· Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S1: I was so fucking obsessed with footwear. 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 dollars 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, Nikes 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 had kind of extended, and the winter kind of like shrunk to like three months 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 Onitsuka Tiger, which is Asics, and it wasn't sports style yet. It was just Onitsuka for what we were carrying, but the sales rep knew that I was a sneakerhead 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 Kidds. I don't know if you remember this, with the carbon fiber in the midsole.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Uh-huh. [00:00:00] S1: And it kind of looked like a spaceship, and it was the first like iteration of that kind of shoe was a basketball shoe. [00:00:00] S0: But were you buying to flip? [00:00:00] S1: No, back then there was no flipping. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: I was buying a second pair because I loved them so much. [00:00:00] S0: Got it. [00:00:00] S1: And the Air Max 95, the Neon 95s were like, the design language was just something we'd never seen before. I was just gravitated towards it. Come 2006, when I helped build Onitsuka Tiger to a multimillion-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, do you want to look through some of these styles and work on it?" And I was like, "What do you mean by work on it?" "Oh, you could 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. [00:00:00] S0: Mm-hmm.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Mm-hmm. [00:00:00] S1: So he was doing it 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. If you were either wearing it for construction or wearing it to hunt, 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?" People saw that and were instantly... Like, we sold like 10,000 pairs of that boot in a couple of years with no internet, right? So, like, people coming into the store- And 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. [00:00:00] S0: How old are you when this is happening? [00:00:00] S1: This is in 2006, so I was 23. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: 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. [00:00:00] S0: Mm-hmm. [00:00:00] S1: And she brought me a pair of ASICS Gel-Lyte IIIs for 50 bucks or something, instead of buying me a pair of pumps that were like 110 or 120. [00:00:00] S0: I wanted the pumps too. The thing that... [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. That just wasn't happening, right? [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, no.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah, no. [00:00:00] S1: The D. Browns or the Victory Pumps, they were incredible. So, I had to wear these Gel-Lyte IIIs, and I fell in love with them. 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- [00:00:00] S0: Wait. So when they're opening the archive, they're meaning- [00:00:00] S1: Yeah [00:00:00] S0: ... "Hey, these are past models. We're not doing it. They're not manufacturing, they're not creating anymore?" [00:00:00] S1: Correct. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And so why don't you make- [00:00:00] S1: So they opened up old catalogs. [00:00:00] S0: Interesting. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, from 1990. [00:00:00] S0: That's even better because you just mentioned how important it is to have product that's differentiated you can't get anywhere else. [00:00:00] S1: 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 1,000 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 Patta, and that's how the silhouette came back in 1990. We created that shoe, and it took off.
· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: 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 1,000 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 Patta, and that's how the silhouette came back in 1990. We created that shoe, and it took off. [00:00:00] S0: Well, even back then, though, when you were like, "Okay, they offered me a silhouette. I can put my spin on this," was your North Star just like, "Hey, I'm just going to make the shoe look like what I would want to wear"? [00:00:00] S1: Correct. [00:00:00] S0: So, same to this day? [00:00:00] S1: 100%. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: I'm always creating products 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, three different generations. And I know what my wife wants to wear, I know what my mom wants to, I know what my sister want, and I'm really designing for the people. Either if it's not for myself, it's for somebody that's the muse. [00:00:00] S0: Mm-hmm.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Mm-hmm. [00:00:00] S1: And I think that on the footwear side, if you look through this book, that was in '07, my first shoe released, and it 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. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: And then there was a picture of the shoe that I worked on in the pursuits section on the top, right next to the word pursuits. It was 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? [Speaker 1 laughing] Because I'm buying and I'm working on this project, but I'm still managing the store. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah.