Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398]
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Two fund facts about our newest sponsorship partner, rap. First, they are the fastest growing fin tech company in history, reaching a level of revenue in five years that I can't quote exactly, but is eyebrow raising. Second, they're backed by more of my favorite past guests, at least sixteen of them when I counted.

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These Operators managed costs with incredible detail, and they are constantly thinking about how they can reinvest every dollar and every hour back into their business. This is rams mission to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and freeze up time for teams to work on more viable projects. First, on expenses, the average american business has a profit margin of seven point seven percent.

This means saving one percent on cost is the equivalent of making thirteen percent more revenue. The average ramp customer is able to save five percent on their expenses each year. Of course, every entrepreneurs looking for ways to grow revenue by fifty percent, they should just seriously seek to save five percent on their expenses.

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It's notable that some of the best in class businesses today, companies like airbnb, Andrew and shop fy and investors like coa capital invest equity, are all using RAM to manage their spend. They use IT to spend less. They use IT to automate T, D, S, financial processes, and they use IT to reinvest, save dollars and hours into growth at both classes and positive.

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My guess is ronny, fake founder and CEO of kiss. At age thirteen, ronny started working at David z, an iconic new york shoe store, where he sold title in boots to J, Z. And wallabies to wooten clan.

He worked his way up from the stockroom and earned his first collaboration in two thousand and seven when he worked with asic on a new line of their gel light trees that collection sold out in a day after being featured in the wall street journal, catching the attention of A D test president and launching runny reputation as a cultural touchstone in two thousand and seven. And he founded kit, which has become one of the most influential brands in footwear, fashion and culture. The business sells a unique ation of products to include nike sneakers, are money suits for saatchi robbs watches, cars and even ten doll ice creams.

Our conversation is one of the best examples of lifework that i've ever recorded. IT explores how one's pure love of product has shaped everything from a campaign with Jerry sinfield to his creative direction for the new york. Next, next, please enjoy this excEllent conversation with roni fike.

Roney, I have to begin our conversation with a fun little vin yet and story that's personal, which is a couple months ago, my brother in law was a huge kit fan, took my finger's son, who's an emerging githa, to the new kid kids store in new york. And IT all started when I thought about IT. With that, some told jacket.

I'm sure if anyone's a fan of kid, they can call to mind this image of sign pld wearing a jacket in a campaign that you did with him. And we saw this on my brother in law many months ago, and that kicked off our interest in you and kid, in your brand. And the whole story and IT was such a cool moment to see my kid and my brother in law to do this.

And so I thought the scientist thing would be an interesting place to start, because IT was such an iconic, an interesting thing that you did. IT was a typical IT was new. A close that you chose were very distinctive on him.

It's just really surprised. And I love just to hear about that episode, how you came to IT, where the idea came from, what it's like to do those things. We're going to talk about lots of examples like IT, but that's the one that viscerally hit me as IT relates to the kids brand. And I would just love to hear the story of IT.

that ones actually a really interesting, and that's a good example of how long I could take for some things to come to. Basically, for about five years, I wanted to shoot jury. And he became one of these bucket list moments for the brand and myself, being such a big fan of sign filled in the show.

But more importantly, what Jerry has meant to new york city. And I always felt like he was a poster child for everything that we felt growing up in the city. So that took a lot of time, but basically I became friendly with his wife, Jessica, when I met through another friend, through a mutual friend, and I started to have conversations with her about the vision of what I would look like for me, a shoe jury.

And we met about IT a few times, and IT was a very slow process of really getting her and her son, actually, whose an incredible kid, to help really IT make them understand the purpose behind why we wanted to sue jury. And IT was mostly because I felt like people in our market already viewed him as such an icon because it's like stories about him and the football are that he wore on the show in our world, which was studied because I was on mood boards and became a big tumbler moment that people spoke about. And it's funny because but when I speaking with Jerry on set, so basically they got him to trust that IT was gonna great, and he didn't know much about the brand.

He doesn't know much about this world. And when I started to have the conversations about the foot are that he used to wear on the show, he had no idea that he was this guy that people looked to that way. He was like, what? So I showed him some of the photos, and he was surprised by IT, which is even more so the reason why I love this guy so much, because he never did anything in his life, in my opinion, to appear cooler than he actually is.

You know, i'm saying, I think that that was such an eye opening moment for me, just to understand him a bit Better through the shoot and through the entire day that we spent together and the result of IT was exactly what I was expecting IT to be in, hoping that I would be people that respected Jerry and understood his impact on the culture. Seeing him in that product in that way, I think really struck a cord. And I think that's a big part of the DNA of the brand is that cord is continuously striking these emotional cords kind of leg playing an instrument where you just get Better at understanding what people want to hear from that instrument and how things sound.

It's kind of like through my career is developed and become a life of its own in the sense of who we shoot, why we shoot them and what the content ends up turning out to be. The jury should really snowballed division that we had of shooting icons in the way that we do. It's become a big part of our D N.

A. Or when you shoot somebody like Jerry who doesn't shoot anything, ever for anyone. I think that kind of impact is what we always are searching for. When myself in the marketing team meet and discuss what we want to do that, we use that as a huge example of how we were able to create emotion.

How are you? You gotten Better at this scale, which is remarkable, the ability to know what will resonate. You just said, you have gotten Better knowing what people want to feel.

So what do people want to feel? What is that thing? Is that a common threats, something that changes with time and circumstances?

I think it's familiarity, but without knowing that they were looking for that specific feeling when you're able to give them that feeling. But he feels familiar. I think that that's what we've been able to do so well is understand what people would want before they know they want IT.

That comes really from how I started my career or the middle of my first ten year, David, when I became more of like a merchandise er slashed buyer, is really trying to understand what people want without necessarily them knowing they wanted yet. And that's the science, understanding what people like, how they dress, why are influenced. And then the evolution of that is understanding how people digest content in product, which is our business basically split fifty fifty is the design of product, the product itself and then the story telling around the product.

IT has to be, for me at least, the consistency of the experiences that we've had internally has made us professionals at that with our consumer and with the consumers that we want to cade to is understanding the way they think and the way they interact with content and what they want to see from product. And you have to really become the customer and the consumer to then understand that on that level, which is what I am at the end of the day, i'm just a product nerd. And we really have to get to the core of product creation to understand the purpose behind anything else.

We do cause IT starts there. And then when you speak about something like a jury shoot that comes from the right product that would be applicable to that kind of shoot with gery. If I didn't have the right product and we didn't tell that story, the queens college story, which I thought was epic, to tell that story with Jerry, then the timing won't been right. And then I would have to wait until the product would be right again to shoot him. So there's so many moving parts.

Can you detail that a little bit more? That product story, the queens college thing and jury, i'm really interested in this product creation process and that moment specifically and again, government to a google IT right now. And look at the cloth is so unique.

And one thing I want to come back to just, I remind myself, is this combination of familiar with insane originality, everyone in new york, myself included, as obsessed sign told. But I had certainly never seen a jacket like that or clothes like that, and I had never seen him or anything like that. So is this interesting jacky position of the familiar, making me open to the new in this fascinating way? But I would want to zoom in on the literal cloth he was wearing in the story behind them because I think it's really .

important when I first started speaking to Jessica and he was straight up like hay IT would need to make sense. There needs to be a reason why. And I said, of course, that's the only way would work for us as well. I'm from queens and on the show, there's this moment where Jerry wears the queens college sweat IT and he's a queens college lemi. So the concept when I thought about representing my city, where i'm from and i'm always trying to write my city as much as I can, and the model for the brand is just us.

But we also own this tagline called new york to the world, which is such an important lines for us as we start to work on sports york teams near culture, and we start to open up in different regions in the world, that tag line becomes even more important for us as we start to expand globally. Like going back to queens college, there was a conversation that we be had for a few years internally on what would be the right moment to put this out and to work on this project. And there was a brook in queen story, because is brooking college, queens college, IT was the story of us opening in rookley, me living in brooklin, but then also being born, raised in queens, and my family being from queens, such an important part of my childhood and my life.

So everybody always, typically, you see people walking around trying to represent where they're from. That's not new, but in the sense of trying to put the queens college on the map, figuring out that would be the perfect marriage between what we would do with Jerry and the product that we want to put him in, that became the perfect moment. Where would make sense to Jessica, to his son, to Jerry, for us to all come together, and for IT to be something that everybody would want to do.

But when I say everybody would want to do, we were all on the same level of wanting to do IT IT never works well when one party wants to do something more than the other. But when we had this gift back, which we gave some of the proceeds back to the school, IT was a moment that I thought that Jerry was proud of to be proud of that moment. But IT didn't IT didn't jeopardise any of the product esthetic of the product that we were making at the time because the captain in the collection for queens college was really strong.

And I felt like that was the kind of product that people would want to see. Germany, an, so that became the y. And the y is always so important. I know that people seeing and basically don't think about the process as much as maybe they should or as much as they need to. But even though we have so many moments throughout the year, they're all backed about eighteen months before the moment happens.

So there's so much care and thought process and conversations that happened that lead to these great moments that have made the brand hopefully, people put IT in the iconic bucket at this point because you look at the store. Our SOHO shop, it's become an institution. And I say that because people show up there rolling a suitcase into the store, coming straight from the airport off the plane, it's the first stop they make. And it's not only in new york, it's become this place that feels like home for people that travel like myself, new york, miami, A A, tokyo, paris, london. It's really become this place where people can go and feel at home.

Is that the feeling you want them to have when they walk into the store? If you had to name the feeling.

even though the stores are all very different from one another, purposely different from one another, because what I really don't like is what luxury brands do, and they have this copy and paste formula for spaces wherever they open, they're all the same. And the problem with that is, when you open too many, then IT starts to go basically in the opposite intention of wanting people to feel luxurious.

But then IT actually has the opposite effect because the experience becomes too accessible. So the concept for us is very different. We like to compliment the city that were in with a design of the space. So in the sense of they all feel like home, they don't necessarily all feel the same, but the people that work in the shop and the experience of people have in the shop, that is the same. And when you see the product and the product speaks to you the same from city to city, then you start to have this connection to the brand that is built off of experience, which many CEO will tell you from the creative spaces, what everybody is basically fighting for.

I ve to tell the story of how this whole thing evolved and where the foundation started, maybe with you learning that first lesson at dav or whatever. It's so interesting to me how being a retailer, being a curator than these collaborations and then the independent kith brand have sort of co evolved together. I don't know what the foundation is.

Maybe it's one of the storm experiences you said you first started thinking about that pretty Young age. So what is the first part of that story? And then obviously, I want to get into all the ways that it's evolved, but the story itself of the brand is so interesting and feel so organic and rooted in your life. So what point would you begin at? What do you think that foundation is?

IT really starts by ally is a great question. And making me think of things I haven't thought about a long time or maybe ever. I'm twenty nine years in retail now and you work so hard and so many hours that you forget that they're basically all linked like all these years are linked to the evolution of the business.

But their building blocks, when you think of the first time you became passionate or fell in love with something, I have a few of those categories in my life. I would be collector, and I collect a lot of different things, but I collect them for myself. I think that what the term means now to collect or to be a collector has been overshadowed by social media and the need to share what you collect with the world.

Instead of the passion that I have of collecting for myself, a very different feeling. But people have been able to start collecting the brand for themselves and also to share with others, which IT doesn't necessarily matter what your intentions are when you collect, as long as you're passionate about what you do when you speak about the beginning stages of my passion for this world that I mean now and product that I get to work on that really feels the stogies to a lot of people. But for me, it's basically like being able to relieve those moments myself.

When i'm able to work on these products and put them out, I get to share that feeling, that feeling that I had when I was Younger, when I first started either collecting marvel cards, because I think that that's really the first moment of collecting for me started in one thousand and ninety. I think that those moments of clicking comics first, then cards, I think, really set the path of understanding that my feeling of having a collection of something was stronger than other people had. I became obsessed with having collections.

And then in nineteen ninety five, before I started working in ninety five, because I started working in june, my sister got her first credit card, and he was so excited to spend money on the credit card, and he asked me, I was thirteen at that time. He was nineteen SHE, six years older than me. And he was excited to spend money on the cards as he asked me to come shopping with her.

So he went to sneaker corner, which was our foot wire store, like athletic foot store, sneaker store on the corner of one eighty eight and hard harding in fresh metals. And we went, and they didn't have a size in the shoot that he wanted, but he was like running, buy something. I want to spend money on the card.

I was like, okay, so I was wearing a pair of shoes that my parents bought me for my birthday. And I was a pair of flight ninety five, which was a parody and kitchen. I love them so much that the whole time that he was shopping in the store, I was wearing them, but also I had them in my hand and remember her saying to me, why are you holding the same show you're wearing?

Pick something else and I was like, I don't know what would happen if these shoes get busted up because I was playing ballin on them. I'm going to cry if I don't have these look, good shoes. I love these shoes.

So I bought a second pair of that you. So when I went home, I put that second pair in my closet, and I kept IT in the box, and I just put IT there. And then I started to think about IT.

After, like, six months, when I started working at David, I still had a second pair of a hue I was wearing, which was aliens. IT was not regular for us to think in that way. Thirteen in the school that was going to.

And the kids I was hanging out with IT was just something that nobody did. Then I started working at Davida, which was a Brown shoe and boot retailer. So at a time in the midnight ties, where everybody was just focused on the culture, was focused on wearing hiking boots and Brown shoes, so very different from the shoes I was wearing and the shoes that eyes was in love with.

Air max zini five came out that year, which changed everything. This is my favorite nike solo, wet to date. But I was only in tune with the world of athletic footwear.

And then I got to learn this whole other world, a foot square, because in the city at the time, at that point, the city was always like a year or two ahead of the in the city, everybody was wearing a combination of these different boots. David Z, I was the epicenter of hiking boots at the time. I was timberland, dolomites, bear, A K, U, boot, dinner treat, red wing, the ringo, Clarks, those with the brands, polo, cookie, boots and technica.

All these brands that were in the boot world were running new york city at the time. Manhattan, I should say. And I got to start working in the the stockroom, all these boxes of shoes that we're coming in.

I would be responsible for creating stock numbers for them and consolidating them in a stockroom. So I got to open up these boxes and discover product for the first time in that way, one on one time, with new product coming in one after another. I'm open with all these different iterations of boots and shoes a couple of years of working in the stockroom.

Once I hit the sales floor, the sales team on the floor were all at least twelve years older than me. And they all became my family and started teaching me about these shoes, started teaching me about these boots and shoes in the differences between them and functionality. A lot of these boots at the time were made in italy, because hiking boots back then, that came from the mountains.

vitally. And I got to experience that because I started later on in my career, I collaborated and worked on handmade goods in italy, and got to go to the place that really was origin around the product that I started to love. So I started collecting boots, which nobody that I ve ever known in my life did, that. I started collecting dolomite in my aim, my lao well. Instead, messager was like dolo collector.

something like that. So funny.

I started collecting these dollar, my boots that I was very much in love with. And I would just have piles of shoes and boots in my room, and they would be new. I wouldn't even want to wear them because I saw them as art.

I would hold a pair of these boots on my hand. And I got to understand two conversations of different people that I worked with, and the buyer that would walk into the store. And sometime David would walk into the store, and they put these boots on a pedestal.

These are like some of the best hiking boots ever made. So I started to really understand and learn the ins and outs of what makes a boot great band. Every season.

They were changed the color, ways and designs of these boots. And I didn't want to let these moments go, these moments that I shared with these new products that had. So I started collecting them.

And that was the beginning. I would say that that was a part of IT. And then the different people that I would help, because I was a Young kid on the floor starting to help the hip hop artists that we're coming in and helping us.

And A C and wu tang clan and bus arrives and mace. At that time, those are my heroes. The apop music was just as important to me in my life than anything else being that Young.

They always say that whatever you love between the ages of thirteen and eighteen is what you love for the rest your life. The way I was introduced to the music was on a street between five and six, seven around the block, from fat beats on probably the most culturally relevant block in the world. That was what he was because saturday, sunday, basically with block parties every weekend, and everyone was there, you would see all of the stars.

Everyone from the hip hop world would go there on the weekends and hang out. I was listening to music and seeing these artists. They took over my life, and I bought turn tables.

I would shop final FBI around the corner. Grace popo was on the corner, and there was the store that would sell all colors of yankee. After spicily wore that red hat, then they made twenty colors of yanchi fitz, and IT would be fedor and yanchi fitz at kang's and new areas.

And then across the street that would sell iceberg. That block became where everybody went. To dress, fly and buy their product that they would wear for the week and then they come right back in next week.

But basically, the reason why bring that up is because I got to see why these different stars and heroes of mine liked the product that they liked. And I became a combination of all of their taste of liking, different part of different reasons. For example, I used to help routine by their rolls bees.

It'd come in, and I would help all of them. They come in full plan to buy the walls, and then they go up the block to this guy that would die them. And I was talking to required after day.

He's like one of my very close friends. And I get the chills. You're saying that right now, because the bridge between those two moments of yesterday verse when I was fourteen, fifteen helping routing is crazy.

But then I would wear wallabies, and i'm wearing them to my junior high school and taking two buses wearing royal blue sweet wallabies with para su co genes, with a royal blue stripe, with a royal blue maka, sure, and a royal blue jacket looking like a smooth on the fucked in bus. And I got left that. But exactly one year later, people were coming into my store from my school buying wallaby es.

And also new baLances. The same thing we were early Carrying new baLances, five, seven, sixties, and I would wear new baLances with the big end on the bus. And people in queens would ask me, are those nikes? Because they thought the instant nike? Meanwhile, in the city, the top hip hop artists and drug dealers, because they were coming in, calling them orthopedic and buying them, because they suspend on the corner wearing comfortable thirty hundreds.

And that was the most expensive runner in the category at the time. So the reason why I tell you this is because you wanted to know the origin of where I fell in love with product, where my part came from and IT came from, living in such an incredible era where people were buying product for different reasons. IT was like the sense of individuality was at its peak at the time where people were buying product because of their own personal taste.

And the way that they shopped the store was very different from the way people shop the store. Now they'd come in and they'd actually be interested in product they never saw before. There was a big discovery factor.

So they shop ten, twenty, twenty skills off the wall, then y'd have to narrow down to what they want. And for the purposes they were buying ship for, whether they were going out at night and they were buying hush puppies or the ranges, or they wanted to pair boots for during the day or both. But that process and that experience that I had with those amazing individuals, a celebrity or not, I got to get into people's heads to understand why they like certain products and why they were buying certain products. And when you help thousands of people, imagine then learning the inner world, king of people's brains of why they like things. I'm picturing .

nineteen ninety four is in a year that the rangers want the standing cup. And I think it's your film tic came out too, if I remember that you're correctly and the .

next where in the finals and lost at a rockets that right?

And i'm thinking of nazis, the store choosing stuff and how that times a thousand created the foundation of what i'll call your product philosophy. And so I would love to hear this what your product physical y is. After all this experience, after doing so many things, if you had to sum up the philosophy behind the product you put out, how would you put IT?

I don't think that it's one specific philosophy that I would be able to put into words. There was no way that I wouldn't work on product and make product that I felt was missing in the market. So fast forward.

And I became an assistant buyer in nineteen ninety nine or two thousand. I think that was two thousand. So went from the stock to sales, a system manager, manager.

And then I became an assistant buyer. So splitting my time, and I spent one day in the office. And when I did that, I started to work with the brands. I understood product on such a different level because of how long I spent working on the floor.

So my understanding of product, when you start from there, when you understand the consumer on that level, the intimacy of that relationship that you have with the consumer and then you become the buyer slash merchandizing of product you're bringing in. You're now working with the brands. So that was me working with the brands and looking at product and actually having an opinion, not necessarily an opinion, a matter to the brand yet, but an opinion to myself of what I felt was missing, that I knew people wanted, that the brands weren't offering.

That is the beginning stages of creation. That's what started my engine. That's what really began this train of thought to want to create product that I felt was missing in a marketplace and everything that I wanted to make. Here's the crazy part at this point that I have collected a lot of football, and i'm now the customer with, in my opinion, where I was at that time of my life.

I had this case level that was the best of all different cultures in york city, because I was helping and understanding all different types of people that were shopping, whether IT was the tourist that was coming in from japan buying red wings, or IT was the dog Walker in the village coming in and buying Green sway, choose, believe IT or not. That was a trend. I've noticed that the local consumer loved Green swee athletic footwear.

It's crazy. And you can pick that up after the twenty of consumer that you're helping these guys from the village, they really gravity towards Green, sweet. And then i'm helping law and hill, who came in and asked me for a pair cortex boots because he thought I was a brand, and I had to explain her what cortex was.

And this is background. Ortez was relatively new, so not a lot of people knew. And then SHE had that line in the song with a gorgeous and sweats.

I tricks like a homeless. That was that time I sold her boots and then seeing fat joe come in and J, Z. Come in every weekend and buy a air construction tumblin boots.

So my taste was running across all these different people. And then all the sudden i'm buying for different brands, understanding what each brand is missing in the marketplace. So then i'm starting to think about how I can contribute in that way. And fast forward to two thousand and six.

That was the first project ever worked on, was when asic, a mcmakin, was a sales persons at asic really jump started my career, understood that I was a big collector, and I helped to bring the asic business from zero to look a couple of million dollars at David, because I open the asic account for David when we walked a trade show back then. Wrestling sneakers, believe that are not where a huge fashion trend. And on a sugar tiger was, a combination of both on a super tiger and the sports style performance driven product that was becoming very fashionable.

So I opened that account for David, and we built a great business, and the sales are came to me with a catalogue. The catalogue was basically an archive of styles that he asked me, would you be interested? The group loves you here. My boss loves you. We love the business that we built.

Would you be interested in picking one of these to put out as a bring back of a ritual style? So i'm flipping through the pages and rewind back to, I would have to say, I was nineteen ninety, so I was eight years old. Reback pumps were out around that time, and I really wanted to pear reback pumps bad.

And we were standing outside of, I think was called, and is juncture or something like that sneaker store, basically somewhere not far from where I lived. And I literally was crying tears. I was ten years old, crying tears.

I like begging my mom to buy me appear. We back pumps, and he came out of the store, and SHE bought me a pair, eight, six to eight, three years, that were seventy dollars or something. So I ended wearing no shoes, and I love them.

I worked until they had holes in the souls, and I went back. I wanted to buy another pair when I was that Young. Anyone have them? So they discontinued them, or they didn't have any longer.

So when I foot to the book, I saw that style and my eyes popped into my head. And I was like, that actually issue that I love that I owned when I was a kid, and I showed him pictures of me wearing IT in one thousand and ninety. And he was like that, perfect.

So that the first shoe, he sent me a CAD of the shoe. Remember, I printed IT out, and I started drawing arrows to different panels of the shoe with a description of what material and color I would want in the different panels of the shoe is before I started working on illustrator. So basically I fax in back then three of these different drawings, which I still have in my momma out somewhere, three different drawings of the shoe for them to basically make.

And I got samples, looked great. And then we launched the first batch of shoes called the two fifty two pack, because back then the minimums to make a shoe was two hundred fifty two pairs. They opened up a mold, which is very expensive for the investment of letting me work on a shoot, which was incredible.

Then you have the responsibility to sell them. So here I am, three shoes, seven hundred and fifty six pairs, they come in. And I remember my friend working at complex at the time, complex magazine.

I got them into the magazine a few months earlier, so IT was in the print mag, and then i'd had this party that I put together on fifth avenue. You then we sold fifty pairs that night in the next morning. I'm never being in the store, and we saw two pairs in the morning and a negotiate.

This is not good. Then this editor came in. I didn't know he was an editor, and he asked me a bunch of questions about the shoe, and he ended up buying a pair.

And then the next morning, biking to work, because I was living in the city at the time, and I get a phone call for my mom. So I pick up the phone on the way to work, and I pick k IT up. And i'm like, what's going? My mom is like flipping out because my dad reads the wall street journal.

And on the cover of the pursuit section, there's a picture of the shoe. And then this article about limited edition sneakers, the blogs, by the way, were starting to bubble. But this is very early on.

so. I get to the storm as a line three blocks long to buy the shoe. Because of this article that came out, all the stores had lines that we sold out of all the pairs to the pair by the end of the day.

Now, during this moment, people lined up that day, the atis office moved in across the street for me on broadway between person spring. And the president of additive was there, looked out his window, saw this line, came downstairs and came in and asked me, because I was managing the store, what's going on with this line. And I explained to him what happened.

I showed him the paper, and I was like, so excited. And he's like, did you take your lunch break yet? And I was like, known he's like, do you have time for the? I was like, I could leave for an hour.

So I left with him and he he walked me to the new idea original store, winter street. And he's like, what if I gave you the ability to work on any shoe in the store? And I was like, what I was like, that would be crazy.

That would be amazing. So I picked up the super star and worked on the black thai super star, which was back then, I was dating this amazing woman who is working in gold bar, which was an amazing lounge slash club that was opening up. And IT was the talk of the city.

And I was helping her, literally, gold leaf, the paint on the ceiling of gold bar, like we would stay there, and I would help her put this place together. And I got to meet the manager and the staff. And I was like, you know what I would love to make, because they're are going to wear suits.

The staff was going to wear suits. IT was a beautiful place. I think I want to make this ideas shelter instead of the rubber toe.

I want to make IT all leather with a lever rap MIT soul, and make a dressed a data super star. Ecover are with the suit, and IT was called the black tie. And he came with a black eddas tie that I made a tie with three strikes in the garment district in the city.

And IT would come with a shoe. So then that you released and that had a story. And then the blog started picking up based on this article in the wilsey journal, the blog started reaching out to me. And that's basically .

how IT started. wow. It's incredible to think about how efficiently you seem to use your own experience as raw material or ingredients in these recipes that you then create. IT seems like a major takeaway for created people out there, whatever they're creating, to tap into their own unique experience more because no one else had that gold leaf experience or whatever.

And IT seems like if I think about the story of kids sense, I want to come next to the moment of kids becoming a thing and the thing you're working on and how IT started. But IT seems like it's that story over and over and over again. It's like you earn your way into more new unique experience and then take that raw material and apply back into the product. Is that like a right of summarizing IT?

That's a perfect way of summer zing IT, I think, for every incredible creator in this world. And we're talking him about creators in any category, whether its architecture or art or music or product, any think any great creator is basically sharing his or her D N A with the world of very experience that is then translated through product. Some people are born, I think, with this need to spread their experiences and emotions with the world.

And some people spread them differently through art, to music. There's a thousand different ways to spread them, but for me, it's spread through product. And its spread through product for me, because I love product more than anyone I know when we speak about product, it's like I could show you where i'm sitting right now.

I'm sitting in an office that I built in a garage space that I built because I like to be around the cars that I built. It's that emotion that I try to share with the world so people can have the emotion. I want people to buy into product for the right reasons, for the reasons that I did growing up.

And I think that part of why kit has become so special is because we have become a trusted voice through product. So people trust the product because they know it's coming from authentic place. And I think it's become reliable across many different categories of fashion and of product.

Is so hard for me to explain how this happened. I haven't been able to step back and look at IT as this is where I started. This is where IT is. It's more so like living a day by day and just day by day.

I've been able to tell more stories and i've been able to make more product that is on a wider spectrum that can affect people through their closets in a much bigger way. Now then we used to, because i'm just had to tell, like foot twee socks, pants, underwear, shirt, over shirt, hat, glasses, car bag is all my brand. I always dreamed of being able to do that because I do would be like one piece or two pieces of my outfit. And I would bother me, would bothered me that I wasn't something I created for myself.

I love the prompt of what do you love more than anybody else, you know? And leaning into that aggressively for whatever? Or does you create a love that prompt?

By the way, i'm a big fan of that because I always tell people if you're not the hardest working person, you know, then you're not working hard enough. That's another iteration of that. It's a competition within yourself of being the best version of yourself.

I want to do that in every facet of my life, not just in my work. I want to be the best dad, and I know I want to be the most efficient person I know with time. Want to be the best family member of my extended family that I know try to be as Carrying as I can always try to Better yourself in every facet. I think that that's been a piece of something that i've learned throughout my career, that i've been able to transfer that over to other pieces of my life, which has been great.

I love the line. The reward for great work is more work. And IT seems like kit has been an unfolding version of that.

Can you describe the very earliest days of kith, the brand, what the name came from, how IT came together? It's become iconic. It's all those cities you listed. If you're in new york, you certainly know kh, but increasingly in the major cities around the world, it's becoming one of the iconic brands with so many different interesting facets. And so i'd love there for to hear where the name and the concept in the original story came from.

IT comes from the phrase kit and kin, which means friends and family in the city. During that time, when I left David and created kiss around twenty ten, twenty eleven era, there was this attitude that you'd get where you felt like people were doing you a favour walking into certain stores and certain brands, and that felt like they were too cool for your business. And that really wrote me the wrong way.

I remember walking with my dad into a store, and I won't mention the name of the store. And because my dad walked in and my dad is not a world stress man, he's just not into that type ship, is like a corky dude. And I walked him him because I was trying to show him the kind of brands that I liked, different types of stores that I thought would be really interesting to him because he's never seen those type of stores.

He's never really cared about the retail business in that way. But I wanted him to experience a few things while he was in the city. And we were grabbing lunch.

So I walked into a store with them and they shut the music off until he walked out. And i've always wanted to open up my own store, and I had different intentions back then, and they've obviously changed since. But if that was the fire that I needed that little up, huge fire under my eyes to go and fucking do IT.

And basically, that's where the name came from. Because kit means friends. I wanted to create an experience where everyone who shopped with a brand felt like they were at home and felt like they had a lot in common with the people who were helping them.

And IT became the space from like minded individuals that cared about product in similar ways than I did. And that's where the name came from. IT came from the phrase kit and kin, which means friends and family.

I like the four letter word. I liked that. I thought I was unique. So I dropped and kin.

And ironically, thirteen years later, I started a brand under the umbrella last summer called and kin. And that's a more elevated Price point with more elevated fabrics of the perl. Just my version of the most luxurious product you will find from the brand.

IT seems like key elements of the entire story, our relationship and communities in the name. Those are long games. Those are not things that happen overnight or quickly. Even the sign full story where we started that was a long story of five year story. Say a bit about the role of relationship and community and the way you've build community and the intentionality behind that, because IT seems like they're inextricably linked with the vibe and the ethos of .

cah when we built our first shop in manhattan. So we built two shop cy multi evensen. One in the new atrium store. At that time, I was new on flap shing bergin, and then one in the back of atrium and SOHO on bleaker and broadway.

In the back of bleaker and broadway, there was this driveway that when I walked in to the space, I was like, what is the space over here? And they like, no one uses that to keep the gate closed. It's a driveway.

You can barely fit a car in there because I was a little more narrow than you would want IT to be for a driveway. So, like, this is interesting. I want to turn this into a courtroom.

I want to turn this into a space where people can hang out. The concept of the store was to have two rooms, and we started off selling multi brand footwear. That's how the company started.

IT was two multi brand football rooms. One was more Brown shoes and boots, and one was more athletic driven. Because, you know, for me, as foot are is number one in my life, it's always be number one.

But i'm not a sneaker guy. I'm a football guy. I can make a shoe in front of you.

I know how to make shoes. I spend a month. In the dominican republic, making my sobo shoes on the line, knowing how to handsel.

And that was a very important time in my life, is learning how to make footwear. Because I love footwear so much. I needed to understand how they were made. So Brown shoes were as important to me as athletic footwear, and that tell you, open the store.

And there were two different personalities who would walk through the rooms, and one was more rustic, wooden metal, and the other one was stone and frosted glass and lit up in a tron s way. So I opened up the court yard, and people started hanging out in the store and in this court yard, not coming in to shop for product which I loved. Like minded individuals would just talk about random shit and just chop IT up in the back.

In, a lot of staff became really good friends with one another. The staff became like family. And then these people that would shop the store, they became close to the staff. And IT became the community of people.

That was just incredible for the over time, the people that would hang out in the store, in the community that hung out there, they wanted to represent the multiple and retail store as a brand. People were asking me to make product with the name of the store on IT. Now collaborate foot are I was already doing since l seven, so the football would have the name of the store, and that's one thing.

But people wanted to wear a perl with the name of the store on IT to represent the store. And what I realized was people were having the same type of experiences that I was having a different shops around the area, and they were sick, that they wanted to feel like they belong to something where they were welcomed and wanted. And that became the D.

N. A. Of the kid space. And the purpose and the reason as to why I started making other products.

It's incredible to think about all of this richness that goes into product. And we've talked less about the storytelling, and he said at the beginning that it's two sides of the same coin. And i'm thinking about the production quality and interestingness of some of the videos, especially in the last couple of years, related to some of the incredibly, whether it's your money or something else, collaborations that kid has done with other iconic brands. Maybe talk a little bit about you've told us so much about how you figured product out over time.

How have you figured out story telling? Because again, you're doing the same thing over over again, i'm noticing, which is like taking something people already know, introducing something radically new, fusing them and then delivering that package in a way that is so fun to consume. And that's the story telling peace. So maybe give us the same thoughts on how that part of your life came to develop.

Okay, so i've never really had to talk about this, so trying to put my thoughts together. But I love film. Probably my first love. When I was Younger, I had a very good friend of mine who, coming out of a achieve a school in fourth grade, my parents couldn't afford to semi there anymore. As so I went to my local public school in the middle fourth grade, and the kids were kinda stand office.

And there was one kid who was the coolest kid in the group there, who took me in and started to make me feel welcomed and introduced me to the other kids and made me feel like I belonged. And this kid, this name is joe. He became my brother.

I would spend more time in his house and in my house, and he, at a very Young age, would say starting sixth grade, maybe, maybe fifth grade, actually, like eleven, twelve years old, he was the first one that had a laser, this player. So his dad was well off, and he had bought the full catalogue of laser desks that were available because not every movie was everyone, not every movie was a available on laser desk. But he literally had a library of a couple hundred movies on laser desk.

And on the weekends, we would spend the entire weekend in his room watching movies, and he'd make me watch crazy movies. He was making me watched dear hunter. And on my days, the range was insane. We fell in love with film back then, and he became our obsession as kids.

And throughout the years, I was always in the theatre, up until recently, up until covet, I would say I basically put my wife on to, shouldn't see any other movies SHE probably saw like maybe two percent of the movies i've seen. So IT then he became putting her on in the same way and making her watch all these movies that I got to relive, and then going to the theater twice a week and watching films that was pretty incredible. So my passion for film was very important to me.

And he became the part of my DNA and how I would love to see the brand be able to communicate through the medium of film. I would say the real start for this was the new york love story. And there were two chapters of the new york love story.

And I was my first attempt at showcasing product through the setting of new ork city, but also thw this short film that would be like Billy Crystal feel when I think about when Harry, my Sally, like through that kind of via that was the first concept I had for showcasing a fall collection in new york city. Is this love story between these two people. And then we continue that and had this part too, which I didn't love as much.

But that was my attempt, and I was good, not great. As time progressed, one of my employees who started off as an intern, his name is Austin, became my right hand and also throw my relationship with him. He phone up with film as well.

And this happened recently, I would say, in the last few years, and started to research how we will take this to the next level, because he's basically the head of content for me. And we started to take IT a lot more seriously because I told him that I wanted this to be a major part of what we do, these films. So he did his part by doing some research and figuring out the talent that we needed to work with to bring these things to life, these many films to life.

And we did that. And I started to become a huge part of our DNA and how we story tell. And IT really checks off a lot of these boxes for me and Austin with how we feel people should experience the product or seeing the product through the most passionate way for us to feel accomplished.

I think that that's what makes you feel organic, is people understanding that when I feel accomplished, it's so much Better of a place to be than for you to feel forceful in the way that I tell a story or in the way that I present product. So now with understanding that we could do that on a very high level because the videos are insured now, incredible, and i'm so proud of them. I was a struggle to get the easy.

But now that we know we could do that when we create product in its inception of creating product, we are already understanding that we can tell a story on the highest level. So IT expands the spectrum of the product that can work on and makes me feel a lot more comfortable working on some of the products that I do, especially our money. For example.

what have you learned that might be applicable to others? Because I think it's amazing how many different domains these set of ideas could be powerful. What have you learned about a great collaboration with money is on another brand that people could buy in some weird way that might be thought of as a competitor.

I know i'm sure you don't think about IT that way, obviously, but it's in the same category. What have you learned about just running these collaborations and thing all the way back to that first lunch? But you had effectively like, what are the ingredients of a great episode, a collaboration or partnership like the one you have done? You've done more of them than just about anybody.

probably. So i'm going to bring you back to the first bmw project that we worked on. The e thirty three is probably the most culturally relevant car in my market ever. It's so, so, so iconic.

And in trying to explain what the car meant to B M W, B M W produce the m three without the intention of the becoming commercialized, there was a race car, 还是 IT was a race car。 They had a three series that was on the road, but then they created this m version of IT to be a race car. And the car won multiple awards, and the driver, john y.

Jato won multiple races when I told the story about the e 3m three， which was a one off car that dm w in germany rebuilt for me, along side the am for which I introduced to the world, and for was introduced to us. When we told the story, I was so important for us to tell a story about this cinnabar red m three, e thirty and three. That color was so iconic.

And what I wanted to do is to showcase the m for is basically the newest version of the old m three. So I wanted to bridge the story for people to understand the D N. A.

Where came from. So we got john y. Chicken to and his son to drive the e thirty three.

And that was hony chicken to and his son to drive the m4。 His son is also a risk AR driver. So I put both cars on the track to raise each other, needs two cars.

And IT was basically to showcase the e thirty, m three and m four and to explain, show people the visual and bridging the two together, being able to do that on a high level. So you ask me a question about collaboration and how I work on some of these bigger moments with these bigger brands. When I have these type of ideas for a brand like bmw, it's refreshing for them, for someone to want to come in and tell that story through their point of view.

And I think that me describing that to you right now is how brands feel across the board on the projects that I work on. Because as my love for the product that I work on, they can doubt the passion that I have. For once, we sit down and we figure out what the story telling will be.

IT always comes from wanting to celebrate the brand I work with, not from wanting to put my version of the above, their history and heritage, on why that product is important to the world. credible? yes.

So with every collaboration, I feel the responsibility to need to educate people on the why. Here's what happened through time is the y becomes a lot more of a burden because of how we been able to story tell. So these bigger story telling moments now have set the bar and now have to compete against what I have done, either the last project or the last year, working with the same brand.

So it's tough. I may give you one example, the evolution of something like what i've done in chapter one with the mw to what we did. Or two, when we go and we start to work on chapter two, we sit down the room, we like why we doing this? Why is there chapter to? Is there a story that is worth telling through our lens? Some stories shouldn't be told through our lands, but there are stories and moments that people need to know about and wouldn't happen unless we apply IT through our filter, through our lens.

For example, chapt or two was in the fifty year anniversary. And as I was looking, I was trying to see the history of what B, M, W has done and moments that would definitely resonate with the consumer today and something that people can be curious about. And chapter two was the fifty anniversary of the sixteen or two, which was presented as a concept car, as th Epace c ar o n a t rack d uring t he o lympics i n m unich.

And the car was presented as the first electric car that ran twenty seven miles, which was the length of a marathon, as th Epace c ar i n t he o lympics o n t he t rack. So there is fifty years since that story, and I thought that that was a forgotten story. And as B, M, W is releasing a new electric cars today, I was like, let people know where I came from.

Let people know how long ago bmw was thinking about electric cars and how long bmw been working on this. So now the sixteen, eight, two released as a combustible engine, same body, just not as an electric car back to them. IT was just a concept car for that one moment.

So we took a sixteen or two B, M, W, rebuilt IT for me with specks of two I, three batteries, and converted a sixteen, now two of vintage car, and rebuilt from scratch to make in an electric car. And then we told the story of that car, which is literally under me right now as i'm sitting above IT in this missile, and next to the downstairs is also die for. And to show the past and present. That is basically the purpose of what I do is to educate the consumer, but to build a motion through the DNA of the company, but also tell their story of their purpose of why the y is so important. And we've become professionals at the y IT.

Seems like also this master collector of these raw ingredients and travel is something that we haven't talked about, that i'm also super passionate about and something that stood out thinking ahead, was japan specifically, and the first time that you ever went there, and how IT changed you and what happened? Because another lesson about people to take away, collect these right ingredients, go have unique experiences of the world, see what resonates and give them back. And IT seems like you've done that with travel quite a bit. You can zoom in anywhere but japan's the one that pick my interest but you pick.

yeah, japan changed my life completely, but also my relationship with jia, who is the director of my business in japan. That relationship changed the course of my life completely. But the way I think about product, if you haven't been to tokyo, it's the first place you need to go.

If you care about reduct style culture, just about anything I got there and I was like, wow, I can't believe I live my whole life up until this point without knowing that this exists because is so different. That sounds like anyone know japan existed. It's that I didn't know that culture existed.

It's a culture that cared about product on the same level that I did. And I got to meet without a lot of people who viewed the process the same way I did, and cared about the process the same way I did, and care about the details the same way I do. And everything is so perceptable.

There's nothing that happens there without a great reason for that to happen. So IT changed my life completely. And what has happened over time, and actually is happening currently, like right now, in the last couple years of my life, is my european and travel, traveling to italy and across europe, whether it's degrees, italy, london, germany, I go to germany, a love of bmw in the datas, amsterdam.

The italian portion of the trips that I ve taken has influenced to me. Now, I would say fifty, fifty with japan, 是 吧？ My aesthetic and my style, which will never change, but will continuously evolve IT.

Now is fifty, fifty, the tailor shooting out of italy, but in the world that comes with that, not only sitting has taken up, I would say, fifty percent of what I want in my wardrobe. Info, russia, shana last night, like, I wore a suit to master yourself, elves. And they like, wow, we've been waiting for this version of you.

So and I just came back from the london and milan, where I celebrated the release of the armani collection. And working with georgio and the team and their team has inspired me to want to dress that way. And I think that japan had the same exact influence on me and still does. And I think now IT split fifty fifty between japanese influence and italian influence.

You said in japan, it's that nothing happens without a lot of care and thought and intentionality. And maybe that's like the unique thing. What would be the coral? Everything for italy, quality, Christmas ship.

crash ma ship and quality are just the best. You have the greatest suitable kers in the world, all in one city, especially with georgio. I got to work with the best suit maker in the world.

That's the greatest suit maker in the history of mankind, working with the greatest shoe maker of all time. That's like you put on a georgio suit. And there's nowhere to go from there.

There's absolutely nowhere to go from. There is not even possible to go up from there. So getting to work with the best, that's also for me, what my goals are in life, is to work with the best across categories.

So I really think B, M, W makes the greatest car in the world. And I got to work with them side by side. They'll be a third chapter that happening this year.

And I got to work across different categories and across some of the greatest icons for the brand. That's been an incredible experience. And then we work with the latest brand, a brand like our money.

Similarly, it's the greatest fabrics and the greatest construction in the world. And we've worked with my clare greatest underwear brand probably in the world. I would say we've worked with nike, with the greatest basketball player of all time. Got to design the lebron fifteen with that team, with the nike team, our version of that, which was incredible that he wore in the all star game in one M V P, with the iconic picture of him dunking the ball in our shoes. A great moment for us.

What a feeling i'd had to work with the greatest tennis player in the world, Roger federal, in helping him put out his fur shoe, the Roger one with on working on a few things right now, which is also on that level of the greatest in the world, to work on the olympics. A, T, M, U, S, A, and what we are able to do with the olympics, with T, U, S, A basketball, have that capture, we shot the land. And it's been honestly an unbelievable journey to think about the brand being associated with some of the greatest brands in the world and us striving to be the greatest brand.

For what we do specifically select there is the collaborative ARM of what we do, which IT will always be a huge part of the D N. A because that's where IT started for me. And then there's us, a sustain alone brand that has been able to evolve tremendously throughout the years.

One of the things that we haven't talked about in an hour of talking is the business itself. And one of the things that i've learned actually from shan venia Mitchell friend is when you approach an old business restaurants, in his case, a perl, and many other things in your case that have been around a long time, if you're creative about how the business unfolds, IT actually unlocks more creativity.

So the way he structured his leases, for example, with the landlords, created more flexibility for the artist missing in his case, to, like, do exactly her creative genius however he wanted. What have you learned about as the business has evolved, you're selling these things. It's a very big business about structuring the business and Operating the business in a way that allows you to do more and more of this thing that you love doing .

more and more of the things that I love has allowed me to do more and more of the things that I love. That's the best way I could put IT because the business portion of what we do is done so that we can continue to be a universe for me, that I can continue to feed with products that I love in projects that I love. Sustaining the business has been tough, little alone, growing IT.

But we have an incredible team, and I think that, that's the most important part of the growth and the company at the moment, not even at the moment at any moment, has been the help and the execution of what I considered to be the greatest team in the game. And I think that when you speak about the business, IT takes up so much less of my brain power in the sense of how we execute because i'm also very involved in the merchandising and the buying and the planning and where we allocate dollars and the leases and how we grow, of course. But any free time that I have, i'm not thinking about that.

That's when i'm forced to think about that. And I sit down and we have decisions to make. That's when critical thinking is applied in thinking about how we grow and what we think about the business.

But my goal is to be in a position where I can continuously think creatively as to how we evolve the brand and become the best version of ourselves. It's never been thinking about how we compete. It's never have been about what other brands do.

It's never been about that, which is why we've been able to be so successful in creating something so unique because the most unique part about our business, I don't like using that word about our brand, I would say, because it's never done for business purposes. Nothing is done for business purposes in the center of what we create. We don't create for the sake of business.

We create for the sake of what people will love. And the most unique part about that is the ability to work with serial companies on eight dollar cereal box or seven and a half dollar ice cream, and then sell a car for one hundred and thirty grant and sell a hundred and twenty of them in a matter of eleven minutes. The ability to think about both and give the same consideration to both, I think, makes us a unique because when I think about keep treats and its impact on the brand, it's as big of an impact as George our money has on the brand.

And thinking about both ends of the spectrum, the thirty five to fifty five year old men that will buy a georgia, our money suit from us for six thousand dollars, and then thinking about the Younger consumer who's coming in and buying A T shirt from treats and an ice cream when they come into the store, those people are just as important to me. Both of them are just as important. So I think the business side is I wanting to call IT business.

I would just say it's the intent on making sure that both ends, the spectrum r cater to with the same intent of making sure that they feel welcomed, that they feel special and that they feel like there's a lot of creativity and purpose behind all of the product that we create in the middle of everything else. That's where sport and music and everything else fits is when you think about what i'm doing with the nicks and that portion of IT. And that's why maybe it's not even on a spectrum, maybe it's dimensional, maybe it's just different categories and buckets of what we do because the magic of the brand is the ability to have a creative process and intend to across all the categories.

It's really incredible. And IT makes me wonder how difficult IT has been to keep your intention so pure. Has there ever been a point in history where you have had a devil on your shoulder? I feel like everyone has Angels and devils. What devil, if any, have you had to fight to keep the thrust of this story? If the treats to the your money is just so resonate with me in the equal amount of care, what double has there been in the history, if any.

even if there was which, I don't think there was a moment. IT was part of the learning curve. I have never regretted any decision that i've ever made since I started the company, not even won.

And I think that also speaks to when people wonder how it's possible to manage and be the C. E. O.

And creative director of a company this big. It's because the decisions that need to be made, the split second decisions and so many decisions to make everyday. It's like when you have a really great free throw shooter, IT becomes second nature.

It's almost like thoughtless when you step up to a free throw line and you shoot us because its routine through time making decisions becomes a sport. That's the way I look at IT. And like my life revolves around that sport.

So it's like getting enough sleep, eating healthy, working out, not going out. I don't have any vices, which is crazy. I don't go out late. I don't drink, I don't smoke.

Some people may consider that a really boring life, but if I need to be a great decision maker and make decisions that I won't regret, I need to be in my a game. And i've learned and have become very experienced in guiding the ship if you want to be a great business person and a great creative becomes with a lot of sacrifice. So yeah, i'm just trying to think of people that listen to this part.

They're gonna some industry people that listen to IT, they can relate and then they'll be people that like want to understand how. And just like we try to showcase the process of anything we do, it's important for people that are passionate, that want to get into this world to understand that IT doesn't happen easily. You need to go through decades of experience to be able to then make all the right decisions that can help you evolve in anything such an important part of IT. I also don't think that I would be thinking in this way. A few years ago, i've had some moments i've had to like really reflect because as I think about the next three to five to ten years, you also need to think about whether or not you're .

capable or one of those moments every day.

I have that moment. I think it's every day when I think about the future and I always think about the future. When I look at my daughter, I think about the future. I'm always concerned about the future. I actually have never able to fully enjoy the moment, because i'm always thinking in another moment .

kind of fucked up as a .

double sort IT is. But every day I am thinking about, am I going to be able to be what I am today, three to five years from now, and have the same impact, because I can't continously do what i'm doing today. It's going to have to get bigger and bigger in the sense of evolving.

The story telling needs to get Better. The product needs to get Better. Otherwise I don't want to do IT.

I don't know what it's like to remain the same or want a steady business. It's not what I want. It's not what I said or so. I'm just trying to think of how much further I can take IT. So i'm constantly thinking about that, but that's what's LED to this.

I've love to close with three areas of passion because this conversation been about passion holistically. Those are a brand you recognized mali on door, an iconic old brand that you are in charge of, the next as a creative director or and architecture, which you mentioned earlier and something that I hadn't seen.

I mean, I know the stores themselves are like an ode to incredible spaces, but seems like a passion that I i'd love to learn more about. How do you recognize and up in coming brand that has so much potential like Emily on door, what do you see in IT? How do you process IT? You're not the person.

You're not the creative director of that someone else. He says that you then are inspired, buyer admire and then get to work with. So what is IT there that you saw? Or what do you see in other people or brands that inspire you?

Well, first of all, a million door is similar to my baby and the amount of work that I put into what I do. Teddy will have his own stories, some similar to mind, some of his own, that make that brand what IT is.

And I have a lot of respect, teddy, maybe if something in the water in queens that breeds these creatives, but he's on an incredible job, is a brand that has definitely impacted the culture in a very big way, in the way that people view product. The visuals have been top notch, is a visionary, is great vision and greathead. And he's one of my closest friends, and I love him.

How do you person like the next? You and I grew up in the exact same era of the next. The nostalgic around them for me is extreme. I have a son now who's now involved as the next fan, and it's one of life's greatest and simplest pleasures, the NBA in general. The next, specifically for me and for my family.

How do you begin? How do you approach something like that was so much history where it's not a one off thing? IT is a key relationship for the next for you. I'm sure you must be a kid in a Candy shop. Just say a little bit about the experience.

So far that would be a whole other pod, but for me to describe how I fill up the nicks and how much I love the team and what that means to the city. But basically, I feel like the nix are the most important team in new york, personally, the most important policy in new york when the next are good. There is nothing like a new york cities, a different place, unlike the rest of any team in any city, in my opinion.

And it's not because i'm a nix fan, it's because i've witnessed and i've lived IT and I want to be a part of IT in any way I can. And I think for some of these creative moments that i've had with the mix in the ability to design their city edition uniforms and ability also to release these collections within the garden, kiss night at the garden has become a big thing. The collections have got ten bigger and bigger.

And finally, people are able to wear the team and the brand in a very elevated way, because we apply some of our best garments to the collection and treat IT really like a brand and not like a team. And I think that that's been a difference in that vision for the nicks because I do think the nicks are a team and then the nicks are a brand. And when you look at the brand, I think IT resembles the city and the heart of the city.

More than many other brands do kit as a new york brand, and the nicks really go hand in hand, and people love to see when those two come together been a lot of fun. It's been very successful. And the relationships that i've gotten to build with the players and the staff has been great.

And unlike a lot of fans who think about IT one dimensionally, I think of the nix is the conglomerate. It's more than just a team to me. I think that jim dolen has done a very good job putting people in place to bring that culture back to the city and put people in place to have put together an incredible team and also an incredible atmosphere and msg and how people feel when they come and they experience the games.

Because i've gone to games across the country. There really is nothing like being in amastan. There is nothing like IT. IT really is the unicorn type of experience.

An iconic jail and brunson game or something right now is a singular sports feeling that so cool they got to be such a part of IT. So cool. One thing I didn't ask about that I should before we close is this notion of a quality bar and everything that you produce in the brand.

You've got a big team obviously, like you have a standard and we talk lots about where that standard came from. How do you uphold a standard like that in a big team? What is the key to setting and maintaining a suitably high and rising quality bar, which sounds like a good idea and simple enough, but i'm sure is really hard to do over and over again.

Here's the biggest part of that. It's people that need to check their eagle at the door and understand that if the work is not up to par, they need to go back to the drawing board until IT is. And I think that with the team that ice around myself with and that I have none of us have the eagles, and all of us understand that the brand is bigger than all of us when IT comes to the work that we do.

So right now, even though the brand and myself are synonymous, the decisions that I make are on behalf of the brand, not on behalf of myself. But i've been spending so much time on the brand that, that now comes second nature. I'm able to make those decisions easily because now what's right for the brand is right for myself.

That's been the biggest key is also the dynamic between the teammates on the staff. They all have to be like minded in what we're trying to do in the goal. And everybody needs to understand what IT is that we're trying to do.

We're trying to be the best at what we do. Also, consistency is super key. Having the right people in the right roles. The consistency, I think, is what makes the biggest difference.

Because when you look at the brand, the evolution has been easy to see and easy to transition for the consumer when they see that the vision has been consistent. So it's like walking people through a journey. Throughout the years, they've seen the growth through consistent eyes, which I think has been super critical to the brand.

Is any closing prompt or chAllenge that you would give to an audience that is full of incredibly ambitious and curious people, often already leading businesses or investing in businesses, but also full of people that maybe haven't figured out their thing yet, ni prompt that you would give them a closing thought for that kind of person?

I've only done one kind of job my whole life. I've always been in this category of business and this world of products and retail. So it's really hard for me to apply that to anything but this category of business. But I will say that what has helped me has been finding my passion very early on in my life.

And I think they gave me a leg up on starting really early and then also starting from the bottom of a company to then learn all of the different positions and inner workings on how a company works and what makes the engine run from all facts. Because before I became a creative, I really got to understand the business world, and I got to understand what people want and why they want IT. So like I mention before, but I think for people that are trying to figure out their way, it's important not to skip the alphabet. You can get from a to c without the alphabet. And my biggest piece of advice would be to start at the bottom and work your way.

When I do these interviews, I ask everyone the same traditional closing question, what is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?

Honestly, i'd have to say it's my wife understanding and loving me for the kind of person that I am in this world that I live in because I spend so much time on what I do. And i'm so investing in what I do, that understanding how my time is split up and how I privatize my time to want to to be successful in the brand and the business, but also wanting to be the best husband and father. I think my wife has always been kind to me and understanding me in that way.

Beautiful place to close round. fantastic. So interesting. So different. Thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, I appreciate IT. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

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