EVERY SPOKEN WORD
100 min read · 19,580 words- 0:00 – 4:43
You can’t work backwards from money
- DSDavid Senra
[typewriter sounds] I wish we just recorded the conversation we were just having, but I love what you just said. So you're like, "Hey, my favorite entrepreneurs cannot work backwards from money." Say more about this.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, it's true. Like, even some of the biggest companies in the world, like take Apple and Steve Jobs, who's like one of your favorite, I guess like favorite icons-
- DSDavid Senra
For sure
- RFRonnie Fieg
... um, ever, if not your favorite, right?
- DSDavid Senra
One of them, yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Okay. But when you, when you see the product he was making, you can actually tell that there was passion behind trying to make product that was gonna change his own life, right? And I felt like, uh, even then, when, uh, the iPod really changed the trajectory of the company, you could feel the passion through the product, and that legacy lives on. Like, even with the duo that we're seeing now, you could see that legacy live on. Is it on par with what, uh, Steve Jobs may have designed? We will never know, but ultimately he created an ethos that I believe really transcended and that feeling that penetrated everyone's lives really affected us in so many ways. I don't apply that, um, to my business. It's just naturally there because when I grew up, I became passionate about my world at such a young age, and I think that that's the most important element of anyone's or any entrepreneur's success. If you listen to most of them, they'll, you know, explain how their passion started so young in their li- you know, when they were, uh, so, so early in their lives. Whereas, you know, in my, in my case, it started when I was, um, when I was 13 and I started working in a stockroom. Uh, but even before then, I always wanted to dress fly in school, and my parents, uh, couldn't afford to buy me the things I wanted. So back then, I went to work strictly for the purpose of like being able to buy my own shit and just dress the way I wanted to dress. Uh, and that's how it started. And I think the passion for that grew, and as I learned about product, it just grew more and more, but getting my foot in the door and knowing what I wanted to do from such an early age gave me the, I think gave me the upper hand.
- DSDavid Senra
But how does like a 12 or 13-year-old kid get in- interested in like fashion? Is this coming from like hip hop culture? Like what was going on-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... in your life where it's just like, "Man, I wanna dr- I wanna come to school dressed in fly"?
- RFRonnie Fieg
So I'll tell you. So, so growing up, um, up until fourth grade, uh, my parents sent me to, to a private school, to a yeshiva, and in fourth grade they couldn't afford to send me there anymore. Actually, my grandfather was helping my mom send me to a, to a private school, and then in fourth grade they couldn't do it anymore, so they pulled me out, and then they put me in the public school closest to my house. So I grew up in Jamaica, Queens, so I went to PS 178. And when I, when I attended 178, it was like a culture shock for me because it was so many different cultures. It was like the biggest melting pot ever. And you know, Queens is the biggest melting pot in the world. So we got to see, or I got to see, um, from day one, so many different cultures in the way people were dressing and the styles and really there was like a small crew of kids, it was like six or seven of them, that befriended me right away. And these kids, like, that was back when, you know, Polo, Tommy, and Nautica were like-
- DSDavid Senra
I remember this
- RFRonnie Fieg
... you know, were really, were really big.
- DSDavid Senra
We're around the same age. I remember this. [laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, so it was, uh, it was... Are you 82? What year are you?
- DSDavid Senra
'84.
- RFRonnie Fieg
That era, um, of like... And then going into middle school, it became even more important, so more important in the way that you were dressing. You know? So I found myself, you know, really wanting... You know, I used to have to borrow my friend's clothes, like-
- DSDavid Senra
Dude, I had knockoff Tommy Hilfiger.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Dude, it-
- DSDavid Senra
I literally bought, bought it at the swap shop in South Florida.
- RFRonnie Fieg
That was a big-
- DSDavid Senra
We had no money.
- RFRonnie Fieg
It was a big thing.
- DSDavid Senra
And then I got called out at school. You wanna hear an embarrassing story?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Oh, shoot.
- DSDavid Senra
I didn't even know. Some-
- RFRonnie Fieg
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
You know how these hustlers in South Florida are. They took old Wendy's uniforms. Like they, Wendy's u-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Oh my god
- DSDavid Senra
... like the, the fast food place.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 4:43 – 10:25
“Keep the envelope. I want a job.”
- RFRonnie Fieg
and then some of the kids in school, you know, they had the money or the parents had the money to buy them the product they wanted, and that's really what fueled, you know, my, my kinda like passion for wanting to work. Just like I wanted to make money so I could buy my own product, you know, and buy my own clothing. So at 13, at my bar mitzvah, you know, my, my mom's first cousin, my second cousin, [clears throat] who was David Z, he owned shoe stores in the city. He offered me an envelope of cash 'cause he knew that my parents were paying off for my bar mitzvah party with the money I was getting as gifts.
- DSDavid Senra
Oh.
- RFRonnie Fieg
So he offered me, like, I was going to the bathroom during the party, and he gave, offered me a, like a envelope of cash, and I told him, "Keep the envelope. Um, I want a job."
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
I was 13, you know? And he was like, "Are you su..." Like, there was some money in that thing. So, uh, I was like, "Yeah, no, I'm sure. I want a job." And I started the next day, and I started, um, working, um, in the stock room in a warehouse on Broadway, uh, where David Z had a bunch of stores, and I worked there throughout the summer. Uh, and then after that I worked in the stock room in 8th Street, which was like probably the most important part of my upbringing, and also like the most influential part of my life. Uh, because that's where I got to see, like, it was really the epicenter of culture, 8th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue. Like, during the weekend they would shut down the block. There would be like- Basically like block parties every weekend there, and the cops would let it rock, and then the cars were parking like diagonally 'cause there were so many cars. And that's where people would come to get, you know, whether they were coming to get their fitted, or Grace Papaya was on the corner, or Fat Beats where DJs would come and get their vinyl. Sam Goody was across the street. And then you had a bunch of different shoe stores and also apparel shops, uh, where people were buying their Iceberg apparel, or they were buying... Back then, brown shoes and boots were running the streets of New York. So like today, when you see like the obsession over kids in their Jordans or, you know, uh, kids buying sneakers the way they are today, they were buying boots, like hiking boots back then, and that's when New York City was colder, and it was snowing a lot more, and, you know, for a good part of the year, you needed to have boots. And David Z. was the number one location for those products. So you're talking about brands like Asolo and Tecnica and Red Wing, and we had Polo, like the Polo cookie boots and the hiking boots, the RLECs boots, and Timberlands, um, Trasetta, Dolomite, like all, Bare AKU, like all these GORE-TEX, uh, hiker boots. Hiking boots were just everywhere in New York City in that culture. It was like it was still a subculture, but it got so big, like people were driving from like different states to come buy these products because they were Italian brands making product in Italy, and it wasn't mass- you know, it wasn't massively distributed.
- DSDavid Senra
But when do you go from, like, admiring what other people are making to saying, "Hey, I'm gonna do my versions of this"?
- RFRonnie Fieg
That came, that came later. So that, like, I worked as a s- a stock boy, like receiving product, getting one-on-one time with the product, then becoming a salesperson, then becoming an assistant manager, then becoming a manager, assistant buyer, and then buyer/general manager.
- DSDavid Senra
So this is just you learning the business, not thinking like... L- let me ask you a question. Maybe, like, I should start here. If somebody doesn't know who you are-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... and say, "Hey, w- what do you do?" How do you describe yourself?
- RFRonnie Fieg
I do a lot more than design. So I'm the CEO, creative director, and CMO, I would say, of the company.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- RFRonnie Fieg
So CEO, CMO, and cr- and, and, um, and creative director. And I think the creative director portion of my role, uh, has evolved over time, but I am ideating and part of every design of every product that we put out. So it's hard for me to describe what it is that I do-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- RFRonnie Fieg
... because I do a lot.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And a typical creative director wouldn't be doing the buying or merchandising, and I do, I, I do most of those things. So I have my hands in everything, um, in everything product-wise, uh, and then I design the spaces.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- RFRonnie Fieg
I'm heavily involved in, in the full, like 360, 360 degrees of the business, the, you know, even, even down to, um, the experience that people have when they walk in, the F&B portion of what we do with Kith Treats and now Ronnie's. So there's a lot that I do, so I can't really describe it, and it's hard-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- RFRonnie Fieg
... for people to get a grasp on what it is that I do if you're not following it, because it's been like building blocks since the beginning. It's not like I've given up any responsibilities. They're just added on.
- DSDavid Senra
You're kind of like, uh, w- I met you outside, and your car is very interesting.
- RFRonnie Fieg
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
And I, I, I like stuck my head in and I was like, "Oh, dude, this is nice." And you're like, "Welcome to my world." [laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
[laughs] Yeah, it's like-
- DSDavid Senra
You're kind of like building your own entire world.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah. And, and by the way, like I'm, I'm head to toe in my product, socks and underwear.
- DSDavid Senra
We don't have to see that-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... but I will take your word on it. [laughs]
- 10:25 – 18:43
Why the CEO is also the fit model
- DSDavid Senra
But this is interesting. Why would it be important for you to be the fit model? Because literally, like this is for me first.
- RFRonnie Fieg
It's, it's... No, it's a great question, because it actually creates efficiencies when we get a sample in, and then I fit the product, and during the fitting, I make all the decisions that I need to make for that one product. So I fit the product, and then I'm, I'm deciding if the fabric is right for that body. I'm making alterations to the body. Sometimes I'll even drop it, and then come up with ideas on what we need to do to evolve from that body, or how, you know, a specific design can be better. So I'm giving direction in, you know, live during a fitting. And i- if my, you know, the team is all there, so I have like 20 people at a fitting, and you have your material, your, your materials team, you have your merchandisers, you have your designers, um, and then you have like the VP of product there and some assistants, and there we're making like real decisions. So we'll make the decisions on that product, and then we'll wait for the second sample to come in, and we gotta fit that too. I think a lot of these brands cut corners. I've spoken about this, um, a few times with different people about how the industry cuts corners, and sometimes you walk into a store and you try something on. You have a shirt from that brand that fit well, but then you try it on and it doesn't fit well, and you're like, "Well, why'd that happen? I came back for the same style." And it's because brands will want to create another version of the same style but not fit it again. So they'll, they'll apply a different fabric to the same body, but they won't fit it again, and it drapes differently, it fits differently, and they cut corners. And even, you know, there are fashion houses that do that, where you'll walk into a very expensive store and, you know, try some product on that doesn't fit. It fits like shit. So I'm very meticulous, uh, to every detail only because my closet Every season I wipe it out, and then it gets replaced with the new season. So if I'm gonna be wearing the product, it better fit properly, you know, as I'm, like, the representative of the brand.
- DSDavid Senra
I wanna tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I have been reading a lot about SpaceX lately. SpaceX is one of the most valuable businesses in the world, and one of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your cost. Ramp helps many of the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. And one thing SpaceX has demonstrated is that a religious dedication to controlling costs can help actually increase revenue, because you can pursue opportunities you couldn't otherwise, and we see that in the Ramp data too. The median company running on Ramp also grows their revenue by 16%. So when you're running your business on Ramp and your competitors are not, you have a massive competitive advantage that compounds over time. Ramp is the only platform designed to make your finance team faster and happier. Many of the top founders and CEOs I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp, and you should too. Go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. That is ramp.com. So I love how you, you've used the word, like, love.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, several times. We started the conversation, we were like, "Hey, you know, the people I admire the most, entrepreneurs that came before us, maybe some even operating today, it's just like they're doing it for, like, out of... They're not doing it for money. They make money because they love it so much, and they wind up, if you love it so much, you wind up building great products. And turns out, if you maintain control and build a great product, you're gonna wind up with the money anyways."
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
So the love of this, let's go back to, like, the story you were sharing a second. I'm kind of learning, like, the, almost, like, the mechanics of the business-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... as a kid.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Right? This is before you're like, "I'm learning how the, how the business exists or a part of the business exists-"
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... before you kind of put your own spin on it.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right. It was-
- DSDavid Senra
So when, when do you, when you're like, "Hey, I actually have my own ideas..." Like, so me and you are both know Jeff Zalaznick, who was on this show.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
And he, he told a very similar story, where he was just like, "Man, I was obsessed. I was, like, eating at every single restaurant. I was, like, the weird kid that'd come home at, from after middle school and watch PBS cooking s- [laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... sh- shows."
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, I saw that.
- DSDavid Senra
And then he's like, "Then I'm, like, eating at all these restaurants, then I'm creating media about this." Then he's like, "You know what? I got my own goddamn ideas-"
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... "on how this should be done."
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
When was that turning point in your life?
- RFRonnie Fieg
I was so fucking obsessed with footwear, you know? So, like, when Kith opened, and we'll go back, I'll go back to your question in a second. When Kith first opened in 2011, we were a multi-brand footwear shop, and then I had projects with brands where I was working on my own versions of some of these iconic footwear silhouettes for the store. And then from there, it expanded to be a lot more. But I'm gonna rewind back because I was a footwear guy, you know, and strictly footwear until 2012, 2013, right? So I was basically buying, you know, u- upwards of $30 million at retail a year from, from so many different footwear brands. I was the sneaker guy before I became the shoe and boot guy when I started working. I was wearing, like, you know, Nikes were my thing before I started working in this brown shoe and boot retailer. And then I helped David, because the trend of brown shoes and boots as the, as the weather actually got warmer and the, you know, the seasons kind of extended, and the, the winter kind of, like, shrunk to, like, three months, you know, instead of the four or five months that we were used to. 'Cause it was getting cold in October back then, and then it was cold up until April, and now it's a bit different from that. So athletic footwear started to really become a trend in New York City and kind of take over that business of the brown shoe and boot world. So I helped David transition from brown shoes and boots to athletic footwear, and he knew that I was, like, obsessed with sneakers, so, um, I was going to these trade shows and helping open new accounts, uh, new footwear accounts, and then starting as an assistant buyer being put on some of these accounts. And we built an incredible business with Onitsuka Tiger, which is ASICS, and it wasn't sport style yet, it was just Onitsuka for what we were carrying, but the sales rep knew that I was a sneakerhead and knew that I was collecting product, 'cause I was collecting sneakers since, like, '95, right? When I turned 13. That was the first pair of shoes that I bought twice. It was a Flight 95 Jason Kids, I don't know if you remember this, with the, the carbon fiber in the midsole.
- DSDavid Senra
Uh-huh.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And it was, kind of looked like a spaceship, and it was the, the first, like, iteration of that kind of shoe. It was a basketball shoe.
- DSDavid Senra
But were you buying to flip?
- RFRonnie Fieg
No, back then there was no flipping.
- 18:43 – 20:52
The childhood shoe that launched his career
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right? I'm looking at the catalog and I see a shoe that my mom bought me when I really wanted a pair of Reebok Pumps. She left me outside the store. I was crying. I was eight years old.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And she, she bought me a pair of ASICS Gel-Lyte IIIs for 50 bucks or something [laughs] instead of buying me a pair of Pumps that were, like, 110 or 120.
- DSDavid Senra
I wanted the Pumps, too.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
The little, the thing that ch, ch, ch. [laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, that, yeah. That was just, that just wasn't happening, right?
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, no.
- RFRonnie Fieg
The D. Browns or the Victory Pumps, like-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
... they were incredible. So I had to wear these Gel-Lyte IIIs, and I fell in love with them, you know? And, um, and when I saw it in the catalog, I was like, I knew that that's the shoe that I wanted to work on, and also, in, in the world of... And I was collecting, and at that time-
- DSDavid Senra
Wait, so when they're opening the archive, they're meaning-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... hey, these are past models. We're not doing a- they're not manufacturing, they're not creating anymore?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Correct.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And so why did you pick your-
- RFRonnie Fieg
So they open up old, old catalogs.
- DSDavid Senra
Interesting.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, from 1990.
- DSDavid Senra
That's even better 'cause you just mentioned how important it is to have product that's differentiated you can't get anywhere else.
- RFRonnie Fieg
That's exactly why I decided to work on that shoe. And I didn't know if people would gravitate towards that model, so it was 252 pairs were the minimum, and we needed to commit to 1,000 pairs for the style to be made. And I worked on three colorways of the style, 252 pairs of each, and then they took the other 250 and then offered it to a store in Amsterdam called Patta, and that's how the, the silhouette came back in 1990. We created that shoe, and, uh, it took off.
- DSDavid Senra
Well, even back then, though, when you're like, "Okay, they offered me a silhouette, I can put my own spin on this," was your North Star just like, hey, I'm just gonna make the shoe look like what I would wanna wear?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Correct.
- DSDavid Senra
So s-
- RFRonnie Fieg
And it was my, yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... still same to this day.
- RFRonnie Fieg
100%.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- 20:52 – 26:48
The Wall Street Journal, a line down the block and a visit from Adidas
- RFRonnie Fieg
And I think that, um, f- on the footwear side, uh, w- if you look through this book, that was, in '07, my first shoe released, and it had a slow start for the first day. I had an event. We sold 50 pairs. Then the next day it released in the store. We sold a few pairs, but one of the s- one of the pairs that sold was to an editor that came by from the Wall Street Journal and asked me a shit ton of questions about the shoe. I didn't know he was an editor, so I'm giving him all the information I just gave you, and then he wrote about it, and then the next day I came in and there were... My mom's calling me as I'm biking to work and was telling me, like, that it's on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
That, like, the, like the shoe, my specific...
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
'Cause it was an article about, like, limited shoes.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And then there was a picture of the shoe that I worked on, uh, in the Pursuits section on the top, like, right next to the word Pursuits. It was, like, right there. There was a line down the block, and then the shoe sold out instantly. And on the same day, the CEO of North America for Adidas was moving into his office across the street and saw the line and walked downstairs and was like, "What's going on over here?" And I was working in the store, right?
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
So, like, 'cause I'm doing, I'm buying and I'm, you know, I, I'm wor- I'm working on this project, but I'm still managing the store.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right? Like, the flagship store, which was 556 Broadway between Prince and Spring. So the guy walks in, the CEO of North America, and he's like, "Hey, what's going on here?" So I'm telling him what's happening, and he was like, "You worked on the project?" It was like, yeah, and I had the Wall Street Journal there, the copy, 'cause my mom called me. I picked one up.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
So he's like, "Let me take a look at that." And he's looking at it and he's reading it, and he was like, "So you're behind this d-" And he was like, "What are you doing right now?" I was like, "Well, I'm working here. I'm..." "When do you have lunch?" And I was like, "I could go off in a, you know, in a, like, a half hour, an hour, whatever." So he met me, and then we took a walk to the Adidas store, and we walk into the store, and he was like, "Well, what would you wanna work on here?"
- DSDavid Senra
Whoa.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And then I picked up the Shell Toe, and then the second project was called the Black Tie, and at the time I was dating a girl, um, that was, um, part of the design process of Gold Bar down on Broome Street.
- DSDavid Senra
What's Gold Bar? I don't know what that is.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Gold Bar is a, it's a beautiful lounge, uh, that was, like, the first of its kind to be kinda like, when all these clubs were, like, really big, it was this, like, really intimate small room. There was nothing quite like it since. It became this, like, really energetic, like, spot that everybody, d- like the downtown kids were all, like, gravitating towards this place at night. The employees were in these black suits, and the whole place was gold, and it was beautiful. Like, I remember, like, she was, like, working there at 4:00 in the morning gold leafing the ceiling, and I was helping her. Like, I got up on the ladder and was helping her paint the ceiling of the space. So I was really in love with the space, and then it opened, and I became good friends with the manager, and then I w- I was thinking one day, I was like, what am I gonna do with this shoe? And I'm holding the shoe in front of me. I was like, I'm just gonna make the Shell Toe a dress shoe, and then have the employees at Gold Bar, you know, wear these shoes, and then I ended up shooting the staff from Gold Bar for the campaign of the shoe, and I called it the Black Tie, and the shoes came with a black tie, with an Adidas tie. Uh, and that became the second shoe that I worked on, and then from there it kind of snowballed, and I was doing this at David Z. So there were so-
- DSDavid Senra
You still have a full-time, more than full-time day job. [laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
Oh my God. And so this became a pretty substantial business where we were selling, where we were selling these products that I was working on.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And, you know, it grew and grew and grew, and that became a, a pretty, a pretty big business relatively quickly.
- DSDavid Senra
Well, where's the money going? When you say this big business-
- RFRonnie Fieg
It was-
- DSDavid Senra
It's going to David, right?
- RFRonnie Fieg
It's going to David, yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
So it's not you. You don't have any kind of equity, economic tie, nothing.
- RFRonnie Fieg
No, I-
- DSDavid Senra
You're essentially just talent.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, correct.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- 26:48 – 31:09
Get rid of the crap
- RFRonnie Fieg
for David, you know? That wasn't-
- DSDavid Senra
I got a fun- I, I wanna interrupt you. I got a funny story though, 'cause, like, you mentioned Steve Jobs being one of my heroes, and I love that he's just completely unfiltered. And so-
- RFRonnie Fieg
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
... uh, this is, like, a few years before he died, and at the time some, there was a new CEO of Nike, 'cause he d- he, he loved brands.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
And he's like, "Nike's one of the greatest brands of all time."
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
He thought Sony was a great brand, Polaroid, Apple.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yep.
- DSDavid Senra
He was like, love, love people-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... that, like, build these really, like these brands that ev-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Soulful brands
- DSDavid Senra
... exa- they evoke emotion is the way he would put this.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Correct. Exactly.
- DSDavid Senra
And he's like, "Steve, do you have any advice for me?" He's like, "Nike makes some of the best products in the world, but you also make a lot of crap." And he's like, "Just get rid of the crap." [laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
That's it, like-
- DSDavid Senra
"And focus on the good stuff."
- RFRonnie Fieg
And it-
- DSDavid Senra
It's exactly what you're, the, the realization you're having at this point
- RFRonnie Fieg
... the, but the, the crap was still generating a lot of money.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, but Steve didn't give a shit.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And I don't give a shit.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
So that, th- we're, that's where me and Steve are alike.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right? And to me, like, I saw an opportunity in being passionate about 100% of the things I was doing, not about 10 to 15% of the things I was doing.
- DSDavid Senra
Man, that's an important insight. I don't wanna skip over that.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
That's super important.
- 31:09 – 32:40
What luxury should actually mean
- DSDavid Senra
love.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And I don't ever wanna step away from that. So like everything I do is for the love of what I do. The market needs more of that. It needs more attention to detail. It needs to have more purpose, and I think purpose is, is huge. I often go back to like the purpose behind a lot of these products that Apple makes, and it's to better people's lives. And it doesn't only come in the form of technology. Like the product that you're wearing can make your life better. You can feel better in the product that you're wearing. You know? It can make you look better. It can give you more confidence. Like I wanna give them more than what they pay for. So that there's so much that goes into just that portion of it, of making sure that there's value in the product when you touch and feel it, or through 50 washes of a garment. There are a lot of words that, um, I think meanings of some of these words are changing over time, like the word luxury, and like the word value. Like typically, luxury and value don't come together. Like value is like this beaten down term by down market retail, and then luxury is typically like it needs to cost a certain amount to be luxurious. What luxury should mean is how much people love what they're buying. That it's a luxury to have the product. That's what luxury should mean. So a lot of these luxury companies I think are overexposed now and are becoming less luxurious, at least to me. That means it's over-accessible.
- DSDavid Senra
So how do you, how do you avoid that with Kith, though?
- 32:40 – 38:24
Why Kith doesn’t wholesale or license
- RFRonnie Fieg
First of all, we don't wholesale. Second, we don't license.
- DSDavid Senra
Why is that important for somebody that's outside of your business?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Because you can't-
- DSDavid Senra
Explain why that's so important
- RFRonnie Fieg
... because then you can't control how those, uh, products are spoken about and where they're placed and how they're merchandised. Then you can't story tell around the product. You could story tell top line by creating these TV ads, and then you're walking in the airport and there's some fucking little rinky-dink shop, um, that half the store, you know, there's construction done on half the store, and you walk in and it's like messy as to how you see the product. And the people that are catered to you, like they might not be best in class, and then all of a sudden people are subconsciously associating your brand with that experience. From day one, I've always wanted to control the experience that people have, because I thought I could be the best at speaking to it, since I'm the creator of it, right? So I wanted to walk people through the full experience, you know, from ideation, you know, through walking out the door, walking out the Kith door. So the storytelling, I feel like we're 50% storytellers and then 50% retailers. But on the retail side, that's then broken up to what we do digitally versus what we do physically. And as the business starts to skew more digital, I feel forced to open more physical. And that's how the brand grew, 'cause I have a number, there's a threshold where I won't allow the percentage of the total pie to go over an X amount on the website for the web revenue.
- DSDavid Senra
Why?
- RFRonnie Fieg
I don't wanna become a digital brand. The touch point, the touch and feel-
- DSDavid Senra
So you're purposely foregoing more sales. This goes back to the love and not how the conversation started, it's like you can't work for just money. You're purposely foregoing more sales because you have to be a physical, and that's a better experience for the person. So if I order something from kith.com-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... right, as opposed to going in your stores-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yes
- DSDavid Senra
... it's like way better experience that you control the whole story, the whole experience.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Well, we're controlling-
- DSDavid Senra
Like-
- RFRonnie Fieg
We're controlling from the website down. And actually no, you're, that's, that's not true. I'm not foregoing revenue, 'cause the website revenue continues to grow-
- DSDavid Senra
Okay
- RFRonnie Fieg
... and it's on its path. But I always want it to be half digital and half physical. So I want the physical to grow at the same rate is what I'm saying.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Does that make sense?
- DSDavid Senra
So ex- yeah. The, it's not like, okay, wait, we're at 50%-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... like-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Stop make, stop selling product on the internet.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
That would be kind of, actually might be a good idea. It's like, "Sorry, the website's closed for a few days."
- RFRonnie Fieg
[laughs] Right. Right.
- DSDavid Senra
You gotta come back.
- RFRonnie Fieg
By the way, there are some brands that do that-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- 38:24 – 40:39
Building the opposite of an arrogant sneaker shop
- DSDavid Senra
too."
- RFRonnie Fieg
I'll say this, if I was easily influenced by what people expect me to do, or what people want me to do, I would be in a very small box, because we started off as like streetwear, which is like... A- and actually, we did, we actually didn't start off as streetwear. We started off with a, with a, a cut-and-sew pant, uh, out of the Garment District in New York. And there's a, there's a long story about that p- I could go on for two hours about that pant, but that pant was the entry into apparel. But we didn't start off with a T-shirt, a graphic T-shirt. We started off with a pant, and then that pant turned into a varsity jacket, and then, and that be- that happened because people were... I created community around the store, right? And how did that happen? Because at the time, like I said before, like I was collecting and I was, uh, big into the culture of, of product in Downtown in New York. But the stores that were offering this like streetwear product and, and limited footwear, they were arrogant. You would walk into the spaces and they weren't very friendly, you know? And I, I saw an issue with that because I came from David Z. that was a m- becoming more of a mass retailer, and I always felt like, and I was consumer-facing at the time, I always felt like having the conversation with anyone who walked in, even if they weren't coming in for product, it's like important for them to feel at home, you know? So the concept of Kith, which means friends, part of the phrase kith and kin, friends and family, it means friends. I wanted people to feel like they could come to the space and enjoy their day, even if they weren't gonna buy anything. So that's what fueled me to open the sh- the store in the first place. And then we built this great community based on those, you know, based, based on that concept of like, you know, those values of like wanting to be very welcoming just easily created a community because it was like something that they were looking for. They just didn't know it. So as I created a community, they just wanted to wear the name of the store on their chest. They wanted to represent the store. We weren't a brand yet. We were a store.
- DSDavid Senra
Explain what the difference is then compared to now.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Well-
- DSDavid Senra
What was the initial thing? You were just selling people's product?
- 40:39 – 52:02
The Italian crook who registered Kith’s trademark
- RFRonnie Fieg
Now, now we're-
- DSDavid Senra
Like, what was it?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Now, now we're a brand before anything, right? So I think the, the difference today, the delta is huge between then and now, but I, I will say that, I'll explain the difference to you in a, in a, even in a simpler term. Back when I first opened the store, my attorney asked me if I wanted to register the IP for product. And I was like, "Well, I'm not making any product. I'm like working collaboratively with these footwear brands, but I'm not making any apparel, so I don't need to buy the mark," right? And he's like, "Oh, you still have protection rights even if you use it on apparel. Like, you'll have some rights anyway." I was like, "Okay." Then four years later, there's a, this fucking crook out of Italy that went and registered my mark, the same mark, in Italy for apparel, and I've already become successful with apparel. I just didn't revisit buying the IP.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right? So all of a sudden, you know, I, I then had to buy my IP and negotiate with this crook to buy the IP back and own it globally, and that was a very expensive lesson that I learned. But I, I didn't even consider myself, in the beginning, I wasn't considering myself a brand at all. Even for the first couple years of me making product, I was just like, "Yeah, that's just like cool shit I have on the side for the store." But very quickly it turned, and then when the Kith, the small 800 square foot space in the back of atrium then expanded into the full atrium space because we were that successful, we took another 5,000 feet All of a sudden, I had to quickly put a plan together around becoming a brand
- DSDavid Senra
I found one of my all-time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas." That is exactly what AppLovin has done with their advertising platform. AppLovin connects you with over a billion potential new customers in mobile games. AppLovin allows you to capture undivided attention. AppLovin ads are full-screen videos that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water, and you can launch on AppLovin in minutes. You set the goal, and AppLovin achieves it. No complex setup, no expertise needed. And AppLovin scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results scale to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increase their revenue by millions. So you want to get started quickly before all of your competitors are on AppLovin, and you can do that by going to applovin.com. That's applovin.com. When you were 800 square feet, what are you selling in the store?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Only footwear, and then apparel was like a rack.
- DSDavid Senra
Are, are these, are these footwear that are only-
- RFRonnie Fieg
No
- DSDavid Senra
... the, the collaborations you're doing?
- RFRonnie Fieg
No.
- DSDavid Senra
You're doing-
- RFRonnie Fieg
I-
- DSDavid Senra
It's still the same thing when you were at David, small percentage collaboration?
- RFRonnie Fieg
David was not a top-tier distributor of product.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right? Or retailer of product. David had main catalogs of product, and then I opened this store strictly to have the top tier of distribution from all of the brands I was carrying because all these brands-
- DSDavid Senra
What, what does that mean, top tier distribution?
- RFRonnie Fieg
I'll, I'll explain.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- RFRonnie Fieg
So for example, and the easiest one to explain would be Nike. Nike has what's called a tier zero, and then they even have quick strikes, which are below tier zero. So tier zero would be the most limited product they make. Quick strike would be the second layer to that. And then you have the mainline collection, which is a catalog that a Dick's Sporting Goods gets to buy into.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Okay? The whole premise behind the Kith space was to have the best footwear wall in the world, and that was gonna have, like, top tier, and this is at a time where it wasn't this popular. Sneaker culture grew a ton since then, but top tier distribution from all the brands. I didn't invent that. Sneaker boutiques were a thing, but I wanted to be the best of, and I had enough knowledge as a buyer, um, and as a merchandiser and as a salesperson, I, I had enough knowledge of knowing how to do that and to, like, and, and curate the best wall in the world.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay, so you combine this, like, industry knowledge with the fact that at this point you're over 10 years deep into just being a s-
- RFRonnie Fieg
A collector.
- DSDavid Senra
A collector.
- RFRonnie Fieg
From '95.
- DSDavid Senra
Exactly.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
So even, even longer.
- 52:02 – 55:11
How a $20 deli experiment became Kith Treats
- DSDavid Senra
why even do that?
- RFRonnie Fieg
When I expanded the Brooklyn space, I wanted to add, um, an element of happiness where it would 100% undoubtedly be a happy bite of something, so you'd smile, right? And I wanted there to be another way for people to consume the brand, you know, for less than 10 bucks. That was the idea. And I knew that it would be a loss leader, or I thought it would be a loss leader. So originally, it was gonna be a white chocolate bread space that I had, uh, for the first time in Club Med.
- DSDavid Senra
White chocolate bread space?
- RFRonnie Fieg
So if-
- DSDavid Senra
What? [laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
I traveled to, uh, Club Med for vacation a bunch, and there in the cafeteria, there's this very famous white chocolate bread, and I had it there and loved it, and thought of the concept for even having some kind of F&B portion of the store. That's where I came up with the concept. I was like, people need to smell this. 'Cause when you walk into the cafeteria, it was, like, all you smelled. People need to smell it as you're walking past the store. So the venting out from the building, I wanted people to smell the white chocolate bread. So I brought the chef over to New York, and we started working on this white chocolate bread back at Cafe Bari on Spring and Broadway. Before it became the Nike store, it was a very famous cafe. The chef left, and we tried to make it ourselves, and we just couldn't make it right. So as we're walking to the deli, I'm watching this guy behind the counter throw frozen fruit into this machine and pull the lever and, like, it was coming out soft serve.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- RFRonnie Fieg
So I, um, I saw a box of cereal. I was a cereal fanatic. Saw cereal and saw ice cream in the tub, and I paid him 20 bucks to throw it into the machine and see what happens.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And it just, it came out perfect. So I got the idea of mixing cereal with ice cream there at the deli while we were trying to figure out this white chocolate bread concept. And then from there, I decided that that's what we were gonna do, so we flipped it to the concept of a cereal bar, cereal ice cream bar. And then from there, it grew to be a lot more than that, but that's where it started. And then I paid attention to people as they were eating that, and every single person that would take a bite would smile. And that's where the concept was, was, uh, created.
- DSDavid Senra
But then you said initially you thought it was gonna be a loss leader.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
So it's just like, I'm just gonna get more people More people's attention. This is might be their first exposure to Kith, and then they're like, "Oh, this is nice. What's happening next door?"
- RFRonnie Fieg
No.
- DSDavid Senra
Is that the idea or no?
- RFRonnie Fieg
No, no, no. It was like people that were coming to the shop-
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, I see. A reverse.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Correct.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- RFRonnie Fieg
If you have it, or if you think about it the other way around, the way you just mentioned, then you're forcing the issue, because what you're trying to do is you're trying to create a new consumer.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And I already had the consumer. So everything that started, you know, when Kith was first built, I was so paranoid about whether or not we'd be able to even break even. And then once we were able to do that, I was so happy. That became just a starting point, and the, the organic base that I had, growing it from there was just like idea after idea as building blocks, you know? But it wasn't until a lot later that I thought, "Hey, let's do something over here, and start a new con- and, and start building a new consumer."
- 55:11 – 59:35
Serve your customers, don’t chase new ones
- DSDavid Senra
I'm glad you said that because it ties to, back to ex- where this, the, the, this like tangent we've been going on in the most beautiful way of the conversation. It's like, well, yeah, but I just wanna focus on like the 10 to 15% that I really love and not this other stuff. And I, the reason I, I thought of the ice cream as the reverse, 'cause I just read this very obscure biography of Sam Walton.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Mm.
- DSDavid Senra
And in, you know, people don't understand. He built, obviously they understand he built the largest retail empire in the world, but for the first five and a half years of his career, he had one single store in a town of like 2,000 people, and he did not know how, he did not have what you had where like-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right
- DSDavid Senra
... I have the people already. How do I continue to serve them? Which is where you're going to. He's like, "I need to get them in the store." So he put like an ice cream s- uh, cart out front. He'd do popcorn. He would do all this other stuff.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Trying to figure out how to get more people in.
- DSDavid Senra
Exactly.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Attract more people.
- DSDavid Senra
Which is why I drew the analogy, and you're like, "No, no, no. I already have the people, this core group-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right
- DSDavid Senra
... of really, we're building a really special..." Almost like, and I, I mean this in a, the, the, the, you know, in like a positive way. It's like th- this cult-like following.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And it's okay, you, that is so special and rare. How do we continue to serve them and extend it? Not the other way around.
- RFRonnie Fieg
All of our growth has been based off of that. How do I service my consumer in the best way possible? How do I give them the opportunity to have the best experience? And then from there, we gained more consumers.
- DSDavid Senra
And then you knew this because you... Remember, go back to that story about the, the gray Timberlands, right?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
This is pre-internet.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
Right? It's like they, if you serve this cult-like following that you have, they will go out and recruit other people on your behalf.
- RFRonnie Fieg
It's 100%. And that, when it happens organically in that way, and people then hear it word of mouth rather than seeing it on Instagram and like becoming curious off of a photo, the, the bridge of emotion that people have to the brand, it just becomes a way stronger bridge, right? When they could discover it themselves based off of what, what people said, or when they walk into the space for the first time, people in their minds, um, don't necessarily think the space would be as grand as it is when they walk in. So a lot of the times, and, you know, through conversations with some of my GMs in the store, like, yo, people walk in with suitcases first stop from the airport.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
And they'll walk into the store and just stand there. [laughs] And he's like, "It happens multiple times a day where I have to like, like, 'Excuse me, do you need help?'" Or, but, and they're like, "No, I just, we're just taking it in." Like walking into the West Hollywood store today, it's jaw-dropping. It's like every time I walk in there, I still, I'm like emotional when I walk in because I'm, I can't believe we've gotten to the point where I can build this for the community, for people to come in and have this kind of space. I could build a space where the product sells itself. At this point, the product has such a great following because there's so much value in the product. I don't need to build these amazing spaces at $1,300, $1,400 a foot, which is what luxury brands are spending. But I do that because this is like how I give back to the consumer for giving them an experience they could come in and really cherish, you know? And then they make days out of it, where families will come to the store and spend time, like real time in the space, and then they'll go to Treats or they'll go to Ronnie's and they'll, they'll really make a day out of it. So I never take people's time for granted, you know? I never take people's, you know, spending power for granted. And I always feel like we need to make better product and offer more at the same price point. Like those type of philosophies of w- the end result of what people get and the substance of what they feel is very different from like trying to change human behavior in, in the way that Steve Jobs has done in the past, of like, you know, his, his creations are to better people's lives, but through the change of human behavior from going from one style of technology to another. This is familiar product where if you're buying clothes, you're buying clothes, like we're not inventing something new there. But when you, when you buy an item, like the shirt that I'm wearing, for example, um, and you put it up, you know, dollar for dollar against other product in the market, I do believe... And this is touch and feel. If you wanna post two pictures next to each other, you could post a Uniflo T-shirt next to a Kith T-shirt, not know the difference, and argue about the price point. But this is for the people that know, and that Kith is built for the people that know the difference. Know the difference between what? Good product versus great product, and that's really the motto of the brand.
- 59:35 – 1:02:41
Always give people more than they pay for
- DSDavid Senra
Say more about how you think about pricing though.
- RFRonnie Fieg
I always feel that, um, people should get more than what they pay for. So where we price product within the marketplace becomes really important to be, not only to be competitive, because that's not really the challenge for us. It's mostly about, and we don't look elsewhere at price points, even though I, I study the market, um, just to have the knowledge, but it's not, I, I don't necessarily apply that as to how we price our product. We look at the pr- at, at the, at the, at the previous season or the year before to see how product was priced, and we try to better the product sometimes at the same price or by elevating price points a little bit, but getting a lot more for the product. So- It's not necessarily a formula, it's more of like a touch and feel of like being in the business for 30 years and just know- 31 years, and now knowing the difference between good and great.
- DSDavid Senra
Have you read, uh, this book called The Luxury Strategy? It's a red book with white letters.
- RFRonnie Fieg
I haven't.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay, I'm gonna send it to you, because it goes into... I, I think what you're, you're hitting on is just like, well, there's other people in, in industry, and especially luxury industry, where it's like they know there's a human psychology. Like, uh, pricing is like a shortcut for us.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, we're all busy, and it's just like if you actually increase the price without reinvesting into the product, it makes the pr- in some categories, it makes it more desirable.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
And it actually increases the line and the demand for it.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
You're saying, "No, no, no, I'm not trying to maximize and charge, you know, do some kind of psychological trick."
- RFRonnie Fieg
That's a bubble.
- DSDavid Senra
I-
- RFRonnie Fieg
That's a bubble.
- DSDavid Senra
Yes.
- RFRonnie Fieg
What you just mentioned is-
- DSDavid Senra
Well, it, it's very enduring in human nature, actually.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
But my, my point being is like, it's like, but I don't wanna just make money for the sake of make, making more money. If I'm gonna charge more, I want them to get more value. Is that, am I understanding what you're saying?
- RFRonnie Fieg
100%.
- DSDavid Senra
Yes.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And I think the consistency of that thought process that I have has been why we've been able to grow at the rate that we've grown, right? So, like, I, I think that the consumer has seen that year over year, and a lot of the kids, like a lot of these, um, kids that are... I won't even call them kids, these dads that are my age, at 44, a lot of them have come up with the brand, you know, from when they were 30 or 29. My number one following, uh, age range is between 28 and 35, and then number two is 35 to 44. I feel like the growth that people have had for the last 15 years of consistently seeing the progress has... They've felt like they've been part of the journey, and we've, we've gone so far, like w- with creating product that just, it's, it's actually mind-blowing when you look at the first collection versus the collection today. We didn't have any fucking clue what we were doing.
- DSDavid Senra
Well, you can see the, you can see this in this book, right?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Th- this book, this book is different because-
- DSDavid Senra
It's just the footwear
- RFRonnie Fieg
... the foot- the footwear is collaborative, and I-
- DSDavid Senra
Okay
- RFRonnie Fieg
... I had 15 years under my belt before working on this product. Like, the first shoe was 15 years later in my career. Where apparel, my first product was in 2012. So, like, when you think about that, that's like 14 years ago, and, and looking at the progress there, there'll be a bi- a much bigger delta than in this book.
- DSDavid Senra
Would you make another book just on apparel?
- 1:02:41 – 1:12:00
Seeing 15 years of work laid out on the floor
- RFRonnie Fieg
You know, I thought about it for the 15 year, but after, you know, we were building the second floor of my office a few years ago, so we expanded. We have 60,000 feet on the, on, um, the third floor, and then I took another 30,000 feet for the design studio on the second floor. Before we started building, on the second floor I, I, I knew I had like six to eight months to design the space, so I knew I was gonna have an empty space. We already took the space. So my archivist, his name is, uh, uh, his name is Jordan Bloom, I had him lay out all of my footwear from day one in chronological order.
- DSDavid Senra
Is this the picture I just saw on Instagram?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah, yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, that's, that's dope, man.
- RFRonnie Fieg
So, so that, um... And it's actually, it's in here. So the first, um, the first time-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, that's incredible
- RFRonnie Fieg
... the f- the first time I got to see all of my work in one place was a few years ago when I saw this. And I actually did that because I've never seen it before, so I was just curious to see the progression myself. You know, like, I wanted to see how far we've come in footwear, and it's impossible for you to see 1,800 different shoes by flipping through photos or organizing it in a way where you're gonna see the progression. It has to be in person. Otherw- there's no other way to do it. So when I saw it, two things happened. The first thing was people need to see this. And then I was like, people need to see it physically. Like, we need to do this. So the first idea was we need an exhibition for this product, which we're doing the end of this month. I showed you the index, and the index is all of my product that released, but more importantly, all of my unreleased product. And the unreleased product are samples that led to the release pair. So there's like 800, uh, or so released pairs, and then there's another 1,000 or so unreleased pairs. So I wanted to have them all in one space, and basically have a show. It's called Walk the Index. So we're gonna have, um, a digital version of the index, uh, uploaded onto people's apps, like onto the Kith app, and you need the Kith app to walk in, so then you can look at it and really walk the index of the book, which I thought was really cool. And then people will obviously be able to buy the book there. And then for those four days, um, that the show will be open for, we also have panels with each of the four biggest collaborators, which are, um, Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and ASICS, and there's some le- senior leadership that are coming down for that. On top of the exhibition, Ronnie's will launch for the first time in New York via truck. And the truck that we built, it's a really special truck. It's gonna feature what I'm calling the Ronnie's Meal. So there's two sandwiches that really blew up, one in London, uh, called the OG Burger, and then, uh, one in LA in West Hollywood called the Wagyu Pronto. And the Wagyu Pronto is a wagyu pastrami sandwich, and then the burger is this wagyu burger. It's incredible, uh, with our own, uh, with our own sauce, and kinda like this mix with sautéed onions, and it's just one of the best burgers I think you'll ever have. It comes in this red box, and in the box comes one of the two sandwiches that you can order, and then Pronto fries, and then one of the, these two like frozen drinks that we make in LA. And with it, more importantly, is a toy, is a toy box of a pair of shoes. And I'm bringing back, uh, for the first time, um, in its original form, 'cause we brought it back one time with a navy sole, but there's a shoe that really, that, that really put me on the map when I opened Kith, called the Salmon Toe. It's a Salmon Toe ASICS, and it's a Gel Lyte III, uh, in this salmon, uh, the whole toe is blocked with salmon, and there's like, uh, navy on the quarter with white stripes. It's beautiful. So a, a miniature version of those shoes will come in a small shoebox, and then that'll be basically the toy in the Ronnie's Meal. The truck will only serve a Ronnie's Meal. That, like, that's the only product it'll serve, and it comes with the options I mentioned. Uh, that will launch, um, for the exhibition, uh, where we're launching the exhibition, which I can't name right now. And then, uh, the truck then gets positioned in front of the flagship store, uh, after the exhibition full-time. So, and, and I got the city to approve me having outdoor seating in front of my store in Lafayette, so then I'm gonna have, like, the Ronnie's truck, um, stationed there. We're gonna launch also delivery for the full menu out of a ghost kitchen, uh, which will happen, I think, the end of October.
- DSDavid Senra
Deel is how the best founders turn the world into their talent pool. I've been studying how history's greatest founders operate for a decade, and one thing they all have in common is they understand that recruiting and hiring the very best talent is your most important priority. A players recognize other A players, which is why top companies like Ramp, Shopify, 11 Labs, Uber, and DoorDash all use Deel. Many of the top founders I know have personally invested in Deel after using their product, and what they discovered is that Deel is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deel will help your business hire, pay, and manage any worker anywhere in the world, so you can retain the best talent anywhere and spend the rest of your time focusing on what you do best, delivering value to your customers. The founder of 11 Labs has a great description of the value Deel can give your company. He said, "We built 11 Labs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deel enabling us to hire and support exceptional talent anywhere, we can accelerate our innovation and bring more voices, stories, and ideas to every corner of the world." Deel is trusted by over 40,000 companies and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business by going to deel.com/senra. That is deel.com/senra. I love this idea of, like, keeping a catalog of past work and looking back through it. On my other podcast, Founders, where I read just biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, I, I went down this, like, fashion designer thing for a while. And so I did, like, Coco Chanel and, like, Ralph Lauren and then Balenciaga and, like, I think of Balenciaga now as kind of, like, not my... I don't want to insult him. It was like, this is like, you know, not my thing.
- RFRonnie Fieg
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
But what's interesting is I'm always interested in, like, who in the top of their profession, like, who do they say is the best?
- RFRonnie Fieg
Okay.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, uh, Warren Buffett has this idea where it's like, well, if you want to invest in a company in, in, in an industry, go around asking all the leaders in the, uh, industry and say, "Hey, you got one bullet. You can take out one guy. Who is it gonna be?"
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
And usually, they'll all say the same guy. He's like, "That's the guy you should invest in." So he has this. So it, Balenciaga was that, where, like, Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, they called him, like, the, the master of us all, I think was one of the quotes.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And I didn't- So I was like, I gotta, like, obviously, what I think of Balenciaga now and what, how they thought about him back then is crazy. But Balenciaga, if you haven't read about him, uh, I'll send you some good bi- biography recommendations. He essentially redid his stores almost like a, it was like a church. He had, like, a reverence, a religious reverence to what he was doing, but one of the most fascinating things is he had notebooks of... 'Cause he would not only design, but he would also physically, like, sew everything together. He was, like, one of the few coutures or whatever-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... yeah, master couture, whatever they're called. And, um, but I thought that idea of, like, okay, your career, in his case, I think it's, he started relatively late. Let's say he spent 20 years.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
He can go back and be like, "What was I doing 18 years ago?"
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah. But as an atelier that he was, like, he, to, to, to me, um, and this is very important, like, especially in footwear, I got to learn how to make a shoe from scratch also. So going back and looking at the progress, um, that we made, also the knowledge working with certain brands, and some brands do things better than others. So the amount that you pick up along the way working with this many brands, I feel like in footwear, um, I've become the most well-rounded, like, knowledgeable person in footwear because I got to see between athletic shoes and brown shoes and boots, like, I got to really learn how these brands make product, go to the factories, go to their offices, and, like, really understand the dynamic of what makes them so special. So this, this book, um, it stands for so much more than just a product at face value. Uh, it's, to me, it's a timeline of, of, of feelings that I had and knowledge that I gained along the way. So, like, when I think back to a moment, there are things that you'll remember based on current ev- You know, based on certain events or based on certain news and, um, milestones in your life based on certain, you know, things that happened in your family or whatever it is. I remember my life through product. So, like, I think back to when I got married and, and I think about also the product during that time. Like, the product when my, my first baby was born, um, when my first store opened, or all the stores along the way. I have product-
- DSDavid Senra
It's-
- RFRonnie Fieg
That-
- DSDavid Senra
Your life milestones are anchored to products you were creating.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Oh. [laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
Which goes back to again why the soulful-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
We talked before we started recording. It's like, wh- when I says, like, what I'm trying to understand is, like, I can't understand the way you approach your work until I understand the, the personality of the person that developed the ideas.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
I seek to understand who the fuck is sitting across from me.
- 1:12:00 – 1:25:46
Growing up before the algorithm
- DSDavid Senra
that happened then.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah. Taking the tr- Like, going back to that, like, taking the, taking two buses to high school, the Q17 to the Q30, or taking the train to work, when I took the F train from the last stop on 179th and Hillside to Broadway Lafayette or West 4th when I used to work at 8th Street. What you see on the train, because you pass by certain neighborhoods, right? Each stop, or every other stop, would be, like, a different culture hopping on the train. 'Cause cultures are spread out, and they-
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm
- RFRonnie Fieg
... you know, they create communities, and then they, they get on the train in packs. And like along the way, from the la- the basically the first stop on the F train to the, or the last stop, I should say, going to the city, what I got to see became my world. That was my influence. I got to see so many different styles, people dressed in so many different ways, and that's when the sense of individual- individuality was at an all-time high. Before you were influenced by, you know, your algorithm, which now, like, a lot of, a lot of people want the same things because they're, it's based off of what they see or, you know, what brands have to, um, have to basically pay for in terms of, like, mass distributing content. We lived in such a different era. I got to see people walk in to a store, have no idea what they're looking for, have no idea about the brands, and I got to see what they gravitated to first based off of a visual of what they thought looked different or looked, you know, on par for what they wanted to wear. So I got to understand why so many different people liked so many different products for so many different reasons, and that became a big part of who I am because it became a part of why I like product. You know, that was my influence basically, is seeing so many different styles and then forming my own edit. It's like that- that's- that's a lost art.
- DSDavid Senra
Wait, wait, say more about that. I got to see so many different styles, so you're taking in all this information. You're thes- essentially synthesizing it, putting it in your head, and you say, "Okay, what's my spin or take on this?"
- RFRonnie Fieg
Like, what's my opinion on it? Like, back then, when you go, when you went shopping back then, you ha- you were forced to have an opinion 'cause you wouldn't have seen everything. Like, if you were to see a, if you would see a music video, you'd see one or two different shoes, right? Or boots. If you were to open up a magazine, you'd see 10 different boots, but then you walk into a store and you see 500 different boots. So it's like you're walking in and you're, you- you are forced to have an opinion. Today, people will walk into a store and, and know about all the product before they walk in, so they've already seen someone wearing it, a photo of it, a look book of it, a campaign of it.
- DSDavid Senra
They're, they're, like, outsourcing their taste to somebody else.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah. And, and not to say that people weren't influenced by media back then. They were, but it was a much smaller aperture, you know, like of what people were seeing. And then you'd come in, and back then you were just forced to have your own opinion.
- DSDavid Senra
I feel like I get the vibe, like you wanna live in more of, like, an analog world.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Man, fucking hell I do.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
For real. Like, if, and I tell, I tell my wife this every day, like I just, I wish that I could throw my phone away. I wish that I can... And, and you know what's funny, is that I really feel, just like, um, fashion is very cyclical, I feel like, um, people's thought processes are also, like, cyclical, and the way people think about how their lives are influenced, I feel like that's also cyclical. Meaning, if you had had a taste of what we had pre-internet, like I just find myself fucking begging for analog, for, for just the physical. I wanna be influenced outside of digital. I wanna travel and shut my shit off and just not have a connection to the internet, you know?
- DSDavid Senra
Something we had when we were kids is, like, you were just forced to be bored and alone with your own thoughts.
- RFRonnie Fieg
And my, my daughter's like, "I'm bored." I'm like, "That's great."
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- RFRonnie Fieg
"That's amazing." That you have to under- that's when you use your imagination, when you're bored.
- DSDavid Senra
But that's also where difference comes in. We, I, I was just, I just flew to Milan because, um, I, I meet a lot of founders, like entrepreneurs, just like, uh, I, I meet a ton of them, and I met this guy named Luca Ferrari, who does this company called Bendingspins.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And I remember having lunch with him back in like February, and I, literally the lunch was so like jarring 'cause he was describing how he built his company and, and ideas I'd never even heard of anywhere else, especially for s- he's, he's our age, too.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And I was like, "Dude, stop. No, you gotta run that back." I pulled out and I, we're on, we were on WhatsApp together, and I just like light, light him up on, like, all the stuff he's saying. And I was like... He's like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "I'm taking notes on your very unique ideas for when you do the show." He didn't even agree to do the show.
- RFRonnie Fieg
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
I just assumed. I was like, "Dude, you got weird shit in your head. I need to get it out." But one of the things he said, he was like, you know, he's building a tech company, but he grew up in a little village of 900 people. His parents were hairdressers. And he's just like, "I started in Copenhagen, then I moved to Milan." And he's like, "I couldn't copy the startup, tech startup mantras 'cause I didn't even know they existed."
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
"So I was forced to..." He was essentially like he was in a digital world, but he was like how we were as kids. He was just like, "I only had my own thoughts and my own thinking."
- RFRonnie Fieg
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
"And because I was involved with my own thoughts and my own thinking, not influenced by everything else-"
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
"... 'cause he doesn't pay attention-
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yep
- 1:25:46 – 1:30:12
How a padel obsession created Kith Ivy
- DSDavid Senra
Um-
- RFRonnie Fieg
I wa- I wanna t- I wanna touch on Ivy because-
- DSDavid Senra
Okay, go for it.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Um, you asked me about Ivy, and I wanna, I wanna just go back to that for a second. So three or four years ago, I spent, um, uh, I spent a season in Miami, and, uh, I got introduced to Wayne Boich. Wayne, uh, is the founder of Reserve-
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, yeah
- RFRonnie Fieg
... which, which is, um, he builds, like, padel courts, also built, like, a membership club in, um, in a seaplane in Miami. And I used it as my office, and we were playing padel all day. I was taking calls all day, and I, I just became obsessed with the sport. But what I realized with people that were playing, they didn't know how to dress for the sport. And as I became, like, obsessed with the sport, I was, like, watching people come and play in, like, vintage tees and basketball shorts, and it was, it was throwing me off, honestly. I thought to myself, like, "Well, how can I start to, like, help shaping how this sport can potentially look and feel?" Because it was brand new. The first courts, I think, in America were in Miami, built by, you know, by Wayne. But I thought for sure the sport was gonna grow. And as this, a- a- as the season went on, I came back home, and then for the next six months, all I heard about was padel. People wanted to play padel and didn't have a court to play on. I creatively direct Wilson Tennis, but that's been behind the scenes for quite a while, and we started a new line called, uh, Sport Professionals, which is, like, an elevated tier that sits within Wilson, and I help them through that, through design. And coming back, I was like, let me start to apply some of these ideas that I have around, um, around tennis, but in a very different way because it's a way sweatier sport. Y- it's, it's a lot more active in, in the way fabrics need to feel and movements. You know, like, you're spinning a lot. You're going, you know, um, a lot of vertical movement, a lot of side to side movement. It's very different from tennis in the way that you move in the sport. So the idea of shaping the identity of a new sport that would spread in the States and become a m- a major sport in the spa- in, in this space, that really excited me to wanna take on the sport and help shape the identity of what it would become. So that then turned to the idea of the space of what Ivy looks and feels like, which if you come to this space, you'll love it. Probably the space I'm most, um, passionate about but also I'm mostly proud of. And what we've been able to build there, the community, as I start to travel to different cities and play padel, a lot of these players are wearing Kith Ivy products. Because Kith Ivy is a membership club, but the product is sold on, on, on the website, on the, on the Kith site. So you could still participate in the brand if you're playing padel elsewhere and you're not a member of the club for, for example. So as I started to travel the world, I'm, like, seeing people wearing the product, and it became, I think, the highest form of what the sport can look like and feel like. So just having an idea be sparked by how I could better the sport or better the identity of the sport created this, like, idea around the holistic three sixty view of what Ivy is. And it wasn't just the shaping the identity of the apparel they were wearing. It's also about the experience surrounding padel. Like, what should padel feel like? Because padel could very easily, like, be a sport that Rolex gets into or be one of the other sports that, that then get thrown into, like, ping pong and, and, uh, and pickle. So, like, in which direction will this sport go? And I wanted to be a part of the progress that the sport has to then elevate it to where it is today, which I think I played a part of.
- DSDavid Senra
I think that's a perfect illustration of, like, your idea of world-building.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, telling that entire story. It's also the perfect place to close our first conversation. What I wanna do is run this back in a few months.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Senra
I think we film at Ivy, and we focus on, like, I think you have a very unique, almost, like, filmmaker view on world-building. But, dude, thanks for taking the time.
- RFRonnie Fieg
No.
- DSDavid Senra
This is awesome.
- RFRonnie Fieg
Appreciate it. This was great.
- DSDavid Senra
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over four hundred biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders. [electronic sound]
Episode duration: 1:30:12
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