· 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.
· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: 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. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: He's like, "You're not going to use a..." He goes, "Listen, we're building a cabinet or a dresser. What do people do? Put dressers on the wall. You don't see the back of it." [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: So people that don't give a shit, they use crappy wood. We're not going to do that because we know it's there. [00:00:00] S1: And that's the difference between being such an active founder and being the end user of the product that you make. [00:00:00] S0: 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. He's 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. It's like everything is shit." And it doesn't matter what category or industry you compete in. He's like, "There's two to three guys. There's two to three guys in every single one that are doing great shit, and then a whole sea of mediocrity." [00:00:00] S1: Yep. And the mediocrity is when you're working backwards from money. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: 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 within the product. So, I'm a firm believer of that because half my life is pre-internet, kind of like yours, right? And I think the pre-internet portion of my life- [00:00:00] S0: Half our childhood, we should say. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: No, because the internet came around early. I was on AOL in '97, '96. [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: So half the childhood. [00:00:00] S1: Right. But that wasn't influential internet. [00:00:00] S0: No. You had to call the internet when we were kids. Remember, literally, I got to call up the internet. [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: 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. [00:00:00] S1: That's so true.