· 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.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: 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. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: So he was like, "Let me take a look at that." And he's looking at it, and 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?" [00:00:00] S0: Whoa. [00:00:00] S1: And then I picked up the shell-toe. 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 Goldbar down on Broome Street. [00:00:00] S0: What's Goldbar? I don't know what that is.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: What's Goldbar? I don't know what that is. [00:00:00] S1: Goldbar is a beautiful lounge that was the first of its kind to be kind of like when all these clubs were really big, it was this really intimate, small room. There was nothing quite like it since. It became this really energetic spot that everybody, the downtown kids were all 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 she was working there at 4:00 in the morning, gold leafing the ceiling, and I was helping her. 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 going to do with this shoe?" And I'm holding the shoe in front of me. I was like, "I'm just going to make the shell-toe a dress shoe and then have the employees at Goldbar wear these shoes." And then I ended up shooting the staff from Goldbar 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 was- [00:00:00] S0: You still have a more than full-time day job. [00:00:00] S1: Oh my God. So this became a pretty substantial business where we were selling these products that I was working on. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: And it grew and grew and grew, and that became a pretty big business relatively quickly. [00:00:00] S0: But where's the money going? When you say it's a big business, it's going to David, right? [00:00:00] S1: It's going to David, yeah. [00:00:00] S0: So it's not you. You don't have any kind of equity, economic tie, nothing. [00:00:00] S1: No. [00:00:00] S0: You're essentially just talent. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, correct. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: Correct. And so I was the buyer. I was a curator for this product, and then I was also a general manager, like managing also the shops, right? [00:00:00] S0: Sounds very similar to when I asked you, "What do you do today?" [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Everything. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. Basically, it was a little bit of everything, right? [00:00:00] S0: Yeah.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: 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 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. 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 the Nike account. 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, this is incredible what I'm doing, but also, 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." [00:00:00] S0: What do you mean full-time?