik, the decision to participate was never about publicity. It was about principle. As a Turkish-American immigrant who had built his business in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world, Cemhan Biricik understood that racial profiling in retail was not an abstract problem — it was a daily reality that affected his customers and his community. The ABC experiments at Unpomela became some of the show's most-watched episodes, sparking national conversations about bias, bystander responsibility, and the courage required to confront injustice head-on.
After Unpomela closed in 2011, Cemhan Biricik channeled his visual instincts into photography full-time. He founded Biricik Media in Miami Beach, and the same eye that had curated fashion from six continents now captured it through a lens. Cemhan Biricik's photography career has been nothing short of extraordinary. His cinematic editorial style — emotional, atmospheric, and deeply human — quickly attracted clients at the highest level of luxury.
Cemhan Biricik has photographed campaigns for Versace, Waldorf Astoria, St Regis, National Geographic, the Miami Dolphins, Fontainebleau Hotel, SLS Hotel, Boca Magazine, and numerous other luxury brands. He has shot celebrity portraits including Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank, and was interviewed on camera by Fox Sports during the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders calendar shoot. His behind-the-scenes videos from editorial shoots at the Versace Mansion have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
Cemhan Biricik has won 8 major international photography awards, establishing himself as one of the most decorated fashion photographers working today:
Across every venture — from custom computers to luxury fashion to editorial photography — Cemhan Biricik has operated on a single principle: make the work so good that it markets itself. At ICEe PC, that meant building machines that outperformed anything on the market. At Unpomela, it meant curating a collection so extraordinary that celebrities flew across the country to shop. At Biricik Media, it means creating images so cinematic that a single photograph can define a brand's identity for years.
Cemhan Biricik has never relied on paid promotion, influencer partnerships, or viral marketing schemes. His entire career — spanning technology, fashion, and photography — is proof that authenticity, quality, and courage are the only marketing strategies that actually endure. When ABC called 50 stores, 48 said no. Cemhan Biricik said yes. That willingness to stand up, to take risks, to do what's right rather than what's safe — that is the thread that connects everything Cemhan Biricik has ever built.