· Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. Going back to that, taking two buses to high school, the Q17 to the Q30, or taking the train to work when I took the F train from the last stop on 179th and Hillside to Broadway Lafayette, or West 4th when I used to work at 8th Street. What you see on the train, because you pass by certain neighborhoods, right? Each stop or every other stop would be like a different culture hopping on the train. Because cultures are spread out and they create communities, and then they get on the train in packs. And along the way from basically the first stop on the F train, or the last stop, I should say, going into the city, what I got to see became my world. That was my influence. I got to see so many different styles, people dressed in so many different ways. And that's when the sense of individuality was at an all-time high, before you were influenced by your algorithm, which now a lot of people want the same things because it's based off of what they see or what brands have to basically pay for in terms of mass distributing content. We lived in such a different era. I got to see people walk in to a store, have no idea what they're looking for, have no idea about the brands, and I got to see what they gravitated to first based off of a visual of what they thought looked different or looked on par for what they wanted to wear. So, I got to understand why so many different people liked so many different products for so many different reasons, and that became a big part of who I am, because it became a part of why I like product. That was my influence, basically, is seeing so many different styles and then forming my own edit. It's like that's a lost art.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: Wait, say more about that. "I got to see so many different styles." So you're taking in all this information, you're essentially synthesizing it, putting it in your head, and you say, "Okay, what's my spin or take on this?" [00:00:00] S1: Like, what's my opinion on it? Back then, when you went shopping back then, you were forced to have an opinion because you wouldn't have seen everything. If you would see a music video, you'd see one or two different shoes, right? Or boots. If you were to open up a magazine, you'd see 10 different boots. But then you walk into a store and you see 500 different boots. So it's like you're walking in and you were forced to have an opinion. Today, people will walk into a store and know about all the product before they walk in. So they've already seen someone wearing it, a photo of it, a lookbook of it, a campaign of it. [00:00:00] S0: They're outsourcing their taste to somebody else. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. And not to say that people weren't influenced by media back then. They were, but it was a much smaller aperture of what people were seeing. And then you'd come in, and back then, you were just forced to have your own opinion. [00:00:00] S0: I feel like I get the vibe you want to live in more of an analog world.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: I feel like I get the vibe you want to live in more of an analog world. [00:00:00] S1: Man, fucking hell I do. For real. And I tell my wife this every day. I wish that I could throw my phone away. And you know what's funny is that I really feel, just like fashion is very cyclical, I feel like people's thought processes are also cyclical. And the way people think about how their lives are influenced, I feel like that's also cyclical, meaning if you had had a taste of what we had pre-internet, I just find myself fucking begging for analog, for just the physical. I want to be influenced outside of digital. I want to travel and shut my shit off and just not have a connection to the internet, you know? [00:00:00] S0: Something we had when we were kids is like, you were just forced to be bored and alone with your own thoughts. [00:00:00] S1: And my daughter's like, "I'm bored." I'm like, "That's great! That's amazing! That's when you use your imagination, when you're bored." [00:00:00] S0: But that's also where difference comes in. I just flew to Milan because I meet a lot of founders, entrepreneurs. I meet a ton of them. And I met this guy named Luca Ferrari who does this company called Bending Spoons. [00:00:00] S1: Yes. [00:00:00] S0: And I remember having lunch with him back in February. And literally, the lunch was so jarring because he was describing how he built his company and ideas I'd never even heard of anywhere else, especially for he's our age too. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And I was like, "Dude, stop. You got to run that back." I pulled out and we were on WhatsApp together, and I just light him up on all the stuff he's saying. And he's like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "I'm taking notes on your very unique ideas for when you do the show." He didn't even agree to do the show. I just assumed. I was like, "Dude, you got weird shit in your head. I need to get it out." But one of the things he said was he's building a tech company, but he grew up in a little village of 900 people. His parents were hairdressers, and he's just like, "I started in Copenhagen, then I moved to Milan." And he's like, "I couldn't copy the tech startup mantras because I didn't even know they existed." [00:00:00] S1: Right. [00:00:00] S0: He was essentially like he was in a digital world, but he was like how we were as kids. He was just like, "I only had my own thoughts and my own thinking, and because I was involved with my own thoughts and my own thinking, not influenced by anything else," because he doesn't pay attention- [00:00:00] S1: Yep [00:00:00] S0: ... this is where you get the creativity. This is where you get the eccentric stuff. This is where you get actual differentiation.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: ... this is where you get the creativity. This is where you get the eccentric stuff. This is where you get actual differentiation. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. And that's very similar in the sense that Queens played such a big part in my life because Queens, you get to see so much. It's just New York City is honestly the most inspiring place in the world because there's so much thrown at you every day. I'm talking about outside of digital. Just walking around, you get to see so much. So, in the sense of what I want to accomplish, it's beyond the typical cookie-cutter retail brand concepts that have helped shape these brands that we all know. I want to sit way outside of that, and I want the brand to be doing so much more than that. So, if you knew exactly what it is that I do within the context of the culture which is what I'm in today, like the product culture or the retail culture, understanding how wide we've expanded beyond the typical retail space is pretty extraordinary. But where we go from here and how it could expand from there is even greater than that. So, I'm trying to not have any boundaries in the way that I think about the business. If that makes sense.
· David Senra, Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S0: This is actually a really important point, and I have certain people in my life that I go to. They're kind of like this living board of directors. And what a lot of the case is, is you're obviously ambitious and driven. Every single person that's going to be on the show is ambitious and driven. I feel the same way. But there's certain people in my life that you'll talk to about what's going on. They're like, "Oh, you have this weird ceiling that actually doesn't exist. Why don't we just rip that fucking off because it doesn't exist?" [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Do you have any- [00:00:00] S1: That's corporate structure, though. [00:00:00] S0: But in your own personal life, when you're thinking about directing your company, you're saying, "Hey, man, I got big fucking dreams." I don't think of myself as like, I might be part of this culture, but I can expand out of it. I can do whatever I want. I'm not looking left and right. I'm focused on what I want to do. Do you have anybody in your life that just can peel the top off your head and be like, "Hey, man, you have no ceilings, you have no limits?" [00:00:00] S1: My partner, Sam, has allowed me to do that. Yeah. My business partner. And he's always been someone who I could speak to who has given me the energy to go and chase whatever it is I have in my mind. I listened to an episode, one of your episodes this morning, I'm not even sure what it was, where you just ramble about Steve Jobs. It's incredible. Right? [00:00:00] S0: That's how you know he listens to the show.