Julian Dorey Podcast - #55 - Nick Kifyak: STOCKX & THE GLOBAL SNEAKER MARKET; THE SHADY WORLD OF OLYMPICS TICKETING; KANYE WEST & THE YEEZY BRAND; STREETWEAR & THE SNEAKER COMMUNITY

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

Nick Kifyak is a sneaker / streetwear expert, investor, and entrepreneur. He currently owns KIF -– a high-end sneaker / streetwear Ecommerce & Retail Platform. KIF’s flagship 4,000-square-foot store is located right outside of New York City in the Shops at Riverside. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 5:45 - Limited Releases; StockX explained; The problems with StockX; Amazon delivery speed 25:00 - Revisiting the day Kobe died; Kobe’s shoes on the market today 35:47 - PJ Tucker’s shoe collection; Shoes NBA Players wear in gams; Dwyane Wade’s endorsement deal with Li-Ning in China; The rise of Streetwear 50:41 - Nick’s previous experience working in international ticket distribution for the Olympics; That time the Secret Service lowered Nick’s drone 1:00:46 - How Nick got into sneakers and StockX; Why Nick hated his job out of college; How Nick built the KIF brand online; Nick’s parents’ immigrant background and success and in America 1:22:35 - KITH and streetwear trends; Julian tells a story about the first time he went to the KITH Store in Manhattan (NYC); Nick tells a story about expensive ugly Yeezys that leaves Julian in disbelief 1:39:15 - Nick talks about leaving his job to open KIF’s flagship store after the EComm business took off; Julian recalls his first time coming across Nick’s page online 1:50:25 - What Nick’s clientele is like; What his customers are looking for; his total inventory; the streetwear he sells in KIF’s flagship store (located in The Shops at Riverside - Hackensack, NJ) 2:04:46 - Jordans: how often they come out, the different models, their value, etc.; the bots problem online with sneakers; Nick’s Colin Kaepernick Nike’s; The relationship between scarcity and value 2:21:27 - Why people buy things to impress other people and how that drives value; Spotting Fakes and authenticating sneakers 2:33:39 - The Chinese market for sneakers; Nick talks about the Ichiro Suzuki Jordans; Kanye West and the brilliance of the Yeezy Brand; What makes Kanye a genius 2:55:22 - The future digital metaverse and its incoming collision with shoes; Nick’s issue with Social Media ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So I would spend 30, 40 bucks on that. But if you looked at me and said, Julian, I'm going to need $600 for that. I'm going to say, I'm going to need to fucking steal your wife. Like, give her to me. I'll take her home. Like, do I get her too? Is she hot?

Like, show me a picture. Is that the trade-off? It's like... We had somebody come in. We had somebody come in yesterday, and they had a wedding, and we were like... And essentially, he was just like,

so I want three of these, and I need them in these sizes. That thing. These, three of them. To a wedding and we were like and essentially he was just like so I want three of these and I need them in these sizes that thing these three of them and your wedding three of them he should be shot three of them he should he should be hanged dude if you showed up to my wedding in that and don't get me wrong I get fucking married it at City Hall you know it's up to the up to the lucky lady if that's what you want to call her at some point like she'll do what she wants to do but if you showed up to my wedding in that, you're out. What's cooking, everybody? I am joined in the bunker today by my friend Nick Kiffyak. Nick is the founder and owner of Kiff, which is a play on his last name, yes, but stands for keep it fresh.

And what Kiff is, not Kith, Kiff, K-I-F, what Kiff is, is an e-commerce platform for high-end sneakers that has now also expanded into a full-blown retail outlet. So Nick recently opened up a 4,000-square-foot, bougie-ass space up in the shops at Riverside. And for all my New York City listeners out there and my North Jersey people, you may be familiar with that. And if you are, you know that the shops at Riverside is the kind of place that they don't let people like me in places like that put it that way so Nick's doing okay and all jokes aside he is unbelievably knowledgeable not

just on sneakers and streetwear which he sells but also on culture so I hit him up wanting to talk all about sneakers because I'm genuinely curious about it. I'm not the guy that's sitting there on StockX and buying the latest Yeezys or trading in the Jordan 1s or whatever the hell they call them. But it is so interesting to me how there is such a marketplace for it. And I like sneakers. I think they're a very cool fashion statement. So I was curious and I said, Nick, let's talk about it. What do you think? And he said, absolutely. So this was a really informative conversation for me and also not for nothing. I was entertained the whole time. So I hope you guys are too. Now, if you haven't used the link in my description, along with the code trendifier at checkout to purchase either the

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Guaranteed to be a life changer. Anyway, if you're not subscribed, please subscribe. We are on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. And if you're on YouTube right now, hit that subscribe button, hit that bell button, and leave a like and comment on the video if you would, please. To everyone who has been passing around their favorite episode of the show each week to a new friend who, or new friend, to a friend who listens to podcasts and hasn't heard this one yet. I appreciate you. That is growing the audience. It's definitely having a big effect on the audio side more than anything. So that's awesome. And I love that trend. So let's keep that rolling. If you have a friend who listens to podcasts and hasn't heard trend of fire maybe it's this episode

maybe it's an older one but send them one you really really like and let's see if we can get them hooked and once again thank you to everyone who's already done that that said you know what it is i'm julian dory and this is trend of fire let's go this is one of the great questions in our culture where's the news you're giving opinions and calling them facts everyone understands this but few seem to do it if you don't like the status quo

start asking questions how do you define the item though I mean that's a whole nother question too because when we were growing up and it was like all right the latest jordan came out or something like that it seemed more simple to me i'm talking like in the 2000s when i was a kid or whatever but now the i mean the internet does this and things like StockX does this, but now it's like so much about, oh, there's this limited drop. Exactly. This designer collabed with fucking Nike to build this shoe or whatever. And people are like, oh, yeah, that guy.

I know him well. They know his whole story. And I'm like, what the fuck? So how much – like when did that start coming into the marketplace and like how much of that is dominating like sales that you do? I mean, to be honest, a lot of the – a lot of those like big collaborations just add like hype to the brand so like at the end of the day the only people that are benefiting from these limited releases releases are first of all the collaborators because then people get put on to their you know independent work on top of that nike gets a lot of hype built up because everyone wants this thing and nobody can get it and it's

in the same way that like someone wants a really really limited like louis vuitton or a birkin bag like things that are of astronomical value that to the common person it's just like who's spending 50 000 on a bag but there's there's a line of people like there's just a disturbing long line of people who just want it um i think most of it comes from like just the limited nature of it people want what other people can't have so it's kind of like you know if i'm wearing something and and that's the thing like stock x made it more prevalent for like more people to know the value of that item so if somebody sees like a pair of off-white you know chicago ones in my brain i'm automatically thinking like jesus this person's spending or spending $6,000 to put something on their feet.

In reality, it's like you never know. You have no idea if that was a gift to them. You have no idea. But it's just the fact that like that's a perception now. And totally it's it's kind of the same way with just anything that is limited. And Nike kind of does a really good job of doing that. They like always under supply the market and they keep coming out with new models new colorways so it's like they have they have the right methodology

down to keep the hype up um but i guess it's also a question of like how long does this last because you know trends die down certain ones come back up but at the end of the day like the more and more i look at it from the side just like there's a lot of young young kids super into this like yeah this is this is like their this is a little kids like a hustler's dream with what money though that's the real question that's the thing like where are they getting the capital to start buying like easies that are selling a limited drop at like 2k a pair but that's the thing it's like some the retail cost from is 220 so it's like they need to save It's like some, the retail cost of them is 220. So it's like, they need to save up enough to make, okay.

The retail of a Jordan one high is 190. So somebody saves up enough for, for that 190. Then they sell that shoe for 300 starts like that. Just start reinvesting into the business. And I've seen, I mean, listen, there's obviously other kids who are just like in beneficial positions. So their parents could help them out, you know, purchase something because they have confidence that they could sell it. They're showing them like, look at StockX.

Like I put it here and like the automatic return is here. And to be honest, like I wish I knew about this when I was younger. It's just like I liked shoes when i was young but i never like had the understanding that like oh if i just go for this release and i have the item i could then just make money on that well that's another question though because you're talking about like when the latest jordan comes out into retail as a 190 or something like that to use that example and then you can flip it for 300 you know with stocks which is what i base like my knowledge of how to put this market together off of when a stock ipos it doesn't mean that place

isn't going to go out of business or it doesn't mean that if it comes out at 30 a share it's not going to be down at 15 in two weeks when these shoes drop it seems like a lot of the markets like oh yeah you just buy it it's going gonna be up Is that more prevalent because once they drop they're not made anymore. So it's automatically gonna add like collector value I mean they do do like limited restocks of certain shoes So like you'll see in stock like on StockX whenever I'm like a major restock happens the price will dip So like a good example of this was the Yeezy breads, the black Yeezys with the red letters on the side. They were made super popular and they came out initially in 2017, $220. I think they started restocking for like $400, $500.

They didn't restock them for a real, real long time and eventually they got up to like $1,100, $1,200, like six times the price of the actual shoe. That's by design, obviously. But then Adidas decided to restock them in 2020. And the price dropped all the way down to like $400. Like now they're selling for like $460, $480. But that's the thing. It's like they control a lot of that supply. So that's what like as long as they keep the supply low enough and people continuously want these like new colors

that's that's all it is it's just different color blockings of like the same shoe yeah but in the same regards like that's what collectors do with like pretty much anything that has just like slight variation there's like same thing like funko pops or just like all these other like collectible items it's like it's the same toy there's a different variation it's like it's the same toy. There's just different variations. It's like a different player. It's a different person. It's a crazy concept to me though because it is a utility. Like a Funko toy. I got two of them right here and I bought them for $12. Maybe they're worth under $20.

I don't know. But like that's – or a trading card. Like that, maybe you put it on the wall or you have it sitting on your desk or you put it in a safe and it's never made again that kind of thing i get that shoes though are utility in the sense that you wear them right we put them on our feet i remember when i was a kid the biggest shoes out there like it i didn't realize until like seventh grade that like the biggest shoes were jordans because grown up in philly area the biggest shoes were iversons if up in Philly area, the biggest shoes were Iverson's. If you didn't have Iverson's like, who were you?

That was the one time I was ever like about shoes. And I remember my buddy, Nico and I got the Iverson answers. I think they were, this is like maybe Oh two, something like that right after the championship run. And it was the one that had the, it had the flip over on it.

Yeah. So the questions were sick but they were like kind of like a throwback kind of shoe the new one was like going to the new era with like where you don't see the laces and shit and i remember wearing them for the first time i think we both got them like the same day and i just like looked down we were at school and i'm like what do we do now like what do we do now like wait no no we can't get creases in this bitch you know what i mean exactly yeah so it's different when you're looking at sneakers because you're supposed to wear them the thing is a lot of people who are buying this stuff not just people who are like coming into markets who are

just always going to buy things to have supply and demand to you know flip them and stuff not day traders i'm saying like people will actually buy them and like hold them for a long time they hold them yeah that like they don't wear them storage unit like saran wrapped like they put it in a vault essentially because they know the market is only going to go up and like in the same and the reason because like because it's a utility it decreases the supply even more yes because like now okay there's no more and that's why even selling used, like people sell used shoes for profits. People have bought in shoes, worn them for a year and a half, and because the value of that shoe has exponentially increased, they can sell the used shoe that they wore for two years for more than they bought it for. Wait a second.

Okay, there's a question. This is my first stupid question today. So just as a note, I said this before, but I'm a novice with this stuff. I'm just so fucking curious about it so some of my listeners who are sneaker heads are gonna be yelling at me asking some of these things but when i'm seeing all those shoes trade on stock x are you telling me that even when i see like a 2015 jordan whatever the fuck with the collaboration that it's never been worn yeah those are stock x only sells brand new holy shit i didn't realize that yeah so those are people

those are people buying shoes who have no intention most likely most of them unless they're buying it on the open market because they actually want it they're buying it with the intention of just holding it as an asset and like putting it in a display case a good percentage of them especially it depends on the type of shoe so it's like if it's one of those like $5,000 shoes, listen, if you're somebody who can afford to wear them, you probably are buying them to wear them. But if you are somebody who's just a collector and, you know, you know the value of it's going to increase but you need it in the collection, you're literally just going to buy and throw it in a display case. But for the majority of like the general release Jordans, they're bought up for multitudes of reasons like people will buy them up just to wear them people will buy them to hold them as like investments

like people legitimately treat them as stocks now um yeah and in to be honest like a lot of store owners i know also just buy right off stock guy because they're just like i can't get enough supply from like other people locally i'm missing certain certain sizes. I need, I have like a bunch of people who are like specifically this size. So I'll just take the hit, pay all the fees, whatever. And like the StockX is a good tool for us to better understand the market. Cause like before StockX was,

was before StockX was there, it was essentially eBay. eBay would be the way that you like dictated the value of the shoe or just general knowledge, I guess. But now it's like there's so much additional information given to people about all of these releases because all of them have transitioned to like almost all online. Or like at least the information has all been transferred to online.

And how much of the percentage is going through StockX roughly? That's putting you on the spot. I can Google that. Yeah, I mean – Is it more than? Roughly. That's putting you on the spot. I can Google that. Yeah, I mean. Is it more than half? No. It's not? Wow.

No. I mean, they move a lot of shoes. Like, they move a very disturbingly large amount of shoes. But, I mean, there's other places that definitely do it. Like, eBay sells a ton of shoes. Goat sells a ton of shoes. You can even sell on Grailed. People are doing hand-to-hand transactions it's just like stock X is the place as like the last resort because they take a good

percentage of your of like the fee what is that like what's the cut I think it's like 13 total holy yeah that's a Ponzi scheme yeah no it's that's crazy and the 13 percent imagine 13 on like a on like a seven eight,000 pair of Dior ones. Suddenly I like the government better. Jesus Christ. No, but that's the main thing. It's just like it doesn't make a lot of sense for people who, if you can find it for lower, that's the thing.

But if you're a collector and you're looking for some of those like grail, grail items, StockX is good because it finally consolidated the market into a place where it's just like this is a big platform to sell the sneakers everywhere else you can look you never have like the the true authenticity of the sneaker and you really don't even get that with stock x or go like i can tell you horror stories of like ordering off stock x and then having the item either go missing the item gets shipped to me it's the wrong item the item gets shipped to me damaged and the whole entire time you're literally just like try and talk to this multi billion dollar company who's taking a massive cut of the shoe and they don't want like their

customer service is awful that's not good man it's that's not good and that's why people kind of like... It's shitty and it's kind of a necessary evil. Mostly because for people who just want the shoes but they don't have access. If you live in rural Oklahoma and you're a big sneakerhead. And I'm using Oklahoma as a random example. I don't know if there's any sneaker stores out there. But if there's no sneaker stores in your local area and you really want these shoes you at least know that you can get them almost 100 guaranteed authentic from stock x um but to be honest like i've i bought a stock x and like

had shoes sent in they're fake like just and i have to then prove to them that i didn't swap out the shoes for a fake, like half the time. They'll literally, they don't have that system in place to check that. They do middleman. They do, but they are awful at it. Like,

I mean, they, they're generally okay, but they make mistakes like a fairly large amount of mistakes. And that's why having sneaker stores or people coming into like retailers, that's why it's even an option because like, at the end of the day, like most of the online purchase, like online dominates the market, but specifically for like this niche, there's a very, there's a very specific like demand to like, know that like they're

real. And there's, there's a lot of ways to tell that things are authentic, especially if you like, if you're able to get this pair out of like any of these foot stores like a foot action or a foot locker or champs or whatever if you can get one of those pairs you know those are 100 real if you can compare every shoe against that one you're good and you would think stockics would be able to do that too every shoe though there's all different kinds of shoes well that's the thing you have to get every release oh exactly okay yeah that's an important yeah important little side note there but yeah i got you that's you know i don't understand at all in the modern day that excuse like or not excuse like that whole uh you know what our customer service isn't that great

which they probably don't say they probably don't admit it to themselves but oh you need to google it yeah i mean i and and i will i'll look into some stories on that because i'm sure there's some doozies on there people buying you know twenty thousand dollar shoes and it's like the wrong one there's instagram pages like specifically dedicated to like exposing like oh cases you got to send me that after it works oh it is it is it's hilarious but also like painful like yeah we we just there's a big reseller who's out of connecticut and he just shipped out a pair of off-white chicagos they sold for i think fifty seven hundred dollars payout one shoe almost six thousand dollars yeah he sends it to them it's in like it's en route to them uh and it's in route for like two weeks and then they eventually

tell them like hey you sent us an empty box there's nothing in there and now he's literally trying like he obviously took video of him shipping it out because this is a very very high value item but like the fact that he even has to go through this like what i have to videotape myself shipping out every pair of shoes smart man though yeah you know that's i mean i i feel you shouldn't have to do that for big ticket items it makes sense but like man i got it like what if i have an online store that ships out 500 pairs i need to have a video camera doing this whole entire thing and then chopping it all up for every single order just so i can sort it out dude it's not like it's a lot it it just surprises me that a company especially one who's cornered a market like that, obviously you filled me in.

There's a bunch of other places you can do this. But when you say to the average person, like an idiot like me, and you say, where do people do sneakers? I go, StockX, right? Like it's the Facebook of its generation in a way. I don't understand how companies can look at the precedent that like Amazon has set here and not match that. I understand no one has those resources, but we talk a lot of shit on Amazon because we don't know where the fuck they're going to stop.

They're kind of taking over the world here. At this point, it's just the global... It's a little scary. Bezos. Bezos has got some serious plans. Yeah, exactly. He's now trying to compete with Elon for space domination. Yeah, what's that about, man?

I don't need any of that. Just let Elon do it. He's doing it okay. I mean, okay, competition's good and all that, but it's like, dude, not from the richest guy on planet Earth. Let's get another scientist to do it. Yeah, exactly. Let's get the engineer in there.

That's how I feel. But that negativity aside because it is something we talk about they have created one of the best companies i have ever seen i can't decide if it's the best it's pretty close you know steve jobs obviously set an unbelievable precedent at apple but either way it's it's right up there and the thing that i admire so much about what bezos left at the center of everything from day one was irrational customer service. And it wasn't even just as

simple as the customer's always right. It was like how are we going to, like, let's cut out time, let's give convenience, let's get perfection. And it's actually, it's affected the workers too, because like, have you ever looked into some of the restrictions those people have? I've heard. I've heard recently on certain other podcasts where it's just like they're talking about what some of these warehouse workers have to go through.

Oh, were you listening to Crystal and Sager on Rode? Oh, my God. It was incredible. They're talking about shitting in a bag. Shitting in a bag. It takes them five minutes to get across the warehouse, and they have a 10-minute break, so they have no time at all. I mean, it's surprising that it took this long for some like crazy to pop out because like listen agreed the amount of stuff that they

move and the fact that they could ship it to you the next day is ridiculous in terms of like just a general concept but the fact that they're able to like execute on it in the same way that like when certain like world cup uh stadiums are built in 90 days, there's just a certain type of – A lot of people died. There's a certain assumption that you have to take on to be like, wow, what an incredible feat was done. That's a good one.

On the side note here, I was surprised that that hasn't been talked about more. I was very happy to hear Crystal bring that up because you see these stories. They are online, but they kind of get like, you know, poo-poo to the side. But all that aside, their worker treatment aside, if you have a problem with Amazon,

oh, bro, like you are set. They will get you. All you have to do is go through the first thing where they make you say like, are you sure you want to talk to a rep? Say yes. Boom, you're on right away refund here's a label send it back no questions asked incredible man and then they'll even follow up

after like a after you return an item that was like damaged or something they'll be like hey it was glad you got the new one how's that making out and it's like that's the standard everyone has because we all use amazon and then i hear stories like this and it's like I'm talking about items that could be $20 on Amazon that they do that with. Someone's talking about sending a $6,000 pair of shoes from Connecticut to Portland or wherever they were sending it. I mean that's an investment. That's like a – that's an asset. The thing is like in that person's mind, like any logical person, when you go through this transaction, you're expecting that money to arrive to your bank. Yes.

And when you're sitting there, and it's like, the other thing we could talk about is the fact that it takes forever for them to do this. They have, I mean, they're working on building up distribution centers throughout the US and Europe to make it better. But it's still like, you place an order it could arrive in like four days but it also could arrive in like four weeks like the the time span for a certain item to arrive varies all the time and that also matters if you're someone who's like moving on price action too yeah like let's say i buy i've been eyeing up a pair and it gets to my price let's say 2000 was kind of my strike point my limit yeah right and, yeah. Right? And then I order it, and while it's in route, it's supposed to be here in four days.

Two weeks in, it's still not here, and the market's moving up to $5,000. And I know, like, because I know the market in that case, and I don't, but if I did, hypothetically. But that's what they did. But that's what I'm saying. They wouldn't have it in their possession, so they couldn't even sell it.

Exactly. And, like, they kind of, something kind of like that happened when, like, kobe incident happened like a lot of people went and started buying up um kobe shoes when like they heard the news and the price for kobe shoes was low and then people were looking into the future being like okay well these are obviously gonna be worth a lot more um how is that panned out by the way it's so like it really sucks to see people like really trying to only make money off of it. It's like, listen, it makes sense. Like it's a thing that people want and it's a limited release.

So like, and because of the incident, just like any other like incident when a celebrity or like an athlete passes away, like their memorabilia becomes more expensive. But like the fact that you were able to watch it in real time on stock x like i remember watching that incident and the first thing that came to my mind was like oh watch watch all of kobe's shoes just explode in value and we had we i had some stocked up so i was just like i'm still still sitting on them because i'm not moving those shoes anymore it's like even getting a kobe jersey nowadays costs like 400 i'm just like i just want a kobe. It's not even like a signed, it's a regular jersey. So it's, he is a complete, like it was one of those instantaneous things when he died because of how it happened and how, like everything around it. Instant legend. Yeah. Like not, he was already a legend, but like, you know, in that threshold of like, we're going to be talking about like Babe Ruth and Kobe fucking Bryant.

And he deserved it. I mean, we were able to like, that's the thing. Like with athletes like Jordan, like we were able to give him his flowers the whole entire time. We still are. He's still getting it. He's still considered the GOAT to many. I want to come back to that, by the way. Stay with us. And for Kobe, it's like we were obviously giving him his flowers when he was on the Lakers and all that.

But it's just like he was just starting to do like the like more like he he won an act oscars i think right he did yeah he he started like multiple other things multiple other ventures on top of that being a father who like was raising a potentially one of like the top prospects for like the wnba yeah it's like it's so sad yeah it's one of the the shittiest things that's happened especially in 2020 you know what's so weird like the universe works in really funky ways and I I struggle with that one a lot because when celebrities have died in the past who like I really admire like Whitney Houston comes to mind I was very sad like oh my god Whitney died right

but like you know not to be uncaring here but a week later life kind of went on yeah you know with him it didn't it was like it was eerie yeah kobe doesn't die like kobe kobe with the mama especially like this or like because we've all like at least at least me i woke up every morning at turn on sports center and like you're sitting there at middle school eating your cereal before the bus comes and you you see the top 10 you see all the highlights he's always on there on top of that it's just like like every like you know corny white kid from new jersey we all try to play basketball and even though lebron james was technically like the rising star it's like kobe was just the best like whatever people want to

say about him like he was unstoppable like whatever his mindset put him in a place where it was just like i'm gonna win with lebron you kind of see that too but it's like spurts spurts yeah it's not it's not the same it's not and and that's no i i hate when we get into all the comparing stuff it happens i get it but like LeBron's incredible. He's his own thing, right? I appreciate, I mean, he's a specimen. I watch him play. It's unbelievable, but he's different, right?

Like different, cut from a different cloth, different generation than Kobe. Kobe was a little different than Jordan, but they were creepily similar, you know? Like they were a slightly different generation, but they had a lot of overlap there, which is probably why LeBon gets batted around with that but it's just kind of eerie to me because you know i looked at that probably like a month in but i wasn't and by that i mean like i looked at some of the memorabilia and stuff and like what the prices were doing i looked at

the shoes too and i remember it was exploding but i didn't look at that right away because i was so shell-shocked and what's really weird is you mentioned you just reminded me of it because you mentioned all these things that he was doing after his career he was doing an incredible job i mean he invested i'm gonna get the company wrong i want to say it was uh it was like nutra something you know I'm talking about like that energy drink yeah I was gonna say vitamin water that's 50 Cent yeah it's 50. it was an it was another one and it he invested he made like 200 million dollars on it you know he had a venture Capital arm he won an Oscar he was working on stories he was building out a lot for women's basketball and you know he also towards the very end of his life opened up for the first time too

like for real for real for real he sat down with uh Patrick bet David you ever see that yeah phenomenal it's dude when that came out I was my buddy Luke servino is like the biggest Kobe fan ever he was on this podcast too but he was like bro Kobe talked yesterday like I've never heard him You got to hear this and I listened I was like, holy shit So then fast and I realized I hadn't that was September like when I saw it maybe September 2019 and I was like damn I haven't looked at anything Kobe's been doing since he retired and I remember googling and I'm like wow He's up to some shit. Good job. Cope. That's the crazy thing. It's cuz like what?

He just had like a different humility about him. Like, he didn't want, like, he didn't necessarily, like, want all of, like, that praise and attention. He just wanted to get the job done. He wanted to take the results. Yeah. And that, like, it was his biggest goal, but he didn't need a pat on the back from anyone. Like, he really just, like, was on a mission. And every single time, it was just impressive to see, even outside of basketball, he's just, like he he really just like was on a mission and every single time it was

just impressive to see even outside of basketball he's just like he's still succeeding regardless acting like or screenwriting i think he was doing that he was writing books with like pablo uh quelo i've definitely pronounced that wrong but he's like a very famous author you know he was doing all these things and and that interview was so amazing because he took inside his mindset for real, for real, for real, for real. And it's weird because January 2020, I found on YouTube, like sometimes for like two, three weeks in the gym, I'll go through a little phase where I will just listen to like good music with like people speaking shit at me in the back you know what i mean like whether it's whether it's like the Eric the hip-hop preacher exactly the motivational yes so some guy made i think like an 11 and a half minute video from that interview and i was listening to dude when he died i was listening to it working out when i got the text and i was

just like bro what the fuck the weirdest thing is like i remember that event as vividly as i remember like 9-11 and like 9-11 i was still super super young but i still i remember when they rolled in the tv and we watched it and i got like excuse from school my parents like how they reacted in the same way like i i was in hoboken hanging out with my friends and one of my friends we were just like chilling it was like a regular day it was around noon we like somebody i think one of my buddies was like yo did kobe die and i was like i was like no and then i immediately started googling it and i started seeing like tmz reports i was like ah that's bullshit like it's that's nothing because tmz was the first one to broke who broke yeah they did and then you're sitting there you're like

nah there's no way and then more people start texting you and they're like yo did kobe die and then you're literally like it like you start getting more and more worried and you start turning on the news and start starting to show on the news and then the longer and longer it happened i was just like it literally just like you got like the goosebumps i was literally just like how why and then just like searching for answers there was there was like one point where they thought it was this whole family or something you remember that yeah that was for like 10 minutes and i'm like i mean his daughter being on there as it turned turned out, was tragic as hell.

But it was like, oh, no, it was all of them except Vanessa. And I was like, no, we can't. No, yeah, yeah. We can't deal with that. And even the fact that it was like that many people, it was – I remember still looking up to try to find the confirmation of the helicopter overview because they had like the doppler of like where where it went offline i was just like i was like okay so that's as real as it gets if it's if they're showing you doppler footage like it was i remember it was like foggy days they weren't showing you like the the scene of the crime like the crash but the fact that it was

that it was that like, like etched into my mind, I still remember it. And I mean, it's fairly recent, but it's just like not a lot of other things in my life. I had that much impact where it's just like, and I,

then again, like I played baseball my whole life. I'm not even like a basketball player, but like Kobe himself was something more than basketball. He was just like that same type of mentality of just like, whatever you want, go get it. And as much as you hear that from other people, it's like he's the one who preached it.

He preached it and he practiced it. He did it. And you heard all the stories of other athletes in the gym with him. And they're sitting there taking up shots and they're spending like two hours in there. And Kobe was in there the whole entire time. And he just kept working until that person left just so they'd know you did not work me he was a maniac man yeah he was a maniac and there's so much of a legacy there for people

to follow and it's still it's still something that when i think about it like he'll pop up on some picture for something and i i have to like take a second to be like oh yeah he's not here anymore you know and it's it's a wild thing to me but it it doesn't surprise me sadly that when that happened immediately like merchandise and obviously on your focus shoes started moving but what does like when i step back from not being surprised it's still because it was so shocking and it was him and fucking everyone's some sort of fan of his yeah it's like who the fuck was on there trading the shoot you know what i mean yeah like how's that you you're you're a sneaker head to the core your first thought wasn't oh i'm gonna go on stock x

i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go buy up kobe yeah it's it's morbid it's like up but i knew i knew immediately that it was gonna happen but the fact that i was like i was really hoping because kobe was such an influential sneaker like kobe's aren't the biggest selling sneakers but like especially within like the basketball community if you look at like half of the nba players they're wearing kobe's because ko because Kobe's apparently Kobe fives, Kobe sixes are the most comfortable on court basketball, like basketball shoe. Well, actually, that's an important question, too, because I think about this like that guy, PJ Tucker, I think he's like the biggest sneaker head in the league. You want to hear something real funny? Let's hear.

He DM'd me yesterday. No, he didn't. No, seriously. Come on. I'll show you it after. That's fucking awesome. He's like, how many shoes does he own? He's at thousands at thousands yeah he's got like a warehouse of him or some shit he has multiple houses full of them he has he has a specific uh guy on the team who carries his bag of like just

shoes it's like i think for away games he takes like close to 100 pairs. He's apparently changed the maximum amount of times he's changed his shoes during game was six different times. Wait, hold on. There's a lot to unpack here. Guy carries around 100 pairs of them at a time, whoever this body man is. And not just like whatever shoes. Oh, no, no. Crazy.

They're nice. They're nice. Number one, that means he does wear a lot of these, so they're used. He wears all of them. So he's not looking to sell any of them. Oh, he doesn't sell anything. No, he just collects them. He's a monster.

What the fuck, dude? This is a lot of money. He's got houses full of them. He wore Yeezy Red octobers that like brand new they sell for like 15 20 000 like he wore them during a basketball game no he did whatever because that was my next question i the nba is the best of all the leagues but like letting their players you know and put some swag you know what i mean like i'd love that they do that but there's still like some standards so when i see a lot of these players wearing shoes who i know are like sneaker

heads off the floor the shoes look great but it's i can tell it's like all right that's not a ten thousand dollar pair i was looking at pjs though a few days ago and then i googled like pj tucker shoes in game and i'm looking at some of these i'm like jesus christ like he's actually wearing some real ones so you're saying though that a lot of the players don't do that they wear like what's comfortable and what at least looks good yeah occasionally like i mean a fair bit of them have their own signature line like i mean harden has his own westbrook has his own variation of like uh something and then you know jordan's lebron's like there's tons of options but a lot of people seem to gravitate towards kobe's in particular i don't know if it's just this year but a lot of people seem to gravitate towards Kobe's in particular. I don't know if it's just this year, but a lot of people who have like college basketball players who I'm friends with, they've all said that like in terms of comfort, Kyrie's and Kobe's are the best. Well, like Harden though, for example, because he, if I'm remembering correctly, I might not be.

Isn't he signed with like a Chinese brand? He is with Adidas. Yeah. Dwayne Wade went with Li Ning. That's's it Dwayne Wade was the one that did that so signing with a company that's not Nike not Adidas something like that and going outside the country obviously China is a huge market we can get to that if you know something about that imagine you do but like it within this country how much of that is like all right he's gonna have a signature shoe like oh leaning doesn't exist here yeah so like what's is that just purely like i'm just gonna be dwayne there's a lot of people in china who love basketball shoes oh yeah and leaning is is

dominant it's like the other thing that i think dwayne wade really prioritized was like the fact that he wanted like the most attention towards like his opinion on these shoes so like he and that's the thing like when you go to a massive corporation they're like well this is going to cost that x amount of dollars if we want to do this or you want to make it this material blah blah like they're obviously going to give you pushback unless you're somebody like lebron like even being dwayne wade i'm sure they're not going to make them they might make them let them make like a signature shoe but they're not going to do like multiple variations or like he has a new idea or something like that and they like fully put it full into effect with

leaning i feel like he has more creative control where he could just do like whatever interesting well that actually opens up a whole different bag of worms then because my first time that i ever got acclimated with this whole designer collab i think we were talking i can't tell if this was on the podcast or before when we were just talking so maybe not but like i was going over where you know all these designers they drop these shoes and you're like all right it was on the podcast where you like the supply is low they do it for the attention for it and then you know it drives all the other sales fine my first time ever being exposed to that was watching entourage back in the day because fucking turtle was buying like the yakimotos or whatever and it was some

dude with like a spray can in a garage and i'm just like that's not real those entourage turtles are limited samples there's like a few of them like floating around those are like thousands of dollars come on yeah crazy i i actually believe that but i i guess because they kept them around but that was my first time like oh wait those are i think they were nikes they were air forces yeah yeah they were air force i'm like wait that's like a real company like how's this dude in a garage spray painting that and like they then sell it so it got me thinking because like we were saying when i was growing up it was like you had the jordans you had the air force you had the iversons you had the shacks which were their whole thing which

shout out the shack for making affordable shoes he did his thing he did it fucking awesome yeah i like that but still you know it's not like you know you were excited about the shacks or whatever so you'd see all these shoes and it's like that was it whatever the supply was we could talk about that too but like they put out the iverson question you put out the question it wasn't like we put out the question then this guy's spray painting it and spray paint it and there's 10 of them yeah so when did that start and like is that a whole separate arm of like a company like nike so you're talking about like additional customization yes so like there's a couple i mean people do customs here and there, and a lot of them don't necessarily add value. There's a few people, a few designers or a few artists

who have done something like that. The one that comes to mind is Off-White. Yep, I actually have that on my computer. There you go. Exactly. And so Virgil Abloh owned Off-White. He's the creative director at Louis Vuitton now. It's Louis Vuitton. Louis Vu the creative director at Louis Vuitton now. And he...

It's Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton. I'm kidding. No. And he had an all-blue foam Air Force One that he did a very limited release of at the Museum of Contemporary Art,

so they're called the MCAs. And there was a guy i think his name was cass and he did like to me it also doesn't make a lot of sense but i'll explain the whole thing okay he had these blue mca uh air force ones which were already like about like two thousand dollars a piece he took 10 of them and he scribbled like white paint all over them and he wrote like cass on the bottom of it and he scribbled like white paint all over them and he wrote like cast on the bottom of it and like like random like very random abstract type art and those shoes now go for like way way more than the original ones and that's the thing it's like he to a lot of people

ruined a two thousand dollar pair of like virgil collaborative Nikes by making his own collaboration on top of a collaboration. But like people seek it out, collectors, because they – What year was that? Like roughly. MCAs were two years ago. So that wasn't that long ago. No. But this has been going on a lot longer.

Like where there's some of it at least. Like with Nike, for example. Like you've had these other – i guess these guys who do these sneakers they were artists first obviously to some respect but like did they become known for something else like actually paintings first and then started fucking around with sneakers or were there guys that just came up and they're like yo i got great designs on these shoes um i mean i don't think there was too many of the people who are just like randomly like just design like shoe designers and nike picked them up to do collaborations a lot of the people who like the very famous ones

like jeff staple like he was a skate shop owner he did all of like the he did a lot of stuff for like nike sbs uh and the sb dunk um and then on top like there's other yeah i think the majority of them were there were always collaborations but like the hype behind these types of collaborations, it's like you're getting, you're getting people like Virgil White to collaborate with Nike. Yeah. You're getting like Louis Vuitton, the top designer company to collaborate with Nike. That's, I think what's pulling a lot more people in because like, there's already a massive audience for people in designer specifically, but then there's also a massive audience for people for just nikes yeah you get a crossover with those two people now you have a much larger audience who wants a much more limited product and he's been doing good because like he makes none of these sure and he always does like he's kind of inspiring a lot of these new

designers of sneakers where it's like the big thing the big niche that he had was the fact that he like he made it deconstructed like he like cut off the top to do like exposed foam and then he wrote like air on the air unit what do you mean exposed foam so like on the top of an air force it's usually stitched over like yeah you it's just flush and covered he cut the top and it was just like he would sometimes use like it's pretty much just like thick foam and he would just like you it's much more comfortable it's like weird feeling to be honest but that was his whole idea of just like deconstructed and simplistic yeah like down to the bones type thing and i mean he also kind of did that with off-white

where it's like the construction deconstructed vibe and people people loved it with off-white and then as soon as they started applying it to nike shoes they started going wild because they were like we love jordan ones you're gonna do off-white with jordan ones sign me up so nike's the moral of the story is nike lets the internet and buzz around shit dictate who they approach to just say like, oh, let's try this with this brand or whatever. Yeah, I'd agree with that. Yeah, there's, that's the thing. Like if you have enough hype behind you or honestly, if you just know the right people at these companies, you'll probably get like, you can get a shot. Like there's new designers coming out every

every single you know they're doing an initiative for women so they hire a lady may they're doing an initiative for um like more uh accessible sneakers for like disabled so they hire somebody to do the flat the nike fly ease um they're like that's the things like as a shoe company you're like how much innovation can you perform into like just footwear a lot that's the thing is like as a shoe company, you're like, how much innovation can you perform into like just footwear? A lot. That's the thing. They, they're always doing something new, you know, battery powered shoes, self-lacing shoes, like lightweight shoes, sock shoes, fly knit shoes.

It's just like, that's, that's the nature of them. Like they, they give you all the options, but for the stuff that people really, really want, they don't let everyone have it. So that's what creates this excessive demand of like, I need it. And then when people need it, they start talking about it. And when they start talking about it, the company starts getting free promotion. They don't have to pay anything for marketing because Twitter markets it for them. So they have no marketing campaign on it.

I'm sure they do. But it's not small. I mean, when they did the Colin Kaepernick marketing it. I'm sure they do. But it's not small. I mean, when they did the Colin Kaepernick marketing campaign, I'm sure they paid him a nice check. And that was... There was a lot behind that, too. It wasn't just... What did they even come out with for him?

There were a few things, I think. There was a couple. Right? But that was like... The Kaepernick Air Force One. It was just all white, and it had a silhouette like him with the fro. But then he also got like a clothing line though.

I believe. I think he might have gotten like some apparel. Yeah. But that's the thing. Like for the clothing, it matters a lot less to be honest. Like some of that apparel sits not sold out for weeks on end. And if it's like unless it's like very limited designers like when they did something with ama manier which is like another like boutique company who's just like very very high quality like they always just do stuff with like suede and like thick leathers tumbled

leathers they collaborated with them on multiple projects and then they did a clothing line and like they really upped the quality on that clothing line because i'm on here was literally like if you want to put my if i if we're going to put our name on this, you're going to do this. So I think you have to have that type of control or that type of market demand to even tell Nike something like that. I mean, I'd be very remiss though if I didn't at least highlight that you bring up the example of Louis Vuitton going across with Nike and making a shoe or something like that i don't think any of that stuff really would have happened much and maybe i'm just totally naive on this without the internet number one and number two in particularly without the massive rise as like a premium brand

of the main streetwear brands so you know obviously we talk about supreme we talk about off-white there's others as well like some i don't even know how to pronounce them but you know it's like you know they're selling a shirt it's it's a thousand dollars it's ten thousand dollars and yet it's also built off of i guess like comfortable fits you know my buddy today i was on the phone when he was talking about in miami when you see people walking around you know no offense but in this case usually a drug dealer and they're walking around in like fucking sweatpants and a hoodie and you think you know they're just going to the gym but that sweatpants and a hoodie costs like 15k yeah and they're wearing designer streetwear which 15 years ago that wasn't a thing no and that's why i think it has a little bit more

staying power because it's becoming the new trend of fashion like instead of being like it's becoming more presentable just like in in general like people are now like more accepting towards like wearing like bread 11s to a wedding or like yes it's just becoming like a mainstay for these people who are ultra passionate to like pull it off and once other people see them pulling it off they're kind of like well that's the other thing it's like a lot of us we just want to be comfortable like that's that's the main thing i'm just if i don't have to put on a suit and tie bro who the fuck invented a tie yeah who invented that somebody wanted to

hang themselves that's what i'm saying that's the only solution because like very smart very smart that we're getting rid. It's not that we're fully getting rid of that shit. Like, you know, I guess it still has its place in certain things. But I like what you just said. It's about comfort. And then the other thing is here, that comfort also happens to look really fucking good to some people when they're doing it. That's the thing.

It's like it's I'm sure like the colors and the patterns and all that's going to change and certain things are going to get super trendy. And like it'll be a fad towards one direction or the other. But like right now, the biggest thing is like neutral colors, but just super comfy. It doesn't matter. Like it needs to match with everything. It doesn't have to look super flashy. Everybody likes this like bummy look. And to be honest, I love it too.

It's really nice to come into work feeling comfortable the whole entire time. But people think I'm like, I'm trendy. I'm like, dude, sure. Yeah, I'll it too. It's really nice to come into work feeling comfortable the whole entire time, but people think I'm trendy. I'm like, dude, sure, yeah, I'll take it. But to be honest, in the majority of my thinking, I'm like, I'm going to be on my feet for eight, nine hours. I'm not trying to do it in jeans and some rugged hoodie that doesn't feel good. Something like that. Yeah, and now with the stay-at-home culture, it's like a must.

These people, they're calling them back to the office. They're like, you want me to wear a suit? I fucking burned them all. They're gone, right? But did you ever have a job where you had to wear a suit or something like that? Like something you couldn't decide on to work? Yeah, well, I mean, I was decided very quickly. It was usually just khakis and a button-down.

It's not too bad, but it's pretty lame yeah it was that's the thing it was um i mean it was a good job coming out of college just because like i needed a job um what was it so i was a data analyst for a company that worked with the olympics and we yeah we pretty much just did ticketing hospitality for certain regions um so we worked with the Olympics and the world cup and we dabbled a little bit with like F1, but it was pretty much like all these like super premier events that were like super hard to get tickets to get into blah, blah, blah. And what were you doing? So you were, so I was the ticketing data analyst.

So I just did a lot of the analytics for like how to better sell, who to sell to, what sells the best, how do we like show it on the website, what are people focusing on. What's the optimal price, stuff like that. Well, that's the thing. So the pricing was already dictated just because like Olympics. But the main thing was like trying to package, you know, an experience together where people would find the value for the amount of money so like a lot of us we would do like hospitality on top of like transporting you in a limo or like giving you front access to like certain events or like

letting you cut the line for certain other things or getting into like an exclusive lounge or something like that um and we coupled that with like olympic tickets world cup tickets and then like other stuff like that and it was very interesting just to like find out how all this worked because like it's very not simple it's like not elementary at all they pretty much force companies to like bid for certain countries access so like if you want to sell tickets, it's pretty much like an automatic monopoly when you get the bid for the country. So like we were in charge of the United States, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Greece, a couple of other small countries. So a random crew. Yeah. The big ones were us and Australia.

Yeah. Um, but essentially once you get the bid you're the only authorized ticket reseller for that region i thought you were just on the data that's where you confused me a little bit you were doing the data side but you were also your company was on the reselling side as well so that's that was the whole business the whole business was getting the tickets from the ioc i got you now yeah okay i follow but you were the data analyst at that company yes got it so and then what was that part you explained i just want to understand you were saying once you have the ability to set the bid you monopolize the market because you're the only one that is actually authorized to sell those tickets yeah so you pretty much place a bid to

become the atr the atr is the authorized ticket reseller for that location. And the whole process is fairly like it's publicized, but it's also like sketchy. If you have a lot of interest in like Olympics and stuff like that, there's a really good book called Circus Maximus. I forgot the author, but it shows you a lot about like the backdoor stuff that happens when you are able to monopolize like once you become the atr essentially if you need to olympic tickets and you live in the u.s the only person you're buying them from is that company nobody else has the right to sell you them nobody else has the can't even get them how did they get that relationship i don't know if you said that yeah it's it's i to be honest like i don't even know how they really got it they knew a guy who knew a guy who handed him a little bag a little stack and a manila envelope and, you know, the rest was history.

Yeah, no, I mean, they've been around for a while. And I think they popped off during like a time where the Olympics was near their region. So like they probably just knew the right people and not going to take away credit. Like they do work really hard. But it's like it's a very unique business model for something that's so major it's like the olympics are a global event and you're telling me one company can like sell you tickets from the like from australia i never knew this no yeah it's very very non-common knowledge because like it's also like imagine being a somebody who like really really wants

to go to the olympics to even find us like it's like a few google searches like you don't just like find us out of the blue so there's no i never thought about that because i've never thought about going to the olympics it's never been close to me but there's there's no like stub hub or anything nope at all nope so you literally can't like if you're getting tickets even if you google around like you pretty much better be getting it from like John on the street corner that says I have tickets or you're going to this company if you're going online. So the only way you can do it is you have to go to that company. Whatever company is the ATR for the country you live in is your main residency. Even when you're at that country's Olympics. So like say Tokyo is going to have their Olympics, even if you fly to Tokyo, but you're a US citizen,

you have a US passport, they're only going to allow you to buy tickets from the company who's the ATR of your country. So like- How'd you get into this? This is wild. I never heard of this before. Yeah, it's, I mean, my family were friends with the owners

and so my parents are both uh they both own their own businesses my dad does landscaping and my mom does interior design oh wow and my mom met with uh met with them and did like the curtains for their house and like some draperies and stuff like that and i interned there when i was like i think it was in between summers at one of my years at college that's what does it man you do the internship you're set i did the internship and then i applied and they were like we could find a role for you and i was like dope um and it was it was good for the time being uh it really sucks that because like i showed up right when pyong chang was over so like they finished korea came

back what year was that 2018. okay and so like everyone's telling stories about like oh do you remember this night in pyeongchang we were hammered like a lot of these fun like crazy stories being in korea um and as like as we get got closer and closer to tokyo and then like they gave the covid news oh my my God. I was literally just like, man, I've been working here, trying to get to Tokyo. I was, I was looking out. I was, so like the other thing that it was a curse. It's not, it's not a curse. It was a, it was a blessing in disguise to be honest.

Cause like I did learn a couple of things there, but on top of it, like I had free time and it was income. So like you had a stable job where you were able to like just start making money. Um, and then we had, I just had a lot of free time because like all the stuff for korea was done waiting on info from tokyo by the time they give it to us like you're sitting in the office for like a couple hours a day just doing nothing like it's just like netflix go check your google like do the occasional sheet here and there send it over to whoever and then like the rest of the rest of the day is kind of just like fill your time it's light work light work and then but it would have gotten more busy as you got closer and then you know yeah yeah

exactly so like once once we got info about tokyo we were pretty busy for like a couple weeks um like pretty much where you didn't have any downtime but that's how it was it was like you had a bunch of bunch of free time and then for like a certain time crunch you are just packed with work that's interesting and then you finish that work and then you're like okay now we're waiting for new info or like we're waiting for you know customer orders or then we're waiting for like more data to come in for like any analytics was this in new york jersey jersey we're in jersey uh it was near like the trump golf course area oh down in bedminster bedminster bad they got all the helipads and everything yeah we heard them all flying over the over the place every single day we saw like the

the rioters out on on 206 oh my god oh yeah it was a lot of fun he flew it whenever he would fly into like motown airport i mean the whole goddamn place around there would be shut down yeah they shut like every single i'd be like oh trump's here again fucking guy played golf like 100 times during his presidency i had a drone that like i just got and i was like played around with it i didn't know that they had the control to like look like i had to lower like it auto lowered my drone oh my god i thought you were gonna say they shot it down no no no but like they automatically like it i had no control of the actual device anymore and they just like automatically brought

the the drone back down and i was like uh then after like 10 minutes they let me put it back up but i was like yo technology you didn't have like 10 guys in suits storm your door no that's i mean i was in a public park just like i was in practice making sure i was like even more reason yeah even more reason you got a SWAT team coming around sir sir get your drone out of the airway i'm just trying to take pictures of the dogs like the nice landscape oh my god that's hilarious man so you were in that though then i guess for a couple years or something like that yeah so i was in that so the funny and like again just the blessing and it's like really really couldn't have written it any better but like i was pretty

much planning to quit once the store was opened uh the store was opening on memorial weekend which is like fairly recent like three weeks ago okay wait back up for one sec because i i think i understand now you had plans to open up the sneaker store so during that free time i just started selling sneakers like i was just i would during my lunch break i would have all my orders packed up in the morning i would have them in the back of my car and then during lunch i would drive to ups and usps drop come on drop off all my orders come back to work oh this is genius okay let's back up before we even get to the store so that you were talking about like may 2020 so we're gonna hit the hit the backwards on the timeline here you started your job out of college at this

olympics ticket ponzi scheme in 2018 i know it's not a ponzi scheme no we we jokingly called it the uh the fire festival oh God. That's not good. That's not good. I hope the FBI wasn't tapping your calls, but that's the end of here. They'll be fine. They'll be fine. So like 2018, you do that. But you were into sneakers, you said, like growing up. When did you get exposed to StockX and like the marketplace?

Was that before? I mean, I knew about, I generally knew about it in college, but like I started looking at it like all the time during my free time at work. Excellent. Love that. And I was just like, because, yeah, I do have childhood stories of like, this is maybe when I was 15, 16. We went to Florida, and they were releasing LeBron 9 free gums. And I knew nothing about shoes at this point. I had a pair of LeBron 3s that I loved.

I remember when you took a picture of them like certain parts of it would reflect and i just thought it was like the coolest thing i was just like i have reflective shoes like i was just like it's my first pair of like dope shoes and then we went to like a champs at like a really nice mall in in like the florida area and one of the employees was just like yo we just got these and he just like he like he approached me like real quiet because i was just looking at like a bunch of stuff and he was going to take you to get some blow in the back that's what was really happening like yo let me check let me show you what i actually got um but he he pretty much showed us like yo we got these in today if i was

you i'd buy two of them i was just like why i was like why the hell would i write two of them i was like i don't need two and he was just like buy one and put one away. I promise you, you ain't, you're not going to be upset. And I was just like, and my dad overheard it. He was like, what? Like, why, why, why are you trying to convince us to buy two shoes? Yeah, fuck that. He's just like, yeah. Your dad's going, this is bullshit.

Yeah, this is bullshit. But the whole entire time, he's like really selling us the idea. Like, I'm telling you, like, these are limited release LeBrons. I, I mean, listen, I don't have to sell you them but like i'm telling you you should buy two and then my dad was like all right he'll take one and i'll take one so he we ended up buying two i still have the second pair i think that she was going for like five six hundred it's i mean didn't go up that significantly because it's just like a whatever lebron but still like the fact that a whatever lebron is now doubled its price over I mean has been a long time so that got you

thinking so like that happened way way back and I still had like this passion for like opening up something because like as much as that as the job job that I had was great it really irked me that like there was a certain people in the company that were incompetent and when you deal with incompetence too frequently at least in my perspective when you deal with it too frequently it becomes it becomes a burden like it literally becomes harder to go to work because you know that like you're trying to bring up a good point you're trying to bring out like give some value to the the actual like discussion at hand and instead like the opinion doesn't matter it'll it'll eventually get decided elsewhere it

doesn't really matter what you thought doesn't matter if you had you know something that would like help save money help like expedite a process whatever you think that's a generational thing no i think people in general and this is like it's too simple of a way but it's like people in general are pretty there's gonna people can get pissed people are pretty dumb like there's a lot of dumb dumb people in the world and it's like when you have to explain stuff that's super simple to somebody who's like three times your age it becomes like a like a nuisance to you. You're literally like, I can't, like, how do I continuously try to like be calm about this? How do I continuously try to

be like professional while explaining something so elementary to you where it's just like, how much longer can I tolerate this? So I think there's two layers to that because I agree and disagree where i disagree is i would amend that and i would say it's not as many of them are dumb though there are some who are let's let's be honest like it's just the law of averages there are some people who are fucking dumb yeah but especially if you're talking generationally and you're talking about anything to do with technology or like simple shit to you and me there's a level to which a lot of people have resigned themselves even if they didn't realize it for years that like this isn't my generation i don't understand

it so they're not fucking they don't care but i feel like that's a dumb perspective oh it's so it's very dumb but they don't my point is they don't actively wake up in the morning and say fuck every single thing new that's happening but they do subconsciously and they don't really think about it so i i agree it comes across as dumb but what kills me is when i do see people who are intelligent who have just they just don't give a shit you know and they're like no we used to do it it used to be done a better way like when people say that to me i mean because i worked in corporate job too if you can believe it or not but i wore the fucking suit every day not even the khakis and polo. But, you know, I worked with some great people.

There were certainly some people, like some of the people on my team exactly, like they knew their shit inside and out. And they didn't have to know like new tech trends and stuff because it wasn't applicable at a bank. But there were a lot of people who within like the tools we used at a bank were just like, yo, fuck that or whatever. And I'm like, this is such a simple concept. Such a – you know what I mean? And it makes things easier and yet they weren't dumb. They just didn't give a fuck about it. And that always bothered me.

And I think in our generation because we grew up with tech especially and learning how to make things not just like work hard but how do we get convenience too. Like you're a prime example with your job you knew when you were on you knew when you were off but you were never off because you're like that's time that's time I won and you obviously hit the jackpot here using it smart right like older Generations don't think like that you know it's like a simulation to them it's like you go to work you do your nine to five you do the job it gets done a certain way it'll never change and that's it i i guess and like if that is the case then damn that's such a sad way to live your life because like i i mean okay listen i i understand that not every company has to like adapt to like the newest craziest trends but like they have to be they

have to be competent in like the big decisions because otherwise you're setting yourself up for a lot of doing the same thing over or redoing something that could have been fixed. Like that's, that was my main issue. It's like, we would redo the same thing over and over and over and over again, just because like,

we didn't want to automate something or we didn't want to make something like we were using Excel 97, man. Like, all right, that's excessive. Yeah. That's excessive. We were using Excel 97. like all right that's excessive yeah that's excessive usually excel 97 like yeah that's bad we we oh it was just all right you did work with some dumb people i will i will level with you there if you were using excel 97 that's that is beyond even what i witnessed at a bank so they were good they were there were some goods there

were some people who really really tried their best And I think the majority of them had decent, like pretty good intentions. Nobody was like, you know, consistently an asshole. But to be honest, it was just like, I don't know if it was, maybe it's just like my nature or it's like, I just really couldn't consistently take orders from somebody who I knew was making poor decisions on a frequent basis. So I was just like, okay, well, you know what? I'm going to just do my own thing. I'm just kind of going, all right, going back to – as I'm thinking about opening up this store,

I'm also thinking, okay, so I have to quit this job because I'm not going to have enough time. I thought you were going to do it on your lunch break. Go fucking put on the go to the store um no but they uh I pretty much we signed the lease and they pretty much gave us notice like all right you got to be back in the office like June 1st or something like that it was pretty much the weekend after Memorial weekend and i was like okay well that's pretty much the day i'm gonna quit because like that didn't happen though right they didn't go

back to the office no they did go back to the office yeah they're back in the office i passed it on the way first 2020 in new jersey oh i'm so serious it was crazy come on or maybe no yeah june i mean good for them i mean that makes me pumped but i'm just saying like someone did that yeah i mean it doesn't make a lot of sense when i tell you how we spend our time in the office yeah i was going to say like this is one job i would it's like the last one i'd expect that they're not essential that's all that's what they yeah they thought they were because they're running an olympic ponzi scheme i'm telling you they're gonna see a news story about this and you're you're gonna be like i didn't work there no that wasn't me that was me taking it. Taking it off my LinkedIn right after this.

All right. So you wanted to, the lease was starting June 2nd. So you were going to quit like before Memorial Day. Yeah. So I was pretty much going to quit on the day they were returning back to the office. Just because I was like, okay, well, let me get some time to like, to make sure that everything solidified for a certain date. Because like, if I do have time to like go into the office, I was just kind of gauging how quickly we were going to be able to like open up yeah that's a problem i mean you got a full you got a full blown how much square feet

do you have there uh so the whole unit is like four thousand something square feet but the floor space is like three dude that's a house yeah it's this is not like i always i love the places like some of the really good i forget the names of the store but like the one in the short hills mall the sunglasses store where i got my versace's shout out to them but like you walk in there and it's it's big like it has all the sunglasses on the wall and everything but it's not like it's i don't know 600 square feet something like that you're talking about 3 000 that's like some kith shit yeah from a mall it's it's absurdly large i mean it kind of comes with the the mall we're in because like majority of the stores that are massive it's like i think the tiffany's space there is like 8 000 something square feet like

it's they're monstrous places i'd believe that for tiffany's but still that's that's a lot it's that's and that's the other thing is like they create that environment of just like a lot of open space because like their neighbor right next to them is gsp where it's like there's a lot more traffic but it's people on top of each other smaller stores more stores but like you don't get the same echelon of brands and to be clear because we were just sitting down and there was like a no i noticed this right at the beginning i didn't say anything there was a noise in the background the second we sat down so i'm probably gonna pick this up like two minutes into when we were talking and i think the first 90 seconds you mentioned you had a store

so i just want to cover that again for people who are like what the fuck store so your store is called what and it's where so it's called kif k-i-f and it stands for keep it fresh and your last name's kif yak and it's yeah that's how it all said the name started as kif kicks um that was like dope man it's dope that was our that was our online brand um and i because of like the type of mall that we're in we're surrounded by like tiffany louis vuitton tori birch um prada like i i thought it would just be absolute shit checks yeah crazy crazy garbage no um but they i just thought it would be out of place to throw like a kicks store into like that type of mall so i was just like let's keep it super simple a little bit ominous and then when people who know about it find it it'll

be a gem um and like so that we just called it kiff and people even to this day are coming in they're like what is kiff they always they always think it's kiff that's what i'm gonna say that's what i'm saying even when you see like i see your logo on the side of your hoodie there it has those vibes so smart so we're trying to get the lawsuit going we're trying to so hopefully this promotes it ronnie uh get your lawyers uh because we're making merch and it's coming out soon. But no, we that's kind of a joke, but also kind of serious. Like we're thinking about doing like a Kith box logo. And then we just put like a huge F over the TH and just sell it as just like, this is our new merch.

You're coming for all the smoke. I like it. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. Any news is good news. But you were in your free time you were building an online store that's why i was going to ask but you kind of answered that already so you were saying like you ship shit out at lunch and stuff like that and sell it so i mean tell me what you're allowed to hear what you're comfortable with but what you know were you doing real sales volume or was it kind

of just one off here and there and it was growing a little bit and now you're like well shit i know a lot about the market i know how to get inventory so now I'm going to open a full store and then also build the online store through that as well yeah so I mean in the beginning it was kind of like it was kind of calm like we were doing a couple things here and there we were like I was pretty much trying to build a reputation that like I'm actually selling like high demand shoes I'll'll have them frequently, whatever I have. If you want to pay for it, we accept these payment methods and just consistently building the clientele that like, that would trust me.

Cause like, this wasn't a website. This was just like people DMing me through Instagram being like, yo, can I get that? Or like, yo, do you still have that available? So in the beginning it was pretty basic. And then as I started doing the math on like some of, some of them like, yo, do you still have that available? So in the beginning, it was pretty basic. And then as I started doing the math on like some of them, like monthly numbers, I was just like, maybe I should take this a little bit more seriously. And then maybe like six months in,

I started working with some people who would do like botting and they would pretty much like run programs for certain releases. And we would just try to like buy up as much as we could. Started doing one of those that's the thing like i i tried it for a little bit but it was like i'm not good at it like i'm atrociously bad at like i'm not bad with computers but like botting in particular i just i suck at it i've tried i've spent way too much money trying to try i thought that was like all out of russia and china anyway i know you thought it'd be good because i'm like half for like moldovan so it's close enough but you're moldovan yeah where's moldova again so it's under it's near ukraine oh yeah next to ukraine got it it's

like eastern block like latvia estonia yeah yeah um yeah it's the only third world country in europe fun fact really yeah it's a third world country how did they define only third world country in Europe, fun fact. Really? Yeah, it's the third world country. How did they define a third world country like metrics now? I think it was just like the main differentiating factor was the corruption. It was just like very blatant corruption. They were just like, okay, so you don't have a democracy figured out. Yeah. Down a rank. I think they got up two and then they went back to three.

That's not good. Turned in the wrong way. So are you a first generation, second generation? the yeah so i was born here so my parents came they pretty much flew here and had me like immediately as soon as i got here and they made you on the plane pretty much yeah that's great and my little baby and um and they uh yeah like we we they didn't speak a lick of english like they just took a massive risk and we're just like america's definitely better than this like let's give it a shot that's awesome um that's awesome they did like manual labor for like the first

my dad did like landscaping for like a long long time with my uncle um and then he come here as well with them yeah uncle so the uncle came first as like the first person to like set up base. And once he kind of said like, everything's good, we came here. We, and then the grandparent, uh, yeah, well, my grandparents, their parents came. Um, so it was just like a, it was like a couple months in and out. It was like migrating into, into the States specifically into Jersey. Um, and then, yeah yeah mom was cleaning houses dad was working at landscaping and car washes made up enough money opened up his own landscaping business

now now he doesn't landscape at all he just like does the bills so it's like and your mom's got the interior design now she does interior design she's transferring that to my little sister who is that's amazing there's a monster at like painting and monster design. So she's going to do perfectly well in it. This is in your blood. This is like your whole thing. It's in your blood. And the funny thing is back in Moldova, the first job my dad had was a shoe salesman.

Come on. And my mom was a shoemaker. Come on. That's how they met. And I mean they weren't making like regular brand shoes. No, they're making like leather shoes. Yeah. Like dress shoes. Yeah. That's sick're making like leather shoes, like dress shoes.

Yeah. Yeah. But sick though. But that's what he was doing. He was just like selling off like leather shoes, just like on the streets. And like now all of a sudden I got, I went to college, got two degrees and instead I'm opening up a sneaker store. No, but seriously though, it's like you, you went out, you did it the plan way, right?

Like you get a good job. You had a good job. You were obviously pretty quick to recognize like wow a lot of this is bullshit so let's pay the bills and i got it you're lucky you had a lot of time like that and the thing is there's a lot of people who are lucky and they don't realize they are and they don't fucking use it they jerk off and they fucking watch netflix or like you know and they get content with it it's like like i see that with some of like people who are close to me too it's like it sucks get content with it it's like like i see that with some of people who

are close to me too it's like it sucks to see that when it's like like do you not see it like it's like it's hard to consistently go like you come and every single time i talk to you you're bitching about the fact like i hate my job i hate this blah blah it's like dude then why are we like why do i keep coming back and we keep having the same conversations like why aren't we like, why do I keep coming back? And we had keep having the same conversations. Like, why aren't we like trying to do something moving forward? Like, like what's what, give me a, a actual logistical thing that you're going to plan to achieve some type of goal that will make you happier. Because like, at the end of the day, it's like, you want to love doing your job. Like it's as corny and like, as you know, played out as it is. It's is it's true it's like it really really sucks to like go into a job dreading it monday

through friday i'm like i'd rather i'd rather have like listen every every job is going to have like the job aspect to it like the not fun part where you're doing all of like the basics and it's going to be work but being there and like building something or like doing something that like legitimately brings you joy that's what you should be doing try it like any way possible find a way to monetize it make it a thing couldn't say that any better man i mean there's nothing in this life even like guys who are professional athletes there are parts of being a professional athlete that suck right waking up early staying on a diet yeah it all blows practices the drills like people it's not like people enjoy that right they make themselves enjoy it they enjoy the process as a whole but there's parts of it

that's like i wish i didn't have to do that but that's part of the game but for you to put that out there and you know the example of all the people coming up and saying the same things over and over man i am convinced that a lot of society lives in a controlled insanity and they like it you know you look at people with screen time especially with the pandemic where you know they don't feel great after they spend 11 hours of the day on their phone why should you but they do it the next day and they do it the next day after that because there's something – there are the things that they design within that phone and within the apps that keeps you coming back with the serotonin or oxytocin or whatever. And they keep on getting on the fucking hamster wheel. And the thing is it has – even before phones, like they're the culprit now and the apps are the culprit.

But it's always been that way. People are very afraid to do something that is different than what society says is like what you're supposed to do you know you look at it and you're a first generation guy you know it's like oh i'm gonna be the one that goes to college i'm gonna get the job i'm gonna make money my parents live the american dream for us to be able to do this like here's how it goes and then to step out of that for a second and be like okay i got two degrees i did that part i got the job i did that part but holy shit this is bullshit that is that is a critical thing that a lot of people don't do and i'll even speak for myself and say i didn't do that right away like you it

was pretty clear that within a year you're like all right i i know where this is going you know most people don't do that man i mean it it would have been I may have like listen it may have been different if it was if it was something that like I found more passion in and like It also would have been more tolerable if I was maybe like had team members Why I was like consistently like happy to see and consistently like being like, okay Like they're pushing they're pushing me to do better They're like I'm pushing them to do better. Like we're consistently moving forward. We're trying to achieve an objective every day.

It's like, instead I sat with the same team and we all did our own thing, looking at our phones or whatever, like the whole entire, like some days we would literally do nothing, like zero things. Some days we would do, you know, a couple hours of work here and there,

but like having that much free time and not using it just seems like a couple hours of work here and there, but like having that much free time and not using it just seems like a disturbing amount of waste. Like it's, there's, there's no real explanation for like, I think it may just be like my personality where like, I always need to be doing something. If I can't like, as much as I love a vacation where you're sitting around just lounge and doing nothing, like it's, it becomes very, very boring for me to just sit around and stare at a wall. Agreed. That's essentially what you're doing.

Yeah, they're paying you to do it, but they're going to be paying me if I'm on StockX. They're going to be paying me if I'm doing all these other things too. It's the action though too. Yeah. You know, it's not just, and it's clear with you. It's like, you enjoy the process of this. You enjoy the things you got to do. Like not all of it, but you know, there, there's a lot of it where you're like, oh shit, I

just got my hands on like three new pairs of this, whatever easy drop. Like you're into that. You know, you talked about loving the job. I think that the optimal situation is if, you know, you're married with a family and kids and you're going on vacation where you can take the vacation. But whatever you're doing, what do you probably do? You probably talk to people in that job. I'd say that's a pretty common thing.

Exactly. If you're on vacation, that's great. But even if you have a call to check in for 10 minutes a day, it's like you're still involved. And then you can fucking throw the phone away and enjoy your day. But you know that you're not totally and enjoy your day but you know that like you're not totally you're it's there you know that something's going on yes like my like some effort that i put even though i'm not physically there i know that other like the work is getting done and that like people are getting the products they want like that's the thing it's like as much

as i love shoes the thing i love more is like the aspect of building the business or like building something that like grows into something more the shoes is is like a beautiful marriage to the business aspect of it but like ideally like the end goal isn't just like a bunch of shoe stores it'll be eventually more businesses um what kinds of businesses or do you not really know uh i mean i really want to do a dispensary i want to get into like the interesting yeah i want to i want to marry because like a lot of. Yeah, I want to... Because like a lot of these new companies or a lot of these new sneaker stores that are coming out,

especially like the mega ones. Like there's a big one called Urban Necessities out in Vegas. I don't know that. So they just moved from the Fashion District Mall to the Forum at Caesars Palace. They took over the... The real Caesar lived there, by the way. Did he? I don't know if you know that. I didn't. caesar lived there by the way did he i don't know

if you know that i didn't the real caesar what the shit was he doing in vegas gambling i'm kidding i remember in the hangover where he's like you probably get this a lot but did caesar live here yeah i always get the so wait these jordans are retail right get out get out get out i'm sorry go ahead i couldn't let that one go so you're talking about this urban accessory So wait, these Jordans are retail, right? Get out, get out, get out. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I couldn't let that one go. So you're talking about this urban accessory was moving into.

So they were taking over the gap. Like the gap space was like 25,000 square feet. And they transformed this former kids clothing store into like the Mecca for like like sneaker location it's like a whole lit up wall of sneakers then they have like a treat section where they do like ice creams milkshakes then they also have a tattoo shop upstairs they have a barber yeah like you come here to get fresh like you come there to have a nice treat to buy yourself some dope kicks to go get like some you know some artwork done like it's like that's a destination i take it you've obviously been to the kith outlet in manhattan like probably a thousand times yeah yeah yeah i that's the that was crazy to me you're talking about a whole

different level here but like in that store they sell like fucking ice cream and i'm like what yeah i'm like what is happening and there's like a menu. I'm like, you're buying shit here. What are we doing? Yeah. That's the other thing. I'd never really understood the idea of like, oh yeah, let's bring food next to these like expensive ass sneakers. That's what I mean.

Like people are walking around with an ice cream cone. Like, yo, fucking watch that cone, man. Like that's $400 stuff. That's probably what they want. They're probably like, you got to buy that now. Yeah. I mean, you gotta be that vigilant to make sure that like, cause that's the other thing. Like how many, I mean, they probably have enough employees to just be like staring and looking.

But like you can't see everything in a retail store. So it's like at the end of the day, you come back to your inventory and you see like scuff marks or just like dairy all over your shit. Fucked up. Well, all right. I have to eat that loss. But in a 25,000 square foot place, but minus the barber shop. And what else did you say was in there? Tattoo shop.

Tattoo. Yeah, exactly. 25 000 square foot place but minus the barber shop and what else did you say was in there tattoo shop tattoo um and yeah exactly and um and they also do like the treats like they had like a ice cream whatever custard i don't know what they do okay so they did that too but let's just say there's 15 20 000 square feet left over after that stuff when they're put in and it's all shoes all shoes all shoes so they have walls they're clothing too they have like their merch and like some other like random like supreme babe on the floor pretty much in the middle whereas the shoes are on the outside so the um the way it's set up is like the far left wall is just all shoes it's like okay they have one mega huge wall of just like shoes for display and it's impressive how many like how many shoe pairs are we talking about the math is probably i mean they definitely carry over like 50 000 pairs of shoes oh okay

that'll that was higher than i thought so here's the question then what are are they putting are parts of those walls the basic jordan drop yeah and then another part is like all designer shit so and are they all sneakers versus like other kind of shoes too which that's a we haven't touched that yet i don't know how much i imagine you know a lot about that but like when they do like the timberland crossovers with like off-white with spongebob yeah yeah they did that yeah did you see that i i i have heard of the spongebob crossovers i definitely haven't seen the one you're talking about timberland spongebob's dude they put it on like these on the brands themselves they put it on like off-white or maybe that's a bad example but like

some of these they do like a literally like you're buying spongebob and they're paying fucking fifteen thousand dollars for it yeah i mean listen i think yeah i at a certain degree the same thing is like all these companies are in their bag and respectfully, like keep doing your thing. Cause like whatever's making you money, good for you. Yeah. But a lot of these people are kind of just like, they're selling out their identity for collaborations.

Like, yes, you can look at Kith as a pretty decent example. It's like, they do some, they used to do collaborations that were sick. Like they would do like, they did the Gucci. I think they, no, they didn't do gucci um i'm gonna get roasted now but now so so they did like early on collaborations with like certain nikes or certain other shoes and like people really really liked those and the quality on was like super super clean now they're doing collaborations with like any and everybody with like bmw like what the does bmw have to do with kith yeah nothing and how long has kith been around

for a while now because supreme was 94 but it didn't blow at 93 94 something like that but it didn't blow up it was purely like the niche skater community i guess until like maybe the mid late 2000s it started to go a little bit 2000s was like the year where it just like it became started place yeah it's like where the parabola started to like push up and then 2010s yeah through the floor or through the roof but like kith did that come out during that like 2000s yeah i mean just because like i think it was also uh they were smart in the fact that like they also just did a box logo and like people who didn't get the supreme box logo they also got an alternative option with the kith one and it's like the quality on the kith

ones were honestly better than the ones for the supreme ones so you felt like you were getting you know better value and eventually those box logos from kith started reselling too um but the kith logo is sick yeah because it's simple i mean he would have loved it steve jobs would have would have loved that fuck if you ever saw it when he was alive I mean it was incredible because it's what they didn't do yeah that's so beautiful about it but the store in general like the way that they set up like all like everything's a black display and then they have like white uh Jordans or white Air Forces just like all throughout the thing like it it pops that was probably my first time really really getting deep into holy shit there's something going on here i was always like in my you know with my blinders on to certain things i was

very cultured in certain areas and then other things like like what the fuck is stock x i'm asking that in 2018 so 2018 is when i started to really just look at everything and be like all right i'm not an expert on any of this but i know this exists i know that exists like and why is that a big thing i was always curious about it because i was getting into marketing i was having my own moment where i realized i'm not going to do this fucking job yeah i watched that podcast on like early this morning with the like it was like the one where you're by yourself oh yeah one of the like the one where i'm like telling the story about that yeah yeah so you you know the vibes i mean that was really uncomfortable for me to do but people asked me to do that like it's like talking about yourself for an hour but i figured

all right that's the good thing because it was like relatable like in the same way like i when you were telling that whole entire story of just like this isn't for me i mean you obviously had a better connection with like the people who were your mentors and stuff like that so like i'm sure those conversations are a lot more difficult to be like listen man i don't know if this is for me blah blah but like the fact that you still had like that conscious moment to be like you know like i need to do what's what's gonna make me happy like as much as i want to do like i want to be successful i don't want to be like taking a position to like fulfill someone else's like happiness or fulfill someone else's like obligation or just like check a box

like i want to actually like go and do something that like every single day i'm like like this is like you wake up and you're like okay well let's keep going and if you have that drive that's that's kind of just like it's it's going to be made it's going to be yeah man and i i think you just summarized that perfectly i think if i could add one thing to it it would be that you also have to look at where things are going and you get that heavily because minus the fact that you're you also have a physical location you're if you're opening up retail you're opening up in the right kind of thing because that shit is not going away like the louis vuitton store is the fucking the high end like niche whatever like the kith store that stuff you you get a great sneaker store you get a great

sunglasses store high quality shit that shit is gonna be around and then you have the online so who the fuck cares if it goes away right but probably a seminal moment for me was the kith store because we went there my buddy matt mangano shout out matt was moving back to the west coast in november 2018 so we were out in new york for a weekend like during the day and everything and i had come from a business meeting i'm wearing the full suit dude i walked in the kith in a full suit minus the i never wore the tie i was a rebel but i walk in there and and the reason was Matt was like, yeah, I want to go to the store and really, like, chill there for a while. I'm moving back to the West Coast, whatever, yada, yada. And I'm like, you want to go where?

He's like, Kith. And I'm like, is that an Asian restaurant? Like, that I don't know about? He's like, no, just come with me. So we go to the Kith store, and and i'm like what the fuck is this and you know the ice cream up front i'm like all right i am out of my territory yeah so we go upstairs and i'm looking at all these people look at that giant wall along the windows of the sneakers which are it's pretty sick i'm not gonna lie and it's a lot more than sneakers it's like that's where i

saw the timberland collabs for the first time some other shit but after a while matt comes up and he you know i was like kind of like a test subject to him because he was cultured he understood this shit and he said i want to take a lot of walk along the walls with you and i'm like what do you mean he's like i just want you to look at every single pair of shoe we'll take as long as we have to and i want you to tell me what you think the most expensive one is. I said, okay. So we take three laps, I think. It was at least two, maybe three laps. And I don't know if that's like 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes. And at the end, I turn back to him and he's like, all right, which one?

And I walk over to find a shoe and he's like, okay, well, that's like midway. That's not one of the high ends, but he's like, it's a nice shoe. I forget what it was. I don't even remember what the price was but it was a lot so he said tell me what you think the least expensive shoe is so i'm like oh i got you there was one shoe in there dude this is a hill i will die on with this shit it was imagine if the atlantic ocean were just paint and you fucking threw one of those dad new balances in the ocean. And then it came up with like paint barnacles all over it. Like a fucking mistake.

Right. I thought it was a mistake. It was there. And I picked this thing up. It's got like globs around it. Like I'm talking 3D mountainous shit coming off the shoe. And it's this stupid new balance that like i will never buy in my life because that means like your life is over and like your dick doesn't work so i pick it up

and i'm like this is the worst thing i've ever seen if this retails for more than 50 someone's they're robbing a bank and he said like i twist i like i i picked it up off the thing and i like twisted it around when i did it and his eyes got real wide as I was explaining it. And he grabbed the shoe. He's like, it's the most expensive one in here. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. He starts explaining to me. I'm like, all right, this is where I lose it. Cause I'm like, this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.

You know? And then I pointed to another one. I think it was the Timberland one that it was like a really nice collab. I keep coming back to that. I pointed to that and I'm like, now I know that one's probably like three grand but like i get it like that's fucking nice what is this shit you know and so it's crazy to me that guys like you and it's not like maybe some of that stuff you're less interested in but you have to look at a shoe that even if you don't like it to your eye you have to decide is there a market for this based on the supply and do i know

that that exists and therefore like is the demand of this price not relevant to what it's going to be that's hard man there's a lot out there it is hard but it's also like for certain cases like okay there are i mean to be honest like i'm very very honest with customers who come in like if there are certain shoes that i think are ugly and they ask my opinion of them directly i'll be like those are ugly i personally don't like them but if you like them that's the thing it's like you got to buy what you like like then they buy them you're like they look great on you yo we have so like i don't know if you know the the new yeezy foam runners do you know what those are i'm gonna google that keep talking okay so the foam runners are just like it's a it's essentially like a crock, but it's like a foam crock.

They retail for like, I think $90. It's nothing. But store owners sell these for $500, $600 a pop like they're nothing. And people come in initially looking at him picking him up and being like ah not yeah those yeah those we'll talk about kanye because i'm an enormous i have so much respect for him i think he's incredible those are one of the worst things i've ever seen so i would say the same thing but they are potentially the most comfortable shoe you'll ever put on your feet i'll bet that that looks like that looks like a pillow it's a tempur-pedic mattress yeah in a shoe yeah i'll

bet that's probably why but but that's the thing like people will come in being like yo look at like what is this shit and then they'll look at the price and they'll be like 600 like what like who's paying that like nobody's paying for and people will get like angry at the fact that like who's paying that and i'm just like people are paying it i'm like i wouldn't list it at that price if it wasn't selling at that and you also bought it at a high price yeah yeah the thing is like the the thing is like would these sell out so fast that i need to pay over market to get them back in the store fast enough because i for me at least i hate telling people like i don't got your size so we try to do our best and try to make sure we have especially for items that are

super super hot try to make sure we have all your sizes that being said people will come in be like these are so ugly they're disgusting can i try them on and they go try them on and they go up to the to the mirror and they're like so 600 right yeah i'll take them the price look makes them look better they look yeah i mean they the thing is like it's a really cool shoe you've never really it's it is technically just foam but like because it has easy on it because it's you know kanye's behind it it's a story because it's limited because exactly there's a ton of reasons why people will continue to pay that price but like objectively in my opinion would i ever in my in my

personal life pay six hundred dollars for them no if i got them for retail i'd 100 wear them just for like the what the like like what what is that factor because like sometimes you you got to get people talking but this is like for 600 bucks of my money i'll wait other people though i don't think i can i'll put the picture in the corner so people wait. Other people, though. I don't think I can. And I'll put the picture in the corner so people can see this if they're watching. I don't think I would ever be able to wear that at any point in public, including around, like, very close relatives. However, you know, like, when you buy a really nice pair of flip-flops? And I'm not talking the fucking Nikes that, you know what I mean.

Like Gucci slides. No. No. Not even a brand one. I'm talking, talking like that looks really fucking comfortable i can wear that to the beach in the last 10 years yeah right you pay 30 bucks for it it's great utility and they're nice like mine i have right now are fucking awesome that's how i would think of that except wearing it alone in the house so i would spend 30 40 bucks

on that but if you looked at me and said jul Julian, I'm going to need $600 for that. I'm going to say, I'm going to need to fucking steal your wife. Like, give her to me. I'll take her home. Like, do I get her too? Is she hot? Like, show me a picture.

Is that the trade-off? It's like, you know, but to your point, like, you're talking about people that come in, they try them on. They're going to fucking wear them. They're not investing in them. You know, that's...

We had somebody come in. We had somebody come in we had somebody come in yesterday and they had a they had a wedding and they didn't have an outfit like set up and they really really it's they that the wedding was in cabo and they needed to all an all white fit and we were like and essentially he was just like so i want three of these and i need them in these sizes that thing these three of them and a wedding three of them he should be shot three of these and I need them in these sizes that thing these three of them and to a wedding three of them he should be shot three of them he should he should be hanged dude if you showed up to my wedding in that and don't get me wrong I get married it at City Hall you know

it's up to the up to the lucky lady if that's what you want to call her at some point like she'll do what she wants to do but if you showed up to my wedding in that you're you're out you're gonna kick that you know that's it's on a beach. So it's like. Just don't wear the shoes on the beach. You can be. If I get married on a beach. You can be barefoot. My groomsmen are allowed to be barefoot on the fucking beach.

Come on. Wear flip flops. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like without blinking. He was just like, I need three of those. Okay. No problem. So what in this store?

Because now you've had this space and you guys have been open now for how long? Because you got delayed from that original. Yeah, like three weeks. Okay. Oh, wait, I haven't even finished that part. So yeah, let's go back. Let's hear about that. The aspect of me quitting didn't happen because they fired me two days before I quit.

Which was honestly lit because they had to pay me out of a package plus all my back paid PTO. They pretty much gave me a couple of extra thousand dollars because they fired me and didn't want to wait two days for me to quit. But they didn't know I was quitting. So why did they fire you? They were downsizing. Probably because you told John in accounting that he was a fucking moron 12 times. They were also

like yeah honestly a little bit but like the the other thing was the fact that like they had to refund everybody from the tokyo olympics because there was no foreign spectators i forgot about that so like olympics now they're going through hell like making sure all of these corporate companies like we didn't deal with just like randos like we dealt with like amex or like we dealt with like toyota like there were like monstrous companies who are like oh they wanted to like go to the olympics because like they're a first of all partner but they're also like they want to give stuff for their um for their employees as like benefits and blah blah um and they didn't i mean they had they had some money back they didn't have all this so like well question because i totally forgot about that

because this is happening during the pandemic that was the whole point tokyo got delayed and it kept on getting delayed so did you re like mass refund so your company we had the mass refund yeah so your company was basically in like dire straits out of nowhere and had to figure out how to pay for like the next year to over yeah i mean they like that's the thing like we we still had to like because we handled and processed the orders we stick we technically kept that fee and that was written out in like all the terms and whatever but like people when they're paying like hundreds of thousands of dollars for these packages and they're like not getting a percentage back of it, they're kind of like, what?

Like, no, you're giving us like I'm assuming they probably fired me to hire lawyers and stuff like that. So, yeah, that's that's a whole. I got out of I got out. You got out a good time, but you didn't open up the store right away, obviously. No, I did. That's the thing. As soon as I quit. So we were we signed the i signed the

lease in jay for more people in may in may early may oh i was hold on back up i was up here i thought you were saying this was all in 2020. no this is all this year this was all this year yeah oh okay so you were a year behind where i thought so you had more time to kind of build the online store than i thought i thought you were just building the online store from 2018 to 2020 and now we're shotgun forced to do it no no yeah and so i thought your office when you said we opened up i thought you meant june 1st 2020 i'm like who the did that in new jersey that's awesome no no yeah we did that uh we pretty much opened up three weeks ago just because like the whole entire time we were only online up until literally may um then may we signed that lease we built it out in a month um and then by the time everything was set i was gonna quit on

the 20 i think it was the 29th no i was gonna quit on the 31st but they fired me on the 29th so i was just like i lit i didn't even say i really i said goodbye to like a couple of like family friends who like hired us in the I said goodbye to like the couple of like family friends who like hired us in the beginning and like thanked us for the opportunity. But like everybody else, I was kind of just like, peace out. I was also like half the people who I was friends with also got fired.

So I was kind of just like, ah. Now it all makes sense to me too, by the way. Because the one thing I couldn't understand when I, so you DM me, cause I think you randomly found one of my episodes you were early days like happened to come across that you were probably like only the 25th person i didn't know who just happened to come across the pod because it was so early on and i was building and i was like oh cool so you sent me nice messages and it wasn't like looking for something

you're just like hey man i saw this that shit was funny or whatever and you were a random guy so i'm like all right cool i'll follow him back so just between you and me when i see an account because then i went to go follow you and i'm like i click your page i see all these fucking sneakers when i see an account that also has like no name on it or whatever and it's some business i assume it's a ponzi scheme right like that is my operating assumption just it's all whenever i see a business on instagram and that's the barrier that's the barrier You had to like that's why in the beginning it was slow because like in the beginning everyone kind of thinks like okay It's like a random Instagram account who's just like he's telling us that he's gonna ship us these shoes I have to send him money ahead of time and then we get the shoes like shipped out

I'm like so initially you have to build a relationship with a couple people who decide to trust you, the other thing is like, there's a bunch of ways to prove that you have the sneakers. I was posting, consistency was the biggest thing. It's like, I was posting every single day. Well, that's what I, cause that's what I know. I went to your page and I'm like, okay, he's posting a lot, but they're all pictures of sneakers. Right. And I'm like, so is this a Google search?

Like this out of my mind, thanks for all businesses. When I don't know the person, cause I still hadn't seen your face or got your name they were just this guy behind this kiff kicks account i was like all right cool so i'm looking through this i'm like all right maybe that's like page 25 of some google search and it's a kid in japan holding up the same shoe and he's like really not selling any of this shit then you had a website and the website looked lit and i wasn't gonna go in and buy sneakers because they were all fucking expensive and i don't do that so i'm like all right maybe it's real maybe it's not i'll keep looking and then when you posted maybe it was like two months ago when you posted the picture in the outlet and it was and it was

up there in hackensack and i knew what it was i'm like oh this is a real person not a ponzi scheme great all right we're up in the world because that's in fairness like that's the baseline for everybody you can only go up from there and that's the thing like once i posted the storefront i started getting a lot more i mean like listen we dealt i dealt with a lot of people in like the new york new jersey area just because we built relationships with like bulk suppliers we also like in the early days all before online all during the online era we were also spending time with like other stores asking them like hey what do you need? And we would start supplying them stuff on consignment.

Oh, wow. And then essentially we started bringing up like multiple stores, batches of like 30, 50 shoes, let them sell them out. And we get paid out every week, every two weeks. And essentially, once we started doing all of the store consignment along with the online, I was kind of like, okay, well, if every store is taking 10% to 15% of the consignment fee or the sale price, if I technically charge the same amount that they do, what rent do I have to pay to make a profit instead of just giving them the shoes? And like, are there any locations that make sense for me to do that, to charge those prices, to move this amount of volume, blah, blah, blah. And we started doing like shopping around during COVID. We got, it was a monstrous headache because like we found one mall, it was going to be great. Then they re-signed with some new leasing agency.

So then they pretty much told us like you know get lost other we wanted to do short hills but because we didn't have another store or we didn't have a store this was our first shop they were literally like they don't like we don't need you yeah so like they they just brought in a new store from connecticut um so now there is a sneaker store in there yeah you want to talk i mean where you are is bougie as fuck don't get me wrong short hills and king of prussia mall down outside philly are the two malls in the world yeah i mean it's like they don't let i i used to go shopping for one or two things in the short hills mall and people looked at me like what are you doing here son you don't i saw eli manning at the short hills mall that's when i knew i was just like oh this place is

and he wasn't wearing a giant's jersey. No, but he's so tall. Oh, yeah, dude. He's so tall. Oh, he's big. I literally always thought I was like, oh, that dorky little brother. Nah, he is like 6'4". All of it. Yeah.

Big boy. 100%. But you were going in and building up the online store before any of this. And where I realized like, oh, this is a real person is when i actually saw a figure that was the first time i saw your figure but i was still like i can't fuck i can't i don't know this guy's name he's just kiff kicks and i'm like i i don't know where he's from i can't see the picture still didn't have your face i was far away now it's making sense to me because you were incognito still because you hadn't quit yeah so like no one knew

about this you just had you were buying this outlet so you were making your moves already and now it's all coming together in my head i get it now yeah a couple friends at the company knew what i was doing and like okay like they were pretty they weren't sneakers too so like they bought pairs here and there and i would ask them to like enter raffles for me and i would pay them if they won and you'd shoot them if they said anything yeah exactly yeah uh no but that's the thing like my like my boss and like my manager like they all knew that I was doing this sneaker thing. And the only person who actually knew knew was only one person. I won't write him out.

But he knew knew I was opening up a store and knew knew I was going to quit. So they didn't know that part. They knew you were just doing something on the side. Exactly. And they were like, damn, you're taking your full hour lunch break every single day i was just like yeah like it's it's it's time consuming um but yeah essentially once once we finally signed the lease we were like okay let's let's get this going and so far it's it's not bad we're we're glad that we found a place because like like i said earlier these types of sneaker stores are

popping up in every single mall like we we looked at other places and luckily we didn't get accepted by certain ones because like we we're looking at like we know we know a lot of these store owners like we've all done business with each other we're all in the same industry so we've all like crossed paths at some point um but when we when we talk to these people it's like some some malls are just like they're hawking you for like all your sales numbers they're hawking you for everything's like some some people are just like much easier on you they're kind of just like yo do your thing send me this by this date if that's all good we'll keep going and we'll renegotiate a rate at this date like they just give you everything simple laid out on a post like somebody who's just like uh like an auditor like a like there's certain mall groups that that literally hawk

over you like an auditor all the time and there's certain mall groups that don't and like we were lucky enough to find a place that was kind of just like they were good they were easy to work with they you know helped accommodate a lot of things and we we love being there so hopefully hopefully we stay there for a fair bit of time so yeah see that's like kind of surprising to me though too because these malls the ones that are left that are like legit and not like going out of business signs everywhere they they are like that because they are so high end so the fact that especially the place you're talking about because i know where that is that's a bougie ass neighborhood and everything that's a bougie ass place it's kind of surprising to me that they would even be willing to be so hands off

on that and just be like you know i guess not going into your revenues and all that and giving it a chance technically on something that was just previously an online store it's just your first time doing it yeah no i mean they really they did take a risk on us and i mean really appreciative for the offer and like the opportunity um but at the end of the day it's like the goal is to continue meeting those expectations it's like as long as we keep on doing the like providing the services that like all these people want it's like that's the one thing about this mall it's like you don't get the same amount of traffic you would at a different mall like there's not like a million people walking through this place because it's like majority of the stores is like there's not even a price on the items like you're literally walking into these stores and like if you want it

you buy it but like they tell you at the register it's like three four grand yep so you have to walk in there kind of knowing okay well we're blowing bags today well what's the what's the clientele like though too they gotta know i mean they walk in this place like how many sneakers do you have in there on display at the moment uh probably like 300 400 pretty sure and then how many do you have in the inventory not including like the all the different sizes for a given pair is that you have everything in inventory out there we uh no like we have multiple sizes for a lot of the like shoes that are out there um but to be honest like that's the main thing is like we're making sure that we're trying to like fulfill anybody's like desire when they come into the store if they find like that shoe we're

trying to make sure that we have that size right but i'm saying i didn't ask that clearly i'm sorry you have the three or four hundred on display and then you have the multiple sizes across a lot of them because you're trying to accommodate that but then do you have some that you don't have on display that you do you do okay so you got it you got a lot and how many is that maybe like a hundred two hundred no it's a couple thousand i mean holy shit so like we still do provide other shoes to other stores because like we sell things we sell certain things better than other stores and other stores sell stuff better than we do so like mid like specifically jordan one mids or shoes that are like within that range of like 150 to 300 a lot of other malls push out those shoes way faster consistently at higher margins than we do we get a lot of the peoples push out those shoes way faster consistently at higher margins than we do

we get a lot of the people who are like looking for like something crazy like they want they want their collectors or they're like they're looking for something specific for like an outfit or they they know already about the culture of it and a lot of the time is they're just like okay well if you have this, I want this. And they really don't care about the price. It's just more or less like, do you have it? And for a lot of the other stores, it's just like, you should have all of these sizes because like they don't, it doesn't cost as much to like procure a full size run of like Jordan 1 mids compared to like off-white fives or something like that. See, you kind of have three businesses though. That's what's really coming together to me you have the online where people can go look at

your inventory on there from fucking japan or you know europe or america somewhere else and buy something from you and you have those relationships and you're used to the shipping method and all that stuff you have now the in-person store which i want to get to your clientele in a second because that's a whole can of worms but then you also have the relationships with all these other wholesalers and distributors, whoever they are, who have the man coming in at different rates for different types of shoes at different times. And they have a relationship with you where they can come and say, all right, how much for this? We need this in stock right now just to get it to a loyal customer or something like that. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. So clientele though, you don't have a ton of foot traffic ever in stores like this, like period. It's just kind

of how it is unless it's like the one you talked about earlier in Vegas where it's in the middle of everything. It's like a tourist attraction. A lot of these places it's like, and correct me if I'm wrong, if you're different, but a lot of it is like you get a couple of customers coming in an hour, that kind of thing, whatever it is. And a lot of people are coming in to look and maybe look purchase later. But what is your early on in the physical location? You can also speak to your online presence if you want, but what is your clientele like? Is this like old sugar daddies walking in and buying their trophy girlfriend, you know, the latest Yeezys? And then is it also like parents coming in for their kids who have like six trust funds and now a few sneakers to go with it like what are you looking

at yeah that's literally i mean you get a lot of that you get like we have some very interesting cases of like exactly that like sugar sugar daddy comes in buys his girl like two grand worth of stuff and then like we have uh we have you know parents who have like no idea even like if their kid likes this like brand of hoodie or whatever and they're just like oh it's it's in this genre of like street wear it's like we'll just buy it and it's like 400 i'm just like jesus christ oh so you have more than shoes in there oh yeah we have clothing too oh i didn't know that oh yeah oh this is interesting okay so what how do you procure your clothing also like bulk distributors and we have we spend a lot of time especially specifically for this store it's like

we're trying to marry a lot of the general streetwear stuff so like stuff like vape anti-social supreme it's like it's easier to get that um But like there's a different like crossover of like designer and streetwear. So like a lot of like the off-white stuff or like a lot of like the – there's another company called Gallery Department, Amiri, Rude, like all these like very, very high-end brands that people still associate with like streetwear, but they also cross over into just like designer mainly based on like the retail price of these items like rude t-shirts some some start at like 300 like three four hundred dollars for retail so

we'll bring them in we'll sell them for like 455 but that's the thing it's like you can't find like you really can't even find rude t-shirts anywhere were you selling this online too the clothing we only sell in the store it's just it's it becomes such a monstrous headache to log everything and like logging everything into a system is all good and well but like having back like having stuff in overstock that you still have to log and then you might be moving it to a different store it's just like a lot to keep track of sure so we keep track of that on like a different sheet of like all of our all of our clothing but we also it takes it takes plenty of time to do the shoes and we're mainly known for the shoes so we kind of just stick with that as like the online thing and like what kiff kicks is about um but for like the in-store

experience when you come in there you see like a whole ton of shoes it's also like an additional benefit to the other types of stores like the other types of stores have mostly just sneakers some do have clothing here and there but like you come into the to our store and it's like you have an option of like over like 300 different like clothing items like there's there's brands that definitely other stores don't have um and it's it's kind of just like trying to gauge what's still selling um like we in the beginning never thought that like at a mall like this travis scott merch would move like we were like uh bougie people don't really want travis scott

stuff like they kind of oh no they do oh yeah they do they do they do i was like i never knew travis scott had this much influence over just like yo these are like grown adults like buying like heist in the room t-shirts and stuff. I'm like, yo, it's a good t-shirt. It's all good and well. But like, it's also like, why? Like, why do you like Travis Scott? I mean, his music is good and all that, but it's just like, I guess I just, like same thing.

It's just like for certain things, like I've stopped trying to wrap my head around it and I just do like the pure analytics of all of this. That's the way to go, man. But to be honest, yeah, it's like, since we are so new, we're kind of just like, we threw out a bunch of options of like anything. Let's see what the people around here want. And now we're kind of just starting to tailor. Okay, so now this is moving.

Let's start getting in more variations of this. Let's see if like those very, of those variations, what moves the best. And just like following the trends you keep saying we by the way because the store the store's named after you and everything but you have people working for you is that is that what you're basically referring to yeah pretty much got it and that's awesome so how many people do you have now a couple uh so we have well we have my cousin who's who's partnered into the store excellent i i really

needed like a trustworthy person so yes he's uh same thing like he's somebody who just like uses his free time very wisely like he's an engineer he has a full-time job and yet he still has the time to like help inventory help log that's huge man it's crazy that's because that's what i was gonna ask there's so much overhead type work to do with just like pure analytics in this type of job because and you're operating on three fronts as we said and i'm thinking there's no way you're there's not enough hours in a day to do this yourself like the store itself and building that brand i mean that's that's got to be 90 of your time right there and i'm i'm including the online store with that and then then like relationships too, with other people clearly. So you still have

to be able to figure out like, Oh, this shoe suddenly came to market. Who's watching stock exit all time to see what's what's what, what, where do we run out of sizes on a shoe or whatever? So it makes a lot of sense. You have an engineer back there doing that. Yeah, it was, uh, in the beginning I was like, was just me for it was it was me pretty much up until we opened maybe like like as soon right right before we opened like me and him had a conversation and he i was kind of under the impression i was just like listen man like i obviously have a lot of my plate but regardless like i'm just gonna keep it. I barely slept. I literally just stood up until 4 or 5 a.m. every single night, making sure everything was logged, checking it back on other sheets,

making sure everything was transferred over to all the other stuff that we had. And like you said, none of it's just very hard work, but it's all very time-consuming. Well, the other thing I keep forgetting here, and I don't want to miss this, is the fact that that huge inventory you have where you have 300 or 400 out there and then you have thousands in the back or whatever. I know you obviously had a lot of success with the online business before this because you even had a year longer than I thought because I was on the wrong timeline to grow that. But I'm just thinking about a 3,000 to 4,000 square foot store. 4,000, I guess guess is what you bought there. And, or you leased it, I guess.

Right. Yeah. Either way, like I'm thinking about the overhead there. I'm thinking about having to get all that inventory day one and the amount that goes into that. Like, are you taking out loans here as like a new business or you just, you own all that shit? So, I mean, it started, I mean, I don't own all of it.

So we do have consignors who you know bring us pairs and we we've built relationships with other people who are also like they only do the online thing or they only do like or they only trust like certain people to manage their inventory so they'll send it all over to us they'll have like full-time jobs or they're students so they don't necessarily wow in your store they'll do that yeah like they're people who just like they get a lot of stuff i don't know how i don't know where but like they get it we check it all out and if they want to consign it we we have like a minimum for the amount of pairs that we accept um but yeah essentially in in the beginning we i just spent a lot a lot of my time on procuring inventory for the store, especially in the beginning.

You're building relationships left and right. Yeah, just consistently going to these sneaker events, talking to other store owners. Because in the beginning, we were mainly focusing on making sure that we provided these other stores with all the right stuff. So our stuff would sell 100%. And then we would always be able to reclaim that payout and then invest it into the newest thing coming out that's the way to do it so in the in the beginning it was a lot of just like exactly that talking to these people building that relationship having a consistent communication and you had the full you had a very full pipeline of suppliers and also you know know, businesses and stuff to sell to before

you ever even opened up a physical store here. So now it's just, you happen to be adding to the fray with this store. You're still serving all those suppliers, obviously. And now you get to do it through a physical place. But the only thing you're adding is the people that are actually foot trafficking coming in. And so now you're building relationships with people who, you know, they got a dollar or two in there. Yeah. They got a couple of dollars and they, they really like, that's the thing is like, they like the fact that it's in Jersey. So you're not paying New York sales tax. We have, we have clothing, which a lot of sneaker stores don't have. And it's like, you have all this space. And a lot of the times, like I said, like I said, we have pretty low

traffic. So like when you come in there with like your family, you're like shopping there by, it's pretty much you're shopping there by yourself and you have like the whole entire space to look through everything like people sometimes who really really are into you know streetwear and the whole entire store they'll spend like an hour hour and a half two hours in there like yeah they'll spend a egregious amount of time and like i'm perfectly cool with it because like the more time they spend the usually the higher like the more they buy and it's and they get white glove service you know what i mean because it's not like you have 30 people in there at a time and you're sitting

there going through and i can imagine the amount of you pick up from people like what their other tastes are and things and the math you're doing in your head with where that can then tie into you it's it's got to be valuable spending 90 minutes with somebody yeah my my garage is consistently it's just like a wall of boxes from ups fedex and it's like my mom consistently you know tells me like yo you need to rent out another storage facility because like this it like you can't do this i like took my car out of the garage and i just like used my entire garage as like just like storage space um that's a good sign though it's a good sign but it's also like like some of these like that's the thing like these shoes need to go somewhere so they could be sold because sitting in a garage they're not they're only collecting dust um but yeah and

in the beginning we uh we spent a decent chunk with like, with identifying how these stores are able to sell certain things much better than others and targeting all these moving parts. Yeah. It took a little bit of time to perfect it. But now it's like, it becomes easier, especially when you have people who are just like, they get the routine now.

Yeah. As soon as they get the routine, it's cause that's the thing. It's like, all it is is like, like we said in the beginning, it's just like a get the routine now yeah um as soon as they get the routine it's because that's the thing it's like all it is is like i like we said in the beginning it's just like a different color way people still want jordan ones they always want jordan ones but they always just want the newest color so if we keep supplying the jordan ones to the stores that sell jordan ones we're going to keep getting money to keep you know buying up the new ones so we can keep resupplying it's just like a it's a cyclical thing that until people stop wanting Jordan ones

and they transition to something else, we'll start, we'll transition to moving that in there too. So how many times a year did, did Jordans come out? Like, is it on a set? I've never looked into that. I just always know. Cause I look to Twitter and I see lines around a corner and they're like, the Jordans are dropping. I never pay attention. Is that the second one this year? first one like how often are they every week

every week and sometimes they'll release like more than one week like all right let me ask a better question because obviously now there's all kinds of brands of them but let's say like per type of jordan that's the better question like is that a yearly thing or is it every six months so they do like the seasonal like they'll give you like a seasonal lineup of like okay this is what's releasing in the summer and it'll be like three jordan ones a couple jordan threes a couple jordan fours some sixes some sevens like stuff here and there they want to they obviously don't want to like overproduce certain things but like right now in particular nike is like pumping out dunks like nobody's business like everybody wants dunks um they were popular

you know when they initially came out and then they lulled for the longest time that's a jordan it's like a nike low-cut shoe they also have a high top dunk but they initially got super popular during like the collegiate era so like they always had like a michigan dunk and it was like the michigan colors or like the michigan state dunk and it was like oh like back in the day yeah oh got it and they used to supply it to the actual like they actually used to supply it to like the actual teams uh the ncaa teams and like they would wear those during the tournament like the final four tournament and all that stuff um and like that's when they were like the most popular during that era but now it's just like everyone likes the simplicity of it the colorways are like nice

and basic black and white jordan ones are jordan of it. The colorways are like nice and basic. Black and white Jordan 1s are – Jordan 1s. Black and white dunks are like the hottest selling shoe pretty much in most like higher-end stores. Now, what about the supply though? And this might be really putting you on the spot because I know that this is something that's widespread. It's not like a limited drop in the sense that there's 20 of them or something like that but when they release seasonally whatever it is you know the new dunks or something like that a are there different amounts that they release per size like in the strike zone of like most usual sizes to be weird i don't know why and then b approximately like how many pairs are they releasing so it depends on like the colorway um for for the amount that they release.

But yeah, they always release a certain amount per size. Not per, the percentage per size. They'll always have the most size 9 through 10. Because that's the most common one. Most common size. They're never going to have the most size 15, 16, 17. But it's the kind of thing where, let's say they they release i'm just going to throw round numbers on it let's say they release they put out a hundred thousand pairs of shoe x onto the market for the seasonal drop

and those hundred thousand sell out right away or do they have it locked like like an nft like like where they hey no more we're not making any more that's what it is or are they have it locked like like an nft like like where they hey no more we're not making anymore that's what it is or are they like oh there's serious demand here we're gonna make another 50 and they just do it on the fly so yeah they've kind of been transitioning more towards like especially for dunks they've been transitioning to like restocking all the time or like that's the thing with nike is like they've gotten a lot of flack for not being able to supply the people who are like really passionate about these shoes,

like the opportunity to buy them. Um, because like you can enter raffles all you want. You can enter the sneakers app, but all you want, like the luck is against you because people are entering a bunch of bot entries into those things and people are going to continue winning. Just,

it's a numbers game. You mentioned that earlier. I want to come back to that and keep going but like for for like i know one specific case like for the brett 11s the most one of the most popular jordan retros like he won the i forgot what championship in them but they made i think two million pairs of those in between from like men's grade school and preschool sizes and they released those in 2019 and they made it very clear like we're not restocking these for a very long time um for certain shoes that are kind of like those like the classic retros that like every

they know everyone wants them um they'll make a lot of them so everyone gets their chance but even then like they sell out like immediately well do they know do they have any analytics now where they can reliably reliably predict let's say within like a 10 plus minus of if we sell 2 million of that shoe x percentage of people are going to buy them as an investment and not wear them therefore they're going to be in the marketplace forever or for a long time. And X number of people are going to buy them and wear them and they're going to therefore leave the marketplace. And so the real supply is going to be why. So, I mean, to be honest, the, the people who are like, it's gotten so out of hand that like, if it's a popular enough shoe and there's enough like margin on stock X or like enough

margin for them to be continually selling them in stores those people with those bot accounts are going to keep buying them up like they will like even right now is the craziest thing because like even a year ago you go into any champs any foot locker any foot action you can get a pair of all white air forces in your size no problem now people who are resellers they bought all white air forces like they put a limit on how nike put a limit on how many all-white air forces you can order per day to your address to fight the bots yeah but even then there's people like reselling like 14 000 15 000 pairs of air force ones at a time and it's like now instead of being a 90 shoe people are pricing

me like 95 or 100 like they're making their little tiny margin but like because it's an air force one and they know air force one all white air force one is like one of the top selling shoes ever someone's gonna pay an extra five bucks just to be able to press enter and get it delivered to them like right then and not spend five more minutes on google that's actually smart unfortunately but the bot thing is interesting because you even saw it like when top shot blew up earlier this year and they would have all the i'm talking about nba top shot where you had all these video moments that were the early nfts and the craze and everything like that where when they would do a drop they had to start building algorithms to try

to fight against bots because you just had straight up bot algorithms coming in and purchasing it. Inside of a nanosecond. So you now have all these shoe companies, whether it be Nike or Adidas, whatever, and they have, whether it be limited drop shoes like with a design collaboration or these standard, hey, Nike's's gonna drop dunks or the jordan ones for the year or whatever they're when they're doing this i know they're still giving a lot to like i guess direct relationships with like a champs a footlocker stuff like that so they they don't have to worry about bots with that because they know we're going to give that company x amount this company x amount whatever but all the other people that come in how much then like what is that half the marketplace or and then like half is to the places they have relationships with and

then how are they fighting it like are they building their own bots to like say all right that's bot right there and i think you said something about they are capping the number you can buy at a time like is that the only thing they're doing so for all white air forces that's the one that i i've personally run into because like we've wanted to buy all pairs of all white air forces and i thought you could just go into like full locker and champs and get them not the case yeah um but to be honest like it's they hold back certain amount of pairs for certain occasions so like they have they have like these certain like planned restocks where they'll eventually like they'll reintroduce maybe like 10,000 pairs or something like that.

Or they'll have cases where it's like they have a new, a brand new champs opening in like a new mall and they want to have like a lot of hot product there to entice people to come into the mall, to come into that store. So they'll have backlogged shoes maybe from like a couple months back specifically set to the side for that store so there's like there's always additional inventory but for them to be making a bunch of new stuff usually they're not going to do that unless they like they'll retro stuff that's the thing like they'll make a they've made how many they made a jordan 11 like every they've made one in 2001 1996 20 i'm gonna butcher this 2005 that's the thing they restocked

them like four or five times but it's like over a 20 year span so like eventually people once they like beat up their old ones or it's just like they want a newer pair it's harder to get those pairs from like 1996 or whatever you're not going to find them anywhere so they'll make something new people will want it a little bit less but even then like the demand for it is still so exponentially higher than like the supply it still resells and it'll still sell out every single time how big is nike's sneaker business aren't they like the what the biggest company yeah definitely but you know they have the apparel they got all the other like is it like half their company is sneakers or more than that probably probably more yeah that's what

i was gonna say it's it's like stupid because they're gonna sell these main brand sneakers in bulk it could be like your good running sneakers right your average 85 dot well they're probably fucking with inflation 125 now but you know the solid sneakers that everyone can buy and it's a nike it's good good quality they buy it and they sell hundreds of thousands of those but then they also go all the way up to the limited like colin capron it drop and stuff like that which he's done he's done sneakers right they did a they did like a collab with him when he had like an air force one all right so i'm not wrong about that he did have wasn't that the one where he had there was like a controversy around it or something like he wouldn't sell it because it had like a flag on it or something like that so that was a that was

an older pair so when they were initially starting their campaign with him, he, uh, there was a shoe that came out, it was an Air Max one and it was just like the USA colors. And on the back, it had the 13 colonies flag. Oh, that's what it was. And they, uh,

they pretty much, he, he tweeted out like, yeah, this is a racist time, blah, blah, blah.

And Nike folded. They pretty much. And the thing is like the most annoying aspect of it is like this shoe would have sat everywhere like yeah it's it's not it's not a very like aesthetically who cares if it's a 13 like who wants a 13 colonies flag on an air max one like they actually re they released a pair of air max ones with the same exact color blocking but without the flag it's an outlet it's on clearance it's literally yeah people don't care the only people the only reason people cared about that was because of the controversy yeah and now they're they turned an air max one that went from clearance to 1400 so wait the one they sell on clearance is that

a kaepernick one it doesn't have the flag on the back so it's not kaepernick at all there's just an air max one with the same exact colors yeah so it has nothing and that's such the interesting thing about this man it's such a beauty is in the eye of the beholder kind of thing like if i took if i took a a blue square and put dory or kiff yak in it right and then sold it in some cool text no one gives a but if i take the red square and it's supreme and i just you know i was allowed to do that it's going to go everywhere take the red square and it's supreme and i just you know i was allowed to do that it's gonna go everywhere because it's like oh that's supreme yep you know what i mean it's this crazy and same thing with kith it's same thing with off-white it's like you're in the club

yeah and at some point the thing that still blows my mind is like these places were cool because that like early on they got cool and they had that rise because the early adopters got to them and it's like yo it's like a click you know what i mean but the early adopters who are the same types of people and literally the same people across generations as time goes on across different things they move to what then becomes like the yo this isn't mainstream man right so there's people who are moving away from supreme and stuff like that because every basic person has it at this point that's why chrome hearts is popping up gallery depart like that's the thing it's it's becoming more and more interesting that like you're you're 100 right

people are especially once it becomes too mainstream they're kind of like uh that's that's not my style anymore it's like people want to be unique and listen if you want to express yourself in a unique fashion sense of more power to you go for it but especially like a lot of these people look towards like major pop like pop celebrities or like just influential celebrities for their fashion advice and those celebrities are a lot of times by the way give them some credit they're like early adopters of things so they have the same attitude sometimes where it's like yo everyone's wearing supreme now i'm not wearing that anymore yeah and it's like i mean i think supreme is kind of it's it's continued it's its path it has it's kind of lost a little bit of steam through like

the acquisitions it had a major acquisition from um i forgot i think it's like a zoomies or it's a major distributor and the fact that they went from like being this like individual company that did their own thing and did like limited stock blah blah a lot of people kind of saw that deal and were like uh maybe we should maybe we should find something that's back in that domain of like super limited impossible to get and like that's kind of why especially now like chrome hearts is like disgustingly popular. And the reason it's like, I'm not familiar with that. So they, um, they were really, really popular in like the eighties and nineties. Like they were their master leather and metal workers.

Like they're very good at making like custom items just like out of leather and metal. metal um and they'll make like recently they they did a cullinan rolls-royce cullinan took out took out all of the seats re-embroidered them custom made the rims uh to make it like chrome heart style so they did that for drake for drake yeah yeah they they custom they custom and like in did the custom interior design for a rolls--Royce Cullinan, the brand new Rolls-Royce, like, truck hybrid. God, what a life. Yo, the store, like, it's kind of, that's, like, when you said, like, to join the club, that's exactly what it is.

And it's like, it falls past just, like, clothes and shoes. Like, go look at watches. Watches are the same thing. If you go to a Rolex store. Those watches are crazy, man. If you go to a Rolex store- The watches are crazy, man. If you go to a Rolex store and you ask them like, hey, let me get a steel Daytona. They'll be like, hey,

spend a half a million dollars with me first. That's what they'll tell you. They'll be like, you know how many people I have asking me for a steel Daytona? I can sell that in a second. But you know what I can't sell? This. So if you want to buy this and this,

we could talk about a steel Daytona. In the same way Chrome hearts for people who aren't Kylie Jenner or Travis Scott or whatever. Those people are pretty much told the same exact thing. You have to book an appointment. You have to pass a COVID test. You have to then like, once you get an appointment, they show you a selection of like three things. And of those three things, you, uh, not three, they show you like 10 things. And of those 10 things, you can grab maybe maybe like two or three of them like they won't even let you buy all of them like they'll be like no like they that's smart they control it and then like once you spend enough

money with them then they'll start showing you like oh you want to see like some of our older stuff like you want to see like maybe this like really cool like bean bag for like 50 grand you're like no and this is this is this is the great paradox of the internet when it gets to a certain level of luxury the internet's all about transparency and cutting out middlemen and going straight to the source on things but all they did smartly and the very high end of stuff is the is the quote-unquote middlemen just met people online at that point and said by the way we'll still keep it physical for certain things as well but it's's the same. Oh, there's a back room over here. Maybe I'll take you there. Maybe I won't. Let's see what you do first. It's, it's amazing that that hasn't changed, you know, this whole

decentralized world and whatever. We still have this, a like almost pay to play type aspect to it. And now you just see it. Like you were saying earlier, when people go to weddings and stuff, like I knew shit was legit. When I saw Robertbert craft wearing i don't remember maybe they were like some form some offshoot of like off-white or something like that to like an event in a suit and i'm like that's an 80 year old guy with hemorrhoids wearing the latest yeezys or whatever you know what i mean like now it's gotten to that point where it's like oh yeah sneakers too, sneakers too. They made a pair of Air Forces for the Patriots when they won the sixth Super Bowl. And they had pieces of the turf and the confetti in the packaging with the shoes. So, like, that's probably what he was wearing.

But, like, that's the thing. Like, they're making cool enough stuff to continually grab the audience and if they keep supplying that like niche while keeping supply low in the same way that like rolex will continue having people want to buy their stuff because they just keep making too little of it what about that one richard millie you were you and i were talking about that when you first got here before we came up here but i keep seeing that i got aware of that one two years ago when OBJ wore it on the fucking field, which was savage. Crazy. But I started looking through them, and they have all different kinds of models and everything. And these things cost like $250K.

Yeah, their house. When did this become a thing? Because I had never heard of it until he did that, and he was probably paid 500k to do that but you know the craziest thing is like on top of the fact that like yeah it's a quarter million dollars for something on your wrist like some of the stuff like some of the bracelets okay you know like a very nice patek or really nice rolex like it'll be an all white gold bracelet or a rose gold bracelet it'll be nice those some of them are like scrunchie bracelets or like nylon or like it's not like a high and like it is like pretty good quality but it's like a pvc plastic case yeah with a scrunchie dude it's it's insane and they're like yeah 300 000 you're like why but that's the thing it's

because people like rafa like rafa nadal got his own one i saw he played in that it made waves that's the thing i was like when you are a good enough marketing agency that's what they are they are a watch they're a watch company and a marketing agency yes they are the best and rolex is right next to them they're the best at being able to consistently get their product and into the hands of people who are looked at the most. See, here's the thing. You're on that side, and I'll even give you a separate side of it. Like when we're talking about Richard Milley, we're talking about the company itself who's producing those products and everything.

You are a guy who, in an industry that needs it badly, like there's a lot of industries I can't say this about now, but in an industry that needs it, you are that middleman. You are translating this crazy market. It's like a language. You know, sneakers are fucking insane. Like no one – there are sneakers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The sneakerheads are like, wait, what's that?

Why is that important? And you got to be like, oh, I know that market. That's what I do. But you're on the side of like you're a procurer and you're a student of the game and you appreciate like when we were talking earlier and we were talking about the art, you point out the artwork here and stuff like that. I can tell you look at it from like an artist lens of like, why is this design like that? And then, oh, that's why this is worth this.

And then add in the analytics of it, with your partner, the engineer and figuring out like, oh, this has this type of market. That's why we'll buy it, whatever. All that middle stuff. At the end of the day, the people you're selling to on another end of it where just like anything else,

literally like cars, like everything, they are buying something that they've learned to like or maybe they liked it pretty quickly when they first saw it, like with sneakers or like I was saying,

I like the Iversons when I put them on for the first time. They make them feel a certain way. But they're buying these things that are now in such an exorbitant price atmosphere even if it's like ashtray money for them you know it's still like oh you're gonna spend 5k on this fucking peril whatever it's crazy to me that they'll do that and those by the way those the yeezys that were the like foam thing we looked at earlier that are ugly as hell and sorry but they're like six hundred dollars and people are buying it people are buying it because they want other people to see that they

have it yep like anything else in the world so you're exonerated of that on the side you're on because you're just procuring and you appreciate the art of all of it but at the end of the day are you still like looking at some of this? Like these people don't even appreciate like what it is. They just know that like they're supposed to have it. And so I got to be the guy to give it to them and I make my living off of it. But it's kind of like an, you know what I mean? It's like a crazy concept. Yeah.

I mean, I've tried, I've stopped trying to like fully comprehend like the justification for like the price for the item. And cause like to a certain degree, like demand dictates the price. Whatever the thing costs is whatever someone's willing to pay for it. And like, we have, we have a pretty good team of people who are able to like find those things that people want regardless.

But to be honest, like I'll, I'll tell people straight up if they like, if they want the history lesson on it, that's the thing. It's always good to have that extra knowledge because that extra knowledge helps you sell the item. It's a story. It gives you that additional fact. When people come in and they see that random Colin Kaepernick Air Max 1, which we have, by the way, size 6 and 7.

You have that? Yeah, size 6 and 7. The one with the flag on it? Yeah. Yeah, we got both of them. Well, we have a size yeah size six and size seven is that a shoe for ants uh size six yeah tiny girl the fuck am i gonna do with that no there's uh i mean we don't we the funniest thing is like we i never knew people's foot sizes could be that small like certain girls come in and they're like five five and they fit like a two and a half y it's not like a black shoe um like that's a masculine shoe which one the capper neck

one no so that's uh it's an air max one it's usa colors it's i'm picturing it wrong i remember i vividly sometimes my mind's fucked up like that i vividly remember seeing the the flag on the shoe when the news story was coming out but in my head i'm picturing a black shoe so it's not no yeah it's a it's red mostly red and white and then it has the flag on the back okay so and that's the thing like people will look at it from the side and they'll be like why is that in the case like that's so dumb but then that's the thing like we have a we have glass on the back of the case so collectors when they walk past and they see the flag on the reflection of the glass they'll literally come up and they'll be like oh what's that damn right damn right so you haven't sold that you're kind of hanging on to that yeah haven't sold it yet i mean it is for sale but um

interesting it's it's that's the thing like we're trying to procure the things that like collectors really really want as well as having like wait how'd you how'd you get that didn't they like cancel that yeah so like they we have consignors who also just are very well-connected within the industry. You said you're Moldovan. You know a guy. We know a couple guys. You know a guy who knows a guy. Couple bodies out there.

Yeah, no, that's the thing. The unreleased stuff, that's the stuff that all those uber, uber wealth people who really don't care about money, that's what they want. And if you can get it for them, they will be your consistent clients. Does Nike know you have that on display and would they be okay with it if they knew you did? I mean, I'd be impressed if Nike knew about my existence at all, to be honest. Yeah, I don't want 12 lawyers coming at you like, you know, we heard you on this podcast. So you have some unreleased sneakers, that's no i mean i don't nuts the the thing is like i i actually questioned this early on when i was like into like looking into like selling sneakers i was just like

it's really weird that nike would allow because like we i saw stores opening up years ago and and seeing the fact that like okay so full stores are opening to resell licensed goods from Nike. And I was like, that's a little bit like, isn't there a legal issue there? I don't think it is as long as you don't like, if you consistently market it as a Nike product, you're not claiming like some other, you know, copyright or trademark over it. You're still marketing it as like, this is nike i'm not even thinking that that's wow so like the same thing with the d like i mean it made it a little bit more difficult with online because like we like kiff is technically selling the nike item and if kiff doesn't have the license to sell it from nike then it might become an issue but

as long as it's advertised as like a nike good and it's like that's all it is it's not that's why even like when people sell fakes and they rip off the nike sign as long as they market it as a inauthentic or like a ua or replica nike they can still sell that item how do you know you don't have any fakes in there are you an expert i i mean you got to be an expert at that at this point but do you ever you don't have any fakes in there are you an expert i i mean you got to be an expert at that at this point but do you ever worry that one could slip through the cracks because it's so fucking good oh i mean yeah they they are getting very very good um yeah i mean we mostly spent we spend a lot of time on like authentication um because we buy from a lot of sources so a lot

of the time we'll actually procure like a retail pair, like directly from a retailer and use that as like our base. And then whatever, whatever that, when we have that base, then we can start comparing it to other stuff. When it comes to like more unique, like one-off or like, you know, very, very limited shoes. Sometimes I'll go to other sneaker stores who I know that have that shoe that they've gotten from a retailer. And I'll literally like come in. I'll be like, Hey, I need to check this against yours yours let me know if you see anything weird here's the box here's the shoes here's a black light here's all this so there's like there's tons of ways to like check to tell um but yeah like they are they are getting impressively good at making these um

and that's the thing it's like a lot of people really don't care about whether or not it's fake or not but that's a lot of people do like i mean if you're spending that kind of money too you know it's like there's one mona lisa man yeah it's it's no different it's the same concept if if you have one in there and you can't prove it's real then who the fuck cares i mean i could buy that anywhere i know t-shirts that have it on it that actually not for nothing sell for like two thousand dollars but still you know mona lisa's that's got to be retailing for like 200 milli yeah so i don't know man it's it's like it's still nuts to me and and i i'll admit i have to like kind of remove any bias i have with that topic of why people buy it because i'm i'm the

opposite like i mean shit dude i wear some clothes that I've had for 15 years because I like them. I do the same thing. And you kind of strike me as a laid-back guy like that, and you're just into the art of it. That's why I was bringing that up. But once you start looking, I mean, you've got to have clients, right?

And you see these people, and that's what they want. They want that competition of, I got it, they don't. And the biggest thing is understanding the demand. And the one thing, early on when I started, that competition of I got it, they don't. And that's the thing. The biggest thing is understanding the demand. And like the one thing, like even early on when I started, my parents had no understanding of this. They saw like a bunch of sneaker boxes coming in. They were just like, dude, what the hell are you doing?

Like why are you spending this much money on sneakers? They saw me shipping them out. So they were like, okay, so he has to be selling them. And then I remember one day I bought. Did they think there were like drugs in those sneakers? Dude, they thought I was going crazy. They they were literally just like what are you doing like yeah your dad thought you were an international drug dealer it's like we tried to get him out of there um but essentially we um I forgot what I was saying oh my bad I made you laugh no no yeah the humor the humor knocked the knock the topic out of it you had all you were saying you had all the shoes in your garage so you were shipping them out left and

right and your parents were like what the yeah yeah and I remembered still to this day when I brought back a pair of used Yeezy solar red twos so this is when Kanye was part of Nike and he did the the the easy two which was like part of the red october uh which is like a super popular shooter that now like around what year is this oh man maybe like 2005. oh this is a while while back yeah i might be wrong with that but yeah long time it was pretty pretty decent amount of time back um yeah i think it's pretty close and he did the easy one and then he did the easy two and the easy two was really really popular because he had the red october's it was a shock drop and it was the final like nike kanye shoe that they were gonna make because they were having issues um i remember i bought them for 1100

from taiwan from a guy who won a raffle which is a country yeah which is a country shit i'm not gonna be able to open a store in china there's certain things we stand for on this show so if later you have to disavow me i understand just don't be john cenan start speaking fucking mandarin and apologizing for it on camera the funniest thing is i took a year of mandarin don't remember a single thing the only thing i do remember is ba is eight and father yeah no disrespect to mandarin by the way i'm just saying like that was fucking wild when he did that yeah seeing john cena speak mandarin never apologize for calling out a country that's a country come on never in my life would i ever thought i'd see john cena speaking pretty decent mandarin hey i think that's a really cool thing i

think the context of what he was doing though was fucking insane yeah you know like where's the line here but i mean actually maybe good time to go to that i'll just cut off what you were just saying sorry but you know you had mentioned it earlier i can't miss this the whole chinese market with this yeah how much of that is driving like stock x um so i think i don't think they're in china yet i'm they might have like one one um distributions on her from there but better question better question sorry i asked that wrong how much of like the price action you're seeing on stock x driven by an overall global market for said shoes which would therefore include china as a main driver versus like no we still dictate the prices here because stock X isn't there.

That's a better way to ask. I mean, China buys a lot of shoes. They buy like there's bulk suppliers who consistently ship out like pallet fulls of shoes to China every single day, every single week. And it's like, they,

they move shoes a lot. That being said, there's a lot of them. And it's becoming like a more it's becoming more mainstream like fashion there as well like they're still very big into the idea of like designer is the higher echelon of like these types of fashion trends or whatever but like more and more as it becomes like as it meshes like if once the guy who owns off-white one of the most popular streetwear brands becomes the lead designer at louis vuitton one of the top luxury brands that everybody in china is just like look at all these luxury brands

technically he's making stuff that's like close to streetwear at louis vuitton he there are certain things that are a little bit closer to like the traditional line of like, you know, long cut trench jackets and stuff like that that are like more universally worn opposed to like worn in like hip hop settings or like music videos or like stuff that's just like a different type of style entirely. Once that starts to like cross over, that's when they become to accept becoming to accept it more um and to be honest like i feel like it'll only become more popular in china because like they're also big into like preserving the history and like the collectability of these items like japan in particular japan is is amazing at preserving the history of these sneakers like they have some of the biggest Jordan collectors out in Japan. Well, that doesn't surprise me.

Because, I mean, Tokyo is insane as far as, like, how ahead of the curve culturally it's always been. I mean, they had, not for nothing, like, they had Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift, and it was very real. You know, maybe not some of the drag racing stuff. That was probably a little bit exaggerated. But the whole, like... The cars. Exactly. Like, that's what they're like.

It's a crazy culture. Yeah, when I was... When we were doing the... Like, when I was doing olympic job and we were supposed to go to tokyo i was like looking up all of these like sneaker stores that i was gonna go to and try to like procure a couple of their like very limited pairs because i was like they have stuff i've never seen like they had a pair of ichiro suzuki sample jordan ones yeah like what does that even mean it sounds like a fucking single so you remember who ichiro suzuki is i know ichiro suzuki will he's all he's gonna is he in the hall of fame yet

should be i think he hasn't been retired five years maybe i'm wrong about that but he's one of the best players i've ever seen but yeah so you know his silhouette where he has like the yes the handout where he's like waiting for the pitch they had that silhouette on the back of a seattle teal like you know the seattle mariners teal color yeah the teal black and white jordan one with his silhouette on the back heel i've never seen that but as soon as i saw that in like a japanese sneaker store i was like i need it but that's the thing it's like you see did you get that that's the thing i didn't get to go to oh yeah because you didn't get to go fuck yeah exactly so i did all this additional research i found all these dope places to go and i was just like all right well

the cats like foreign visitors are like lit wow so like that one though that means that some designer took a night what was the shoe again it was a jordan it was an actual jordan one jordan one so somebody took they took a jordan one that nike sold so they bought it retail or whatever over the counter and then they put this design all over it. No, no, no. So Nike made this shoe. Oh, Nike made that shoe. It was a sample.

It was never generally released to the public, but it was made as like a prototype. And because they only made a few variations of these prototypes, those are the only shoes that exist for like the Suzuki. And like they have a couple of them wow yeah and usually they make the samples in size nines and they'll write like sample not for sale like on the inside heel of it it's that's the thing like those types of shoes yeah we have collectors we honestly we have a couple collectors in jersey who are um they asked them they got some yeah but in japan especially like preserving like the authentic michael jordan stuff like there's so many like 85 jordan ones that are signed by michael like yeah like those are auction pieces those are like southerly pieces and they like

they're in sneaker stores jordan came up at a really interesting time because he was drafted in 84 and the NBA had been playing like the finals on like tape delay and so very smartly when I don't know if that's is that a word smartly intelligently intelligently yeah here we go I got my vocab guy we're not even drinking tonight either but um still like David Stern comes in and says oh my god we have magic johnson and larry bird this is a show let's market the fuck out of this and started to get it going and it happened to coincide when jordan comes into the league what they didn't have you know at the time i know like converse was a big thing but it's not like dr j who was jordan before jordan right like the precursor to it it's not like he had these signature shoes that everyone knew because the NBA also was in a low period after the 60s Celtics left the building.

So Jordan starts to come up and because he was doing the fucking foul line thing right away, he was Air Jordan, Nike had him as an endorsement partner or whatever, and they started to make this Jordan line. Where I lose it in the context of history is obviously he they started to make this jordan line where i lose it in the context of history is obviously he went on to have this legendary career and then even had the pause in the middle after baseball yeah like leaving on top after three in a row and had all his shoes coming out at what point did it start to become oh my god that's the only sneaker that's the collector item and then the second part of the question is is it fair to say that it pretty much built the sneaker that's the collector item and then the second part of the question is is it fair to say that it pretty much built the sneaker market that we know like it none of this none of the yeezys would have ever happened without jordan i don't think they would have been

as popular if jordan was the thing or like there wasn't something that supplemented that type of demand like i mean he he was iconic in the fact that like, he really was the first person who just like, was like the clutch King who like always had these highlight moments on top of that. Like he had his own product that he consistently advertised. So like, in the same way that like, it was also

during the growth of like the digital age, like we finally started seeing stuff like live events on, on, on like TV. We finally started seeing like all of these, all of these like shoes coming out to like major distributors all over the United States, all over like other, you know, other countries as well. So in the same way as like, and the same way that Kanye kind of did it where he just like, he made him cool by being the iconic figure that he is. That's what Jordan had going for him. Like he, listen, like he won how many championships, then went and played baseball, then came back. Came back in the four or five just to play games with you. Shout out, Jay.

Well, that's the thing that's also why for jordan a lot of like the like the jordan's after 14 when he like stopped playing nobody cares about those as much like there's there's a few collectors who are like still into them and stuff like that like all of the jordan's like pretty much 1 through 14 during his era of playing those are the ones are the most that are regarded as like the most in high demand okay idiot question now those ones like the ones through 14 when they release this all that they have all different jordans that come out obviously it's a whole line but does he he re-releases those in like new models new colors yeah that's what i'm saying like they're they're constantly like impressioned upon making up a word but they're like impressioned upon and they create new markets

over the years and what you're saying is the most popular markets that are created today are the ones to play off of those when he was in the league and that's the thing like they'll build that shoe with like certain like um certain like odes to like maybe like an accomplishment during that year or like maybe towards like a theme that happened like they're releasing a jordan 6 that's um they're going to be releasing a jordan six that's um they're going to be releasing a jordan six that's like iconic to like the hoop the gold hoop earring that he wore that's and they're doing a woman's release and doing like a bunch of those gold hoop earrings down the six that's sick so like that's the thing like they find ways to like tie him always into it

or like they'll have like um what's another good example like the j Jubilee 11s, I guess, are a pretty good example because like they look like a Concord. But like it's a shoe that like has become iconic because they've been pictured in like those like last shot moments or like within like the game winning moments. So people still have them as like posters. People still have them as like those moments that like when people were while you know growing up and watching them maybe less of like the young young kids but like people still remember it in the same way that like i still remember ray allen hitting that three uh when he was on the heat oh yeah that was one of the most crazy moments i've seen live ever and like i don't even care about ray allen that much but the fact that he hit that like that he hit that shot I don't think I'll ever forget it that's the thing man we are tied to experiences and just to go back within that

point to something you said earlier about how and it's it should be an obvious comment but when we are looking at these things in context we forget this and your point was when you have the enormous individual brand with the allure to go next to the actual brand of the product that sells so you have the enormous individual brand with the allure to go next to the actual brand of the product that sells. So you have like a Kanye with a Yeezy. That's what drives it, the personal brand, right? These people, when they buy a Yeezy, they're buying Kanye, but I'll take it another level and say, I think like subconsciously or even consciously when people are doing that, they don't just think like, yo yo i'm buying kanye's shoe they go back to all the things in their life where kanye walked into the door of their life and they had an experience with it whether it was a song that

was in a special moment that was something he created or got them through a tough time or like was a vibe during the summer or whether it was some news about some crazy shit he did that they heard that they were laughing to make a memes about for a long time or whether it was like they just have seen his whole career come together and they're like this guy's just a creative genius and i get to walk in this piece of art that he made that puts the entire value behind like what that shoe represents before they even look at well is this even a good design yeah like the fucking and don't get me wrong he's got a lot of great designs i don't want to take away from him that one just happened to be really funny

that uh that pillow of a shoe whatever it is i'm sure it's comfortable but you know they look at that and they're thinking like yo this is yay yeah this is the genius yeah no that's the thing it's some people might not even think it's the genius though some people think like this is the controversy or like this is like a thing that will keep people talking this will have the eyes on me so like even if you're not buying into like kanye's like music or whatever like you still know the influence or the impact that it has and the fact that people also understand that influence um and i feel like that's kind of why in particular with like his early shoes they got so popular like people just like loved the fact that like kanye continued to like be a prominent influential figure whether it was for

good whether it was for bad he was just like always in the news he was saying crazy shit he was you know oh always staying relevant um great point but at the end of the day like that's what at least got people interested in in looking into it because at the at the end of the day, like, that's what at least got people interested in looking into it. Because at the end of the day, it's like people like James Harden. People like the fact that he's, like, an amazing scorer. He is one of the top, like, offensive prospects. Like, not prospects. He's one of the top offensive, like, players in the league, period.

He's the greatest procurer of strip clubs of all time, too. He knows every single great one you know it's exactly so he has so many good like amazing qualitative benefits or like qualitative yes yes yeah he has quantitative quantitative yeah um but that's the thing he he's he has all of these things going for him but nobody cares about his shoes because he's not as relevant or as controversial or as like he's relevant during the nba era or during the nba season and then during the offseason what do you hear about harden strip clubs that's strip clubs yeah instagram which is not for nothing he could he could find a way to brand off that yeah you're right he hasn't branded his shoes yeah do

a collab with the strip club have him wearing them online never you never know maybe people in atlantis are buying them. What do you think of Kanye, though? I'm always curious for people's opinion on that. I think he's a little bit crazy. Agreed. I think he actually has a mental something. He's either just like...

I mean, I don't think. He's already said that he has like a certain you know type of i don't know what he has like adhd or definitely ocd bipolar bipolar that's what he has bipolar um and i think like for somebody who's in his position who consistently has to deal with all of this like revolving anxiety of like people looking at you people judging you people telling you certain things people people within your own like camp trying to screw you over like when you get to that echelon of money and power it's not only about like putting people on it's about like

preserving the fact that like you've built something great and you don't want to ruin because like that's the thing as much as people give them a hard time for being crazy or having these manic episodes, dude, imagine having a multi-million dollar contract with Adidas where they're telling you, you have to sell this amount of shoes. You have to make these shoes. You have to design them. They have to move. If they don't move, we're going to cut this contract.

You're not getting any of this money. You have ambitions to do clothing. You have ambitions to do all these other things like for somebody who who likes to get shit done i couldn't imagine the headaches that guy has and even though he's he can definitely push some of them onto like managers agents whatever then you still have to trust those people you have to make sure you have those people that are like have your best interests at heart and on top of like there's so many things to consistently be thinking about where it's impressive the fact that he's been able to like

continue to produce good stuff still he's still putting out shoes that people want he's still putting out i mean bro it's amazing what he's pulled off. It's amazing. Yeah. He was, there was a point where he was a, he was borderline broke because he had just been in music. I don't know what year this is. This is a while ago, but he started building off of himself. And like, he's one of those guys, I'm a huge fan of his. And like, I also don't listen to every single thing he says because sometimes he says fucking crazy shit.

I'm like, all right, well, that's fucking crazy. But like, he's got the thing. We talk about it on this show every now and then i talked about my friend shannon a couple weeks ago extensively and kanye's i think he came up he's just a great example you you can't put your finger on it exactly what it is but you listen to him talk and there is a level of like creative genius there that whatever is going on above us in this world, whether it's evolution or a god or whatever, touched him with a lightning bolt and said, you got it. And like not – maybe five other people have something like this and that's it. Like you want to talk about supply and demand. It's like it is the ultimate demand with the lowest supply and you know i see what he's done with his marketing to build out this brand and how outside the box it is and he's and he's putting

out even like some ugly shit and making it cool off that but then putting out some amazing beautiful shit and building factories in wyoming just to do it like andrew schultz, I think, probably, the comedian, probably had one of the best theories I've ever heard in anything. Like, simple but great. On Kanye West a few years ago where he said, you know, he, like, is cutting through it like bullshit. I respect it, though. He was like, Kanye West wants to take everything that's completely uncool and make it cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was amazing. uncool and make it cool yeah it's amazing he's like what was the biggest douchebag thing like

in urban culture wearing pink wearing pink polos and shit so kanye west said i'm gonna wear pink polos and all the homies are gonna do it and it's gonna be the wild shit did it what was the old there were a couple other things he had and then he landed it with what's the ultimate not cool thing you can do make music about fucking god. Kanye goes out and makes music about fucking God. And I'm like, wow, he does that. But there's a level of creativity to it that even if he's like programming all of us,

like I can pull this off. He does. And it, and he makes it like, like you listen to what he does. I mean, even when I hear simple shit, like the way he sampled Elton John song and put it into good morning yeah like and and you you you read

about him working with ruben in the studio and everything like these legends and you know the like the religious pro it's like a steve jobs process like that religious thing of like him and johnny ive when they'd be in the apple studio and not say a word to each other and just point at shit. Like that's the same way he operates. And now to see him bring it to the sneaker and apparel market. But let's focus on sneakers because you're the sneakers guy more than anything. And it's like you see what he's done building these Yeezys out. Even if he built it in the shadow of guys who came before him, he created his own marketplace for this.

And now people, whether whether they like he's controversial whether they love him or hate him they're yeezys and it's like oh kanye is crazy but i'm gonna buy that shit and he's nuts man and he has the ultimate like marketing platform like his music is his marketing platform he's like jump on jumping over jump man like saying all these things about like how how he's making yeezys cooler than than nikes like he uses his music as a marketing tool and like very very wisely um on top of that like yeah he's he's just really good at being able to like that andrew schultz bit i i remember it still is like he he took dad shoes the most like ridiculous dead looking dad shoes and he's just like no these are the coolest

things ever yeah and like it's that's the thing like you need to be very very confident in in who you are and like and in your design because like if you made the dad shoes and they weren't as comfortable as they are or maybe they looked you know a little bit more goofy like he had the perfect color blocking and he had also the right people wearing them for the hype around them to just explode yeah and that's why early on like when he started doing like the 350s or 750s he they were selling for like thousands of dollars they retailed for for nothing but because they were just trying it out with adidas and they were doing super limited supply people were paying

crazy money yeah just because like they were like nah there's something special to it and like as much as I agree with the fact that like yeah he's he has something unique and crazy about him I'm sure not all of it's good you know it's like a lot of it has to be like monstrous headaches because like even the way that he oh he doesn't operate on our planet no like when he was talking i still remember when he went to meet with trump at trump tower oh god and he was telling him about like hydrogen planes or something like that and trump is sitting there staring at him like dude like usually i'm the one spewing bullshit non-stop and he and kanye's just over there showing like yo check

this out like look you fuel efficiency at its height you're like what are you talking about remember the yeezy jet? Air Force One. He's like, I think we're going to make Air Force One the Yeezy Air Force One. Because, like, I mean, dog, this is the president right here. President Trump, you need to be flying in the best. I'm going to bring you the best. And Trump's like, mm-hmm, okay. I always respect Kanye. This is why he's a genius. And he's looking over at his aides like, what the fuck is going on? flying in the best i'm going to bring you the best and trump's like okay i do i always i always

respect kanye this is why he's a genius and he's looking over at his aides like what the fuck dude trump didn't even have like a second to say anything because like kanye was on such a manic rampage i'm just like no like look at this new innovation like look at this new dope shit like it's so great trump's literally like yo you're doing all of my work for me like usually i'm the one who's supposed to say the greatest but dude like and the funny thing is all his aides and suits who are just you know let's let's be honest about it anyone that works in a political job they're all you know they're fucking lobbyists and political you know back room dealers they don't fucking understand designs they don't understand most of them don't understand creativity and they're sitting there in the

presence of genius even when he's saying like some crazy shit about like hydrogen bombs on the back of air force one you see like some of the shit he's doing and like i'd be i'm a creative so i'd be there like jaw on the floor ignoring the crazy shit and looking through it like the design ideas he has and how he formulates this stuff and all these people are looking at him like they're looking at the fuck did we let yeah they're like what the fuck did we just let in the oval office yeah he's got the fucking mega hat dude i i can't i i can't but that's the same thing he's just like what what's the most not cool thing to do the mega like trump so you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna like that was the other thing he said it's it's i mean i mean i don't know if that one was as successful but like people forgot man everyone's like i'm

never buying a yeezy again or listening to his music yes you are you're all listening to all of it you're all buying it because you don't give a fuck no but actually the other trend i i just remembered because you said something earlier and i was like oh let's go into it and then i didn't i didn't after that but we i forget what we were talking about but the digital side of this you know because the morphing of the physical and digital worlds is nuts and it's real and like my friends anthony fenu and riley horvath at soar who've been on this podcast and their co-founder justin baker's going to be on in a few weeks you know like that's they're building the metaverse and they're right at the they're they're at the precipice of taking the physical world officially and making it all the

same and so i think about that with things that have clearly become major sources of like collectors and retail items that are so valued and sneakers is like right at the top of that list from all the reasons we've discussed today but are you you know not to go like too fucking hokey here but you know you saw all the nfts blow up there was a lot of bullshit but are you seeing marketplaces where people are making nfts with like physical sneakers and creating experiences that maybe are like ar that you have to use a phone to actually see or stuff like that and like how how real is that And where are we like in the adoption phase? So there, there's one really cool thing that a company called goat does.

So that goat is pretty much the same thing as stock X. Um, but they also sell use choose and they have, they had a function on there at one point where it was just like AR to try on certain pairs of like really, really limited sneakers. And you would essentially like pick whichever sneaker you wanted and then you would like pretty much take your camera point at your feet and you would be able to see how those shoes would look on your feet through your camera now it's free yeah oh that's sick it was so and they put on like the crazy they put on dior jordan ones they put on kanye's like grammy sample. Easy's like the craziest of the

crazy shoes they had. They put them on there just so you could see like in a digital world, what would my feet look like if I had D or ones on? Okay. Now I'm going to ask you a crazy question. You just got my brain churning here. How close are we to a world? And this might be totally out of like what you're looking at. So if you can't answer, no problem, but how close are we to a world where everyone wears the same standard shoe but you don't see it it's just something that goes around your foot and they are wearing an ar experience on their foot so the jordans are not made physically for unless they're needed for like a basketball court or something like they still make those but they make digital

representations that look completely real and they're streamed by fucking anthony fenu and riley and fucking baker because that's fucking happening but you know still like do you think that's something that 20 years from now might actually be a real thing um I think just because they still have utility like the sneakers themselves I think maybe but just I think it might be closer to like what I see happening maybe a little bit sooner is like something where i watched that episode with venue and he had um i'm gonna introduce you to him by the way you definitely got to talk with him yeah for sure and um i remember him talking about like walking into

stores as an ar experience and like actually being able to like you know how cool it would be if you had an option on like an ar headset to like walk through the doors of Kif and like just browse around and then on there, you could like click on a shirt and then just like check out through the air. Like, Oh dude, that's happening. That's, that's not 20 years away. That's happening. Yeah. That would be so dope. Yeah. The, the having just like basic form shoes. I mean, I think they still need to keep the limited nature of the release or, or I mean, technically if it's like an NFT and you have like limited stock or limited production of those and you're paying like for access to that.

Yeah. I didn't even think of that. But yeah, like I still figured I was treating it the same way as physical. It just happens to be a digital representation. So maybe they would store the digital representation on the blockchain because why not? It's verified yeah i mean to be honest like that's like the whole entire like super super far i mean maybe it's not that far future but like to be honest like i remember watching um have you seen the movie ready player one i've heard of that i have not seen that so it's also a book and they it's pretty much like the next phase of like ar

adoption to the extreme where people are essentially like living their life in an ar headset just writing that down so i have that later and they they in the movie they pretty much show that like every single person because you know the world goes to shit and there's like economic economic disaster climate disaster everyone's going to go into this world and in in the show or the book not the show the movie um the place is called the oasis and you can essentially like unlock certain things and have like it'll in the movie they had like a morph suit that would essentially allow you to feel sensation from the ar thing to that suit um on top of that you would have like a platform where you could like run and control your character so like i could see i i'm

i'm confused maybe concerned is probably the better word um at the fact that like we take our lives and live them in a different reality where it really uh i, I don't know. I'm, I'm very much that person who's just like, I re I'm, I truly enjoy like interpersonal connection, interpersonal reality, like conversations and stuff like that. Even for like social media, like I, I, to this day do not understand why people find the need or like the desire to like post their entire personal lives on social media. Like social media to me is a business tool. You use it to only, you know, market, show people what you have, blah, blah, blah. If you look at my Instagram, like my personal one, I post maybe like once a year.

I don't even have your personal Instagram. Oh, I'll show you. All right. We'll get that after. It literally, I like, it'll be like a random vacation that I take to like Colorado or whatever. It's like, that's all it is. And it's like, I really don't, I don't need to show everybody what I'm doing on a consistent basis.

Cause like the people who I'm close with, the people who I care about, they'll know what's going on. Cause they're checking in or I'm checking with them. Bro. It's the same thing you sell to them. Yeah. Compare. Yeah.

I got it. You don't, I'm doing this. You're not. Same psychology. No, that's fair. But it's also like, I'm not disagreeing with you by the way. I like your point. I'm just saying. Yeah. I, I,. You're not. Same psychology. No, that's fair. But it's also like – I'm not disagreeing with you, by the way. I like your point. I'm just saying.

Yeah. That's the thing. I see it more as like people are too enthralled into like this world of like I need to like see or like show this image of like me having a good time or like of me being happy like it really really sucks when people are consistently posting up like all of their like super super happy moments and like look at how like dope dope like this like party is blah blah and then you come and talk to them like a week later and like yo how's it been going and they'll be like yo honestly like it's been really downhill like everything's shit like this is happening this is happening you're like i mean you couldn't tell you like it really like i don't know that's

why i really don't understand like the whole entire need to like and a lot of my friends do this too it's just like why like i honestly like i don't even have that many friends to share this stuff with like i i know that enough people who are realist yeah enough people who care about me who like see what's going on with my life they always check in i always check in with them because i know that they have stuff going on i'm interested but for the people who are just like yo check out this week in cabo like yo check it check this out like like i'm still having a lot of fun out here though and then and then what and then what nick if i touch that one we're gonna be talking for like another

two hours and we do we just did like three hours i mean time i told you time doesn't exist not at all it's wild but i could talk with you all day this is this is your level of knowledge on this is even beyond what i expected i guess i i guess i should have known that coming in but i love your story i love how you got into this i love the hustle what you're doing and how you are all about it and i like how i don't even know how much of it we talked about on camera versus how long we were talking before camera but i love how you look at this like how you approach it and and how you view sneakers in the market it's not just like this thing that you're comparing yourself to other people too you like the art of

it and that's that's the coolest but bro if you're down i i definitely want to have you on again you know i'd like you to be the go-to sneaker guy and and maybe like general culture guy on some stuff like this is very cool to me because you're knowledgeable you're really good yeah it's like i said it helps sell the shoes so as long as long as it keeps helping me with uh with with all the procurement and all the all the you know supplying to you know clients help we're gonna keep doing it and um dude thank you again for having me on here it was of course brother it was quite the pleasure first podcast ever so it's cool to like see how it all operates see how uh how it functions and sorry for always

saying the same exact what i always say like but honestly or i always say um see people wouldn't have known until you just said it i know they're gonna know i know but now you'll now you'll go back and re-watch it a second time to see how many times i said exactly that's what it is but listen man thank you for coming in thanks for coming down here and congratulations on the new physical spot to add to the online spot and all the relationships behind the scenes

and uh we'll be checking in again soon and I want to talk to you after this about some some stuff in the digital world maybe that I could I could use your opinion on

so we'll do it again thanks bro thanks again alright everybody else give it a thought get back to it

peace Everybody else, give it a thought. Get back to it. Peace.