Digital Social Hour - Jayssee Lopez On Building a Sneaker Empire with Urban Necessities & Being Homeless | DSH #175

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

On today's episode of the Digital Social Hour Podcast, Jayssee Lopez reveals his come up story, his favorite sneakers and how he plans on turning Urban Necessities into an empire. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH HelloFresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/50dsh Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's the most expensive sneaker you've seen? Oh, most expensive sneaker that I've physically seen is something that we had at the store for a little bit, which was the Sotheby's auctioned LV Air Force One. Wow. How much was that? Like 300k. Yeah, no, I've walked into a Rolex store in like sweatpants and hoodies and they won't even talk to me. I love not looking the part and then being being the part not a not a boasting statement but i hoard and you know i 31 31 time pieces in two years welcome back to the digital social hour guys have an amazing guest for you today

jc lopez how's it going bud doing well man it was good seeing you yeah it's good seeing you last night i've been in the store like three times before i even knew you owned it so thanks for having me at your store yeah no worries i mean i'm just glad you had a little bit of time to justify a visit or two or three um that place is uh it's really hard to explain to the people that aren't into sneakers but when they walk in it's like the same reaction emotion it's it's it never gets old to see it's it's a real blessing yeah man i felt like a kid in a candy store cop some yeezys for me and my girl it was a fun time man you got a lot of cool bear bricks in there yeah we you know we've done we we kind of went away from just sneakers

right it was like we're looking at this space and in the urban space and we're like what are the needs and that's really kind of subjective right and as the brand is grown and and we've been able to attach a few more layers it's really going in tons of different directions from food from you know grooming uh tattooing yeah art it's clothing it's it's just been a lot of fun of saying yeah that makes sense and then trying to piece it all together yeah so you guys had like an upstairs is that where yeah so uh i'm assuming you went to our Caesars Palace location, right? So that used to be a gap, and it's about 18,000 square feet. And when we had the opportunity or started having the conversations with Caesars,

we were in a previous mall here on the Strip, and they're like, hey, we want you to come over what does that look like and i was like well we're pretty happy where we're at but if we could try xyz then you know we're we're down to have a couple conversations and they were very open to this new what seems like a new iteration to retail but it's really just a shop and shop and shop and it just makes a lot of sense when you walk the space it's awesome i've seen your video on your sneaker collection it might have been the biggest collection i've ever seen um you know uh hoarders hoard you know like i it i uh

this whole sneaker thing i've just enjoyed the chase yeah not just with sneakers but with a bunch of different things and um you know as your as your dream starts becoming a business as your passion project starts getting all these layers that require responsibility um you start shedding and then downsizing and upgrading and downsizing and upgrades um if it's a video that i think i'm nowhere near that amount i think you have like a million dollars in sneakers something crazy yeah we've shot way past that but with a lot less shoes but no it's uh i got lucky with a few yeah say that what's the most expensive uh sneaker you've seen oh most expensive sneaker that i've physically seen is something that we had at the store for a little bit which was this um sotheby's auctioned lv air force one wow um how much is that like 300k

yeah but it's you know when you're looking at sneakers and you're like wait a minute who's paying 300 why did this get to that number like you're looking at it with just like it's like the purpose of what a shoe is right you're supposed to wear it so you're like why would i spend 300 grand on something that i'm gonna beat whereas it's more like uh it's more like an archivial piece that you you you just put up as art but there's some people that they're they're hoarding and they're collecting like they could justify the wear right and and and wearing something of that magnitude creates an emotion that's really hard to explain very few people understand you're just so protective of not getting them dirty right some people don't even care oh really you know like

yeah i mean like my what i consider my holy of holies, right? Like the ones that I'm like, I still can't believe I paid what I paid. Like it's at its highest peak and I still wear it and I don't, I don't even bother to clean them. Wow. I think that's part of, there's no right or wrong with sneakers, right? It's just, you have to have an appreciation and, and most of it is just a tie on tie in into the chase and the stories behind the chase and your, the why, right. That's really what I think. That's why I think sneakers now more than ever is all more, all walks of life.

Yeah. And I don't know much about like the business side of things, but do sneakers in general hold their value pretty well? Great i mean um if you if you do the research and you know you tie it to the right story or you're at the right moment and you you acquire it at the right time yeah most of most of what you could purchase from any of our locations if you allow a little bit of time to season and you don't wear them, they go up. And a lot of times with the ones that you buy at the store, if you wear them, even seven, eight months from now, sometimes even less time, they go up or at least are still worth what you paid even though you wore it. Wow. So it's like wearable stock in that sense. Yeah.

That's interesting. So it's almost like an asset. Well, I treat everything in my almost like an asset well I've treated everything in my store like it has because it really kind of is you know I've um I don't know how much of my my story and background on how we started but you know that that location um we got a little bit of love with from the from the property to to kind of build out but I was building that store during the middle of a pandemic everything you're paying a premium expedited fees nothing was happening in the time frame that you were

expecting and then next thing you know your cost is triple and so you know the way my bank account is set up you have to kind of let go of some of this stuff and when i shed a lot of my personal collection and funded the build out of that store and that store cost millions of dollars to build yeah that's crazy so you took a huge risk building that up and not not calculated i mean it's kind of easier to take those risks that like for most will be like yo this guy's crazy yeah when you know that like i mean you 10, you 10x your money on an asset, you're hoarding the asset, understanding that at some point it has to serve a greater good. Right. And for me, it's always been the rainy day fund.

You know, so I got a lot in the rainy day fund. And you also had that personal brand to fall back on. You spent years building that in the sneaker community. We've worked really hard to make it inclusive yeah right and um you know you know without like boring you with the story at one point i really felt and i still feel that um that what this brand like is focused on and all it cares about is like community right and and that's all walks of life and you know it started on a kitchen table and now it's in caesar's palace and saudi arabia and all these other places but it's with you're focusing on hey here's the here's what you came

in for but this is really what you're gonna support at the end of the day and building that brand and that sweat equity has really helped kind of get in those rooms and get these opportunities that for most like you don't even know where to start on how to unravel how did this even get to where it's at yeah you really emphasize the community i saw you at sneaker con people were just approaching you and it was really cool to see that you still give love to everyone no i mean because i know what it's like being that guy the dreamer that wants to do something and you're trying to articulate it to your friends your family your your close ones and like because they don't understand why you're so passionate about something like it's demoralizing when they

criticize it and the criticism you receive it in some cases it's it's more like because you haven't done enough and not necessarily because they don't want to see you do it it's just you're you're talking about something that how do you explain the tangible yeah it's really hard to do right so i know the impact of having a conversation with someone in front of you that gets what you're into and is proof of like if you stick to it it could it could work out for you right right and so i try really hard to be a good ambassador for the for for my space for for our community not just here in vegas but globally yeah that's right i've done over 170 shows globally and i've made it a point to travel like i try to go to all the stores that i hear

doing it right or trying to do it right or just opened up so i could understand what their best business practices are so i could share mine because it makes you know like everything no matter how good your idea is you probably got it from somebody else or thought you could do it better than someone else wow so i've been very fortunate to kind of like learn um on a global scale and then teach on a global scale it's been a lot of fun that's cool to see that because a lot of people would see other sneaker stores as competition and not even walk in there why i mean no matter no matter what you do no matter how hard you go no matter how efficient you are no matter how many resources you have

you're never going to win everybody over i mean like you and i could be in the same exact room same exact resources same exact people try for the same exact thing guess what one of us isn't going to get the opportunity and it's not because you went about it the wrong way they might just not like the fact that my voice sounds the way that my voice or my eye goes this way you know what i mean like i i get frustrated when i hear people say it doesn't have anything to do with luck because it to an extent it does like you could be doing everything right and still not get the opportunity and you could be in the right room that could possibly give you that opportunity but because it's not your time you don't get it and that moment could like because you didn't get

it at that moment it could stop you from going right so like um i don't know man i look at a lot of stuff business i i don't really care for the I love scaling I love trying to make it more efficient I've you know I could I could sit here in both numbers with the best of them um but that's not really what drives me at all it's more about the teaching and helping people be more efficient wow and you mentioned earlier people thought you were crazy when you were starting out did you have any support system at all or were you solo the first few years um well you know to tell you my story in the shortest form possible right like uh when i moved to vegas my first six months i was homeless and i slept in parks i ate out of trash cans i panhandled i

stood in line for stuff when i couldn't sneak into hotels i would shower in the fountains in front of caesars in on days like today where there's like heat advisory warnings i would jump in i would i would go to the properties on the strip that generated the most foot traffic to get out of the heat but also to learn retail like it's so intriguing it's all walks of life the city's like narnia in a sense right like everybody's here but nobody's here and like if you go to one property you don't really go to the other property and there was like a few properties in the city that like i really had a lot of fun even though i was like kind of trying to save myself but i had a lot of fun just people watching and learning and like caesar's won me over from day one even though

i didn't win caesar's over from the beginning and so you go from showering in the fountains in front of it to another point you're working all up and down the place right at all the retail locations that are in there from you know from sony back in the day to apple to nike to you know george jensen when it was there and then now uh I have one of the highest foot traffic stores in that place it's um it's really weird man but a real blessing I'm just getting started yeah I love that attitude man and you said you're in Saudi Arabia too yeah so this started on a kitchen table one shoe 40 bucks I've been September of mark nine years that I've been selling shoes through the brand at this point I've touched through the brand we've moved over four million pairs of sneakers I I started in the

hood mall went to the good mall now I'm in the great mall I have two locations in Caesars I have a great relationship with some friends that I met through the store when no one cared about my brand uh now in Saudi and that's gonna I think it's gonna get a couple more layers attached to it and and you know we're kind of scouring the Earth trying to find new friends to kind of be the right ambassadors for the brand and continue to scale it i definitely think like this is the smallest iteration that anybody will see of my brand that's insane that's a real blessing do you worry about scaling too quickly like you saw what happened with cookies does that

worry you at all um scaling fat i don't think we're scaling fast enough um you know what you have to understand is what i'm learning is that you got to make sacrifices in the growing, right? So you mentioned a great brand that I have a lot of friends of, and I have a liking to, um, you know, you have to make it, you have to water it down as you grow. And it's not because you don't care. It's just that it's too many moving parts so you got to make it more efficient you got to make it repetitive you got to make it safe and sometimes in doing that as you grow a brand you kind of lose your cool right and or you're so used to seeing it and you're so good at it that it just becomes like bland right so um am I concerned about with that with my brand yeah there's days

where I think about it like that but I also know that like my purpose is more to to standardize the industry and I have to be okay with some of the things that like I might not necessarily run that way but the majority of my message is going to come across and it's going to be for a greater good in the industry i think i changed not just sneaker retail i think i changed retail in general with the experiences and formats and processes that were implemented wow so what do you do differently from like just regular sneaker stores um well the entire store is qr code based it's been like that for about eight years yeah that, that made it so easy to see what size is available. I really am not a fan of walking into a retail location, regardless of price point, in a retail location where you want something, you need something, how about now, right? And then based off of what I think you may or may not have as far as the sales rep, like, is what determines your sales experience, right? I've always much more been a fan of like,

look, these items that you're here for, you're here for because you're assuming I have them. They're the holy of holies. You don't see them every day. And I want you to see, touch, and feel them. And for me more, it's my concern is that my staff treats you like a family member they haven't seen in 10 or 15 years,

and that they become kind of like that liaison that walks you through gracefully like through this museum yeah that just curates your positive experience i don't even want my staff to sell i just want to make sure that you have a smile throughout the whole process because not everybody that walks in my doors needs to buy something wow i need promoters of the brandoters of the brand are made by a positive experience. Not me grabbing you by the ankles and taking every little coin you got in your pocket. No, I love that, man. Because the first time I didn't buy anything, but no one pressured me.

No one even came up to me to try to sell me. Second time I bought something. And now I just come back for fun, honestly, because it's so cool. Then we did our job. Yeah. No, you provide a great customer experience. Because there's certain stores you walk in and someone's up here it's very elitist and it's very like i don't trust right yeah and it's like it's frustrating because i mean we're in the time pieces everybody's in the time pieces now right you walk into one of those

you know you got the money for what you're about to ask for yeah and it's the same repetitive experience i don't got anything gotta get out of the way they wanted to talk to you you know you got the money for what you're about to ask for yeah and it's the same repetitive experience i don't got anything got to get out of the way they want to talk to you it's like why is that really helping your brand not at all and they have it in the back too yeah there's an allocation that's based off i mean if we're going to spill the beans let's spill the beans right there's an allocation that's provided at every store it's based off a seniority of the amount of reps that they have. So if you and I come into the store and we get the same sales rep and you ask for a timepiece that's not allotted to them, they're not even going to entertain their conversation.

And then if you're only asking for one, they really don't have an interest. They're trying to build the next 20 years of clientele, right? That means repetition, multiple. So if you're not in there throwing on the wall, asking for a whole bunch of them, you're probably not going to get any of them. Yeah. Right? And the other part is these brands are asking these clients to wait at least two to three weeks before that rep actually gives you one unless you got somebody that cares. Right.

You know? So that's pretty tough. No, it's crazy, man. It's a racket. Yeah. No, I've walked in the Rolex store in like sweatpants and hoodies and they won't even talk to me i that i i love not looking the part yeah and then being the part i i live for that but i have some great relationships because i listen a lot and then i i attack where your opening is and right i've been very fortunate i mean i'm persistent right um not a not a boasting statement but i hoard

and you know i 31 31 time pieces in two years yeah yeah i'm up to five i gotta get like you man i mean you're i think you're gonna be there a lot more efficiently than i ever was oh man i love your story for real it's it's really inspiring honestly thank you brother yeah not a lot of people go from homelessness to i wasn't you know i i allowed myself to get into a space um where i i just you know i was really young i was in my 20s didn't have habits i'd messed up a few times being a knucklehead as a kid and i just didn't want to ask my parents hey can you can you bail me out of this one again? Like at 23, 24 years old, I'm now looking at the other foot.

Man, what has my mom gone through? Does she really deserve to have to bail me out again? Like I should probably figure it out this time. Oh, so you didn't even tell them? Yeah, I would tell everybody I was good. And I would call back home, check in. Hey, how are things? Yeah, we're great. that oh so you didn't even tell them yeah i would told everybody i was good like you know and and uh i would call back home check in hey how are stink yeah we're great wow but i'm really sleeping in parks and you know showering in fountains and you know like i i once you you know i i replayed a lot

of moments and uh that didn't work out in my way or in the way that I ideally wanted to. And there was a common denominator. And there was a few common denominators. One was me. The other one was my attitude and then my selfishness. Right. And so when I pretty much got it together, sorry, got it together and then lost it all again because I didn't really have any rules. Like, I just I was very reckless. I was just I looked at everything and any rules. Like, I just, I was very reckless, right? That's good.

I was just, I looked at everything and I said, man, if I get the opportunity, maybe I'm just going to start focusing on everybody else. So it was like a switch. Yeah. And at first it felt very uncomfortable. Right. At first I didn't really understand how to do that. Like, very foot and mouth. Felt weird weird and then as

I started growing you know I was very scared to tell my story and then I felt very uncomfortable that I wasn't telling my story and as the brand started growing that's when I started kind of telling my story and it's more because there's a million people like me that want to do exactly what I'm doing if not bigger that possibly that possibly could. And all they need is somebody to tell them, get off your backside and go get it. Wow. What was that first breakthrough for you? Was it someone taking you on? Was it alone? Do you remember a specific moment? I mean, there's so many moments that I think helped me look at my brand and say, I think you're on to something. I think one of the most one of the biggest

bursts that gave me a boost of confidence with the brand was um about six seven months into my brand um i came across another uh a buddy that i had met earlier like when i started my business i i the day i signed my lease i had uh i have 40 to my name wow like i signed my business, I, I, the day I signed my lease, I had, uh, I have $40 to my name. Wow. Like I signed my business license. I got a credit card for 2,400 bucks. I opened up in a 500 square foot location. No neighbors for six months.

Uh, I, I kind of sublet when I wasn't supposed to, but I charged it as marketing. Um, you know, and I made a post was like, Hey man, I'm going to be opening something that I think is going to be very different. If you guys want to get a post was like hey man i'm gonna be opening something that i think is gonna be very different if you guys want to get a first-hand look like come down and this was before the store was open reality was i didn't know how to paint i didn't know how to put shelves up i was just looking for help all sorts of ways right yeah came across this guy had a great conversation he was like hey i don't feel well i'll be back later and i you know i thanked him for his time months past six months to be exact comes back he's like a shell of himself and i'm like dude what happened he's like look i'm a little under the weather i i need to get a heart transplant you know it goes

down this whole spiel of how like he has to try to raise money to be able to get into a program out in san diego so he could get on the list to get a heart transplant i'm like all right so what do you need what are we doing he's like well i started a go fund you know the typical route that you try to do to generate money i'm like well how much have you raised it's like you know a couple hundred bucks i'm like who's helping you he's like i'm like where's the family he's like none so it hurt to hear that right and so i'm telling my wife we got to help this guy we got to figure out a way to help this guy so this was around the manny pack y'all mayweather fight yeah and i'm a consignment shop right so at the time i really don't own anything right i don't really have

anything i'm this is six months into my like six months into the brand. So the way consignment works at the time, and for the most part, is you sell something, you hold on to the money, and then there's a time period when you pay it out, right? At that time, we were quick with it. It was like a week. Now there's so many layers to protect consumer, customer, consigner alike, right? So it takes a little bit longer. I'm trying for months to get this uh the tickets to the fight i have boxers telling me hey we're going to give you tickets don't worry about it this is a great reason why but money's involved and people are reselling the tickets and it's just not working

out right so the wednesday night before the fight i asked my wife how much money do we have we have six grand in the business bank account but on monday checks need to be cut and go out right for most of that money so i'm sitting here like all right i don't have anything i could sell we only got six grand you know what give me the six grand i'm gonna buy two tickets that i could then do a raffle i'll figure it out and if look if we upset some consignors because we weren't able to pay them out reality is we don't need them as consignors they can't have a heart like they i should i don't need to be making money for anybody so she was a little concerned rightfully so i'm literally risking my business for a guy that i

don't even know one two interactions i buy these tickets wednesday night i somehow get on the news thursday um i did what we had to do wow uh i got that six thousand back i got fifteen thousand for a guy that needed ten thousand um the guy that won the tickets then sold the tickets to then send his mom on vacation so it was like the gift i kept giving and at that time i'm like man i did that out of nothing yeah i did that out of thin air so if i could do that with just a simple thought on you know like a 48 hour window like what else can i do and that was like the first real empowering moment with my brand that like i knew i had something that was different wow and we've from there on we probably paid for like nine or ten funerals we gave a car away we've and i don't have

a you know a non-profit this is just a husband and wife that feel like hey i think we could do this let's pull it off and let's go that's insane man you saved the guy's life with no money that's an incredible story wouldn't you if you could yeah that's so inspiring wow and you don't even do it for the write-off you just do it i could care less yeah because most people just do it as like a charity write-off i don't really really, I'm not wired that way. There's a lot I got to learn from a business standpoint. I'd be the first one to tell you. But my intentions aren't to get a tax break.

If I got to pay the number, whatever it is, I'm paying, I'm overpaying, I'm underpaying. Like I'm learning, but I'm having fun and I'm helping. That's all I care about. I don't care about the dollar. I never have. Wow. So money is just not even on your mind at all wow why because i mean look at some point i'll probably have a hundred locations at

some point i'll have enough layers that my brand is gonna do all the work for me and they're just gonna say here you go boss you know and and and i'll have the resources to go and move in any direction but my impact of where i'm still connected in the limelight like this my window is very short so i have to really i'm focused on legacy right right i'm focused on generational and that doesn't always require a dollar you're thinking the long-term game you're not thinking no i'm thinking way past anything that i'll ever be able to see myself wow you got kids yet i have a 20 year old oh congrats yeah 20 years old yeah she's uh gonna be a junior in college um she has my work ethic she is not consumed in

hoarding like i am which i am very thankful for um you know same thing as the previous guest that i heard when i was walking in you know uh i i told her i'll make you a deal save some money i'll i'll match it yeah she got her first car she paid half i paid half nice you know it wasn't it wasn't the little 250 honda accord i had when i started you know but um times have changed and i'm really proud of her she's got my work ethic and she's going to be way greater than i ever could be do you want to pass the torch to her i don't think she wants it there was a moment where she was like hey dad i want to do this let me i'm going to take over the business and then she kind of became my worst employee oh

yeah yeah she very uh she's not enough experience right and in human interaction and she's not enough experience, right, in human interaction. And she's very foot and mouth like I was as a kid. But I think that when she finds what she wants to do, she's going to be exceptional at it. She's going to have all the tools and resources to do whatever it is that she wants. Love that. Man, what's next for you? Anything you're trying to promote? No, I think for me, it's just being a better person than I was yesterday.

Probably having a few more locations. I know we have like seven LOIs in place from now to the end of next year. But, you know, we want to kind of have 20 doors in the next three years. I think 100 doors in the next 10. I don't think it's going to take that long, but that's kind of what's on the board. And just continuing to raise the expectations of what your retail experience should be you're about to take over man i can't wait to see the empire grow yeah i'm excited man i really appreciate your time absolutely man thanks for watching guys see you next time take care