· 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?
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: What do you mean full-time? [00:00:00] S1: Full-time meaning when I was working on these type of projects, like that Asics shoe, for example, that kid that was buying that Asics 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. [00:00:00] S0: 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. [00:00:00] S1: Correct. [00:00:00] S0: Why don't we just focus on the special, is what you're saying? [00:00:00] S1: Right. And I wanted to do that, but that wasn't the roadmap for David. [00:00:00] S0: I got to interrupt you. 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 a few years before he died, and at the time, there was a new CEO of Nike. Because he loved brands. [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: And he's like, "Nike's one of the greatest brands of all time." He thought Sony was a great brand, Polaroid, Apple. He's like, "Love people that build these brands that- [00:00:00] S1: Soulful brands. [00:00:00] S0: Exactly. They evoke emotion is the way he would put this. [00:00:00] S1: Exactly.
· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Exactly. [00:00:00] S0: 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 and focus on the good stuff." That's exactly the realization you're having at this point. [00:00:00] S1: But the crap was still generating a lot of money. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, but Steve didn't give a shit. [00:00:00] S1: And I don't give a shit. So that's where me and Steve are alike, right? And to me, 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. [00:00:00] S0: Man, that's an important insight. I don't want to skip over that. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: That's super important. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: I'm spending 85% of my day on stuff I don't care about. 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. [00:00:00] S1: Substance. [00:00:00] S0: It's just like they do things that are non-economic decisions. [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: 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. [00:00:00] S1: Right.