Building the Streetwear Empire Kith | Ronnie Fieg

Key Takeaway

Build for a specific person you understand deeply—ideally yourself—rather than chasing a market-size spreadsheet. Today, choose one product, service, or project you own and ask: “Would I personally use this repeatedly, and what would make it meaningfully better?” Fix one overlooked detail, remove one mediocre element, or add one piece of value without raising the price. Distinctive work compounds when every decision comes from genuine product conviction.

Episode Overview

Ronnie Fieg traces Kith’s evolution from a small footwear retailer into a global lifestyle brand spanning apparel, hospitality, food, and Kith Ivy, a padel-focused membership club. He explains how years spent working retail, obsessing over product, and serving an existing community shaped his commitment to quality, controlled distribution, and building experiences rather than simply maximizing sales.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Building the Streetwear Empire Kith | Ronnie Fieg from David Senra. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

I wish we just recorded the conversation we were just having, but I love what you just said. So you're like, hey, my favorite entrepreneurs cannot work backwards for money. Say more about this. Yeah, it's true. Like even some of the biggest companies in the world, like take Apple and Steve Jobs, who's like one of your favorite, I guess, like favorite icons ever, if not your favorite, right? One of them. Yeah. Okay. But when you see the product he was making, you can actually tell that there was passion behind trying to make product that was going to change his own life, right?

And I felt like even then, when the iPod really changed the trajectory of the company, you could feel the passion through the product. And that legacy lives on, like even with the duo that we're seeing now, you could see that legacy live on. Is it on par with what Steve Jobs may have designed? We will never know, but ultimately he created an ethos that I believe really transcended and that feeling that penetrated everyone's lives really affected us in so many ways. I don't apply that to my business.

It's just naturally there because when I grew up, I became passionate about my world at such a young age. And I think that that's the most important element of anyone's or any entrepreneur's success. If you listen to most of them, they'll explain how their passion started so early in their lives. Whereas in my case, it started when I was 13 and I started working in a stock room. But even before then, I always wanted to dress fly in school and my parents couldn't afford to buy me the things I wanted.

So back then, I went to work strictly for the purpose of being able to buy my own shit and just dress the way I wanted to dress. And that's how it started. And I think the passion for that grew. And as I learned about product, it just grew more and more. But getting my foot in the door and knowing what I wanted to do from such an early age gave me the upper hand. But how does a 12 or 13-year-old kid get interested in fashion? Is this coming from hip-hop culture?

What was going on in your life where it's like, man, I want to come to school dressed and fly? So I'll tell you. So growing up, up until fourth grade, my parents sent me to a private school, to a yeshiva. And in fourth grade, they couldn't afford to send me there anymore. Actually, my grandfather was helping my mom send me to a private school. And then in fourth grade, they couldn't do it anymore. So they pulled me out. And then they put me in the public school closest to my house.

So I grew up in Jamaica, Queens. So I went to PS 178. And when I attended 178, it was like a culture shock for me because it was so many different cultures. It was like the biggest melting pot ever. And you know, Queens is the biggest melting pot in the world. So we got to see, or I got to see, from day one, so many different cultures in the way people were dressing and the styles. And really, there was like a small crew of kids, like six or seven of them, that befriended me right away.

And these kids, like, that was back when, you know, Polo, Tommy, and Nautica were like, you know, we're really, we're really big. We're around the same age. I remember this. Yes. So it was, it was, are you 82? What year are you? 84. Of like, and then going into middle school, it became even more important. So more important in the way that you were dressing, you know. So I found myself, you know, really wanting, you know, I used to have to borrow my friend's clothes. Like.

Dude, I had knockoff Tommy Hilfiger. Dude. I literally bought it at the swap shop in South Florida. We had no money. It was. And then I got called out at school. You don't want to hear an embarrassing story. I didn't even know. You know how these hustlers in South Florida are. They took old Wendy's uniforms, like the Wendy's, like the fast food place. And you would give them like, uh, like a collared shirt, right. And I go to the swap shop cause we have no money.

And like, you have these like street vendors and right. And I'm like, Oh, this is Tommy. I didn't understand what was going on. And I wore it to school. And they're like, dude, that's a Wendy's shirt. I remember being like 12 and like devastated that I'm wearing a fucking fast food costume. Not costume. What's it called? A fast food uniform with a fake Tommy Hilfiger screen printed on it. That's insane. I don't know. I don't think things have gotten that far. I haven't thought about that in 20 years.

I can't believe that. That's really crazy. There were a ton of fakes going around. And even though like back then, you know, a 65 or $85 shirt was like $10. I should have known by the price. Oh yeah. You should have known by that. I could have told you back then. You needed me as a friend. You know, I would have kept you safe, but in, in, in school, that's what really that, that style, like what we were seeing around us, that was, you know, that that's what we really wanted to be.

And my older sister, she was working and making money, buying product for herself. And then some of the kids in school, you know, they had the money or the parents had the money to buy them the product they wanted. And that's really what fueled, you know, my, my kind of like passion for wanting to work just like I wanted to make money so I could buy my own product, you know, and buy my own clothing. So at 13, at my bar mitzvah, you know, my, my mom's first cousin, my second cousin who was David Z, he owned shoe stores in the city.

He offered me an envelope of cash because he knew that my parents were paying off for my bar mitzvah party with the money I was getting as gifts. So he offered me, like I was going to the bathroom during the party and he gave, offered me a, like an envelope of cash and I told him, keep the envelope. I want a job. I was 13, you know, and he was like, are you sure? Like there was some money in that thing. So I was like, yeah, no, I'm sure I want a job.

And I started the next day and I started, um, working, um, in the stock room in a warehouse on Broadway, uh, where David Z had a bunch of stores and I worked there throughout the summer. Uh, and then after that I worked in the stock room in eighth street, which was like probably the most important part of my upbringing and also like the most influential part of my life. Uh, because that's where I got to see, like, it was really the epicenter of culture, eighth street between fifth and sixth Avenue.

Like during the weekend they would shut down the block, there would be like basically like block parties every weekend there and the cops would let it rock. And then the cars were parking like diagonally cause it was so many cars and that's where people would come to get, you know, whether they were coming to get their fitted or grace papaya was on the corner or fat beats where DJs would come and get their vinyl, Sam Goody was across the street. And then you had a bunch of different shoe stores and also apparel shops, uh, where people were buying their iceberg apparel or they were buying back then brown shoes and boots were running the streets of New York.

So like today when you see like the obsession over kids in their Jordans or, you know, uh, kids buying sneakers the way they are today, they were buying boots like hiking boots back then. And that's when New York city was colder and it was snowing a lot more. And you know, for a good part of the year you needed to have boots. And David Z was the number one location for those products. So you're talking about brands like a solo and technica and red wing and we had polo like the polo cookie boots and the hiking boots, the RLX boots and Timberlands, um, trezetta Dolomite, like all bear AKU, like all these Gore-Tex, uh, hiker boots, hiking boots were just everywhere in New York city in that culture.

It was like, it was still a subculture, but it got so big. Like people were driving from like different states to come buy these products because they were Italian brands making product in Italy and it wasn't mass, you know, it wasn't massively distributed. But when do you go from like admiring what other people are making to saying, Hey, I'm going to do my versions of this. That came, that came later. So that like I worked as a stock boy, like receiving product, getting one-on-one time with the product, then becoming a salesperson, then becoming an assistant manager, then becoming a manager, assistant buyer, and then buyer slash manager.

So this is just you learning the business, not thinking like, let me ask you a question. Maybe like I should start here. If somebody doesn't know who you are and say, Hey, what do you do? How do you describe yourself? I do a lot more than design. So I'm the CEO, creative director and CMO, I would say of the company. So CEO, CMO and, and, um, and creative director. And I think the creative director portion of my role, uh, has evolved over time, but I am ideating and part of every design of every product that we put out.

So it's hard for me to describe what it is that I do because I do a lot and a typical creative director wouldn't be doing the buying or merchandising. And I do, I do most of those things. So I have my hands in everything, um, in everything product wise, uh, and then I designed the spaces. I'm heavily involved in, in the full, like 360, 360 degrees of the business, the, you know, even, even down to, um, the experience that people have when they walk in the F and B portion of what we do with get treats and now Ronnie's.

So there's a lot that I do, so I can't really describe it. And it's hard for people to get a grasp on what it is that I do if you're not following it. Because it's been like building blocks since the beginning. It's not like I've given up any responsibilities, I've just added on. You're kind of like, I met you outside and your car is very interesting. And I, I, I like stuck my head and I was like, Oh dude, this is nice. And you're like, welcome to my world.

Yeah. It's kind of like building your own entire world. Yeah. And by the way, like I'm, I'm head to toe in my product, socks and underwear. We don't have to see that, but I will take your word on it. Yeah. Take my word for it. And I'm really living the product. I live and breathe the product that I create and I'm building products for myself. And I think that people know that. So they know that there's a lot of love that goes into it. So if I'm building products for myself and I want to wear the product that we make, you know, I also up until very recently was fitting four hours a week.

I was the fit model for the product that we'd put out. So the brand puts out like more than 5,000 styles a year of product between men's, women's and kids and accessories and footwear. We built a universe of product. And it's been a really great evolution from the beginning. So if you ask me what it is that I do, I, the answer is everything. I'm a world builder, you know, like I built, I built myself like a world that I live, that I live in. But this is interesting.

Why would it be important for you to be the fit model? Because literally like this is for me first. No, it's a great question because it actually creates efficiencies when we get a sample in and then I fit the product. And during the fitting, I make all the decisions that I need to make for that one product. So I fit the product and then I'm deciding if the fabric is right for that body. I'm making alterations to the body. Sometimes I'll even drop it and then come up with ideas on what we need to do to evolve from that body or how, you know, a specific design can be better.

So I'm giving direction in, you know, live during the fitting. And if my, you know, the team is all there, so I have like 20 people at a fitting and you have your material, your materials team, you have your merchandisers, you have your designers and then you have like the VP of product there and some assistants and there we're making like real decisions. So we'll make the decisions on that product and then we'll wait for the second sample to come in and we got to fit that too.

I think a lot of these brands cut corners. I've spoken about this a few times with different people about how the industry cuts corners and sometimes you walk into a store and you try something on, you have a shirt from that brand that fit well, but then you try it on and it doesn't fit well and you're like, well, why'd that happen? I came back to the same style and it's because brands will want to create another version of the same style, but not fit it again.

So they'll, they'll apply a different fabric to the same body, but they won't fit it again and it drapes differently, it fits differently and they cut corners. And even, you know, there are fashion houses that do that where you'll walk into a very expensive store and you know, try some product on, it doesn't fit, it fits like shit. So I'm very meticulous to every detail only because my closet, every season I wipe it out and then it gets replaced with a new season. So if I'm going to be wearing the product, it better fit properly, you know, as I'm like the representative of the brand.

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That is ramp.com. So I love how you use the word like love, like several times. We started the conversation, we're like, hey, you know, the people I admire the most, entrepreneurs that came before us, maybe some even operating today, it's just like, they're doing it for like out of, they're not doing it for money. They make money because they love it so much and they wind up, if you love it so much, you wind up building great products. And it turns out if you maintain control and build a great product, you're going to wind up with the money anyways.

So the love of this, let's go back to like the story you're saying, I'm kind of learning like the, almost like the mechanics of the business as a kid, right? This is before you're like, I'm learning how the business exists or a part of the business exists before you kind of put your own spin on it. So when do you, when you're like, hey, I actually have my own ideas. So me and you both know Jeff Selassnick, who was on this show, and he told a very similar story.

He was obsessed. I was like eating at every single restaurant. I was like the weird kid that come home from after middle school and watch PBS cooking shows. And then he's like, then I'm like eating all these restaurants and I'm creating media about this. And he's like, you know what? I got my own goddamn ideas on how this should be done. When was that turning point in your life? I was so fucking obsessed with footwear, you know? So like when Kith opened and we'll go back, I'll go back to your question in a second.

When Kith first opened in 2011, we were a multi-brand footwear shop. And then I had projects with brands where I was working on my own versions of some of these iconic footwear silhouettes for the store. And then from there it expanded to be a lot more, but I'm going to rewind back because I was a footwear guy, you know, and strictly footwear until. 2012, 2013, right? So I was basically buying upwards of $30 million at retail a year from so many different footwear brands. I was the sneaker guy before I became the shoe and boot guy when I started working.

I was wearing like, you know, Nike's were my thing before I started working in this brown shoe and boot retailer and then I helped David because the trend of brown shoes and boots as the weather actually got warmer and the seasons kind of extended and the winter kind of like shrunk to like three months, you know, instead of the four or five months that we were used to because it was getting cold in October back then and then it was cold up until April and now it's a bit different from that.

So athletic footwear started to really become a trend in New York City and kind of take over that business of the brown shoe and boot world. So I helped David transition from brown shoes and boots to athletic footwear and he knew that I was like obsessed with sneakers. So I was going to these trade shows and helping open new accounts, new footwear accounts and then starting as an assistant buyer being put on some of these accounts and we built an incredible business with Anasuka Tiger, which is Asics and it wasn't sports style yet, it was just Anasuka for what we were carrying but the sales rep knew that I was a sneaker head and knew that I was collecting product because I was collecting sneakers since like 95, right, when I turned 13.

That was the first pair of shoes that I bought twice. It was a Flight 95 Jason Kids. I don't know if you remember this with the carbon fiber in the midsole and it was kind of looked like a spaceship and it was the first like iteration of that kind of shoe was a basketball shoe. But were you buying to flip? No, back then there was no flipping. Okay. I was buying a second pair because I love them so much. Got it. The Armex 95, the Neon 95s were like the design language was just something we'd never seen before.

I like, I was just gravitated to it, towards it, you know. Come 2006, when I helped build Anasuka Tiger to a multi-million dollar business for David, they knew that I was heavy into footwear collecting. They knew I was a sneaker kid. So they opened up the archive for me and they were like, hey, you know, do you want to look through some of these styles and work on it? And I was like, what do you mean I work on it? Oh, you can create your own version of the shoe.

And I was like, oh. So David was already doing this with boots back in the day, but they weren't branded like David Z on the boots, but they were considered SMU, which is called a special makeup. So he was doing that with Timberland. In fact, like in 1997, David had an idea of making a gray construction Timberland boot and Timberland never made a gray boot in their history. It was mostly like for performance purposes in browns and blacks, you know, if you were either wearing it for construction or wearing it to hunt, like they were really into the performance aspect of the brand.

So David's idea of making a gray construction boot was like, I was like, holy shit, what is that? Like people saw that and were instantly like, we sold like 10,000 pairs of that boot in a couple of years. Like it just with no internet, right? So like people coming into the store and you know, that was a product that we had. And I saw that as a salesperson on the floor, I saw how people gravitated towards something they couldn't find anywhere else. So when Asics offered me the opportunity to work on a shoe and I'm looking through the catalog, I found a shoe.

How old are you when this is happening? This is in 2006. So I was 23, right? I'm looking at the catalog and I see a shoe that my mom bought me when I really wanted a pair of Reebok pumps. She left me outside the store, I was crying, I was eight years old. And she brought me a pair of Asics Gel Eye 3s for 50 bucks or something, instead of buying me a pair of pumps that were like 110 or 120. I wanted the pumps too.

The thing that, shh, shh, shh. That was just, that just wasn't happening, right? Yeah, no. The D Browns or the Victory pumps, like they were incredible. So I had to wear these Gel Eye 3s and I fell in love with them. You know, and when I saw it in the catalog, I was like, I knew that that's the shoe that I wanted to work on. And also in the world, and I was collecting and at that time. So when they're opening the archive, they're meaning, hey, these are past models, we're not doing, they're not manufacturing, they're not creating anymore?

Correct. Okay. Yeah. And so like, why'd you take your? We opened up old catalogs. Interesting. Yeah, from 1990. That's even better, because you just mentioned how important it is to have product that's differentiated, you can't get anywhere else. That's exactly why I decided to work on that shoe. And I didn't know if people would gravitate towards that model. So it was 252 pairs were the minimum and we needed to commit to 1000 pairs for the style to be made. And I worked on three colorways of the style, 252 pairs of each.

And then they took the other 250 and then offered it to a store in Amsterdam called Pata. And that's how the silhouette came back in 1990. We created that shoe and it took off. Well, even back then though, when you're like, okay, they offered me a silhouette, I can put my spin on this. Was your North Star just like, okay, I'm just gonna make the shoe look like what I would want to wear? Correct. So same to this day? 100%. Like, it's always, I'm always creating product for myself.

That's the red thread through all the product, at least the men's product, and even the kids product of what I want to put my girls in. And now with the women's product, it's like my wife, my mom, my sister, you know, three different generations. And I know what my wife wants to wear. I know what my mom wants to wear. I know what my sister wants. I'm really designing for the people either, if it's not for myself, it's for somebody that's the muse, you know? And I think that on the footwear side, if you look through this book, that was in 07, my first shoe released, and I had a slow start for the first day.

I had an event, we sold 50 pairs. Then the next day it released in the store. We sold a few pairs, but one of the pairs that sold was to an editor that came by from the Wall Street Journal and asked me a shit ton of questions about the shoe. I didn't know he was an editor. So I'm giving him all the information I just gave you. And then he wrote about it. And then the next day I came in and my mom's calling me as I'm biking to work and was telling me that it's on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.

Like the shoe, my specific, because it was an article about limited shoes. And then there was a picture of the shoe that I worked on in the pursuit section on the top, like right next to the word pursuits, it was like right there. There was a line down the block and the shoe sold out instantly. And on the same day, the CEO of North America for Adidas was moving into his office across the street and saw the line and walked downstairs and was like, what's going on over here?

And I was working in the store, right? So like, because I'm doing, I'm buying and I'm working on this project, but I'm still managing the store, right? Like the flagship store, which was 556 Broadway between Prince and Spring. So the guy walks in, the CEO of North America, and he's like, hey, what's going on here? So I'm telling him what's happening. And he was like, you worked on the project? He was like, yeah, and I had the Wall Street Journal there, the copy, because my mom called me, I picked one up.

So he's like, let me take a look at that. And he's looking at it, he's reading it, and he was like, so you're behind this? And he was like, what are you doing right now? I was like, well, I'm working here. When do you have lunch? And I was like, I can go off in like a half hour, an hour, whatever. So he met me and then we took a walk to the Adidas store. And we walk into the store and he was like, well, what would you want to work on here?

And then I picked up the Shelltoe. And then the second project was called The Black Tie. And at the time I was dating a girl that was part of the design process of Gold Bar down on Broom Street. What's Gold Bar? Gold Bar, it's a beautiful lounge that was like the first of its kind to be kind of like, when all of these clubs were like really big, it was this like really intimate, small room. There was nothing quite like it since. So it became this like really energetic, like spot that everybody, like the downtown kids were all like gravitating towards this place at night.

The employees were in these black suits and the whole place was gold. And it was beautiful. I remember like she was like working there at four in the morning, gold leafing the ceiling and I was helping her. Like I got up on the ladder and was helping her paint the ceiling of the space. So I was really in love with the space. And then it opened and I became good friends with the manager. And then I was thinking one day, I was like, what am I gonna do with the shoe?

And I'm holding the shoe in front of me. And I was like, I'm just gonna make the shell toe a dress shoe and then have the employees at Gold Bar wear these shoes. And then I ended up shooting the staff from Gold Bar for the campaign of the shoe. And I called it the black tie. And the shoes came with a black tie, with an Adidas tie. And that became the second shoe that I worked on. And then from there, it kind of snowballed. And I was doing this at David Z.

So there were so- You still have a full-time, more than full-time day job. Oh my God. So this became a pretty substantial business where we were selling these products that I was working on. And it grew and grew and grew. And that became a pretty big business relatively quickly. Well, where's the money going? When you say it's a big business, it's going to David, right? It's going to David. So it's not you. You don't have any kind of equity, economic tie. No. Essentially just talent. Yeah, correct.

Yeah. And so I was the buyer. I was a curator for this product. And then I was also managing also the shops. Right? Sounds very similar to when I asked you, what do you do today? Yeah. Everything. Yeah. Basically it was a little bit of everything. Right? Yeah. And he had a team of people, but I was young, energetic, and leading a store that was for the masses. When I first started at David Z, it was a subculture. By the time I became a buyer for David Z, it was for the masses.

David took the route of like opening stores on Broadway and catering to the tourists. I wanted to be about the local, and I was very much into the culture of collecting. So I was already starting to collect footwear way before then, and I was trading with Japan and product that David wasn't carrying, I was collecting Nikes at this point. So, and David had a Nike account for a brief time, but at that time, there was a lot of competition with these individual businesses that were kind of like running game with a Nike.

The Nike account was a big deal back then, you know, because that was the brand that was driving a lot of the revenue. So he didn't have Nike. So I was trading, and I was collecting because I built great relationships in the industry. But basically in 2009, I already started thinking about, hey, like this is incredible what I'm doing, but also like, I feel like I could be doing this in a way where I could cater to the consumer that's about this product full time. And not only when I'm releasing this product, they're coming in.

What do you mean full time? Full time meaning, when I was working on like these type of projects, like that ASIC shoe, for example, that kid that was buying that ASIC shoe was not necessarily shopping at David Z for other sneakers. That kid that was focused on collecting and about special athletic footwear, like elevated and very limited athletic footwear was coming back for the product that I was creating, but it wasn't coming back as a daily consumer. So the idea is like, we have this very special differentiated product, but it's 10%, I'm making up numbers, 10%, there's 90% of stuff you can get anywhere.

Correct. Why don't we just focus on the specials? Right, right. And I wanted to do that, but that wasn't the roadmap for David. You know, that wasn't- I got a funny story though, because like you mentioned Steve Jobs being one of my heroes, and I love that he's just completely unfiltered. And so this is like a few years before he died. And at the time, there was a new CEO of Nike, because he loved brands. Right. He thought Nike was one of the greatest brands of all time, he thought Sony was a great brand, Polaroid, Apple, he was like, love people that like build these really, like these brands that- Soulful brands.

They evoke emotion, is the way he would put this. Correct, exactly. And he's like, Steve, do you have any advice for me? He's like, Nike makes some of the best products in the world, but you also make a lot of crap. He's like, just get rid of the crap. That's it. And focus on the good stuff. And it's exactly what you're, the realization you're having at this point. But the crap was still generating a lot of money. Yeah, but Steve didn't give a shit. And I don't give a shit.

So that's where me and Steve are alike, right? And to me, like, I saw an opportunity in being passionate about 100% of the things I was doing. Not about 10 to 15% of the things I was doing. Man, that's an important insight. I don't want to skip over that. Yeah. That's super important. Yeah. Like, let's be like, I'm spending 85% of my day on stuff I don't care about. Like, just get rid of the crap. Because this is what we were talking about earlier off camera, and maybe we'll bring this into discussion, is just like, you feel it.

You feel when there's love behind what people are doing. Substance. It's just like, they do things that are non-economic decisions, right? The idea, let's go back to Steve, where it's like, he insisted that you can't open MacBooks. You couldn't open the Mac back then. But when you did open it, it was beautiful. It looked like it was a piece of art, and everything was organized. No one was going to see it but him. And that was his point. He's like, I don't care if other people see it.

And he learned that from his dad, who was a carpenter. He's like, you're not going to use a, he goes, listen, we're building a cabinet or a dresser. You put it, what do people do? Put dressers on the wall. You don't see the back of it. So people use, people that don't give a shit, they use crappy wood. We're not going to do it because we know it's there. And that's the difference between being such an active founder and being the end user of the product that you make.

It's also what's required for greatness. Patrick O'Shaughnessy is like my brother, one of my closest friends. You went on his show, and we were talking, we were upstairs with one of the greatest entrepreneurs living right now. He's just this maniac, just obsessed with operational excellence. And we were talking about his competitors and stuff. And Patrick made the observation, he's like, man, it's amazing. He's like, everything is shit. And it doesn't matter what category or industry you're competing, he's like, there's like two to three guys. There's like two to three guys in every single one that are doing great shit, and then a whole sea of mediocrity.

Yep. And the mediocrity is when you're working backwards from money. Yeah. Right? So when it's about the money and not about the product, you could see that. It's transparent today to people, I feel like, more than ever before, actually. As this generation starts to steer back to substance as you see vinyl start to pick up, and as you see the mom and pop stores kind of have this resurgence into people looking for discovery, people want to discover things in real life. And I think that the digital world has cheapened information and information comes in the form of art sometimes.

And it's like, you could pass over certain things by not touching and feeling them. You wouldn't understand the substance. than the product. So, I'm a firm believer of that because I come, half my life is pre-internet. Kind of like yours, right? And I think the pre-internet portion of my life. Half our childhood, we should say. No, because the internet came around early. I was on AOL in like, 97, 96. So, like half the childhood. Right, but that wasn't influential internet. No, it was. You had to call the internet when we were kids.

Literally, I got to call up the internet. And like, oh, mom's on the phone, can't call the internet. And then when you're on the internet, they can't call you because the line's busy. I tried to explain this to my daughter. It's so true. And I even went up and looked on, and you can find this on YouTube, the noise it would make. She's like, what is this? I'm like, I was calling the internet. That's so funny, man. It really, that's really true. But like, the first time you were influenced by the internet was really in the blog era.

So, the blog era, the development and the beginning of the blog era was right when I was putting out my first product at Dave and Z. And they were interested in the products after that Wall Street Journal article, they were interested in what was happening. And they were even writing for the right reasons back then, where it was before brand deals, it was a hobby. Again, go back to love. Yeah, man. Doing it for love. I don't ever want to step away from that. So like, everything I do is for the love of what I do.

The market needs more of that. It needs more attention to detail. It needs to have more purpose. And I think purpose is huge. I often go back to like, the purpose behind a lot of these products that Apple makes. And it's to better people's lives. And it doesn't only come in the form of technology. Like, the product that you're wearing can make your life better. You can feel better in the product that you're wearing. You know, it can make you look better. It can give you more confidence.

Like, I want to give them more than what they pay for. So that there's so much that goes into just that portion of it, of making sure that there's value in the product when you touch and feel it, or through 50 washes of a garment. There are a lot of words that, I think meanings of some of these words are changing over time. Like the word luxury. And like the word value. Like typically, luxury and value don't come together. Like value is like this beaten down term by down market retail.

And then luxury is typically like, it needs to cost a certain amount to be luxurious. What luxury should mean is how much people love what they're buying. It's a luxury to have the product. That's what luxury should mean. So a lot of these luxury companies, I think, are overexposed now and are becoming less luxurious, at least to me. That means it's overaccessible. So how do you avoid that with Kiss though? First of all, we don't wholesale. Second, we don't license. Why is that important for somebody that's outside of your business?

Because then you can't control how those products are spoken about and where they're placed and how they're merchandised. Then you can't storytell around the product. You could storytell top line by creating these TV ads and then you're walking in the airport and there's some fucking little rinky dink shop that half the store, there's construction done on half the store and you walk in and it's like messy as to how you see the product and the people that are catered to you, they might not be best in class.

And then all of a sudden, people are subconsciously associating your brand with that experience. From day one, I've always wanted to control the experience that people have because I thought I could be the best at speaking to it since I'm the creator of it. So I wanted to walk people through the full experience from ideation through walking out the door, walking out the gift door. So the storytelling, I feel like we're 50% storytellers and then 50% retailers. But on the retail side, that's then broken up to what we do digitally versus what we do physically.

And as the business starts to skew more digital, I feel forced to open more physical. And that's how the brand grew. Because I have a number, there's a threshold where I won't allow the percentage of the total pie to go over in X amount on the website for the web revenue. Why? I don't want to become a digital brand. The touch point, the touch and feel. So you're purposely foregoing more sales. This goes back to the love and not how the conversation started. It's like, I can't work breakfast money.

You're purposely foregoing more sales because you have to be a physical. And that's a better experience for the person. So if I order something from kit.com, right, as opposed to going in your stores, it's like way better experience that you control the whole story, the whole experience. We're controlling from the website down. And actually, no, that's not true. I'm not foregoing revenue because the website revenue continues to grow and it's on its path. But I always wanted to be half digital and half physical. So I want the physical to grow at the same rate is what I'm saying.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it's not like, okay, wait, we're at 50%. Stop selling product on the internet. That would be kind of, that might be a good idea. It's like, sorry, the website's closed for a few days? Right, right. We got to come back. By the way, there are some brands that do that and then create demand because they go away for a little bit. Supreme does that in their off seasons, which I think is really smart. So are you using the sales online as a sign that, hey, I need to increase the amount of physical footprint, the amount of physical stores I have in the real world?

Yes. Okay, yeah. And I think that because I've done that, the brand is in a really unique place because I open stores where I travel. Right, say more about this. Yeah, New York, Miami, LA, and then Tokyo, for example. And then as I started to visit Paris for Fashion Week, Paris became the next focus for me. And then as I started to visit London, London became a focus for me. Korea, Seoul became important in fashion. So I started to visit Seoul, and that's when I figured it would be a good time to open up a store in Seoul.

I think the growth that we've had has been substantial. As we're planning on opening now, the news is out, we're opening in San Fran, we're opening in DC, and we have the data of how many people are shopping online, like I mentioned before. Those people need the experience, the physical experience of the brand. They can't only have a digital experience if they're a fan of the brand. I feel like I owe that to them. I have the responsibility of giving them the full experience for the company, for what the company can offer, at least.

So that's really the mindset around the growth. This is a privately held company, right? Yes. Do you have investors or no? No. You own all of it? Yeah, well, me and my partner, yes. You mentioned going to Tokyo. There's this crazy, you probably know about this, one of the best pizza, you wouldn't expect to find the best pizza in the world in Tokyo, but there's one psycho guy. That's not true. I expect to find the best of everything in Tokyo, but you go out. Yeah, maybe.

What is the, somebody said this to me, the way you make podcasts, you have a Japanese spirit, it's like, what's the craftsman, the shokunin? Where it's like, it doesn't matter if you're sweeping the floor or making sushi, it's like, whatever you do, it's like, shokunin. You need to be the best at that one thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Whatever you do, it's just like, you take it very seriously and be the best at what you're doing. That's right, you maximize the potential of any one role. Yeah, and so this guy, I went to the pizza spot, I forgot what it's called, but people that hear this will know what it is if they've been there, it's like, he does three kinds of pizza, you can't make any modifications, you can't say, oh, can I get, the answer is, I'm gonna make these three, and I'm gonna make the best, and then he'll just, when he's done for the day, he just closes.

That's it, he's done. Yeah, it just closes. So if you're a privately held company, you said, what came to mind now is like, well, all these brands get overexposed. And they get overexposed because they have the pressure from investments, so the shareholder's like, you gotta grow, grow, grow. But for a craftsman, it's like, I don't know, I make three pizzas, I do this forever, and this is what I wanna do. So you could, if this is a concern of yours, like, stop or slow down. No, I do, I do.

In many instances, I do, but it's not in the sense of shutting down the website or, right, that would be the extreme. And I also definitely am not gonna make three pizzas. I'm like, I have, I'm very ambitious to do, to maximize the potential of what the brand can do. And the brand has expanded way beyond footwear and apparel. I mean, you just walked in here, and you're like, hey, dude, filming in the Amman is really nice. Next one we should do, we should do in Ivy.

To your point, you're just like, well, I don't really have any ceilings on my ambition, and I can take this into hospitality and other spaces too. I'll say this, if I was easily influenced by what people expect me to do, or what people want me to do, I would be in a very small box, because we started off as like streetwear, which is like, and actually, we actually didn't start off as streetwear. We started off with a cut-and-sew pant out of the Garment District in New York.

And there's a long story about that. I could go on for two hours about that pant. But that pant was the entry into apparel. But we didn't start off with a T-shirt, a graphic T-shirt. We started off with a pant. And then that pant turned into a varsity jacket. And that happened because people were, I created a community around the store, right? And how did that happen? Because at the time, like I said before, like I was collecting, and I was big into the culture of product downtown in New York.

But the stores that were offering this like streetwear product and limited footwear, they were arrogant. You would walk into the spaces and they weren't very friendly, you know? And I saw an issue with that because I came from David Z that was becoming more of a mass retailer. And I always felt like, and I was consumer-facing at the time, I always felt like having the conversation with anyone who walked in, even if they weren't coming in for product, it's like important for them to feel at home, you know?

So the concept of kith, which means friends, part of the phrase kith and kin, friends and family, it means friends. I wanted people to feel like they could come to the space and enjoy their day, even if they weren't gonna buy anything. So that's what fueled me to open the store in the first place. And then we built this great community based on that concept of like, those values of like wanting to be very welcoming just easily created a community because it was like something that they were looking for.

They just didn't know it. So as I created a community, they just wanted to wear the name of the store on their chest. They wanted to represent the store. We weren't a brand yet, we were a store. They explained what the difference is then compared to now. What was the initial thing? You were just selling people's product? Now we're a brand before anything, right? So I think the difference today, the delta is huge between then and now, but I will say that I'll explain the difference to you even in a simpler term.

Back when I first opened the store, my attorney asked me if I wanted to register the IP for product. I was like, well, I'm not making any product. I'm like working collaboratively with these footwear brands, but I'm not making any apparel. So I don't need to buy the mark, right? And he's like, oh, you still have protection rights even if you use it on apparel, like you'll have some rights anyway. I was like, okay. Then four years later, there's this fucking crook out of Italy that went and registered my mark, the same mark in Italy for apparel.

And I've already become successful with apparel. I just didn't revisit buying the IP, right? So all of a sudden, I then had to buy my IP and negotiate with this crook to buy the IP back and own it globally. And that was a very expensive lesson that I learned. But I didn't even consider myself in the beginning, I wasn't considering myself a brand at all. Even for the first couple of years of me making product, I was just like, yeah, that's just like cool shit I have on the side for the store.

But very quickly it turned. And then when the Kith, the small 800 square foot space in the back of Atrium then expanded into the full Atrium space, because we were that successful, we took another 5,000 feet. All of a sudden, I had to quickly put a plan together around becoming a brand. I found one of my all time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places.

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No. It's still the same thing when you were at David. Small percentage collaboration. David was not a top tier distributor of product. Okay. Or a retailer of product. David had main catalogs of product. And then I opened this store strictly to have the top tier of distribution from all of the brands I was carrying. Because all these brands. What does that mean, top tier distribution? I'll explain. So for example, and the easiest one to explain would be Nike. Nike has what's called a tier zero. And then they even have Quickstrikes which are below tier zero.

So tier zero would be the most limited product they make. Quickstrike would be the second layer to that. And then you have the mainline collection which is a catalog that a Dick's Sporting Goods gets to buy into. Okay. The whole premise behind the Kith space was to have the best footwear wall in the world. And that was gonna have top tier. And this is at a time where it wasn't this popular. Sneaker culture grew a ton since then. But top tier distribution from all the brands.

I didn't invent that. Sneaker boutiques were a thing. But I wanted to be the best of. And I had enough knowledge as a buyer and as a merchandiser and as a salesperson. I had enough knowledge of knowing how to do that and curate the best wall in the world. Okay, so you combine this industry knowledge with the fact that at this point, you're over 10 years deep into just being a. A collector. A collector. From 95. Exactly. So even longer. Right. So you can combine the two into the very first Kith store, which is, again, 800 square feet.

Right, but then I also, because of the relationships I built opening these accounts at David Z and also buying from these accounts at David Z, I was able to build amazing relationships where I was then working on product with all these brands for Kith. So we had top tier distribution from these brands, but then we also had collaborative product that I was working with these brands on, you know? So we had a very limited product and that was keeping people coming to the door for a very special product, but they were also coming to the door to see the special product that these brands were releasing.

So there were like major release dates for all these brands for different product and we were one of the, you know, I'm sure you've heard of Virgil. Yeah. You know, Virgil and Nike worked on incredible product. You know, Kith was one of the main retailers to carry that product in the States. You know, and then Yeezy product with Adidas, for example, there are a lot of other products that sit within that tier where Kith would become the main destination for people to come and buy those products.

And we built a community around that. And then from that point where apparel started to sell at the rate that it was, the growth that we had for our brand, for our house brand, for our fashion brand, for Kith, was surpassing any demand that we had for anything else. So as we started to open up more doors, you know, we then, you know, had that offering for different communities in different cities. And as we saw the success of the different stores, we understood that our reach was global.

And today, for example, when we have a release of product, like, you know, we just released a big project with BMW. That was about a month ago, I would say. Is that what I just saw outside? That's from the last project. Okay. But can other people buy that or is that something you did custom for yourself? No, that was, we had 47 of those made. And 47 stood for the years between the M1 and the XM, because those are the only two one-off M cars that BMW ever created.

Okay. So like, for example, you can get an X5, and the X5 will, there'll be an X5 M, but there's a regular X5. For the XM, it was only an M version of that car. For the M1, there was only an M version of that car. So 47 years between them, and we made 47 of those, of those XMs. You have one of the 47? That's what I just saw? Correct, yeah. I have two of the 47, because it came in purple and black. And I have one of them.

Of course, you have them both. Of course I do. So when we worked with BMW, I'm bringing this up because, globally in Seoul, Tokyo, France, London, New York, Miami, LA, Dallas, Chicago, there'll be lines outside of every door that we have, globally. Now, I know that there are very few companies that do that, that have the demand in different cities and release something, and on release date, you have lines outside the space. I know that there are other brands that do that, but I don't ever take that for granted.

So we know that we have global reach, and at this point, with the power that the brand has, and the ambition that I have to grow outside of just product, that's where Kith Ivy is born. Explain what Kith Ivy is. Kith Ivy is a membership club for avid paddle players, but also for people who want access to a spa, a very elevated spa, and there's a private dining room with a viewing experience, and there's a gym, and there's a shop. It's 16,000 square feet in the top floor of a building in Tribeca, and then there's three courts that people can play paddle on upstairs.

And then we also have an Erwan juice bar, the first Erwan juice bar in New York. And that's awesome. That went viral when it came out. Yeah, for sure. This is before me and you may even met. Yeah. And I was just like, I saw that everywhere. Yeah, it was pretty insane. And that has become a really special place, especially for me. And when thinking about the space, I really built it first for me, like I do with anything else. Whether it's a product or a space, I'm doing it for myself first because I know that my eye for the brand and the lens has been a consistent lens for 15 years.

That expanded what the brand can do through a hospitality lens. I love that portion of the business now. And that idea then started to trickle into what I'm doing now with Ronnie's. So Ronnie's is a fine dining restaurant in London, and Ronnie's Pronto is a gourmet sandwich shop with a window and a patio in West Hollywood. And now I have plans on what I'm gonna do to bring that to New York, which I'm working on now, which will end up happening at the end of this month.

As I have a book here that speaks to 1,800 designs, because I spend a lot of time on footwear, footwear has always been the anchor, but now serves as a much smaller piece of the business because the Kith product has surpassed anything that we've done categorically in the brand. But as we get into hospitality and I see the opportunity of growth outside of product, that's what I think the future of the brand will look like. It'll be like multiple categories that sit outside of product. What's the better business?

I know you're not doing this for money. Obviously, you're very successful, but to me, wouldn't product be a better, it's a better financially performing business than hospitality? Am I wrong on that? No, you're right on that. Okay. You're right. You're right today. You're right today for my business. Got it. So like I gave the brand the opportunity to grow organically and maximize its potential, I'm planting larger seeds in other categories of business that I plan on growing organically and authentically. I won't force the growth, but if I feel like there is demand above and beyond what it is that I'm doing, I'm going to try to expand that.

And I think that we've provided this experience for people who live in that area near Tribeca. I think that Kith Ivy has changed. I know that I have. Because people have told me that that space has literally changed their lives, living there. Because for that kind of experience, you used to have to travel outside the city, outside New York, maybe. So I think that being disruptive in the way that that is and being polarizing in the way that we show up is a part of the DNA of what we do as we try to disrupt other categories of business.

But it's hard for me to describe and get into stories that sit two or three layers under the surface if you don't first understand what it is that I do. One thing I am curious about is this very unique decision. Why put in Kith Treats? Where did that idea come from? You did it early. But where did that idea come from? Why even do that? When I expanded the Brooklyn space, I wanted to add an element of happiness where it would 100% undoubtedly be a happy bite of something.

So you'd smile, right? And I wanted there to be another way for people to consume the brand for less than 10 bucks. That was the idea. And I knew that it would be a loss leader, or I thought it would be a loss leader. So originally, it was gonna be a white chocolate bread space that I had for the first time in Club Med. White chocolate bread space? So I traveled to Club Med for vacation a bunch. And there in the cafeteria, there's this very famous white chocolate bread.

And I had it there and loved it and thought of the concept for even having some kind of F&B portion of the store. That's where I came up with the concept. I was like, people need to smell this. Because when you walk into the cafeteria, it's like all you smelled. People need to smell it as you're walking past the store. So the venting out from the building, I wanted people to smell the white chocolate bread. So I brought the chef over to New York, and we started working on this white chocolate bread back at Cafe Bari on Spring and Broadway before it became the Nike store.

It was a very famous cafe. The chef left, and we tried to make it ourselves, and we just couldn't make it right. So as we're walking to the deli, I'm watching this guy behind the counter throw frozen fruit into this machine and pull the lever, and it was coming out soft serve. So I saw a box of cereal. I was a cereal fanatic. Saw cereal and saw ice cream in the tub, and I paid him 20 bucks to throw it into the machine and see what happens.

And it just, it came out perfect. So I got the idea of mixing cereal with ice cream there at the deli while we were trying to figure out this white chocolate bread concept. And then from there, I decided that that's what we were gonna do. So we flipped it to the concept of a cereal bar, cereal ice cream bar. And then from there, it grew to be a lot more than that, but that's where it started. And then I paid attention to people as they were eating that, and every single person that would take a bite would smile.

And that's where the concept was created. But then you said, initially, you thought it was gonna be a lost leader. So it's just like, I'm just gonna get more people, more people's attention. This might be their first exposure to Kith. And then they're like, oh, this is nice. What's happening next door? No. Is that the idea or no? No, no, no, it was like, people that were coming to the shop. Oh, I see, a reverse. Correct. If you have it, or if you think about it the other way around, the way you just mentioned, then you're forcing the issue.

Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to create a new consumer. And I already had the consumer. So everything that started, when Kith was first built, I was so paranoid about whether or not we'd be able to even break even. And then once we were able to do that, I was so happy. That became just a starting point. And the organic base that I had, growing it from there was just like, idea after idea as building blocks. But it wasn't until a lot later that I thought, hey, let's do something over here and start building a new consumer.

I'm glad you said that, because it ties back to where this tangent we've been going on in the most beautiful way of the conversation. It's like, well, yeah, but I just want to focus on the 10 to 15% that I really love and not this other stuff. And the reason I thought of the ice cream as the reverse, because I just read this very obscure biography of Sam Walton. And people don't understand, he built, obviously they understand he built the largest retail empire in the world.

But for the first five and a half years of his career, he had one single store in a town of like 2,000 people. And he did not know how, he did not have what you had, where like, I have the people already, how do I continue to serve them? Which is where you're going to. He's like, I need to get them in the store. So he put like an ice cream cart out front. He'd do popcorn, he would do all this other stuff. He was trying to figure out how to get more people in, extract more people.

Which is why I drew the analogy, and you're like, no, no, I already have the people, this core group of really, we're building a really special, and I mean this in a positive way, it's like this cult-like following. And it's okay, that is so special and rare, how do we continue to serve them and extend it, not the other way around? All of our growth has been based off of that. How do I service my consumer in the best way possible? How do I give them the opportunity to have the best experience?

And then from there, we gained more consumers. And then you knew this because you, remember, go back to that story about the gray Timberlands, right? This is pre-internet, right? It's like, if you serve this cult-like following that you have they will go out and recruit other people on your behalf. 100%, and when it happens organically in that way, and people then hear it word of mouth rather than seeing it on Instagram, and becoming curious off of a photo, the bridge of emotion that people have to the brand, it just becomes a way stronger bridge, right?

When they could discover it themselves based off of what people said, or when they walk into the space for the first time, people in their minds don't necessarily think the space would be as grand as it is when they walk in. So a lot of the times, and through conversations with some of my GMs in the store, like, yo, people walk in with suitcases for a stop from the airport, and they'll walk into the store and just stand there. And it happens multiple times a day where I have to like, excuse me, do you need help?

And they're like, no, we're just taking it in. Like, walking into the West Hollywood store today, it's jaw-dropping. It's like, every time I walk in there, I still, I'm like emotional when I walk in because I can't believe we've gotten to the point where I can build this for the community, for people to come in and have this kind of space. I can build a space where the product sells itself. At this point, the product has such a great following because there's so much value in the product.

I don't need to build these amazing spaces that are $1,300, $1,400 a foot, which is what luxury brands are spending. But I do that because this is like how I give back to the consumer for giving them an experience they could come in and really cherish. You know, and then they make days out of it where families will come to the store and spend time, like real time in the space. And then they'll go to Treats, or they'll go to Ronnie's, and they'll really make a day out of it.

So I never take people's time for granted. I never take people's spending power for granted. And I always feel like we need to make better product and offer more at the same price point. Like those type of philosophies of the end result of what people get and the substance of what they feel is very different from like trying to change human behavior in the way that Steve Jobs has done in the past of like his creations are to better people's lives but through the change of human behavior from going from one style of technology to another.

This is familiar product where if you're buying clothes, like we're not inventing something new there. But when you buy an item, like the shirt that I'm wearing, for example, and you put it up, you know, dollar for dollar against other product in the market, I do believe, and this is touch and feel. If you wanna post two pictures next to each other, you could post a Uniqlo t-shirt next to a Kith t-shirt, not know the difference and argue about the price point. But this is for the people that know.

And a Kith is built for the people that know the difference. Know the difference between what? Good product versus great product. And that's really the motto of the brand. Say more about how you think about pricing though. I always feel that people should get more than what they pay for. So where we price product within the marketplace becomes really important to be, not only to be competitive, because that's not really the challenge for us. It's mostly about, and we don't look elsewhere at price points, even though I studied them.

market just to have the knowledge. But it's not, I don't necessarily apply that as to how we price our product. We look at the previous season or the year before to see how product was priced, and we try to better the product sometimes at the same price or by elevating price points a little bit but getting a lot more for the product. So it's not necessarily a formula, it's more of like a touch and feel of like being in the business for 30 years and just 31 years and now knowing the difference between good and great.

Have you read this book called The Luxury Strategy? It's a red book with white letters. I haven't. Okay, I'm gonna send it to you because it goes into, I think what you're hitting on is like well there's other people in industry and especially the luxury industry where it's like they know there's a human psychology like pricing is like a shortcut for us. Like we're all busy and it's like if you actually increase the price without reinvesting into the product, it makes the, in some categories, it makes it more desirable.

And it actually increases the line and the demand for it. You're saying no, no, no, I'm not trying to maximize and charge into some kind of psychological trick. That's a bubble, that's a bubble. What you just mentioned is. Well, it's very enduring in human nature actually but my point being is like it's like but I don't want to just make money for the sake of making more money. If I'm gonna charge more, I want them to get more value. Is that, am I understanding what you're saying?

100%. And I think the consistency of that thought process that I have has been why we've been able to grow at the rate that we've grown, right? So like I think that the consumer has seen that year over year and a lot of the kids, like a lot of these kids that are, I won't even call them kids, these dads that are my age at 44, a lot of them have come up with a brand from when they were 30 or 29. My number one following age range is between 28 and 35 and then number two is 35 to 44.

I feel like the growth that people have had for the last 15 years of consistently seeing the progress they felt like they've been part of the journey and we've gone so far like with creating product that just, it's actually mind-blowing when you look at the first collection versus the collection today. We didn't have any fucking clue what we were doing. You can see this in this book, right? This book is different because- It's just a footwear. The footwear is collaborative and I had 15 years under my belt before working on this product.

Like the first shoe was 15 years later in my career where apparel, my first product was in 2012. So like when you think about that, that's like 14 years ago and looking at the progress there, there'll be a much bigger delta than in this book. Would you make another book just on apparel? You know, I thought about it for the 15 year but after we were building the second floor of my office a few years ago, so we expanded. We have 60,000 feet on the third floor and then I took another 30,000 feet for the design studio on the second floor.

Before we started building, on the second floor, I knew I had like six to eight months to design the space so I knew I was gonna have an empty space. We already took the space. So my archivist, his name is Jordan Bloom, I had him lay out all of my footwear from day one in chronological order. Is this the picture I just saw on Instagram? Yeah. Yeah, that's dope, man. So that, and it's actually, it's in here. So the first time I got to see all of my work in one place was a few years ago when I saw this and I actually did that because I've never seen it before.

So I was just curious to see the progression myself. You know, like I wanted to see how far we've come in footwear and it's impossible for you to see 1,800 different shoes by flipping through photos or organizing it in a way where you're gonna see the progression. It has to be in person. There's no other way to do it. So when I saw it, two things happened. The first thing was, people need to see this. And then I was like, people need to see it physically.

Like, we need to do this. So the first idea was we need an exhibition for this product, which we're doing, the end of this month. I showed you the index and the index is all of my product that released, but more importantly, all of my unreleased product. And the unreleased product are samples that led to the release pair. So there's like 800 or so released pairs and then there's another 1,000 or so unreleased pairs. So I wanted to have them all in one space and basically have a show.

It's called Walk the Index. So we're gonna have a digital version of the index uploaded onto people's apps, like onto the Kith app and you need the Kith app to walk in. So then you can look at it and really walk through the index of the book, which I felt was really cool. And then people will obviously be able to buy the book there. And then for those four days that the show will be open for, we also have panels with each of the four biggest collaborators, which are Nike, Adidas, New Balance and Asics.

And there's some senior leadership that are coming down for that. On top of the exhibition, Ronnie's will launch for the first time in New York via truck. And the truck that we built, it's a really special truck. It's gonna feature what I'm calling the Ronnie's meal. So there's two sandwiches that really blew up. One in London called the OG Burger and then one in LA in West Hollywood called the Wagyu Pronto. And the Wagyu Pronto is a Wagyu pastrami sandwich. And then the burger is this Wagyu burger.

It's incredible with our own sauce and kind of like this mix with sauteed onions. And it's just one of the best burgers I think you'll ever have. It comes in this red box and in the box comes one of the two sandwiches that you can order and then Pronto fries. And then one of these two like frozen drinks that we make in LA. And with it, more importantly, is a toy box of a pair of shoes. And I'm bringing back for the first time in its original form, because we brought it back one time with a navy sole, but there's a shoe that really put me on the map when I opened Kith called the Salmon Toe.

It's a Salmon Toe Asics. And it's a Gel Eye 3. In this salmon, the whole toe is blocked with salmon and there's like a navy on the quarter with white stripes. It's beautiful. So a miniature version of those shoes will come in a small shoe box. And then that would be basically the toy in the Ronnie's meal. The truck will only serve a Ronnie's meal. That's the only product it'll serve. It comes with the options I mentioned. That will launch for the exhibition where we're launching the exhibition, which I can't name right now.

And then the truck then gets positioned in front of the flagship store after the exhibition full time. So, and I got the city to approve me having outdoor seating in front of my store in Lafayette. So then I'm gonna have like the Ronnie's truck station there. We're gonna launch also delivery for the full menu out of a ghost kitchen, which will happen I think the end of October. Deal is how the best founders turn the world into their talent pool. I've been studying how history's greatest founders operate for a decade.

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Learn how they can help your business by going to deal.com forward slash center. That is deal.com forward slash center. I love this idea of like keeping a catalog of past work and looking back through it. On my other podcast founders, where I read just biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, I went down this like fashion designer thing for a while. So I did like Coco Chanel and like Ralph Lauren and then Balenciaga and like, I think of Balenciaga now as kind of like not my, I don't want to insult him, but I was like, this is like, you know, not my thing.

But what's interesting is I'm always interested in like who in the top of their profession, like who do they say is the best? Like Warren Buffett has this idea where he's like, well, if you want to invest in a company and in an industry, go around asking all the leaders in the industry and say, hey, you got one bullet, you can take out one guy, who is it going to be? And usually they'll all say the same guy. He's like, that's the guy you should invest in.

So Balenciaga was that, where like Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, they called him like the master of us all, I think was one of the quotes. And I didn't know, so I was, I got to like, obviously what I think of Balenciaga now and what, how they thought about him back then is crazy. But Balenciaga, if you haven't read about him, I'll send you some good buy recommendations. He essentially redid his stores almost like a, it was like a church. He had like a reverence, a religious reverence to what he was doing.

But one of the most fascinating things is he had notebooks of, cause he would not only design, but he would also physically like sew everything together. He was like one of the few coutures or master couture, whatever they called. And, but I thought that idea of like, okay, your career in his case, I think he started relatively late. Let's say he spent 20 years. He can go back and be like, what was I doing 18 years ago? Yeah. But as an artillery that he was like, he, to me, and it's very important, like, especially in footwear, I got to learn how to make a shoe from scratch also.

So going back and looking at the progress that we made, also the knowledge, working with certain brands and some brands do things better than others. So the amount that you pick up along the way, working with this many brands, I feel like in footwear, I've become the most well-rounded, like knowledgeable person in footwear, because I got to see between athletic shoes and brown shoes and boots. Like I got to really learn how these brands make product, go to the factories, go to their offices and like really understand the dynamic of what makes them so special.

So this book, it stands for so much more than just the product at face value. It's to me, it's a timeline of feelings that I had and knowledge that I gained along the way. So like, when I think back to a moment, there are things that you'll remember based on certain events or based on certain news and milestones in your life based on certain things that happened in your family or whatever it is. I remember my life through product. So like I think back to when I got married and I think about also the product during that time, like the product when my first baby was born, when my first store opened or all the stores along the way, I have product.

Your life milestones are anchored to the products you were creating. Which goes back to again, why the soulful, we talked before we started recording, it's like, when I say it's like what I'm trying to understand is like, I can't understand the way you push your work until I understand the personality of the person that developed the ideas. I seek to understand who the fuck is sitting across from me. Like how the hell, like you're 13, how the hell do you get interested in shoes? And so like then it's like, oh, think about the culture he's in, think about where he's living, think about what he's listening to, think about what is around him.

It's like you can't understand Ronnie unless you understand everything that happened then. Yeah, like going back to that, like taking two buses to high school, the Q17 to the Q30 or taking the train to work when I took the F train from the last stop on 179th and Hillside to Broadway Lafayette or West Fourth when I used to work at A3, what you see on the train because you pass by certain neighborhoods, right? Each stop or every other stop would be like a different culture hopping on the train because cultures are spread out and they create communities and then they get on the train in packs and like along the way from basically the first stop on the F train or the last stop, I should say, going to the city, what I got to see became my world.

That was my influence. I got to see so many different styles, people dressed in so many different ways and that's when the sense of individuality was at an all-time high before you were influenced by your algorithm, which now like a lot of people want the same things because it's based off of what they see or what brands have to basically pay for in terms of like mass distributing content. We lived in such a different era. I got to see people walk in to a store, have no idea what they're looking for, have no idea about the brands and I got to see what they gravitated to first based off of a visual of what they thought looked different or looked on par for what they wanted to wear.

So I got to understand why so many different people liked so many different products for so many different reasons and that became a big part of who I am because it became a part of why I like product. That was my influence basically is seeing so many different styles and then forming my own edit. It's like, that's a lost art. Wait, wait, say more about that. I got to see so many different styles. So you're taking in all this information, you're essentially synthesizing it, putting it in your head and you're saying, okay, what's my spin or take on this?

Like what's my opinion on it? Like back then, when you went shopping back then, you were forced to have an opinion because you wouldn't have seen everything. If you would see a music video, you'd see one or two different shoes or boots. If you were to open up a magazine, you'd see 10 different boots but then you walk into a store, you see 500 different boots. So it's like you're walking in and you were forced to have an opinion. Today, people will walk into a store and know about all the product before they walk in.

So they've already seen someone wearing it, a photo of it, a lookbook of it, a campaign of it. They're like outsourcing their taste to somebody else. Yeah, and not to say that people weren't influenced by media back then, they were, but it was a much smaller aperture of what people were seeing. And then you'd come in and back then, you were just forced to have your own opinion. I feel like I get the vibe like you wanna live in more of like an analog world. Fuckin' hell I do, for real, and I tell my wife this every day, I wish that I could throw my phone away.

I wish that I could, and you know what's funny is that I really feel, just like fashion is very cyclical, I feel like people's thought processes are also cyclical, and the way people think about how their lives are influenced, I feel like that's also cyclical, meaning if you had had a taste of what we had pre-internet, like I just find myself fuckin' begging for analog, for just the physical. I want to be influenced outside of digital. I want to travel and shut my shit off and just not have a connection to the internet, you know?

Something we had when we were kids is like, you were just forced to be bored and alone with your own thoughts. And my daughter's like, I'm bored, I'm like, that's great! That's amazing! That's when you use your imagination, when you're bored. That's also where difference comes in. I just flew to Milan because I meet a lot of founders, entrepreneurs, I meet a ton of them, and I met this guy named Luca Ferrari who does this company called Bending Spinners, and I remember having lunch with him back in like February, and literally the lunch was so jarring because he was describing how he builds his company and ideas I've never even heard of anywhere else, especially for, he's RH2.

And I was like, dude, stop, you got to run that back. I pulled out, and we were on WhatsApp together, and I just like light him up on all the stuff he's saying. And I was like, he's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm taking notes on your very unique ideas for when you do the show. He didn't even agree to do the show. I just assumed. I was like, dude, you got weird shit in your head, I need to get it out. But one of the things he said, he was like, you know, he's building a tech company, but he grew up in a little village of 900 people, his parents were hairdressers.

And he's just like, I started in Copenhagen, then I moved to Milan, and he's like, I couldn't copy the startup, tech startup mantras, because I didn't even know they existed. So I was forced to, he was essentially like, he was in a digital world, but he was like how we were as kids. He was just like, I only had my own thoughts and my own thinking. And because I was involved with my own thoughts, my own thinking, not influenced by everything else, because he doesn't pay attention.

This is where you get the creativity. This is where you get the centric stuff. This is where you get actual differentiation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very similar in the sense that like, Queens played such a big part in my life, because Queens, you get to see so much, it's just, New York City is honestly the most inspiring place in the world, because there's so much thrown at you every day. Even if you, I'm talking about outside of digital, like just walking around, you get to see so much.

So in the sense of what I want to accomplish, it's beyond the typical cookie cutter retail brand concepts that have helped shape these brands that we all know. I want to sit way outside of that. And I want the brand to be doing so much more than that. If you knew exactly what it is that I do within the context of the culture, which is what I'm in today, like the product culture or the retail culture, understanding how wide we've expanded beyond the typical retail space is pretty extraordinary.

But where we go from here and how it could expand from there is even greater than that. So I'm trying to not have any boundaries in the way that I think about the business, if that makes sense. This is actually a really important point. And I have certain people in my life that I go to, they're kind of like this like living board of directors. And what a lot of the cases is like, you're obviously ambitious and driven, every single person that's going to be on the show is ambitious and driven, I feel the same way.

But like, there's certain people in my life that like, you'll talk to about what's going on like, oh, you have like this weird ceiling that like actually doesn't exist. Like why don't we just rip that fucking off? Because it doesn't exist. That's corporate structure, though. But like, no, but like in your own personal life, when you're thinking about directing your company, you're saying, hey, man, I got I got I got big fucking dreams. I got stuff that's it's not I don't think of myself as like, I might be part of this culture.

But like, I can expand out of it. I can do whatever I want. I'm not looking left and right. I'm focused on what I want to do. Do you have anybody in your life that's just like, can like peel the top off your head and be like, hey, man, you have no ceilings, you have no limits? My partner Sam has allowed me to do that. Yeah. My business partner. And he's always been someone I could speak to who has given me the energy to go and chase whatever it is I have in my mind.

I listened to an episode, one of your episodes this morning. I'm not even sure what it was. We just rambled about Steve Jobs. It's incredible. Right. But you know, he listens to the show. The episode was about simplicity. Oh, yeah. How Steve Jobs kept things simple. Correct. That's for my other podcast founder. I think it's episode 349 or 350. OK. So we looked it up. See if I'm right. It's pretty remarkable, actually. But when it's similar to when Steve Jobs got into music, it's like, what the fuck is Apple doing getting into music?

Right. And I'm sure it raised a lot of eyebrows. But for him to take on that initiative and he had shareholders and had a lot more pressure than I did from the financial standpoint. 349. 349. Wow. What are you up to now on founders? 432. Where's Ian? He published it for me yesterday. 435. Yeah. I'm going to do. I end every one. I'm like 435 down. A thousand go. And a thousand never ends because people like, oh, you're going to do 1435. It's like, no, no.

That's like I'm going to do this. I'm dying. It's actually incredible, man. It's really incredible because I just like I go through my workout and you're just fucking wow. Dude, I'm walking to dinner last night. The crazy thing is, you know, Michael Ovitz, like every time I come to New York, I text him. I was like, because I just I care a lot about him. First of all, I looked up to him before I even knew who he was. I was making episodes on him. And we become friends.

And he's just a fucking wild man. Even I think he's 82. He's still fucking crazy. And there's absolutely insane. I won't even. I'll tell you off camera what happened last night. I'm walking to dinner and some dude literally has me on the shoulder and he's listening to Larry Gagosian. Three twenty five. See if I'm right about that. For me. And he's like, let's get over here. Yeah. And he's like, dude, he goes, I mean, I'm in fucking sales. And he goes, I listen to this to hype me up over and over again, because essentially Larry Gagosian built a billion dollar empire with a phone and like a salesperson.

325. Boom. 325. Look at that. And so that. But I do the same thing. Like, I'll go back and listen to him because they're like it reinforces lessons and hypes me up. But anyway, what is it? What does that do for you? Hypes you up? Like, I really think so. The reason I brought up Balenciaga earlier, the reason I think like that would mean you would get along is like I'm doing it for like I have soul in the game. Like I thought first of all, I think podcasting is a miracle.

I think what we talked about before we started recording to find that any subject in the world you want to listen to, you will find somebody has gone deeper than any college course in existence. Incredible. So anything you want to learn, you can learn on demand for free while your eyes are busy in this format, too, which is incredible. I thought it was remarkable when I discovered in 2010, I still think it's a fucking miracle to this day. And so what I would say is it's like I make the podcast that I want to listen to.

And then I think there's like a so there's a bad part of this. And I'm going to ramble a bit. But like, you know, like my mom was like fundamentals Christian. So I was like forced to go to church every Sunday. Right. It's like in the South. And unfortunately, like, you know, this took a bad turn. She went up having breast cancer and I like she would try to initially pray the cancer away. Like, that's how fucking extreme it was. And it took me like two years to convince her to go to an oncologist.

I don't want to start fucking crying now, but like to the point where I had to drive. She was so stubborn in her religious views. I'd have to drive from Miami where I was living to Orlando where she was living to every time she had an oncologist appointment. If I didn't show up and I didn't drive her, she wouldn't go and she wound up dying a fucking horrific death. So like, I obviously don't want to get into that now. But what I would say is like the benefit of growing up in church, and I didn't realize this until you see this on Founders, like I kind of have like the Southern like preacher thing because I'm very fucking I consider myself an evangelist, not a I'm not a journalist.

I'm an evangelist for entrepreneurship. And so like the way I think about everything that we're doing is like, man, the reason that religions or Kool-Aid followings or brands thrive is because of repetition over time, over and over and over again. And for me, it's like, listen, episode 349, I read the book, I recorded it, I edited it, I listened to it before it came out and I publish it and I bet you I go back there and I still forget some of the shit. So I will go back and I think that people overestimate, we forget that we forget, we forget that we forget.

And I think going back to great designs in the book, great books that you can read, great podcasts, great movies, I've seen Godfather 2, I don't know, 15 times, I still learn stuff. I've gone through every single episode of Game of Thrones, I don't know, 10 times, I still take notes on it. And so that's what Desperates does, it reinforces these lessons and gives me energy. And then inevitably, you're going to run into some today, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely next month, two months, you're going to run into some fucking problem in your business and you're going to be like, man, I need another set of eyes on this.

Or like, oh, then you remember, oh, this is what Steve Jobs, this is how he kept it simple or this is what he did. Right. And I'll definitely apply some of that stuff. But let me tell you something, folks, for everyone who's listening right now, if you can create content that you can then go back to, to hype yourself up, you fucking made it in life. So congratulations to you for that. So we have another podcaster because I'm also obsessed with other podcasters, which is Jackson Dolls off camera.

And there's actually a funny, can you pull up the tweet between me and Sam Hinckley about this? And so I spend a lot of time with other podcasters. I think Jackson is one of the most talented people. We talk a lot about like the business and like, you know, other podcasters will come in and like shadow what we're doing because we're trying to operate at the very highest levels here. But there's a tweet exchange between Jackson and my friend Sam Hinckley. Sam is talking about me because I was talking about like when I listen to every episode before it goes out.

Yeah. And sometimes I find myself like laughing at stuff that happens. So Sam Hinckley responds to this tweet where I'm talking about laughing. It was good luck competing with the maniac that cracks himself up while recording his solo podcast, which he remembers because he loves listening to his solo podcast. And Jackson who's sitting off camera here goes, this is July 22nd, 2025. He goes, he once told me he just loves podcasts so much, but there's simply not many great ones. So the rational conclusion is that he usually finds himself listening to his own episodes again.

You know, if you're listening to yourself as first option, that's crazy. But you know what? What are you doing? Making it for yourself. That's incredible. It's the same thing. I think you might be the only one. But I love that. Let's go back to before I interrupted and started rambling to you were talking about Steve Jobs of music. I want to touch on Ivy because you asked me about Ivy and I want to just go back to that for a second. So three or four years ago, I spent a season in Miami and I got introduced to Wayne Boydge.

Wayne is the founder of Reserve, which is he builds like paddle courts, also built like a membership club in Seaplane in Miami. And I used it as my office and we were playing paddle all day. I was taking calls all day and I just became obsessed with the sport. But what I realized with people that were playing, they didn't know how to dress for the sport. And as I became like obsessed with the sport, I was like watching people come and play in like vintage tees and basketball shorts.

And it was it was throwing me off, honestly, I thought to myself, like, well, how can I start to like help shaping how this sport can potentially look and feel? Because it was brand new. The first courts, I think, in America were in Miami built by, you know, by Wayne. But I thought for sure the sport was going to grow. And as this as the season went on, I came back home. And then for the next six months, all I heard about was paddle. People wanted to play paddle and didn't have a court to play on.

I creatively direct a Wilson tennis, but that's been behind the scenes for quite a while. And we started a new line called Sport Professionals, which is like an elevated tier that sits within Wilson. And I help them through that through design. And coming back, I was like, let me start to apply some of these ideas that I have around around tennis, but in a very different way, because it's a way sweatier sport. It's a lot more active in the way fabrics need to feel and movements, you know, like you're spinning a lot, you're going, you know, a lot of vertical movement, a lot of side to side movement.

It's very different from tennis in the way that you move in the sport. So the idea of shaping the identity of a new sport that would spread in the States and become a major sport in the space, that really excited me to want to take on the sport and help shape the identity of what it would become. So that then turned to the idea of the space of what Ivy looks and feels like, which if you come to this space, you'll love it. It's definitely the space I'm most passionate about, but also I'm mostly proud of.

And what we've been able to build there, the community, as I start to travel to different cities and play paddle, a lot of these players are wearing Kid Ivey products because Kid Ivey is a membership club, but the product is sold on the website, on the Kid site. So you could still participate in the brand if you're playing paddle elsewhere and you're not a member of the club, for example. So as I started to travel the world, I'm seeing people wearing the product and it became, I think, the highest form of what the sport can look like and feel like.

So just having an idea be sparked by how I could better the sport or better the identity of the sport created this idea around the holistic 360 view of what Ivy is. And it wasn't just the shaping the identity of the apparel they were wearing, it's also about the experience surrounding paddle. What should paddle feel like? Because paddle could very easily be a sport that Rolex gets into or be one of the other sports that then get thrown into ping pong and pickle. So in which direction will this sport go?

And I wanted to be a part of the progress that the sport has to then elevate it to where it is today, which I think I played a part of. I think that's a perfect illustration of your idea of world building, like telling that entire story. It's also a perfect place to close our first conversation. What I want to do is run this back in a few months. I think we film at Ivy and we focus on, I think you have a very unique, almost like filmmaker view on world building.

But dude, thanks for taking the time. This is awesome. I appreciate it. This is great. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review and make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of of History's Greatest Entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.