David Senra - Building the Streetwear Empire Kith | Ronnie Fieg

Episode Date: September 27, 2026

Ronnie Fieg is the founder, CEO and creative director of Kith. At 13, he turned down an envelope of cash at his bar mitzvah to ask his cousin for a job, then spent 15 years working his way up from stock boy to buyer at David Z. He explains how growing up in Queens and working on 8th Street shaped his taste, how his first ASICS Gel-Lyte III collaboration landed on the front of The Wall Street Journal’s Pursuits section and why he still designs every product for himself first. Ronnie describes why Kith refuses to wholesale or license, why he opens new physical stores as online sales grow and why he believes luxury should mean how much people love what they buy. He also details how a failed white chocolate bread idea became Kith Treats, how he prices product so customers get more than they pay for and what he felt seeing all 1,800 of his shoe designs laid out in chronological order. Ronnie shares how an obsession with padel led to Kith Ivy, why he is expanding into hospitality with Ronnie’s and why growing up before the internet forced him to develop his own point of view. Show notes: https://davidsenra.com/episode/ronnie-fieg Made possible by Ramp: https://ramp.com AppLovin: https://applovin.com/senra Deel: https://deel.com/senra Chapters (00:00:00) You can’t work backwards from money (00:04:43) “Keep the envelope. I want a job.” (00:10:25) Why the CEO is also the fit model (00:18:43) The childhood shoe that launched his career (00:20:52) The Wall Street Journal, a line down the block and a visit from Adidas (00:26:48) Get rid of the crap (00:31:09) What luxury should actually mean (00:32:40) Why Kith doesn’t wholesale or license (00:38:24) Building the opposite of an arrogant sneaker shop (00:40:39) The Italian crook who registered Kith’s trademark (00:52:02) How a $20 deli experiment became Kith Treats (00:55:11) Serve your customers, don’t chase new ones (00:59:35) Always give people more than they pay for (01:02:41) Seeing 15 years of work laid out on the floor (01:12:00) Growing up before the algorithm (01:25:46) How a padel obsession created Kith Ivy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wish we just recorded the conversation we were just having, but I love what you just said. So you're like, hey, my favorite entrepreneurs cannot work backwards for money. Say more about this. Yeah, it's true. Like even some of the biggest companies in the world, like take Apple and Steve Jobs, who's like one of your favorite, I guess, like favorite icons ever, if not your favorite, right? One of them, yeah. Okay.

But when you see the product he was making, you can actually tell that there was passion behind trying to make product that was going to change his own life. Right? And I felt like even then when the iPod really changed this trajectory of the company, you could feel the passion through the product. And that legacy lives on. Like even with the duo that we're seeing now, you could see that legacy live on. Is it on par with what Steve Jobs may have designed? We will never know.

But ultimately, he created an ethos that I believe really transcended. And that feeling that penetrated everyone's lives, really affected us in so many ways. I don't apply that to my business. It's just naturally there because when I grew up, I became passionate about my world at such a young age. And I think that that's the most important element of anyone's or any entrepreneur success. If you listen to most of them, they'll, you know, explain how their passion started so young in their life, you know, when they were so early in their lives. Whereas, you know, in my case, it started when I was 13 and I started working in a stock room.

But even before then, I always wanted to dress flying school and my parents couldn't afford to buy me the things I wanted. So back then, I went to work strictly for the purpose of like being able to buy my own shit and just dress the way I wanted to dress. And that's how it started. And I think the passion for that grew and as I learned about product, it just grew more and more. But getting my foot in the door and knowing what I wanted to do from such an early age gave me the

I think gave me the upper hand. But how does like a 12 or 13 year old kid get in it? interested in like fashion. Is this coming from like hip hop culture? Like what was going on in your life? Or it's like, man, I want to come to school dress and fly. So I'll tell you. So growing up up until fourth grade,

my parents sent me to a private school to a yeshiva. And in fourth grade, they couldn't afford to send me there anymore. Actually, my grandfather was helping my mom sent me to a private school. And then in fourth grade, they couldn't do it anymore. So they pulled me out. And then they put me in the public school closest to my house. So I grew up in Jamaica Queens.

So I went to PS-178. And when I attended 178, it was like a culture shock for me because it was so many different cultures. It was like the biggest melting pot ever. And, you know, Queens is the biggest melting pot in the world. So we got to see, or I got to see, from day one, so many different cultures in the way people were dressing and the styles. And really, there was like a small crew of kids. It was like six or seven of them that befriended me right away. And these kids, like, that was back when, you know, Polo, Tommy and Nautica were like, you know, were really, we're really big.

We're around the same age. I remember this. Yeah. So it was, it was, are you 82? Where are you? 84. That era of like, and then going into middle school, it became even more important. So more important in the way that you were dressing, you know?

So I found myself, you know, really wanting, you know, I used to have to borrow my friend's clothes. Like, dude, I had knockoff Tommy Hillfigure. Dude. I literally bought it at the swarthy. swap shop in South Florida. Because we had no money. And then it got called out at school. You don't want to hear an embarrassing story.

I didn't even know. You know how these hustlers in South Florida are. They took old Wendy's uniforms. Like the Fest Food Place, you would give them like a... A collared shirt. A collared shirt. Right? And I go to the swap shop because we have no money.

And like, you have these like street vendors. And I'm like, oh, this is Tommy. I didn't understand what was going on. And I wore it to school and they're like, dude, that's a Wednesday shirt. A windy shirt. I remember me like 12 and like devastated that I'm. I'm wearing a fucking fast food costume. Not costume, what's it called?

A fast food uniform with a fake Tommy Hilfiger screen printed on it. That's insane. I don't know. I don't think things have gotten that far. Dude, I haven't thought about that in 20 years. I can't believe that. That's really crazy. There were a ton of fakes going around.

And even though back then, you know, a $65 or $85 shirt was like... This was $10. I should have known by the price. Oh, yeah, you should have known by that. I could have told you back then. You needed me as a shirt. friend. You know, I would have kept you safe. But in school, that's what really, that style, like, what we were seeing around us, that was, you know, that's what we really wanted to be.

And my older sister, she was working and making money buying product for herself. And then some of the kids in school, you know, they had the money or the parents had the money to buy them the product they wanted. And that's really what fueled, you know, my kind of like passion for wanting to work. Just like, I wanted to make money so I could buy my own product, you know. and buy my own clothing. So at 13, at my bar mitzvah, you know, my mom's first cousin, my second cousin, who was David Zee, he owned shoe stores in the city. He offered me an envelope of cash because he knew that my parents were paying off from my bar mitzvah party with the money I was getting his gifts. So he offered me, like, I was going to the bathroom during the party and he gave, offered me

like an envelope of cash. And I told him, keep the envelope. I want a job. I was 13, you know, was like, are you, like, there was some money in that thing. So I was like, yeah, no, I'm sure. I want a job. And I started the next day. And I started working in the stock room in a warehouse on Broadway, where David Zee had a bunch of stores. And I worked there throughout the summer.

And then after that, I worked in the stock room in 8th Street, which was like probably the most important part of my upbringing and also like the most influential part of my life. because that's where I got to see, like it was really the epicenter of culture, 8th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue. Like during the weekend, they would shut down the block. They would be like, basically like block parties

every weekend there and the cops would let it rock and then the cars were parking like diagonally because there were so many cars. And that's where people would come to get, you know, whether they were coming to get their fitted or Grace Papaya was on the corner or fat beats where DJs would come and get their vinyl. Sam Goody was across the street

and then you had a bunch of different shoe stores and also apparel shops where people were buying their iceberg apparel, or they were buying back then, brown shoes and boots were running the streets of New York. So like today, when you see like the obsession over kids in their Jordans or kids buying sneakers the way they are today, they were buying boots, like hiking boots back then. And that's when New York City was colder

and it was snowing a lot more. And for a good part of the year, you needed to have boots. And David Z was the number one location for those products. So you're talking about brands like A Solo and Technica and Red Wing. And we had polo cookie boots and the hiking boots, the R.L.X boots and Timberlins, Triseta, Dolomite, like Bear A.K.U. Like all these Gortex hiker boots. Hiking boots were just everywhere. In New York City, in that culture, it was like it was still a subculture, but it got

big, like people were driving from like different states to come by these products because they were Italian brands, making product in Italy, and it wasn't mass, you know, it wasn't massively distributed. But when do you go from like admiring what other people are making to saying, hey, I'm going to do my versions of this? That came, that came later. So that, like, I worked as a stock boy, like, receiving product, getting one-on-one-time with a product, then becoming a salesperson, then becoming an assistant manager, then becoming

a manager, assistant buyer, and then buyer slash general manager. So this is just you learning the business, not thinking, like, let me ask you a question. Maybe like I should start here. If somebody doesn't know who you are, you say, hey, what do you do? How do you describe yourself? I do a lot more than design. So I'm the CEO, creative director, and CMO, I would say of the company. So CEO, CMO, and and creative director. And I think the creative director portion of my role has a evolved over time, but I am ideating and part of every design of every product that we put out. So it's hard for me to describe what it is that I do because I do a lot. And a typical creative director wouldn't be doing the buying or merchandising, and I do most

of those things. So I have my hands in everything, in everything product-wise, and then I design the spaces. I'm heavily involved in the full, like, 360-360-2. degrees of the business, you know, even even down to the experience that people have when they walk in, the F&B portion of what we do with get treats and now Rani's. So there's a lot that I do. So I can't really describe it. And it's hard for people to get a grasp on what it is that I do if you're not following it because it's been like building blocks since the beginning. It's not like I've given up any responsibilities. I've just added on. You're kind of like, I met you outside.

And your car is very interesting. And I like stuck my head and it's like, oh, dude, this is nice. and you're like, welcome to my world. Yeah, it's like building your own entire world. Yeah, and by the way, like I'm head to toe in my product, socks and underwear. We don't have to see that, but I will take your word on it. Yeah, just take my word for it. And I'm really living the product. I live and breathe the product that I create.

And I'm building products for myself. And I think that people know that. So they know that there's a lot of love that goes into it. So if I'm building product for myself and I want to wear the product that we make, I also, up until very recently, it was fitting four hours a week. I was the fit model for the product that we put out. So the brand puts out more than 5,000 styles a year of product

between men's, women's and kids and accessories and footwear. We built a universe of product. And it's been a really great evolution from the beginning. So if you ask me what it is that I do, I'm a world builder. You know, like I build. myself like a world that I live that I live in. But this is interesting.

Why would it be important for you to be the fit model? Because it's literally like this is for me first. No, it's a great question because it actually creates efficiencies when we get a sample in and then I fit the product. And during the fitting, I make all the decisions that I need to make for that one product. So I fit the product and then I'm deciding if the fabric is right for that body. I'm making alterations to the body. Sometimes I'll even drop it and then come up with the fabric.

ideas and what we need to do to evolve from that body or how, you know, a specific design can be better. So I'm giving direction in, you know, live during the fitting. And if my, you know, the team is all there. So I have like 20 people at a fitting and you have your material, your materials team, you have your merchandisers, you have your designers. And then you have like the VP of product there and some assistance. And there we're making like real decisions. So we'll make the decision. So we'll make the decisions on that product and then we'll wait for the second sample to come in and we got to fit that too. I think a lot of these brands cut corners. I've spoken about this a few times with different people about how the industry cuts corners and sometimes you walk into a store and you try

something on. You have a shirt from that brand that fit well, but then you try it on and it doesn't fit well, and you're like, well, why'd that happen? I came back to the same style and it's because brands will want to create another version of the same style but not fit it again. So they'll that'll apply a different fabric to the same body, but they won't fit it again. And it drapes differently, it fits differently, and they cut corners. And even, you know, there are fashion houses that do that,

where you'll walk into a very expensive store and, you know, try some product on it. It doesn't fit. It fits like shit. So I'm very meticulous to every detail only because my closet, every season, I wipe it out, and then it gets replaced with the new season.

So if I'm going to be wearing, the product that better fit properly, you know, as I'm like the representative of the brand. I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I have been reading a lot about SpaceX lately. SpaceX is one of the most valuable businesses in the world and one of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your cost. Ram helps many the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. And one thing SpaceX has demonstrated is that a religious, you know, dedication to controlling costs can help actually increase revenue because you can pursue opportunities

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So I love how you use the word like love, like several times. We started the conversation and were like, hey, you know, the people I admire the most, entrepreneurs that came before us, maybe some even operating today. It's just like they're doing it for like out of, they're not doing it for money. They make money because they love it so much. And they wind up, if you love it so much, you wind up building great products. And turns out if you maintain control and build a great product, you're going to wind up with the money anyways.

Right. So the love of this, let's go back to like the story you're saying, I'm kind of learning like the, almost like the mechanics of the business as a kid. Yeah. Right. This is before you're like, I'm learning how the business exists or part of the business exists before you kind of put your own spin on it. Right.

So when you're like, hey, I actually have my own ideas. Like, so me and you both know Jeff Salasnik who was on this show. Right. And he told a very similar story. He was just like, man, I was obsessed. I was like eating in every single restaurant. I was like the weird kid that come home at, after middle school and, watch PBS cooking shows.

And then he's like, then I'm eating all these restaurants, then I'm creating media about this. And he's like, you know what? I got my own goddamn ideas on how this should be done. Right. When was that turning point in your life? I was so fucking obsessed with footwear, you know, so like when Kith opened and we'll go back, I'll go back to your question in a second.

When Kith first opened in 2011, we were a multi-brand footwear shop. And then I had projects with brands where I was working on my own versions of some of these iconic footwear silhouettes for the store. And then from there, it expanded to be a lot more. But I'm going to rewind back because I was a footwear guy, you know, and strictly footwear until 2012, 2013, right? So I was basically buying, you know, upwards of $30 million at retail a year from so many different footwear brands. I was the sneaker guy before I became the shoe and boot guy when I started working. I was wearing like, you know, Nike's wear my thing before I started working in this brown shoe and boot retailer. And then I helped David, because

the trend of brown shoes and boots, as the weather actually got warmer in the, you know, the seasons, it kind of extended. And the winter kind of like shrunk to like three months, you know, instead of the four or five months that we were used to. Because it was getting cold in October back then. And then it was cold up until April. And now it's a bit different from that. So athletic footwear started to really become a trend in New York City and kind of take over that business of the brown shoe and boot world. So I helped David transition from brown shoes and boots to athletic footwear. And he knew that I was like obsessed with sneakers. So I was going to these trade shows and helping open new accounts, new footwear accounts, and then starting as an assistant buyer being put on some of these accounts.

And we built an incredible business. with Anasuka Tiger, which is A6, and it wasn't sports style yet. It was just Anasuka for what we were carrying. But the sales rep knew that I was a sneakerhead and knew that I was collecting product because I was collecting sneakers since like 95, right, when I turned 13. That was the first pair of shoes that I bought twice. It was a flight 95 Jason Kids. I don't know if you remember this with the carbon fiber in the midsole. And it was kind of looked like a spaceship. And it was the first like iteration of that kind of shoe was a basketball shoe. But were you buying to flip?

No, back then there was no flipping. Okay. I was buying a second pair because I love them so much. Got it. You know, and the Air Max 95, the neon 95s were like, the design language was just something we've never seen before. I like, I was just gravitated towards it, you know? Come 2006, when I helped build Anasuka Tiger to a multi-million dollar business for David,

they knew that I was heavy into footwork collecting. we're collecting. They knew I was a sneaker kid. So they opened up the archive for me. And they were like, hey, you know, do you want to look through some of these styles and work on it? And I was like, what do you do I work on it? Oh, you could create your own version of the shoe. And I was like, oh, so David was already doing this with boots back in the day, but they weren't branded like David Z on the boots, but they were considered SMU, which is called a special makeup. So he was doing with Timberland, in fact, like in 1997, David had an idea of making a gray construction Timberlin boot. And Timbalin never made a gray boot in their history. It was mostly, like,

for performance purposes in browns and blacks, you know, if you were either wearing it for construction or wearing it to hunt, like, they were really into the performance aspect of the brand. So David's idea of making a gray construction boot was like, that was like, holy shit, what is that? People saw that and were instantly, like, we sold like 10,000 pairs of that boot in a couple of years. Like it just with no internet, right? So like people coming into the store and, you know, that was a product that we had. And I saw that as a salesperson on the floor. I saw how people gravitated towards something they couldn't find anywhere else.

So when A6 offered me the opportunity to work on a shoe and I'm looking through the catalog, I found a shoe. How old are you when this is happening? This is in 2006. so I was 23. Okay. Right? I'm looking at the catalog and I see a shoe

that my mom bought me when I really wanted a pair of Reebok pumps. She left me outside the store. I was crying. I was eight years old. And she brought me a pair of eight six gel-a-threys

for 50 bucks or something instead of buying me a pair of pumps that were like 110 or 120. I wanted the pumps too. The thing that just wasn't happening, right? Yeah, no. The D Browns or the victory pumps like they were incredible.

So, I had to wear these jelly threes and I fell in love with them. And when I saw it in the catalog, I was like, I knew that that's the shoe that I wanted to work on. And also in the world, and I was collecting and at that time. So when they're opening the archive, they're meaning, hey, these are past models. They're not manufacturing, they're not creating anymore?

Correct. Okay. Yeah. And so they opened up old catalogs. Interesting. Yeah, from 1990. That's even better because you just mentioned how important it is to have product that's differentiated.

You can't get anywhere else. That's exactly why I decided to work on that shoe. And I didn't know if people would gravitate towards that model. So it was 252 pairs were the minimum, and we needed to commit to 1,000 pairs for the style to be made. And I worked on three colorways of the style, 252 pairs of each, and then they took the other 250 and then offered it to a store in Amsterdam called Pata.

And that's how the silhouette came back in 1990. We created that shoe and it took off. Well, even back then, though, when you're like, okay, they offer me a silhouette, I can come on spend on this. Was your North Star just like, hey, I'm just going to make the shoe look like what I would want to wear? Correct. So same to this day?

100%. Okay. Like, 100. It's always, I'm always creating product for myself. That's the red thread through all the product, at least the men's product and even the kid's product of what I want to put my girls in. And now with the women's product, it's like my wife, my mom, sister, you know, three different generations. And I know what my wife wants to wear. I know what my

mom wants to. I know what my sister wants. And I'm really designing for the people either. If it's not for myself, it's for somebody that's the muse, you know? And I think that on the footwear side, if you look through this book, that was in 2007, my first shoe released. And it had a slow start for the first day. I had an event. We sold 50 pairs. Then the next day it released in the store, we sold a few pairs, but one of the pairs that sold was to an editor that came by from the Wall Street Journal and asked me a shit ton of questions about the shoe. I didn't know he was an editor. So I'm giving him all the information I just gave you. And then he wrote about it. And then the next day I came in and there were my mom's calling me as I'm biking to work and was telling me like that it's

on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. Like the shoe, my specific is it was an article about like limited shoes. And then there was a picture of the shoe that I worked on in the pursuit section on the top, like right next to the word pursuits. It was like right there. There was a line down the block and the shoe sold out instantly. And on the same day, the CEO of North America for Adidas was moving into his office across the street and saw the line and walked downstairs and was like, what's going on over here? And I was working in the store. Right? So like, because I'm doing, I'm buying and I'm, you know, I'm working on this project, but I'm still managing the store.

Yeah. Right, like the flagship store, which was 556 Broadway between Prince and Spring. So the guy walks in, the CEO of North America, and he's like, hey, what's going on here? So I'm telling him what's happening. And he was like, you worked on the project? It was like, yeah, and I had the Wall Street Journal there, the copy because my mom called me. I picked one up. Yeah.

So he's like, let me take a look at that. And he's looking at it. He's reading it. And he was like, so you're behind this? And he was like, what are you doing right now? I was like, well, I'm working here. When do you have lunch? And I was like, I could go off in a, you know, like a half hour, an hour or whatever.

So he met me. and then we took a walk to the Adita store. And we walked into the store and he was like, well, what would you want to work on here? Whoa. And then it picked up the shelltoe. And then the second project was called the Black Tie. And at the time, I was dating a girl that was part of the design process of Gold Bar

down on Broom Street. What's Gold Bar? It's a beautiful lounge that was like the first of its kind to be kind of like when all these clubs were like really big. It was this like really intimate small room. There was nothing quite like it since. It became this like really energetic like spot that everybody, like the downtown kids were all like gravitating towards this place at night.

The employees were in these black suits and the whole place was gold and it was beautiful. Like I remember like she was like working there at four in the morning gold leafing the ceiling and I was helping her like I got up on the ladder and was helping her paint the ceiling of the space. So I was really in love with the space and then it opened and it became. I became good friends with the manager. And then I was thinking one day, I was like, what am I gonna do with the shoe? And I'm holding the shoe in front of me. I was like, I'm just gonna make the Sheltow a dress shoe

and then have the employees at Goldbar, you know, wear these shoes. And then I ended up shooting the staff from Goldbar for the campaign of the shoe. And I called it the black tie. And the shoes came with a black tie with an Adidas tie. And that became the second shoe that I worked on. And then from there, it kind of snowballed.

And I was doing this at David Z. So there was sold- time, more than full-time day job. Oh, my God. So this became a pretty substantial business where we were selling, where we were selling these products that I was working on. And, you know, it grew and grew and grew. And that became a pretty big business relatively quickly.

Well, where's the money going? When you say it's big business, it's going to David, right? It's going to David. So it's not you. You don't have any kind of equity, economic tie, nothing. Essentially just talent. Yeah, correct. Yeah.

Correct. And I was, so I was the buyer. I was a curator for this product. And then I was also like a general man like managing also the shops, right? Sounds very similar to when I asked you, what do you do today? Yeah. Everything. Yeah. Basically it was a little bit of everything, right?

And he had a team, he had a team of people, but I was young, energetic and leading a store that was for the masses. When I first started at David Z, it was a subculture. By the time I became a buyer for David Z, it was for the masses. David took the route of like opening stores on Broadway and catering to the tourist. I wanted to be about the local. And I was very much into the culture of collecting. So I was already starting to collect footwear way before then. And I was trading with Japan and product that David wasn't carrying.

I was collecting Nikes at this point. So, and David had a Nike account for a brief time. but at that time, there was a lot of competition with these individual businesses that were kind of like running game with a Nike account. The Nike account was a big deal back that, you know, because that was the brand that was driving a lot of the revenue. So he didn't have Nike. So I was trading and I was collecting because I built great relationships in the industry. But basically in 2009, I already started thinking about. hey, like, this is incredible what I'm doing, but also, like, I feel like I could be doing this

in a way where I could cater to the consumer that's about this product full-time. And not only when I'm releasing this product, they're coming in. What do you mean full-time? Full-time, meaning when I was working on, like, these type of projects, like that A-6 shoe, for example, that kid that was buying that A-6 shoe was not necessarily shopping at David Z for other seekers. That kid that was focused on collecting and about special, athletic footwear, like elevated and very limited athletic footwear, was coming back for the product that I was creating, but it wasn't coming back as a daily consumer. So the idea is like, we have this very special differentiated product, but it's 10%.

I'm making up numbers, 10%. There's 90% of stuff you can get anywhere. Correct. Why don't we just focus on the specials? Right. Right. And I wanted to do that, but that wasn't the roadmap for David. You know, that wasn't.

I want to hear you. I got a funny story, though, because like you mentioned Steve Jobs being one of my heroes. And I love that he's just completely unfiltered. And so this is like a few years before he died. And at the time, there was a new CEO of Nike. Because he loved brands. Right. And he's like, Nike's one of the greatest brands of all time.

He thought Sony was a great brand, Polaroid Apple. He's like, love people that build these really like these brands. Soulful brands. They evoke emotion. Correct. Exactly. And he's like, Steve, do you have any advice for me? He's like, Nike makes some of the best products in the world.

But he also makes a lot of crap. He's like, just get rid of the crap. That's it. Focus on the good stuff. And it's exactly what you're the realization you're having at this point. But the crap was still generating a lot of money. Yeah, but Steve didn't give a shit. And I don't give a shit.

So that's where me and Steve are alike, right? And to me, like, I saw an opportunity in being passionate about 100% of the things I was doing, not about 10 to 15% of the things that was doing. Man, that's an important insight. I don't want to skip over that. Yeah. That's super important. Yeah. Like, let's be, like, I'm spending 85% of my day on stuff I don't care about.

Like, just get rid of the crap. Because this is what we were talking about earlier off camera, and maybe we would bring this into the discussion. It's just like you feel it. Like you feel when there's love behind what people are doing. Substance. It's just like they do things that are non-economic decisions. Right.

The idea, like, let's go back to Steve, where it's like he insisted that you can't open MacBooks. You couldn't open the Mac back then. But when you did open it, it was beautiful. It looked like it was like a piece of art and everything was organized. No one was going to see it, but him. And that was his point. He's like, I don't care if another people would see it.

And he learned that for it. from his dad, who's a carpenter. He's like, you're not gonna use a, he goes, we're building a cabinet or a dresser. You put it to, what do do do the wall, you don't see the back of it. So people use, people that don't give a shit, they use crappy wood.

We're not gonna do it because we know it's there. And that's the difference between being such an active founder and being the end user of the product that you make. It's also was required for greatness. Patrick O'Shaughnessy, like my brother, one of my closest friends, you went on his show. And we were talking, we were upstairs

with one of the greatest entrepreneurs living right now. He's just this maniac. He's obsessed with operational excellence. And we were talking about his competitors and stuff. And Patrick made the observation, he's like, man, it's amazing. It's like, everything is shit. And it doesn't matter what category or industry your community. He's like, there's like two to three guys.

There's like two to three guys in every single one that are doing great shit and then a whole sea of mediocrity. Yep. And the mediocrity is when you're working backwards for money. Yeah. Right. So when it's about the money and not about the product, you could see that. It's transparent today to people.

I feel like, more than ever before, actually. As like this generation starts to like steer back to substance as you see vinyl start to pick up. You know, and as you see like the mom and pop stores, mom and pop stores kind of have this resurgence into people looking for discovery. People want to discover things in real life. And I think that the digital world has cheapened information and information comes in the form of art sometimes. And it's like, you know, you could pass over certain things by not touching and feeling them. You wouldn't understand the substance within the product.

So I'm a firm believer of that because I come half my life is pre-internet, kind of like worse, right? And I think the pre-internet portion of my life. Half our childhood, we should say. No, because like the internet came around like early, like I was on AOL in like 97, 96. So like half the childhood. Right. But that was an influential internet. No, it was.

You had to call the internet when we were kids. Literally, like, I got to call up the internet. And like, oh, mom's on the phone, can't call the internet. And then when you're on the internet, they can't call you because the line's busy. I try to explain this to my daughter. And I even went up and looked on, and you can find this on YouTube. The noise it would make me. She's like, what is this?

I'm like, I was calling the internet. That's so funny, man. That's really true. But, like, the first time you were influenced by the internet was really in the blog era. So the blog era, the development and the beginning of the blog era was right. right when I was putting out my first product at David Z. And they were interested in the products after that Wall Street Journal article. They were interested in what was happening.

And they were even writing for the right reasons back then where it was before brand deals. It was a hobby. Again, go back to love. Yeah, man. Doing it for love. I don't ever want to step away from that. So like, everything I do is for the love of what I do. The market needs more of that.

It needs more attention to detail. it needs to have more purpose. And I think purpose is huge. I often go back to like the purpose behind a lot of these products that Apple makes. And it's to better people's lives. And it doesn't only come in the form of technology. Like the product that you're wearing can make your life better. You can feel better in the product that you're wearing.

You know, it can make you look better. It can give you more confidence. Like I want to give them more than what they pay for. So there's so much that goes into just that portion of it, of making sure that there's value in the product when you touch and feel it or through 50 washes of a garment. There are a lot of words that,

I think meanings of some of these words are changing over time, like the word luxury and like the word value. Like typically luxury and value don't come together. Like value is like this beaten down term by down market retail. And then luxury is typically like it needs to cost a certain amount

to be luxurious. What luxury should mean is how much people love what they're buying. It's a luxury to have the product. That's what luxury should mean. So a lot of these luxury companies, I think, are overexposed now and are becoming less luxuries, at least to me. That means it's over-accessible.

So how do you avoid that with KISS though? First of all, we don't wholesale. Second, we don't license. Why is that important for somebody that's outside of your business? Because then you can't control how those, products are spoken about and where they're placed and how they're merchandised. Then you can't storytell around the product. You could storytell top line by creating these TV ads and then you're walking in the airport and there's some fucking little rinky ding shop that half the store, you know,

there's construction done on half the store and you walk in and it's like messy as to how you see the product and the people that are catered to you like they might not be best in class. And then all of a sudden people are subconsciously associating your brand with. that experience. From day one, I've always wanted to control the experience that people have because I thought I could be the best at speaking to it since I'm the creator of it, right? So I wanted to walk people through the full experience, you know, from ideation, you know, through walking out the door, walking out the gift door. So the storytelling, I feel like we're 50% storytellers and then 50% retailers. But on the retail side,

that's then broken up to what we do digitally versus what we do physically. And as the business starts to skew more digital, I feel forced to open more physical. And that's how the brand grew. Because I have a number. There's a threshold where I won't allow the percentage of the total pie to go over an X amount on the website for the web revenue. Why? I don't want to become a digital brand. The touch point, the touch and feel. So you're purposely foregoing more sales. This goes back to the love and not how the conversation started. It's like, you can't work breakfast money. You're purposely foregoing more sales because you have to be a physical.

And that's a better experience for the person. So if I order something from kit.com, right, as opposed to going in your stores. Yes. It's like way better experience that you control the whole story, the whole experience. We're controlling from the website down. And actually, no, that's not true. I'm not foregoing revenue because the website revenue continues to grow and it's on its path. but I always wanted to be half digital and half physical.

So I want the physical to grow at the same rate is what I'm saying. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's not like, okay, wait, we're at 50%. Stop selling product on the internet. Yeah, we'd be kind of, actually might be a good idea. It's like, sorry, the website's closed for a few days.

Right, right. You've got to come back. By the way, there are some brands that do that and then create demand because they go away for a little bit, you know. Supreme does that in their off seasons, which I think is really smart. So are you using the sales online as a sign that, hey, I need to increase the amount of physical footprint, the amount of physical stores I have in the real world? Yes.

Okay. Yeah. And I think that because I've done that, the brand is in a really unique place because, you know, I open stores where I travel. Oh, I say more about this. Yeah, New York, Miami, L.A., and then Tokyo, for example. And then as I started to visit Paris for Fashion League, Paris became the next focus for me. And then as I started to visit London, London became a focus for me. Korea's Seoul became important

in fashion. So I started to visit Seoul and that's when I figured, you know, it would be a good time to open up a store in Seoul. I think the growth that we've had has been substantial. You know, as we're planning on opening now, the news is out. We're opening in San Fran. We're opening in D.C. 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 digital experience if they're a fan of the brand. like I owe that to them. I have the responsibility of giving them the full experience for the company, you know, for what the company can offer, at least. So that's really the mindset around the growth. This is a privately held company, right? Yes. Do you have investors or no? No.

You own all of it? Yeah. Well, me and my partner, yes. You mentioned going to Tokyo. There's this crazy, you probably know about this. Like, one of the best pizza, you wouldn't expect to find the best pizza in the world in Tokyo, but there's like one psycho guy. That's not true. I expect to find the best of everything in Tokyo. But you go out. Yeah, maybe what is the, somebody said this to me, the way you make podcasts, like you have a Japanese spirit. It's like, what's the craftsman, the Shokinen?

Whereas like, it doesn't matter if you're like sweeping the floor or making sushi. It's like, whatever you do is like, you need to be the best with that one day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Whatever you do, it's just like, you take it very seriously and be the best at what you're doing. That's right.

You maximize the potential of any one role. Yeah, and so this guy, I went to the pizza spot. I forgot what it's called, but like, people that hear this will know what it is if they've been there. It's because, like, he does three kinds of pizza. You can't make any modifications. You can say, oh, can I get none? The answer is, I'm going to make these three.

And we're the best. And then he'll just, when he's done for the day, he just closes. That's it. He's done. Yeah, it just closes. So if you're a privately held company, you said, what came to mind now is like, well, all these brains get overexposed. And they get over-exposed because they have the pressure from investments,

and shareholders, like, you've got to grow, go, grow. But for craftsmen, it's like, I don't know, I make three pizzas. I do this forever. And like, this is what I want to do. So you could, if this is a concern of yours, like stop or slow down. No, I do. Exactly.

I do. In many instances, I do, but it's not in the sense of shutting down the website. Right. That would be the extreme. And I also definitely am not going to make three pizzas. I'm like, I have, I'm very ambitious to do to maximize the potential of what the brand can do. And the brand has expanded way beyond footwear and apparel. I mean, you just walked in here and you're like, hey, dude, filming in the Amman is really nice.

next one we should do, we should do in Ivy. To your point, you're just like, well, I don't really have any ceilings on my ambition, and I can, like, take this into hospitality and other spaces, too. 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, like, streetwear, which is like, and actually, we actually didn't start off a 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 plant. 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 people were, I created a community around the store. Right? And how did that happen? Because at the time, like I said before, like I was collecting and I was a big into the culture, of product downtown in New York. But the stores that were offering this like streetwear product and and limited footwear,

they were arrogant. You'd walk into the spaces and they weren't very friendly, you know? 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 a consumer facing at the time, I always felt like, like having the conversation with anyone who walked in, even if they weren't coming in for product, it's like important for them to feel at home, you know? So the concept of Kith, which means friends, part of the phrase Kith and Kinn, 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 those, you know, based on that concept of like, you know, those values of like 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. They explained what the difference is then compared to now. What was the initial thing? You were just selling the people's product? Like, what was it?

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 like 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, right? So all of a sudden, you know, 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 consider myself a brand at all. Even for the first couple of 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. All of a sudden, I had to quickly put a plan together around becoming a brand. I found one of my all-time favorite quotes when I was reading the book 0 to 1. The quote says, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places. And they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. That is exactly what App Loven has done with their advertising platform. Apploven connects you with over a billion potential new customers in mobile games. App Loven allows you to capture undivided attention. App Loven ads are full-screen videos that are

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That's apploven. When you were 800 square feet, what are you selling in the store? Only footwear. And then apparel was like a rack. Are these footwear that are only the collaborations you're doing? No. It's still the same thing when you were at David, small percentage collaboration. David was not a top-tier distributor of product.

Okay. Right? Or a retailer of product. David had main catalogs of product. And then I opened this store strictly to have the top tier of distribution from all of the brands I was carrying. Because all these brands... What does that mean top-tier distribution? I'll explain.

Okay. So, for example, and the easiest one to explain would be Nike. Nike has what's called Tier Zero. And then they even have Quick Strikes, which are below Tier Zero. So tier zero would be the most limited product they make. QuickStrike would be the second layer to that. And then you have the mainline collection, which is a catalog that a Dick Sporting Goods gets to buy into.

Yeah. Okay? The whole premise behind the Kith space was to have the best footwear wall in the world. And that was going to have like top tier, and this is at a time where it wasn't this popular, sneaker culture grew a ton since then. But top tier distribution from all the brands. I didn't invent that.

Sneaker boutiques were a thing, but I wanted to be the best of. And I had enough knowledge as a buyer and as a merchandiser and as a salesperson, I had enough knowledge of knowing how to do that and curate the best wall in the world. Okay, so you combine this like industry knowledge with the fact that at this point, you're over 10 years deep into just being a collector. A collector. A collector. Exactly. So even even longer. Right. So you're going to combine the two into the very first store, which is, again, 800 square feet. Right. But then I also, because of the relationships I've built,

opening these accounts at David Z and also buying from these accounts of David Z, I was able to build amazing relationships where I was then working on product with all these brands for Kith. So we had top tier distribution from these brands, but then we also had collaborative product that I was working with these brands on, you know?

So we had a very limited product, and that was keeping people coming to the door for a very special product, but they were also coming to the door to see the special product that these brands were releasing. So there were like major release dates for all these brands for different product,

and we were one of the, you know, I'm sure you heard of Virgil. Yeah. You know, and Virgil and Nike worked on incredible product. You know, Kith was one of the main retailers to carry that product in the States. You know, and then Yeezy product with Adidas, for example.

There are a lot of other products that sit within that tier. where Kith would become the main destination for people to come and buy those products. And we built a community around that. And then from that point where apparel started to sell at the rate that it was, the growth that we had for our brand, for a house brand, for our fashion brand for Kith, was surpassing any demand that we had for anything else. So as we started to open up more doors,

we then had that offering for different communities and different communities, cities. And as we saw the success of the different stores, we understood that our reach was global. And today, for example, when we have a release of product like, you know, we just released a big project with BMW. That was about a month ago, I would say. Is that what I just saw outside? That's from the last project. Okay. But when I, can other people buy that? Is that something you did custom for yourself? No, that was, we had 47 of those made. And 47 stood for the years between the M1 and the XM because those are the only two one-off M cars that BMW ever created. Okay.

So like for example, you can get an X5 and the X5 will cut, there'll be an X5M, but there's a regular X5. For the XM, it was only an M version of that car. For the M1, there was only an M version of that car. So 47 years between them and we made 47 of those of those. You have one under 47, that's what I just saw? Correct, yeah. I have two of the 47 because it came in purple and black.

Of course, I'd have a post. Of course, I do. So when we worked with BMW, I'm bringing this up because globally in Seoul, Tokyo, France, London, New York, Miami, L.A., Dallas, Chicago, there'll be lines outside of every door that we have globally. Now, I know that there are very few companies that do that, that have the demand in different cities and release something. and on release date, you have lines outside the space. I know that there are other brands that do that, but I don't ever take that for granted. So we know that we have global reach,

and at this point, with the power that the brand has and the ambition that I have to grow outside of just product, that's where Kith Ivey is born. Explain what Kith Ivey is. Kith Ivy is a membership club for avid paddle players, but also for people who want access to a spa, are very elevated spa, and there's a private dining room

with a viewing experience, and there's a gym, and there's a shop. It's 16,000 square feet in the top floor of a building in Tribeca, and then there's three courts that people can play paddle on upstairs. And then we also have an airwant juice bar, the first airwant juice bar in New York in that school.

That went viral when it came out. Yeah, for sure. This before me and you may even met, and I was just like, I saw that everywhere. Yeah, it was pretty insane. And that has become a really special place, especially for me. And when thinking about the space, I really built it first for me like I do with anything else. Whether it's a product or a space, I'm doing it for myself first because I know that my eye for the brand and the lens has been a consistent lens for 15 years.

That expanded what the brand can do through a hospitality lens. I love that portion of the business now. And that idea then started to trickle into what I'm doing now with Ronnie's. So Ronnie's is a fine dining restaurant in London. And Ronnie's Pronto is a gourmet sandwich shop with a window and a patio in West Hollywood. And now I have plans on what I'm going to do to bring that to New York, which I'm working on now, which will end up happening at end of this month. as I have a book here that speaks to 1,800 designs because I spend a lot of time on footwear.

Footwear has always been the anchor, but now serves as a much smaller piece of the business because the Kith product has surpassed anything that we've done categorically in the brand. But as we get into hospitality, and I see the opportunity of growth, you know, outside of product, That's what I think the future of the brand will look like. There'll be like multiple categories that sit outside of product. What's the better business? I know you're not now, you're not doing this for money. Obviously, you're very successful.

But to me, it wouldn't product be a better, it's a better financially performing business in hospitality? Am I wrong on that? No, you're right on that. Okay. You're right. You're right today. You know, you're right today for my business. Got it.

So like I gave the brand, the opportunity to go. grow organically and maximize its potential, I'm planting larger seeds in other categories of business that I plan on growing organically and authentically. I won't force the growth, but if I feel like there is demand above and beyond what it is that I'm doing, I'm going to try to expand that. And I think that we've provided this like experience for people who live in that area near Tribeca. I think that Keith Ivy has changed. I know that I have. I don't think, because people have told me that that space has literally changed their lives living there. Because, you know, like, for that kind of experience, you used to have to travel outside the

city, you know, outside New York, maybe. So I think that being disruptive in the way that that is and being polarizing in the way that we show up is a part of the DNA of what we do, you know, as we try to disrupt other categories of business. But it's hard for me to describe and get into stories that sit two or three layers under the surface if you don't first understand what it is that I do. One thing I am curious about is like this very unique decision. Like why put in kith treats? Like where did that idea come from?

You did it early. But like where did that idea come from? Like why even do that? When I expanded the Brooklyn space, I wanted to add an element of happiness where it would 100% undoubtedly be. a happy bite of something. So you'd smile, right? And I wanted there to be another way

for people to consume the brand for less than $10. That was the idea. And I knew that it would be a loss leader or I thought it would be a loss leader. So originally it was going to be a white chocolate bread space that I had for the first time in Club Med.

White chocolate bread space. So if I traveled to ClubMed for vacation a bunch. And there in the cafeteria, there's this very famous white chocolate bread. And I had it there and loved it and thought of the concept for even having some kind of F&B portion of the store. That's where I came up with the concept. I was like, people need to smell this. Because when you walk into the cafeteria, it was like, all you smelled. People need to smell it as you're walking past the store. So the venting out from the building, I wanted people to smell the white

chocolate bread. So I brought the chef over to New York. And We started working on this white chocolate bread back at Cafe Bari on Spring and Broadway before it became the Nike store. It was a very famous cafe. The chef left and we tried to make it ourselves and we just couldn't make it right. So as we're walking to the deli,

I'm watching this guy behind the counter throw frozen fruit into this machine and pulled a lever and it was coming out soft serve. So I saw a box of cereal as a cereal fanatic. Saw cereal and saw ice cream in the tub and I paid him 20 bucks to throw it into the machine and see what happens. And it just, it came out perfect.

So I got the idea of mixing cereal with ice cream there at the deli while we were trying to figure out this white chocolate bread concept. And then from there, I decided that that's what we were gonna do. So we flipped it to the concept of a cereal bar, cereal ice cream bar. And then from there it grew to be a lot more than that, but that's where it started.

And then I paid attention to people as they were eating that and every single person that would take a bite with smile. And that's where the concept was created. But then you said initially you thought it was going to be a lost leader. So it's just like, I'm just going to get more people, more people's attention. This might be their first exposure to Kith. And then they're like, oh, this is nice.

What's happening next door? No. Is that the idea or no? No, no. It was like people that were coming to the shop. Oh, it's the reverse. Correct. Okay.

If you have it or if you think about it the other way around the way you just mentioned, then you're forcing the issue. Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to create a new consumer. And I already. had the consumer. So everything that started, you know, when Kith was first built, I was so paranoid about whether or not we'd be able to even break even. And then once we were able to do that, I was so happy that became just a starting point and the organic base that I had. Growing it from there was just like idea after idea as building blocks, you know, but it wasn't until a lot later that

I thought, hey, let's do something over here and start a new, and start building a new consumer. I'm glad you said that because it ties back to where this like tangy we've been going on in the most beautiful way of the conversation. It's like, well, yeah, but I just want to focus on like the 10 to 15% that I really love and not this other stuff. And the reason I thought of the ice cream as the reverse because I just read this very obscure biography of Sam Walton. And, you know, people don't understand. He built, obviously, they understand he built the largest retail empire in the world. But for the first five and a half years of his career, he had one single store in a town of like 2,000 people. And he did not know how, he did not have what you had where like, I have the people are.

ready, how do I continue to serve them, which is where you're going to? He's like, I need to get them in the store. So he put like an ice cream cart out front. He'd do popcorn. He would do all this, how to get more people in. Exactly, which is why drew the analogy, and you're like, no, no, I already have the people, this core group of really, we're building a really special, almost like, and I mean this, you know, in like a positive way, it's like, this cult-like following.

Yeah. And it's okay, that is so special and rare, how do we continue to serve them and extend it, not the other way around? All of our growth has been based off of that. How do I service my consumer in the best way possible? How do I give them the opportunity to have the best experience? And then from there, we gained more consumers. And then you knew this because you remember, go back to that story about the gray Timberlands, right?

Yeah. This is pre-internet. It's like if you serve this cult-like following as you have, they will go out and recruit other people on your behalf. 100%. And that, when it happens organically in that way, and people then hear it word of mouth rather than seeing it on Instagram

and becoming curious off of a photo, the bridge of emotion that people have to the brand, it just becomes a way stronger bridge, right? When they could discover it themselves based off of what people said or when they walk into the space for the first time, people in their minds don't necessarily think the space would be as grand as it is

when they walk in. So a lot of the times and, you know, through conversations with some of my GMs in the store, like, yo, people walk in with suitcases for a stop from the airport. And they'll walk into the store and just stand there. And he's like, it happens multiple times a day where I have to like, like, excuse me, do you need help? And they're like, no, I just, we're just taking it in. Like, walking into the West Hollywood store today, it's jaw dropping. It's like every time I walk in there, I still, I'm like emotional when I walk in because I'm, I can't believe we've gotten to the point where I can build this for the community for people to come in and have this kind of space. I can build a space where the product sells itself.

At this point, the product has such a great following because there's so much value in the product. I don't need to build these amazing spaces at $13, $1,400 a foot, which is what luxury brands are spending. But I do that because this is like how I give back to the consumer for giving. them an experience they could come in and really cherish, you know, and then they make days out of it where families will come to the store and spend time, like real time in the space. And then they'll go to treats or they'll go to Rani's and they'll really make a day out of it. So I never take people's time for granted. You know, I never take people's, you know, spending power for granted. And I always feel like we need to make better product and offer more at the same price point. Like those type of

philosophies of the end result of what people get and the substance of what they feel is very different from like trying to change human behavior in in the way that Steve Jobs has done in the past of like, you know, his his creations are to better people's lives, but through the change of human behavior from going from one style of technology to another. This is familiar product where if you're buying clothes, you're buying clothes. Like we're not inventing something new there. But when you when you buy an item like the shirt that I'm wearing, for example, and you put it up, you know, dollar for dollar against other product in the market, I do believe, and this is touch and feel. If you want to post two pictures next to each other, you could post a

Uniflo t-shirt next to a Kith t-shirt, not know the difference and argue about the price point. But this is for the people that know. And that Kith is built for the people that know the difference. know the difference between what good product versus great product. And that's really the motto of the brand. Say more about how you think about pricing, though. I always feel that people should get more than what they pay for. So where we price product within the marketplace becomes really important to be, not only to be competitive, because that's not really the challenge for us.

It's mostly about, and we don't look elsewhere at price points, even though I study the market just to have the knowledge, but it's not, I don't necessarily apply that as to how we price our product. We look at the previous season or the year before to see how product was priced, and we try to better the product sometimes at the same price or by elevating price points a little bit,

but getting a lot more for the product. So it's not necessarily a formula, it's more of like a touch and feel of like being in the business for 30 years and just 31 years and now knowing, the difference between good and great. Have you read this book called The Luxury Strategy? It's a red book with white letters.

I haven't. Okay, I'm going to send it to you because it goes into, I think what you're hitting on is like, well, there's other people in industry, and especially luxury industry, where it's like they know there's a human psychology, like pricing is like shortcut for us. Like we're all busy.

And it's like, if you actually increase the price without reinvesting into the product, in some categories, it makes it more desirable. And it actually increases the line and the demand for it. You're saying, no, no, no, no, I'm not trying to maximize and charge to do some kind of psychological trick. That's a bubble. That's a bubble. What you just mentioned, well, it's, it's very enduring in human nature, actually. Yeah. But my point being is like, it's like, but I don't want to just make money for the sake of making more money. If I'm going to charge more,

I want them to get more value. Is that my understanding what you're saying? 100%. And I think the consistency of that thought process that I have has been why we've been able to grow at the rate that we've grown. Right. So like, I think that the consumer has seen that year over year. And a lot of the kids, like a lot of these kids that are, I won't even call them kids, these dads that are my age at 44, a lot of them have come up with the brand, you know, from when they were 30 or 29. My number one following age range is between 28 and 35. And then number two is 35 to 44.

I feel like the growth that people have had for the last 15 years of consistently seeing the progress has, they felt like they've been part of it. the journey and we've we've gone so far like with creating product that just it's it's actually mind-blowing when you look at the first collection versus the collection today we didn't have any you can see this in this book right this book this book is different because it's just the foot the footwear the footwear is collaborative and i i had 15 years under my belt before working on this product like the first shoe was 15 years later in my career where apparel my first product was in 2012. So like when you think about that, that's like 14 years ago and looking at the progress

there, there'll be a much bigger delta than in this book. Would you make another book just on apparel? You know, I thought about it for the 15 year, but after, you know, we were building the second floor in my office a few years ago. So we expanded. We have 60,000 feet on the, on the third floor. And then I took another 30,000 feet for the design studio on the second floor. before we started building. On the second floor, I knew I had like six to eight months to design the space, so I know I was going to have an empty space. We already took the space.

So my archivist, his name is Jordan Bloom, I had him lay out all of my footwear from day one in chronological order. Is this the picture I just saw on Instagram? Yeah. Yeah, that's dope, man. So that, and it's actually, it's in here. So the first time, the first time, the first, And the first time I got to see all of my work in one place was a few years ago when I saw this.

And I actually did that because I've never seen it before. So I was just curious to see the progression myself. You know, like I wanted to see how far we've come in footwear. And it's impossible for you to see 1,800 different shoes by flipping through photos or organizing in a way where you're going to see the progression. It has to be in person. Although there's no other way to do it. So when I saw it, two things happened. The first thing was, people need to see this.

And then I was like, people need to see it physically. Like, we need to do this. So the first idea was we need an exhibition for this product, which we're doing, the end of this month. I showed you the index. And the index is all of my product that released, but more importantly, all of my unreleased product. And the unreleased product are samples that led to the release pair. So there's like 800 or so released pairs, and then there's another thousand or so unreleased pairs. So I wanted to have them all in one space and basically have a show.

It's called Walk the Index. So we're going to have a digital version of the Index uploaded onto people's apps, like onto the Kith app, and you need the Kith app to walk in. So then you can look at it and really walk the index of the book, which I felt was really cool. And then people will obviously be able to buy the book there. And then for those four days that the show will be open for, we also have panels with each of the four biggest collaborators, which are Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and A6s.

And there's some senior leadership that are coming down for that. On top of the exhibition, Rani's will launch for the first time in New York via a truck. And the truck that we built, it's a really special truck. it's going to feature what I'm calling the Ronnie's meal. So there's two sandwiches that really blew up. One in London called the OG Burger, and then one in LA in West Hollywood called the Wagu Pronto. And the Wagu Pronto is a Wagu pastrami sandwich.

And then the burger is this Wagu burger. It's incredible with our own sauce and kind of like this mix with sauteed onions. And it's just one of the best burgers I think you'll ever have. It comes in this red box. and in the box comes one of the two sandwiches that you can order, and then Pronto fries, and then one of these two like frozen drinks that we make in L.A. And with it, more importantly, is a toy box of a pair of shoes.

And I'm bringing back for the first time in its original form, because we brought it back one time with a Navy sole, but there's a shoe that really put me on the map when I opened Kith called the Salminto. It's a Samento Aisix. and it's a Jell-A-3 in this salmon. The whole toe is blocked with salmon and there's like navy on the quarter with white stripes.

It's beautiful. So a miniature version of those shoes will come in a small shoe box and then that will be basically the toy and the Ronnie's meal. The truck will only serve a Ronnie's meal. That's the only product it'll serve and it comes with the options I mentioned.

That will launch for the exhibition where we're launching the exhibition, which I can't name right now. And then the truck then gets positioned in front of the flagship store after the exhibition full time. And I got the city to approve me having outdoor seating in front of my store in Lafayette. So then I'm going to have like the Ronnie's truck station there. We're going to launch also delivery for the full menu out of a ghost kitchen, which will happen, I think, the end of October. Deal is how the best founders turn the world into their talent pool. I've been studying how

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customers. The founder of 11 Labs has a great description of the value deal can give your company. He said, we built 11 Labs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deal enabling us to hire and support exceptional talent anywhere, we can accelerate our innovation and bring more voices, stories, and ideas to every corner of the world. Deal is trusted by over 40,000 companies and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business. by going to deal.com forward slash senra. That is deal.com forward slash senra. I love this idea of like keeping a catalog of past work

and looking back through it. On my other podcast founders, where I read just biographies of 50s, huge, greatest entrepreneurs, I went down this like fashion designer thing for a while. And so it did like Coco Chanel and like Ralph Lauren and then Balenciaga. And like I think of Balenciaga now is kind of like not my,

I'm not my thing. I was like, this is like, you know, not my thing. But what's interesting is I'm always interested like who in the top of their profession, like who do they say is the best? Okay. Like Warren Buffett has this idea where it's like,

well, if you want to invest in a company and in an industry, go around asking all the leaders in the industry and say, hey, you've got one bullet, you can take out one guy who is it going to be. Right. And usually they'll all say the same guy.

He's like, that's the guy you should invest in. So he has this. So Balenciaga was that where like Coco Chanel, Christian Dior. They called him like the master of us all, I think was one of the quotes. And I didn't, so I got to,

like, obviously what I think of Balenciaga now and what they thought about him back then is crazy. But Blenciaga, if you haven't read about him, I'll send you some good bribery recommendations. He essentially redid his stores almost like a church. He had like a reverence, a religious reverence to what he was doing. But one of the most fascinating things is he had notebooks because he would not only design,

but he would also physically like sew everything together. He was like one of the few coutors or master couture, whatever they called. But I thought that idea of like, okay, your career, in his case, I think he started relatively late, let's say he spent 20 years. He can go back and be like, what was I doing 18 years ago? Yeah. But as an artelier that he was, like he, to me, and it's very important, like, especially in footwear, I got to learn how to make a shoe from scratch also.

So going back and looking at the progress that we made, also the knowledge working with certain brands, and some brands do things better than others. So the amount that you pick up along the way, working with this many. brands. I feel like in footwear, I've become the most well-rounded, like, knowledgeable person in footwear because I got to see between athletic shoes and brown shoes and boots, like I got to really learn how these brands make product, go to the factories, go to their offices, and like really understand the dynamic of what makes them so special. So this book, it stands for so much more than just the product.

at face value, to me, it's a timeline of feelings that I had and knowledge that I gained along the way. So like when I think back to a moment, there are things that you'll remember based on certain events or based on certain news and milestones in your life based on certain, you know, things that happen in your family or whatever it is. I remember my life through product. So, like, I think back to when I got married and I think about also the product during that time. Like the product when my first baby was born, when my first store opened, or all the stores along the way, I have product that... Your life milestones are anchored to the products you were creating. It goes back to, again, why the soulful...

We talked before we start recording, it's like, when I says, like, what I'm trying to understand is, like, I can't understand the way you push your work until I understand the personality of the purpose. that developed the ideas. Right. I seek to understand who the fuck is sitting across from me. Like, why, how the hell? I actually, like, you're 13. How the hell do you get interested in shoes?

And so, like, then it's like, oh, thinking about what the culture he's in, thinking about where he's living, thinking about what he's listening to, think about what he's around him. It's like, you can't understand Ronnie unless you understand everything that happened then. Yeah.

Taking the, like, going back to that, like, taking the, taking two buses to high school, the Q-17 to the Q-30, 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 Fourth 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 like along the way from basically the first stop on the F train or the last stop,

I should say, going to 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, you know, your algorithm, which now, like a lot of people want the same things because it's based off of what they see or, you know, what brands have to have to basically pay for in terms of like 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,

you know, 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. You know, that was my influence, basically. It's seeing so many different styles

and then forming my own edit. It's like that that's a lost art. Wait, wait, 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 in your head and you're saying, hey, what's my spin or take on this? Like, what's my opinion on it? Like, back then, when you went shopping back then,

you were forced to have an opinion because you wouldn't have seen everything. Like, 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 story, you see 500 different boots. So it's like, you're walking in and you're, 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. They're like outsourcing their taste to somebody else.

Yeah, and not to say that people weren't influenced by media back then. They were. But it was a much smaller aperture, you know, like of what people were seeing. And then you'd come in, and back then you were just forced to have your own opinion. I feel like I get the vibe like you want to live in more of like an analog world. Man, fucking hell. I do. For real. Like if I tell, I tell my wife this every day. Like, I just, I wish that I could throw my phone away. I wish that I can. And, 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 like 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 eat. had pre-internet. Like, 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? Something we had when we were kids is like, you were just forced to be bored and along with your own thoughts. And my daughter is like, I'm bored. I'm like, that's great. That's amazing. That's when you use your imagination. When you're bored.

But that's also where a difference comes in. I just flew to Milan because I meet a lot of founders, like entrepreneurs. I meet a ton of them. And I met this guy named Luca Ferrari. He does this company called Bending Spins. And I remember having lunch with him back in like February. And literally, the lunch was so, like, jarring because he was describing how he builds a company. And ideas I've never even heard of anywhere else, especially for, he's RH2.

Yeah. And I was like, dude, stop. You got to run that back. I pulled out. And we were on WhatsApp together. I just like light him up on like all the stuff he's saying. And I was like, 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 like, you know, 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 startup tech startup mantras because I didn't even know they existed. So I was forced to, he was essentially like, He was in a digital world, but he was like how we were in 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 everything else, because it doesn't pay attention. This is where you get the creativity. This is where you get eccentric stuff.

This is where you get actual differentiation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's very similar in the sense that like Queens played such a big part in my life because Queens, you get to see so much. It's just New York City is, I'm. honestly the most inspiring place in the world because there's so, there's so much thrown at you every day. Even if you, even, I'm talking about outside of digital, like 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, you know, concepts that have helped shape these brands that we all know. I want to sit way outside of that. And I want to sit way outside of that. And I want to 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, like, 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. This is actually a really important point. And I have certain people in my life

that I go to that kind of like this, like, living board of directors. And what a lot of the case is, is like, you're obviously ambitious and driven. Every single person that's going to be the show's ambitious and driven. I feel the same way. But, like, there's certain people in my life that, like, you'll talk to about what's going on.

You have, like, this weird ceiling that, like, actually doesn't exist. Like, why don't we just rip that fucking off? Because it doesn't exist. Do you have any, like... That's corporate structure, though. But like, no, but in your own personal life, when you're thinking about directing your company,

you're saying, hey, man, I got, I got big fucking dreams. I got stuff that's not... I don't think of it myself as, like, I might be part of this culture, but, like, I can expand out of it, but 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's just, like, can, like, peel the top off your head and be like, hey, man, you have no seamings. You have no limits? My partner, Sam, has allowed me to do that. Yeah, my business partner. And he's always been someone who can 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 rambled about Steve Jobs. It's incredible, right? That's how you know he listens to the show. The episode was about simplicity. Oh, yeah, how Steve Jobs kept things simple. Correct. That's for my other podcast. I think it's episode 349 or 350.

Okay. Somebody looked it up, Steve, if I'm right. That would be pretty remarkable, actually. But when, it's similar to when Steve Jobs got into music, it's like, what the fuck is Apple doing getting into music, right? And I'm sure it raised a lot of eyebrows. But for him to, for him to take on that initiative, and he had shareholders and had a lot more pressure than I did from the financial standpoint.

349. Wow. What do you have to now on founders? 432? Where's Ian? He published it for me yesterday. 435, something like that. Yeah.

I'm going to do, I end every one. I'm like, 435 down,000 go and 1,000 never ends. Because people are like, oh, you're going to do 1,435? It's like, I'm going to do this how I'm dying. It's actually incredible, man. It's really incredible because I just like, I go through my workout and you're just fucking, wow. Dude, I'm walking at dinner last night. The crazy thing is more, you know Michael Ovis.

Like, every time I come to New York, I text them was like, because I just, I care a lot. about him. First, like, I looked up to him before I even knew who he was, I was making episodes on him, and we become friends, and he's just a fucking wild man. Even in this, I think he's 82, he's still fucking crazy. And dinner's just an absolutely insane. I won't even, I'll tell you off camera what happened last night. I'm walking to dinner. And some dude, literally tests me on the shoulder. And he's listening to Larry Goghian, 325, see if I'm right about that for me. And he's like, whizket over here. Yeah, and he's like, dude, he goes, I'm in fucking sales. And he goes, I mean, I listen to this to hype me up over and over again. Because

essentially Larry Goson built a billion dollar. I'm fired with a phone. and set, like, he's just a salesperson. 325. Boom, 325. Look at that. And so, but I do the same thing. Like, I'll go back and listen to him because it, like, it reinforces the lessons and it hypes me up. But anyways, what is that for you? It hypes you up? Like, I really think, so the reason I brought up

Valencia Aga earlier, the reason I think, like, me and you would get along is like, I'm doing it for, like, I have soul in the game. Like, I thought, first of all, I think podcasting is a miracle. I think what we talked about before we start recording, to find any subjects in the world that you want to listen to, you will find somebody has gone deeper than any college course in existence. Incredible.

And anything you want to learn, you can learn on demand for free while your eyes are busy. In this format, too, which is incredible. I thought it was remarkable when I discovered in 2010. I still think it's a fucking miracle to this day. And so what I would say is it's like, I make the podcast that I want to listen to. And then I think there's like a real, so there's a bad part of this. And I'm going to ramble a little bit. But like, you know, like my mom was like fundamentals of Christian.

So I was like forced to go to church every Sunday. Right. And it's like in the South. And unfortunately, like, you. you know, this took a bad turn. She wound up having breast cancer, and, like, she would try to initially pray the cancer away. Like, that's how fucking extreme it was.

And it took me, like, two years to convince her to go to an oncologist. I don't want to start fucking crying now. But, like, to the point where I'd had to drive, she was so stubborn in her religious views, I'd have to drive from Miami-R-R-I living to Orlando where she was living to every time she had an oncologist apartment. If I didn't show up and I didn't drive her, she wouldn't go. And she wound up dying a fucking horrific death.

So, like, I obviously don't want to get into that now. But what I would say is like the benefit of growing up in church, and I didn't realize this until you see this on founders, like I kind of have like the southern like feature thing because I'm very fucking, I consider myself an evangelist. I'm not a journalist. I'm an evangelist for entrepreneurship. And so like the way I think about everything that we're doing

is it's like, man, the reason that religions or collaithful followings or brands thrive is because of repetition over time over and over and over again. And so for me, it's like, listen to episode 349th. I read the book. I recorded it. I edited it. I listened to it before it came out and I publish it.

And I bet you I go back there and I still forget some of the shit. So I will go back and I think that people overestimate. We forget that we forget. We forget that we forget. And I think going back to great designs in the book, great books that you freaking read, great podcasts, great movies. I've seen Godfather two, I don't know, 15 times. I still learn stuff.

I've gone through every single episode of Game of Thrones. I don't know, 10 times. I still take notes on it. And so that's what Desperates, just reinforces these lessons and, like, gives me energy. And then inevitably, you're going to run it some today,

maybe not today, maybe it's tomorrow, but definitely next month, two months, you're going to run into some fucking problem in your business, and you're going to be like, man, I need, like,

another set of eyes on this. Or like, oh, then you remember, oh, this is what Steve Jobs. This is how he kept it simple, or this is what he did. Right. And I'll definitely apply some of that stuff. But let me tell you something,

folks, for everyone who's listening right now, if you can create content that you can then go back to to hype yourself up, you fucking made it in life. So congratulations to you for that. So we have another podcaster because I'm also obsessed with other podcasters, which is Jackson dolls off camera. And there's actually a funny, can you pull up the tweet between me and Sam Hinky about this? And so I spent a lot of time with other podcasters.

I think Jackson is one of the most talented people. We talk a lot about the business and, like, other podcasters will come in and like shadow what we're doing because we're trying to, you know, operate at the very highest level. here. But there's a tweet exchange between Jackson and my friend Sam Hinky. Sam is talking about me because I was talking about when I listen to, I listen to every episode before it goes out. And sometimes I found myself like laughing at stuff that happens. So Sam Hinky responds to this tweet where I'm talking about laughing. He goes, good luck competing with the maniac that cracks himself up while recording his solo podcast, which he remembers because he loves listening to his solo

podcast. Then Jackson was sitting off camera here. He goes, this is July 22nd, 2025. He goes, He once told me he just loves podcasts so much, but there's simply not many great ones. So the rational conclusion is that he usually finds himself listening to his own episodes again. Yo, if you're listening to yourself as first option, that's crazy. But you know what? But again, what are you doing? Make you for yourself. That's incredible.

It's the same thing. I think you might be the only one. But I love that. Let's go back to before I interrupted and started rambling to you were talking about Steve Jaws of music. I want to touch on Ivy because you asked me about Ivy. I want to just go back to that for a second. So three or four years ago, I spent, I spent a season in Miami and I got introduced to Wayne Boych. Wayne is the founder of Reserve. How yeah. He builds like paddle courts also built like a membership club in, in a 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, like, obsessed with the sport, I was, like, watching people come and playing, like, vintage teas and basketball shorts, and it was throwing me off, honestly. I thought to myself, like, or how can I start to, like, 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, you know, by Wayne. But I thought, for sure, the sport was going to grow. And as this, as a, as, as, as, you know, it was. And as, as,

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 a Wilson tennis, but that's been behind the scenes for quite a while. And we started a new line called Sport Professionals, which is like an elevated tier that sits within Wilson. And I help them through that, through design. And coming back, I was like, let me start to apply some of these ideas that I have. 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 know, like you're spinning a lot,

you're going, you know, 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, 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. kiddiving product because kiddive is a membership club but the product is sold on on the

website on the on the kit 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 for example so as I started to travel the world I'm like 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. Like 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 like in which direction it 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. I think that's a perfect illustration of like your idea of world building. Yeah. 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 like filmmaker view on world building. But dude, thanks for taking the time. This is awesome. I appreciate it. This is great. 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.