· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: 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. [00:00:00] S0: So, are you using the sales online as a sign that, "Hey, I need to increase the amount of physical stores I have in the real world?" [00:00:00] S1: Yes. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: 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. [00:00:00] S0: Oh, say more about this. [00:00:00] S1: 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 Kith 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. [00:00:00] S0: This is a privately held company, right?
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: This is a privately held company, right? [00:00:00] S1: Yes. [00:00:00] S0: Do you have investors or no? [00:00:00] S1: No. [00:00:00] S0: You own all of it? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. Well, me and my partner, yes. [00:00:00] S0: You mentioned going to Tokyo. There's this crazy, you probably know about this, it's like 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. [00:00:00] S1: That's actually, I expect to find the best of everything in Tokyo, but keep going. [00:00:00] S0: Oh, good. Yeah. Somebody said this to me. They're like, "The way you make podcasts, like 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 is like- [00:00:00] S1: You need to be the best- [00:00:00] S0: Shokunin. [00:00:00] S1: Right. Okay. Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Whatever you do, it's just like you take it very seriously and be the best at what you're doing. [00:00:00] S1: That's right. You maximize the potential of any one role. [00:00:00] S0: 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, because 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 going to make these three." [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: "And I'm going to make them the best." [00:00:00] S1: That's it.
· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: That's it. [00:00:00] S0: And then he'll just, when he's done for the day, he just closes. [00:00:00] S1: That's it. He's done. [00:00:00] S0: 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. [00:00:00] S1: That's right. [00:00:00] S0: And they get overexposed because they have the pressure from- [00:00:00] S1: Of the shareholders [00:00:00] S0: ... investment. So shareholders like, "You got to grow, grow, grow." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: But for craftsmen, it's like, "I don't know. I make three pizzas. I do this forever." [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: "And this is what I want to do." So you could, if this is a concern of yours, stop or slow down. [00:00:00] S1: No, I do. [00:00:00] S0: Exactly. [00:00:00] S1: I do. And in many instances I do, but it's not in the sense of shutting down the website or- [00:00:00] S0: No. [00:00:00] S1: Right. That would be the extreme. And I also definitely am not going to make three pizzas. I'm very ambitious to maximize the potential of what the brand can do. And the brand has expanded way beyond footwear and apparel. [00:00:00] S0: I mean, you just walked in here and you're like, "Hey, dude, the filming in the Aman is really nice. Next one we should do, we should do in Ivy." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: 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."
· Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S1: 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 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 I created community around the store, right? And how did that happen? Because at the time, like I said before, I was collecting and I was big into the culture of product downtown in New York. But the stores that were offering this streetwear product and limited footwear, they were arrogant. You would walk into the spaces and they weren't very friendly. 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 important for them to feel at home. 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 going to 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 those values of 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.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Explain what the difference is then compared to now. What was the initial thing? You were just selling other people's product? Like, what was it? [00:00:00] S1: 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. And I was like, "Well, I'm not making any product. I'm 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. [00:00:00] S0: Mm.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Mm. [00:00:00] S1: 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 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.