Digital Social Hour - Competing with Ralph Lauren: A Streetwear Pioneer's Strategy | Karl Kani DSH #979

Episode Date: December 14, 2024

Competing with Ralph Lauren? 👀 Karl Kani, the Godfather of Streetwear, reveals his game-changing strategy! From dressing Tupac to revolutionizing baggy jeans, Kani's journey is packed with insider secrets 🔥 Learn how he built a global empire, faced off against fashion giants, and stayed relevant for over 30 years. Discover why Kani doesn't see other streetwear brands as competition and how he keeps his eye on the real prize. 💰 Get the scoop on his collabs with hip-hop legends, international expansion tactics, and the future of streetwear fashion. Ready for some serious entrepreneurial inspiration? 💪 Watch now and subscribe for more eye-opening conversations on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! Don't miss out on these invaluable insights from a true fashion pioneer. 🚀 #KarlKani #Streetwear #FashionIndustry #HipHopFashion #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #EntrepreneurialAdvice #FashionPioneer #ssurplus #streetwearbrands #caviarcartel #marcecko #rap CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:38 - Starting Karl Kani Brand 02:28 - Launching Karl Kani Shoe Line 05:00 - East Coast vs West Coast Fashion 06:49 - Hip Hop's Influence on Fashion Trends 07:37 - Karl Kani's International Success 10:58 - Competitors in Urban Fashion 12:16 - FUBU Brand Overview 15:02 - Decline of Urban Fashion Brands 17:24 - Future of Retail Trends 18:01 - Evolution of Modern Hip Hop 19:03 - Rapid Trend Changes in Fashion 20:16 - Kanye West's Impact on Culture 21:00 - Disrupting Fashion Systems 24:10 - Collaborations in Fashion Industry 26:23 - Future Plans 26:54 - OUTRO APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Karl Kani https://www.instagram.com/karlkani/ https://www.karlkani.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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we're competitors but that's not keeping your eye on the prize he keep your eye on the prize is staying where the big money is at all right guys godfather of streetwear here today, we got Carl. Thanks for coming on man. Thank you. Glad to be here. What a journey you've been on since 1989 in this space. That's right. The last 30 years, that's impressive man.

Let's walk through it. Back in 89, you were kind of one of the first people getting into this. Yeah, we're the originators of streetwear fashion, you know. Grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Started making clothes for myself and people liked it. We found a market. You know, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, started making clothes for myself and people liked it. We found a market, saw that hip hop needed a clothing designer to represent the culture. And we were there for that.

So we kind of made our stance right there. And who were your inspirations back then? Or were you kind of the first one doing this? No, we're the first ones doing it. We didn't have any inspiration before us to do this. You know what I'm saying? There was nobody came before us. There's no other brand that could say they started street wear before Carl Kani's, it's not factual.

Cause we were trying to figure things out on our own and just hustling, taking our stuff to different stores, trying to just, you know, make it how we can and get the brand out there. That's pretty crazy. So you had the foresight to see this industry exploding then. Yeah, well, it was more or less like growing up, we didn't really find the type of clothing

that we wanted to wear. Me and my friends, we were buying Levi's, but we're buying it four or five sizes bigger because we wanted to have more of a baggier fit and the waist was too big. So when I went to my father's tailaxe and could he make me some jeans that bigger legs make the waist fit?

And when I wore that particular pair of pants, that's how the baggy jeans for Cray started. We finally found a way to make baggy jeans that fit someone. And that's how it kind of took off from there. No other designer had this type of fit in the stores at the time until we created that. Wow, so you started that baggy jean movement? 100%.

Holy crap. Started that back in 89, we got my own patterns, came to LA, hooked up with different factories, started manufacturing our own clothing, and just took off from there. Wow, why do you think that movement took off? Because it wasn't there before. And a lot of, you guys think with hip hop,

a lot of kids were break dancing, you know what I mean? Move, a lot of movement in the clothing. So loose fit clothing kind of went along with that and to fashion has a way of changing because jeans were skinny tight back then and As new generations come out they wanted a different look So we kind of appeal to that new younger generation The hip-hop was all about music and fashion and street and they didn't really have that so we count with the colors the look the fashion Kind of all tied in together. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible man And what was the next big trend you caught after that baggy moment? Well back in 93

We connected with the company called Skechers and became partners with Skechers which is a footwear company We came out with online the shoes and footwear We had 15 NBA players wearing Carl Connacht sneakers on the basketball court Yeah, Derek Fisher from the Lakers Carl Malone John Wallace number one pick from the New York Knicks was wearing our sneakers. So we kind of came out with that type of look. And we also came out with a boot, which was straight up competing against Timbaland. But what we did was we put a metal plate on the side of our boot with a Carl Connally logo on it, which kind of identified our boot to be different than Timbaland's boot. That kind of took the life of its own. But the bigger part about it was the support

we got from the hip hop community. All the artists wearing our clothing, that really took us to mainstream. Biggie, Tupac, Nas, Aaliyah, the list goes on and on of the support that we've gotten through the hip hop culture, which really just propelled our brand to the next level. Right, that hip hop culture has so much influence on everybody. It's insane, I haven't seen a movement that powerful.

Nah, to me it's like, you take a kid from streets of Brooklyn, New York who had a dream, and the name Kani was a question I used to ask myself all the time, can I be successful? Can I come from an industry to build a brand that's gonna be global? And I didn't know the answer to that, but I know if I call myself Kani, every day I have to answer that question, yes, I can. And so today, the brand is an international brand, distributed in 25 foreign countries. And Tupac's one of the main reasons why our brand is so big internationally, because they worship him like a god over there.

And I have over 200 pictures of Tupac wearing my clothing organically. It was no paid advertisements or anything like that. He wore it because it was real and it was legit. And we kind of could identify to each other at the same time. That's crazy. So he was buying it himself. Yeah, he didn't want free clothing.

I just started wearing free clothing. He said, no, I want to buy his shit. He was actually purchasing the clothing. And so we used to do, anytime he bought clothing, we just sent him some extra clothing because he didn't want the free clothing. He was like, I want to represent this brand and make it big. That was his whole goal.

That's amazing. I wonder how he found out about it. Well, just through the culture and him wearing the clothing and stuff like that. I'll tell you one funny story about Tupac. And I don't know, intentionally, you know when Tupac got shot in New York at the Quad studio, his first article he did was in Vibe magazine. And one of the questions they asked him, he said, how do you feel when you got shot?

He's like, man, I didn't even know I was shot. He says, well, I know I could feel the heat of the bullet piercing my Carl Conadros. Wow, that's nuts. He talked about Brandon 101. Holy crap. So you got a little PR out of it. Yeah. I wasn't looking for that, but you know, I was like, this guy is legit. Like, you know, he's like, but I think he was just saying what it is.

Yeah. The reality of what happened. That's probably what he really thought. Like a bullet came through my car, and I just- It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything.

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Starring Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere whatever it takes make it invisible the agency new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus Shoot I'm shot. You know saying were you staying neutral during that West Coast versus East Coast feud? I'm shot. You know what I'm saying? Were you staying neutral during that West Coast versus East Coast feud? Yo, yeah. We didn't come out here for that. We're a business, man. We came out here to make clothing and to dress the nation, man. So we definitely stayed neutral. And we had so much support from all of the West Coast artists too, and East Coast, like Snoop, where my Carl Canai sweatshirt in his first video he's ever done, What's Your Name, is the video when he turns into a... he's a doorman pitcher.

He turns into a doormancher at the beginning of the video He had on a car can I hoodie? Mmm that and that kind of set us off and got us all the love and support from the West Coast artists wanting to wear Car can I cuz of snoop that's incredible. Yeah, that's smart cuz yeah, you're outfitting both of them. There's no need to get involved It's like politics, right? But you formed a friendship with these guys too, down the road. Yeah, you know, me and Tupac became really cool. Me and Dr. Dre and Snoop became really awesome.

Ice T was the first rapper that we met in LA. The second day we came out here, we met Ice T. Wow. It kind of went from Ice T to Eazy E. And the only funny thing, one time it was like, when Eazy E and Dr. Dre was beefing, there's one time I bumped into Eazy E at South Coast Plaza Mall, it was right before Christmas.

And we must've spent two hours talking. All he was doing was complaining about Dre. He like, he wanted somebody to talk to. Like, I guess I was a guy. He was like complaining about Dre and I was sitting there talking to him the whole time. But it was really kind of cool. I just like, kind of felt like the respect level they had

for me was kind of different because I was just a young kid just like them, but they were into music and I was into fashion. So they kind of looked at me a little bit differently than what they were doing. Like for terms of a businessman, they all respected that. That we were actually competing with brands like Guess, Jibow, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, giving them an alternative brand to wear. But the key to make us successful, we had to make clothing that was that much better than what was out there. Not because you're young and you're cool. You think people are gonna buy your stuff. It's just your product gotta be legit.

So we have to make sure we over succeed in the quality of our products. That makes sense. Yeah, cause you're up against giants that have unlimited budgets and probably hundreds of designers. And you're the only designer at the time. But the key was the only thing that they didn't have

is they didn't have the streets behind them. And not only that too, a lot of those clothing brands back then didn't think that hip-hop was gonna last So they didn't really cater to the hip-hop artists. They weren't giving hip-hop artists clothing to wear They weren't featuring them in any clothing ads back. I'm talking about like 89, 90, 91, 92 It's not until later on when they sold man This is hip-hop things are forced and now everybody wants to be affiliated with hip-hop So man, this is hip hop things are forced and everybody now everybody wants to be affiliated with hip-hop right to this

No clothing brand really wanted to because they did first of all, they didn't know if Affiliated themselves with hip-hop was going to deter their original customer they had for their brand Mm-hmm. And number two, no one thought it'd be this dominant force of what it is today. That's so interesting I didn't know people thought that hip hop was a fad back then. Oh, absolutely I'm talking about like 89 90 when first started it started some ghetto stuff people just rapping over you know no one paid attention to it but it's not in start they started getting on top billboard charts and you know crossed over to mainstream and then for my brand what helped us was that hip-hop started penetrating internationally now so right now brand is the number one streetwear brand in Europe Germany Switzerland Amsterdam Spain is the number one streetwear brand in Europe, Germany, Switzerland, Amsterdam, Spain,

some of our biggest markets for our brand. Because as there's hip hop, the fashion goes where hip hop is. That's the kind of way the trend goes. If there's music, fashion goes along with it. There's so much overlap there, right? Why do you think that is? Because it's just a culture, it's a vibe. The kids see them wearing on TV, they want to mimic what they're doing, the whole swag, different things like that. One of the toughest markets for us to break in was actually was Italy. I was just in Milan last week and I was speaking to an artist there. He told me, man, I used to get beat up

back in the days wearing your clothing. I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, there's news to me too. I was like, what are you telling me? He says, man, because we started, these are white kids in Italy. He's like, yeah, we started wearing baggy jeans and it wasn't acceptable for us

to wear this type of clothing here. He was like, why are you guys wearing this wrap clothing out here and stuff like that? So kids fought him over that. But it was the rebel kids who changed the fashion game out there and as they changed the fashion game, they became the street guys, kids started respecting them. Now they became the more influential guys in the market.

And the thing too is like hip hop artists, street hustlers was the number one influences back in the is like hip hop artists, street hustlers was the number one influences back in the days before hip hop artists, they wanted to mimic those guys. Then when hip hop artists started making a lot of money, they became the major influence on kids on the streets. Kids wanted to be like them, rap like them, the music, the vibes, so everything just kind of came full circle. Interesting. So each country has its own strategy and you know, you can't just hit them all at the same time, right? You got to grow by country by country. Yeah, for the most part,

you know, because you understand it's different currencies, different languages. But the one common one common goal with the oldest thing is hip hop music. That's the one thing that they all could sing along to and all be part of doesn't matter which country you're from, you can't even speak English, but you can rap along to these music is so influential to kids. And back then they didn't really have a lot of Italian hip hop artists or German hip hop artists. Now you go there's so many different hip hop artists rapping in German, rapping in Italian language, stuff like that. So the culture and the business just just blown up mainstream all over. How did the US this is an ad from better help. This holiday season, do something for a special person in your life.

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That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hip hop artists do in other countries, do they still sell out? Yeah, they do. Especially like a lot of the old school artists, they still do a lot of shows in Europe. Like the Big Daddy Canes, the Karras ones, and the Public Enemies,

and kids still wanna hear those old school rap groups. One thing about Europe that's what I love about it is that they do their research. In college, they have courses in college about hip hop culture. Wow. Yeah, in college out there. That's how mainstream it is. And the one thing about our brand,

while we surpass every other brand who comes to Europe and try to be successful, they wanna know who started this game. What's the history behind the brand? They wanna read about it, get the history, get the culture about it. They wanna know what did Aaliyah wear? Oh, Aaliyah wore a Carl Kanaan on her first album cover.

Wow, I love Aaliyah, this brand must be really cool. Oh, Dr. Dre and Snoop mentions Carl Kanaan in their songs, oh this is cool. So there's different things like that that you can't really talk about, you just gotta be B about it. You can't really shove it in their face, they gotta discover it themselves

for it to be really legit. Interesting, that's cool. So history is big out there. Absolutely, yeah, for sure. So how long did competitors start coming? Once you started in 89, how many years did that take? Yeah, I would say probably like, it took them about, I'd say 94, 95.

Okay, so you had five years of just. Yeah, five years, yeah, it was me and a company called Cross Colors, which was actually around the same time. Cross Colors was doing streetwear also, but they had a lot of financing behind them. So they would put the financing behind my brand and we became partners together.

We stayed together for about three years. Then me and Skechers, we had a great business together for a few years together, and that helped us propel us to international market as well. So today we currently have 10 flagship stores in Japan. Wow. Which is a whole nother section of the market. Because Japan, their clothing is totally different

than what we do in Europe. Japan is very old school. They have the slogan called the King of Black. They love a lot of logos and more closer fit in clothing. So Japanese market has been very well to us as well because Japanese always been fashion trendsetters in the culture as well. And they always knee deep into hip hop culture as well. Yeah, Japan's big on fashion, right? That's kind of where it starts and then it trickles

down. Yeah, Japan's always been ahead of the game, you know, he's got to play catch up with them too, you know what I'm saying? They're always like, they're like very bold and very confident in the styles they do, right? And they put the whole swag together, the cornrows, the hair, the whole look, they're able to put it together in a very unique way. Absolutely. So when did fubu come into play? They came like 94 95. Okay, and that was a big brand, right? Yeah, they came out big they came out strong They're good thing to get L cool J. This is some fat Albert collaborations like that. So they made their mark for what they were trying to do Yeah, Damon's been on the show actually. So what was your relationship with him?

Was it like animosity or was it friendly? Not at all, I mean, I actually helped him out. Oh, you helped him? Yeah, so Damon did a post on his Instagram a couple of years ago, he talked about what we did for them. So basically they were sitting in a lobby, I think he said he had $30 in his pocket, these are words in his mouth,

he had $30 in his pocket and he says, the legendary Carl Kani comes by and says, "'Hey, I know who you guys are, you the Fugle guys.'" I says, yeah, so I gave them tickets to the show. They came to the show, they able to introduce, I introduced them some buyers, they was able to write $300,000 in order. So he kind of gave them the blueprint

to kind of get them set up into the business and they did what they had to do to become successful. But I guess the idea of bringing them to the show, open up their eyes to see how big this thing could get. So, you know, good for them that they're able to take that, take it to the next level. Wow. Yeah. So you helped them.

Like, why'd you do that, honestly? Cause they're competitors. I don't look at them as competitors because you know what? They weren't my competitors when I started. My competitors was Tommy Hilfinger, Ralph Lauren, Guess, Jibbo, Calvin Klein. Those are the brands kids are wearing. Those are the brands we have to convince

that hey, here's an alternative to that brand to wear. You don't have to wear those brands. We're giving an alternative. So we were very laser focused on who our competition was. Now, yeah, after they came out, they could all lump some us together and say we're competitors, but that's not keeping your eye on the prize.

It keep your eye on the prize of staying where the big money's at. Tommy Hilfinger, Ralph Lauren, Don and Karen, they control all the floor space in the department stores. And those are the big accounts that you had. So if they control the floor space, that's who you're really competing against. What they did was they put all the urban brands kind of together

in one little market, in one room, and say, okay, you guys, it is $100,000, you got to split the open to buy here. But meanwhile, Tommy and Ralph and them get all the big money open to buy dollars. So when we start looking at ourselves with competition, we're not doing the right thing. Keep your eye on who's really the competition,

who's really making all the money, who's really doing the sales, who's really controlling all the floor space in the stores. Those are the brands for it. Wow, I love that mindset, man. Cause too many people get wrapped up with their competitors. Yeah, that's nonsense. You know, that's silly, you know, because you can't win that way. You know what I mean? Look at, look at those brands I mentioned to you. They're still

here today. They're still around today. Still doing big numbers. What happens to all the urban brands are around in the nineties. They're all gone. They're gone, right? Yeah. Mitchell and Ness is gone. They're all gone. All those, you know, fat farm fool, Sean, John and Nietzsche Mecca, all those brands are not here anymore, right? Why is that? Why is Tommy, Ralph, and Calvin still here? We gotta stay focused on what the goals really are here.

So as you started seeing those brands drop, what was the reason they were falling off, you think? The market started changing, you know what I'm saying? The market was shifting, skinny jeans started to come out, and I think buyers wanted a change. And the other thing I realized too is that in this business, we had a great run in the United States from 89 to 2003.

You kind of go through a couple of generations. So when I say that is you kind of get a kid going to junior high school through high school. A kid will probably wear the same brand from junior high school through high school. After high school, kids like, they don't wanna be like high school, they change their brand clothing anymore.

So new generation comes in, you always got to capture a new young generation coming through, but your clothing style has to be on point to what they want at the time. If you don't change quick enough, they're gonna move on to something else. So when the skinny jeans trades came out, no one shifted quick enough.

Skinny jeans and what happened was when Lil Wayne started wearing skinny jeans, he was the top of his career. He made every kid who wanted to wear skinny finally say, yeah, I could wear skinny, I could be cool wearing skinny jeans. Before you were skinny, people look at you, oh, you just a skateboard, you're cool. So Lil Wayne made it cool.

So when that fashion trend came in, everyone started shifting to newer brands who came out with that look. But the key to us, why we didn't really get hurt so much then is because we already established ourself internationally as the OG. So we kind of could set the tone how we wanted to do things and it's an international market.

Smart, because everyone had their eggs in the US and then when the market changed, they couldn't adapt quick enough, right? Yeah, pretty much. Wow. So when did it go to Skinny Jeans? What year was that around? I think it was like 2010.

2010, okay. 2010, something like that. Wow. This was when Luden Wayne is the top of his height of his career and he came out with a different vibe and the market started shifting and when department store says get out, they mean get out, they kick everybody out.

Damn. Everybody just, all the brands, they stopped giving open to buy dollars and you have to move on to something else. And back then, because there was no online shopping, you needed those stores to run your, to control your business, right? You didn't have direct to consumer access back then.

No e-commerce back then. So that kind of changed the game as well. So you have to find other means of really getting your brand out there. And this is a very expensive business to be successful in. So you're not generating business and you have all these expensive marketing advertising and magic shows you're not gonna be able to win in this business and be profitable right because you got money tied in inventory right tons of it yeah

sure damn do you see the market shifting from retail space towards something else in the future I definitely see online shopping is gonna still be huge right now I think pop-ups is gonna be really good. Like you do go to certain cities, you do a pop-up over a weekend and then you move out. People always want what they can get. I've noticed people with successful e-commerce sites, they do websites where it's not available every day.

They may say, look, sites only be open one day, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So people kind of lined up waiting to get these products. When your product is too accessible, it becomes not as important and not as exclusive than you want it to be. Right. How do you feel about modern hip hop now?

I think it's cool. I think it's a shift. I think everything's about change. And I feel like once you get to the point where you complain about where music is, you may be a little too old. It's gonna go where it's going no matter whether you like it or not.

I remember when our parents when we was growing up, they was like, don't wear your clothes so baggy, pull up your pants. What is this hip hop music you're listening to? We didn't care what they said. We did it even more. So to me, it's gonna change no matter what. So you better accept it and feel it

because hip hop still be the number Number one influential music category. I think for you forever. I don't can't see that changing. Yeah, it's big now They're collabing with country too. So it's a new new era. I never saw that collab before. Yeah, I think it's just like when Run DMC did their thing with um Walk this way. You know, they did that mix with rock and roll. That was a cool collab right there. No one saw that coming. It's always open to new interpretation because the young generation, they don't see any color.

So I feel like music is kind of the same way right now. Yeah. How quickly are the trends changing these days with social media? I'm sure it's every three months now, right? Oh, it's like daily. I mean, daily change and kids are so unique nowadays and it's so open to fashion right now and wearing different types of looks And merchandise and things together and today there's so many different options in terms of branding and clothing

I mean everyone has a clothing line and some people are doing really good jobs at it You know I'm saying so to me to be successful in this business What you have to do is establish your basics You know, I mean you got to establish With the basic, you could transcend time. Like Calvin Klein Levi's has a basic Levi's. They've been doing the same gene since 1919, right? And it's still working now. Calvin Klein's been doing the same boxer forever

and it's still working. It's easier said than done establishing the basic. But for us, our base has always been the Carl Connard baggy jeans have been our basics and stuff like that. And the Carl Connard oversized baggy jeans have been our basics and stuff like that. And a Carl Kani oversized t-shirt has been our basics. Certain things need to be a stapling of brand to transcend moments, transcend time. So you need that staple product to back you, right?

Yeah, because you know, you have to have a product where you could actually stock and be replenished in stores to be profitable. If you're just in a business selling fashion, you're not going to hit every time on fashion. Something could sell, something cannot. You have a couple of bad seasons, you're going to to hit every time on fashion. Something could sell, something cannot. You have a couple of bad seasons, you're going to be out of business. Yeah. What did you think of Kanye? What he pulled off with Yeezy. That was incredible. No, Kanye is a man.

I mean, you know, he's crazy, but, you know, he knows how to market clothing. He's a great designer. Stuff is great. Muted colors. He had a synergy for what he wanted to do. The same thing with Skims with Kim Kardashian. She kind of had a similar vibe, kept it clean, kept it basic and that's why that brand is successful today. Great influencer marketing on both their parts that do stuff so they get the advantage

because they could say something today and the whole press is talking about it tomorrow. Everyone has that power to do that. Yeah, but with that power that's how they built a billion dollar brand in two years, three years. Exactly. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, but you were old school. You didn't have that option back in the day. No, we, we, we, we, we had the old Detroit hardcore, go out there and work and go hustle hard. You know, there's no other choice. We didn't have the flexibility you have in the

social medias and stuff like that. So what we had was a car. You put your stuff in the back seat of the car. We used to go to the nightclubs, go to the barbershops, go to where you need to go and hustle your brand. That's what we did. I remember we used to go to the Magic Show in Vegas, which is the big cold and convention show. And it was just my company and Cross Colors there to be in terms of the only streetwear companies there.

And I remember Calvin and them didn't even want us next to their booth. So because of that, Magic built a whole urban section for the Magic show. And that's what they put all the urban brands together in one section in the Magic show. Cause they didn't want to not take the dollars we were giving them, but they didn't want to piss off the original brands over there either.

So they found a way to kind of try to keep everybody happy. Wow. Calvin didn't want you. Did that piss you off? No, we loved it. Oh, you loved it. That means we were doing something right. Right.

It means that we were creating an energy that they didn't like. You gotta disrupt the system to be successful. Once you're disrupting the system, once they're talking about you, you're doing something. Once we had the accounts lining up for our clothing, we know we're doing something. Once we saw on MTV, they started blurring out our logos. We're the reason why MTV started blurring out logos.

Because we were so big, MTV wanted us to run commercials on MTV. We were like why do we need to run commercials they're wearing our stuff through the whole video for free right yeah guys are wearing our stuff in our logos we had Redman yet you know Jay-Z we have puff you know wearing our stuff so like when they were in the videos we didn't have to advertise MTV's alright cool they started blurring anyone wearing big logos and so people don't want to blur follow them on the screen. So they would say, okay,

either wear a Swole logo or start running some commercials. Yeah. Well, you're here now and I don't know if MTV is. So things worked out, man. Exactly. Nah, for real though, people don't know how hard it is to make it as long as you have.

Yeah. Like I think 95% of businesses fail within five years. Yeah. I think our hustle is a little bit different than everybody else, man. Cause you know, to me it's like, if you can't see it, you can't be it. We wake up every day with a goal and a focus of where we wanna be in life

and where we want to be as a company and a business. A lot of people like transcend into other businesses. We stuck strictly with clothing and fashion and like we didn't wanna make the mistakes we did here in the United States on the international market. So we made sure we went out there and any mistake we made here in the United States on international markets. So we made sure we went out there. Any mistake we made here, we covered the grounds there.

We have different partners in each country. We have different partners in Spain, in Germany. When we have international meetings, we have a booth there with headphones. So when they're talking, we have lifetime translators telling people what we're saying to them because we have people in different foreign countries, they all don't speak English. Wow. But they understand their market. So it's really an amazing thing.

Our partners in Europe is a company called Snipes. They're the number one streetwear retailer in Europe. They own over 1,600 stores. They just opened up 400 stores here in the United States. Holy crap. They bought out Jimmy Jazz for 900 million. They bought out Downtown Locker Room. They're in Baltimore, Philly, New York

DC and Those are the partners that we have our brand because they understand streetwear market and they understand our brand and the owner His love for to pop was really what brought us together. So love him man. It's crazy how he lives on to this day Absolutely, like it's unreal. He's legendary for sure. Yeah, he's a legend You I went through your deck. you've done some awesome collabs. So you did one with Stranger Things? Yeah, so that one was really cool. That kind of came out of nowhere. So they contacted us in Europe and they said,

hey, we see the Carl Knot brand is big in the streets here. We think it'd be cool to kind of get the youth into Stranger Things. So we did a whole video. We did like a haunted house thing with a fashion show in there with them. It was the number one show on Netflix. So the timing was great and the collection did really well together. So we're looking forward to show in there with them. It was the number one show on Netflix. So time it was great.

And the collection did really well together. So we're looking forward to possibly doing something with them for next season. Nice, because that's a whole different market than what you're used to. Stranger Things, right? Yeah, because to me, you have to diversify who your market is in this business. You can't stay in one market. You got to grow because people love to see different things and get excited. And when they see a brand coming outside their comfort zone and doing

extraordinary things like doing collabs or straight to things unexpected for Carl Kani. That's why I think it translated very well for us. Right. Did you get any hate from your audience for doing that? No, not really. No. I think people thought it was cool. They thought it was different. You know, everyone loves the show so I thought it was kind of different. And you know, I don't look at things like that. I think like if anybody hates, you know, that's the problem that they have. We're gonna always do things. It's gonna push the brand forward and push the culture forward and open up new

doors and new ideas on how to expand your brand. Right. Yeah. Certain companies start losing touch with their customers, I think. Absolutely. When you're not real, you do, you know what I'm saying? Like I think to be real, you got to be real to the culture, be real to the music and understand who you are as a brand and on your style and to also

represents who you are, like there's certain trends that we just can't jump on. That's not who we are. But we got to try to set the trends opposed to trying to follow what trends are. Right. Damn, that's tough to do though, right? To set them. Yeah, but you know, after you've been doing this for a while,

you kind of find that certain things have a way of coming back around again, because we've been doing it for so long. We see, okay, this is in, this is trending now. We see that Baggies in now, but we know this time Baggies not going to dominate the way it was before, because it's some skinnies been in so long, some people don't want to give up their skinnies, you got to find a good balance between that and making sure that you don't go too too baggy, people don't want to mess with you anymore, so it's like a fine line of how you do it.

So Baggies are back right now? Baggies are back, Baggies are back, looking hip hop, everyone's like, they're not as skinny as they were before. Good point. Yeah, there is a trend that way. Just everyone's getting bigger, I think, not just people in hip hop. Dude, what's next for you? I want to take over the world, man. You know how I tell people, if I find out there's life on Mars, I'm going to open up

shop in Mars. I love that. We just want to take over and continue to build a legacy for the brand and never give there's life on Mars, we're gonna open up shop in Mars. I love that. You know what I'm saying? It's like we just want to take over and continue to build a legacy for the brand and like never give up and just keep setting the tone for what it is. Like to me it's like with a title like the godfather of urban fashion, the origin of street wear, you better act like it. You better act like it because you can't have a title like that and don't set the tone for

what needs to go on. Powerful. Can't wait to see where you take it man. We'll link the site below. Thanks so much for coming on. It an honor I salute thank you yeah thanks for watching guys check them out below see you next time