· Ronnie Fieg
[00:00:00] S1: He builds paddle courts, also built a membership club in Seaplane in Miami, and I used it as my office. And we were playing paddle all day, I was taking calls all day, and I just became obsessed with the sport. But what I realized with people that were playing, they didn't know how to dress for the sport. And as I became obsessed with the sport, I was watching people come and play in vintage tees and basketball shorts, and it was throwing me off, honestly. I thought to myself, "Well, how can I start to help shaping how this sport can potentially look and feel?" Because it was brand new. The first courts, I think, in America were in Miami, built by Wayne. But I thought for sure the sport was going to grow. And as the season went on, I came back home, and then for the next six months, all I heard about was paddle. People wanted to play paddle and didn't have a court to play on. I creatively direct Wilson Tennis, but that's been behind the scenes for quite a while. And we started a new line called Sport Professionals, which is an elevated tier that sits within Wilson. And I helped them through that, through design. And coming back, I was like, "Let me start to apply some of these ideas that I have around tennis, but in a very different way," because it's a way sweatier sport. It's a lot more active in the way fabrics need to feel and movements. You're spinning a lot, a lot of vertical movement, a lot of side-to-side movement. It's very different from tennis in the way that you move in the sport. So, the idea of shaping the identity of a new sport that would spread in the States and become a major sport in the space, that really excited me to want to take on the sport and help shape the identity of what it would become. So, that then turned to the idea of the space of what Ivy looks and feels like, which if you come to this space, you'll love it. Probably the space I'm most passionate about, but also I'm mostly proud of. And what we've been able to build there, the community, as I start to travel to different cities and play paddle, a lot of these players are wearing Kith Ivy products because Kith Ivy is a membership club, but the product is sold on the website, on the Kith site. So, you could still participate in the brand if you're playing paddle elsewhere and you're not a member of the club, for example.
· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
So, as I started to travel the world, I'm seeing people wearing the product, and it became, I think, the highest form of what the sport can look like and feel like. So, just having an idea be sparked by how I could better the sport or better the identity of the sport created this idea around the holistic 360 view of what Ivy is. And it wasn't just the shaping the identity of the apparel they were wearing. It's also about the experience surrounding paddle. What should paddle feel like? Because paddle could very easily be a sport that Rolex gets into, or be one of the other sports that then get thrown into ping pong and pickle. So, in which direction will this sport go? And I wanted to be a part of the progress that the sport has to then elevate it to where it is today, which I think I played a part of. [00:00:00] S0: I think that's a perfect illustration of your idea of world-building. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Like telling that entire story. It's also the perfect place to close our first conversation. What I want to do is run this back in a few months. I think we film at Ivy, and we focus on... I think you have a very unique, almost filmmaker view on world-building. But dude, thanks for taking the time. This is awesome. [00:00:00] S1: Appreciate it. This was great.
· Ronnie Fieg, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Appreciate it. This was great. [00:00:00] S0: I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, "Founders." For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through "Founders."