YouSaid · the spoken record

Ronnie Fieg

lines on the record: 94
first: 2024-12-03
most recent: 2024-12-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Explain how this happened. I haven't been able to step back and look at it as this is where it started, this is where it is. It's more so like living it day by day. And just day by day, I've been able to tell more stories and I've been able to make more product that is on a wider spectrum that can affect people through their closets in a much bigger way now than we used to. Because I'm just head to toe like footwear, socks, pants, underwear, shirt, overshirt, hat, glasses, car. Bag is all my brand. I always dreamed of being able to do that because it would be like one piece or two pieces of my outfit And it would bother me. It would bother me that it wasn't something I created for myself.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I'm sitting in an office that I built in a garage space that I built because I like to be around the cars that I built. It's that emotion I try to share with the world so people can have the emotion. I want people to buy into product for the right reasons, for the reasons that I did growing up. And I think that part of why Kith has become so special is because we have become a trusted voice through product. So people trust the product because they know it's coming from an authentic place. And I think it's become relatable across many different categories of fashion and of product. It's so hard for me to”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a perfect way of summarizing it. I think for every incredible creator in this world, and we're talking about creators in any category, whether it's architecture or art or music or product, anything. Any great creator is basically sharing his or her DNA with the world of their experience that is then translated through product. Some people are born, I think, with this need to spread their experiences and emotions with the world. And some people spread them differently through art, through music. There's a thousand different ways to spread them, but for me, it spread through product. And it spread through product for me because I love product more than anyone I know. When we speak about product, it's like I could show you where I'm sitting right now.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bar, which was an amazing lounge slash club that was opening up, and it was the talk of the city. And I was helping her literally gold leaf the pink on the ceiling of Goldbar like we would stay there and I would help her put this place together and I got to meet the manager and the staff and I was like, you know what? I would love to make because they were going to wear suits. The staff was going to wear suits. It was this beautiful place. I was like, I want to make this Adidas Shelto instead of the rubber toe. I want to make it all leather with a leather wrapped midsole and make a dressy Adida superstar that you could wear with a suit. And it was called a black tie. And it came with a black Adidas tie. I made a tie with three stripes in the garment district in the city. And it would come with the shoe. So then that shoe released and that had a story. And then the blogs started picking up based on this article in the Wall Street Journal. The blogs started reaching out to me. And that's basically how it started.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the stores had lines, and we sold out of all the pairs to the pair by the end of the day. Now, during this moment, People lined up that day, the Adidas office moved in across the street for me on Broadway between Princeton Spring and the president of Adidas was there, looked out his window, saw this line, came downstairs, and came in and asked me because I was managing the store, what's going on with this line? And I explained to him what happened. I showed him the paper and I was like so excited. And he's like, did you take your lunch break yet? And I was like, no. And he's like, do you have time to leave? I was like, yeah, I could leave for an hour. So I left with him and he walked me to the new Adidas Original store on Wooster Street. And he's like, what if I gave you the ability to work on any shoe in the store? And I was like, what? I was like, that would be crazy. That would be amazing. So I picked up the superstar and worked on the black tie superstar, which was back then, I was dating this amazing woman who was working in gold.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we sold two pairs in the morning. And I'm like, oh shit, this is not good. Then this editor came in. I didn't know he was an editor. And he asked me a bunch of questions about the shoe. And he ended up buying a pair. And then the next morning, biking to work because I was living in the city at the time. And I get a phone call from my mom. So I pick up the phone on the way to work. And I pick it up and I'm like, hey, what's going on? My mom is like flipping out because my dad reads the Wall Street Journal and on the cover of the pursuit section, there's a picture of the shoe. And then there's an article about limited edition sneakers. The blogs, by the way, were starting to bubble, but this is very early on. So I get to the store and there's a line three blocks long to buy the shoe because of this article that came out.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredible. Then you have the responsibility to sell them. So here I am, three shoes, $756 pairs. They come in. And I remember my friend working at Complex at the time, Complex Magazine. I got them into the magazine a few months earlier. So it was in the print mag. And then I had this party that I put together on Fifth Avenue. We sold 50 pairs that night. And the next morning, I remember being in the store.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I showed him pictures of me wearing it in 1990. And it was like, that's perfect. So that's the first shoe. He sent me a cad of the shoe. I remember I printed it out and I started drawing arrows to different panels of the shoe with a description of what material and color I would want in the different panels of the shoe. This is before I started working on Illustrator. So basically I faxed in back then three of these different drawings which I still have in my mom's house somewhere, three different drawings of the shoe for them to basically make. And I got samples, looked great, and then we launched the first batch of shoes called the 252 pack because back then the minimums to make a shoe was 252 pairs. They opened up a mold, which is very expensive for the investment of letting me work on a shoe, which was”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business that we built, would you be interested in picking one of these to put out as a bring back of a retro style? So I'm flipping through the pages. And Rewind back to, I would have to say it was 1990, so I was eight years old. Reebak pumps were out around that time. And I really wanted a pair of Reebok pumps bad. And we were standing outside of, I think it was called tennis juncture or something like that. Sneaker store basically somewhere not far from where I lived. And I literally was crying tears. I was 10 years old crying tears, like begging my mom to buy me a pair of Rebak pumps. And she came out of the store and she bought me a pair of A6 JI3s that were like $70 or something. So I ended up wearing those shoes and I loved them. I wore them till they had holes in the soles. And I went back. I wanted to buy another pair when I was that young. And they didn't have them. So they discontinued them or they didn't have them any longer. So when I flipped through the book, I saw that style and my eyes popped out of my head. And I was like, that's actually a shoe that I love that I owned when I was a kid.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the first project I ever worked on when ASICs, Mike McLaughlin, who was a salesperson at ASICs, really jumpstarted my career, understood that I was a big collector and I helped bring the ASICs business from zero to a couple of million dollars at David Z because I opened the ASICs account for David when we walked a trade show back then wrestling sneakers, believe it or not, were a huge fashion trend and Anasuka Tiger, it was a combination of both Anasuka Tiger and the sports style performance driven product that was becoming very fashionable. So I opened that account for David and we built a great business and the sales rep came to me with a catalog. The catalog was basically an archive of styles that he asked me, would you be interested, the group loves you here, my boss loves you.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then she had that line in the song with some Gore-Tex that sweats I make treks like I'm homeless. That was that time I sold her boots. And then seeing fat Joe come in and Jay-Z come in every week and buy a pair of construction Timberlin boots. So my taste was running across all these different people and then all of a sudden I'm buying for different brands, understanding what each brand is missing in the marketplace. So then I'm starting to think about how I can contribute in that way. And fast forward to 2006.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Understanding all different types of people that were shopping, whether it was the tourist that was coming in from Japan buying red wings, or it was the dog walker in the village coming in and buying green sway shoes. Believe it or not, that was a trend. I've noticed that the local consumer loved green suede athletic footwear. It's crazy how you could pick that up after the 20th consumer that you're helping these guys from the village, they really gravitate towards Green Suede. And then I'm helping Lauren Hill, who came in and asked me for a pair of Gore-Tex boots because she thought it was a brand and I had to explain to her what Gore-Tex was. And this is back when Gore-Tex was relatively new. So not a lot of people knew.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not necessarily an opinion that mattered to the brand yet, but an opinion to myself of what I felt was missing. I knew people wanted that the brands weren't offering. That is the beginning stages of creation. What started my engine. That's what really began this train of thought to want to create product that I felt was missing in the marketplace. And everything that I wanted to make, here's the craziest part. At this point, I have collected a lot of footwear. And I'm now the customer with, in my opinion, where I was at that time in my life, I had this taste level that was the best of all different cultures in New York City because I was helping”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I became an assistant buyer in 1999 or 2000, I think it was 2000. So I went from the stock to sales, assistant manager, manager, and then it became an assistant buyer. So splitting my time and I spent one day in the office. And when I did that, I started to work with the brands. I understood product on such a different level because of how long I spent working on the floor. So my understanding of product when you start from there, when you understand the consumer on that level, the intimacy of that relationship that you have with the consumer, and then you become the buyer slash merchandiser of product you're bringing in, you're now working with the brand. So that was me working with the brands and looking at product and actually having an opinion.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that it's one specific philosophy that I would be able to put into words. There was no way that I wouldn't work on product and make product that I felt was missing in the market. So fast forward.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when you help thousands of people, imagine then learning the inner workings of people's brains of why they like things”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sense of individuality was at its peak at the time, where people were buying product because of their own personal taste. And the way that they shop the store was very different from the way people shop the store now. They'd come in and they'd actually be interested in product they never saw before. There was a big discovery factor. So they chop 10, 15, 20 SKUs off the wall and then they'd have to narrow down to what they want and for the purposes they were buying for, whether they were going out at night and they were buying hush puppies or durangos or they wanted a pair of boots for during the day or both. But that process and that experience that I had with those amazing individuals, celebrity or not, I got to get into people's heads to understand why they like certain products and why they were buying certain products.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got laughed at. But exactly one year later, people were coming into my store from my school buying wallabies. And also New Balance is the same thing. We were early carrying new balances, five seven sixes, and I would wear new balances with the big N on the bus and people in Queens would ask me, are those Nikes? Because they thought the N stood Nike. Meanwhile, in the city, the top hip-hop artists and drug dealers, because they were coming in calling them orthopedics and buying them because they used to stand on the corner wearing comfortable 1300s. And that was the most expensive runner in the category at the time. So the reason why I tell you this is because you wanted to know the origin of where I fell in love with product, where my passion came from, and it came from living in such an incredible era where people were buying product for different reasons. It was like,”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of liking different products for different reasons. For example, I used to help Wu Tang buy their wallabies. They'd come in and I would help all of them, they'd come in full clan to buy the wallies and then they'd go up the block to this guy that would die them. And I was talking to Raykwan yesterday. He's like, one of my very close friends. And I get the chills just saying that right now because the bridge between those two moments of yesterday verse when I was 14, 15 helping Wu Tang is crazy. But then I would wear wallabies and I'm wearing them to my junior high school and taking two buses wearing royal blue suede wallabies with parasuco jeans with a royal blue stripe with a royal blue mecca shirt and a royal blue jacket looking like a smurf on the fucking bus.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would be Fedoras and Yankee fids like Kangls and Neweras. And then across the street, they would sell iceberg. That block became where everybody went to dress fly and buy their product that they would wear for the week. And then they come right back the next week. But basically, the reason why I bring that up is because I got to see why these different stars and heroes of mine liked the product that they liked. And I became a culmination of. All of their taste.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As important to me in my life than anything else. Being that young, they always say that whatever you love between the ages of 13 and 18 is what you love for the rest of your life. The way I was introduced to the music was on 8th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue around the block from Fat Beats on probably the most culturally relevant block in the world. That was what H3 was because Saturday and Sunday basically were block parties every weekend and everyone was there. You would see all of the stars everyone from the hip-hop world would go there on the weekends and hang out. I was listening to music and seeing these artists, it took over my life and I bought turntables. I would shop vinyl fat beats around the corner, Grace Papaya. It was on the corner. And then there was this store that would sell all colors of Yankee fitteds after Spike Lee wore that red hat. Then they made 20 colors of Yankee fitted.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conversations of different people that I worked with and the buyer that would walk into the store and sometimes David would walk into the store and they put these boots on a pedestal. These are like some of the best hiking boots ever made. So I started to really understand and learn the ins and outs of what makes a boot great. And every season they would change the colorways and designs of these boots. And I didn't want to let these moments go, these moments that I shared with these new products that I had. So I started collecting them. And that was the beginning, I would say that that was a part of it. And then the different people that I would help because I was this young kid on the floor starting to help hip-hop artists that were coming in and helping Nas and AZ and Wu Tang clan and Buster Rhymes and Mace at that time, those were my heroes. Hip-hop music was just.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Collecting That I was very much in love with, and I would just have piles of shoes and boots in my room. And they would be new. I wouldn't even want to wear them because I saw them as art. I would hold a pair of these boots in my hand and I got to understand.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A couple of years of working in the stockroom once I hit the sales floor, the sales team on the floor were all at least 12 years older than me. And they all became my family and started teaching me about these shoes, started teaching me about these boots and shoes and the differences between them and functionality. A lot of these boots at the time were made in Italy because hiking boots back then that came from the mountains of Italy. And I got to experience that because I started later on in my career, I collaborated and worked on handmade boots in Italy and got to go to the place that really was the origin around the product that I started to love. So I started collecting boots, which nobody that I've ever known in my life did that. I started collecting dolom”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was wearing a combination of these different boots. David Z was the epicenter of hiking boots at the time. It was Timberland, Dolomite, bear AKU boots, Danner, Trizetta, Red Wing, Durango, Clarks. Those were the brands, polo cookie boots and technica. All these brands that were in the boot world were running New York City at the time, Manhattan, I should say. And I got to start working in the stockroom. All these boxes of shoes that were coming in, I would be responsible for creating stock numbers for them and consolidating them in a stock room. So I got to open up these boxes and discover product for the first time in that way, one-on-one time with new product coming in, one after another. I'm open with all these different iterations of boots and shit.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still had a second pair of a shoe I was wearing, which was alien. It was not regular for us to think in that way 13 in the school that I was going to and the kids I was hanging out with. It was just something that nobody did. Then I started working at David Z, which was a brown shoe and boot retailer. So at the time in the mid-90s where everybody was just focused on the culture was focused on wearing hiking boots and brown shoes. So very different from the shoes I was wearing and the shoes that I was in love with AirMax 95s came out that year which changed everything and is my favorite Nike silhouette to date. But I was only in tune with the world of athletic footwear. And then I got to learn this whole other world of footwear because in the city at the time, at that point, the city was always like a year or two ahead of the boroughs. In the city, every”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had them in my hand. And I remember her saying to me, Why are you holding the same shoe you're wearing? Pick something else. And I was like, I don't know what would happen if these shoes get busted up because I was playing ball in them. I'm going to cry if I don't have these fucking shoes. I love these shoes. So I bought a second pair of that shoe. So when I went home, I put that second pair in my closet and I kept it in the box and I just put it there. And then I started to think about it after like six months when I started working at David Z.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I became obsessed with having collections. And then in 1995, before I started working in 95, because I started working in June, my sister got her first credit card. And she was so excited to spend money on the credit card. And she asked me, I was 13. At that time, she was 19. She's six years older than me. And she was excited to spend money on the card. So she asked me to come shopping with her. So we went to sneaker corner, which was our footwear store, like athletic footwear store. sneaker store on the corner of 188th and horrors harding in fresh meadows and we went and they didn't have her size in the shoe that she wanted but she was like ronnie buy something i want to spend money on the card i was like okay so i was wearing a pair of shoes that my parents bought me for my birthday and it was a pair of flight 95s which was a pair of jason kid shoes i love them so much that the whole time that she was shopping in the store i was wearing them but also”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Collecting for me started in 1990. I think that those moments of collecting comics first, then cards, I think really set the path of understanding that my feeling of having a collection of something was stronger than other people had.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For themselves and also to share with others, which it doesn't necessarily matter what your intentions are when you collect as long as you're passionate about what you do. When you speak about the beginning stages of my passion for this world that I'm in now and product that I get to work on that really feels nostalgic to a lot of people. But for me, it's basically like being able to relive those moments myself when I'm able to work on these products and put them out. I get to share that feeling, that feeling that I had when I was younger, when I first started either collecting Marvel cards, because I think that that's really the first moment of.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really starts, by the way, it's a great question. You're making me think of things I haven't thought about in a long time, or maybe ever. I'm 29 years in retail now, and you work so hard in so many hours that you forget that they're basically all linked. Like all these years are linked to the evolution of the business, but they're building blocks. When you think of the first time you became passionate or fell in love with something, I have a few of those categories in my life. I'm a big collector. I collect a lot of different things, but I collect them for myself. I think that what the term means now to collect or to be a collector has been overshadowed by social media and the need to share what you collect with the world instead of the passion that I have of collecting for myself. A very different feeling. But people have been able to start collecting the brand.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To the brand that is built off of experience, which many CEOs will tell you from the creative space is what everybody is basically fighting for.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though the stores are all very different from one another, purposely different from one another, because what I really don't like is what luxury brands do and they have this copy and paste formula for spaces wherever they open, they're all the same. And the problem with that is when you open too many, then it starts to go basically in the opposite intention of wanting people to feel luxurious, but then it actually has the opposite effect because the experience becomes too accessible. So the concept for us is very different. We like to complement the city that we're in with the design of the space. So in the sense of they all feel like home, they don't necessarily all feel the same, but the people that work in the shop and the experience that people have in the shop, that is the same. And when you see the product and the product speaks to you the same from city to city, then you start to have this connection.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though we have so many moments throughout the year, they're all baked about 18 months before the moment happens. So there's so much care and thought process and conversations that happen that lead to these great moments that have made the brand hopefully people put it in the iconic bucket at this point because you look at the store, our Soho shop. Become an institution, and I say that because people show up there rolling a suitcase into the store coming straight from the airport off the plane. It's the first stop they make, and it's not only in New York, it's become this place that feels like home for people that travel like myself, New York, Miami, LA, Tokyo, Paris, London. It's really become this place where people can go and feel at home.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It to be something that everybody would want to do. But when I say everybody would want to do, we were all on the same level of wanting to do it. It never works well when one party wants to do something more than the other. But when we had this give back, which we gave some of the proceeds back to the school, it was a moment that I thought that Jerry was proud of, to be proud of that moment. But it didn't jeopardize any of the product aesthetic of the product that we were making at the time because the capsule and the collection for Queen's College was really strong. And I felt like that was the kind of product that people would want to see Jerry in. So that became the why. And the why is always so important. I know that people see things and basically don't think about the process as much as maybe they should or as much as they need to.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few years internally on what would be the right moment to put this out and to work on this project. And it was a Brooklyn Queen story because it was Brooklyn College, Queen's College. It was the story of us opening in Brooklyn, me living in Brooklyn, but then also being born and raised in Queens and my family being from Queens, such an important part of my childhood and my life. So everybody always typically you see people walking around trying to represent where they're from. That's not new. But in the sense of trying to put the Queen's College on the map, figuring out that would be the perfect marriage between what we would do with Jerry and the product that we want to put him in, that became the perfect moment where it would make sense to Jessica, to his son, to Jerry, for us to all come together.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I first started speaking to Jessica, and she was straight up like, hey, it would need to make sense. There needs to be a reason why. And I said, of course, that's the only way it would work for us as well. I'm from Queens. And on the show, there's this moment where Jerry wears this Queen's College sweatsuit. And he's a Queen's College alumni. So the concept when I thought about representing my city where I'm from, and I'm always trying to rep my city as much as I can. And the motto for the brand is just us, but we also own this tagline called New York to the World, which is such an important line for us as we start to work on sports, New York teams, New York culture, and we start to open up in different regions in the world. That tagline becomes even more important for us as we start to expand globally. But going back to Queen's College, it was a conversation that we had for”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what they want to see from product. And you have to really become the customer and the consumer to then understand it on that level, which is what I am at the end of the day. I'm just a product nerd. And you really have to get to the core of product creation to understand the purpose behind anything else we do because it starts there. And then when you speak about something like a jerry shoot, that comes from the right product that would be applicable to that kind of shoot, with Jerry. If I didn't have the right product and we didn't tell that story, the Queen's College story, which I thought was epic to tell that story with Jerry, then the timing wouldn't have been right. And then I would have had to wait until the product would be right again to shoot him. So there's so many moving parts.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's the science, understanding what people like, how they dress, why they're influenced, and then the evolution of that is understanding how people digest content and product, which is our business basically split 50-50 is the design of product, the product itself, and then the storytelling around the product. It has to be, for me, at least, the consistency of the experiences that we've had internally has made us professionals at that with our consumer and with the consumers that we want to cater to is understanding the way they think and the way they interact with content.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's familiarity, but without knowing that they were looking for that specific feeling when you're able to give them that feeling, but it feels familiar. I think that that's what we've been able to do so well is understand what people would want before they know they want it. That comes really from how I started my career or the middle of my first tenure at David Z when I became Of like a merchandiser slash buyer is really trying to understand what people want without necessarily them knowing.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where you just get better at understanding what people want to hear from that instrument and how things sound. And it's kind of like through my career, it's developed and become a life of its own in the sense of who we shoot, why we shoot them, and what the content ends up turning out to be, the Jerry shoot really snowballed this vision that we had of shooting icons in the way that we do. It's become a big part of our DNA. But when you shoot somebody like Jerry who doesn't shoot anything ever for anyone, I think that kind of impact is what we always are searching for when myself and the marketing team meet and discuss what we want to do. We use that as a huge example of how we were able to create emotion.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even more so the reason why I love this guy so much because he never did anything in his life, in my opinion, to appear cooler than he actually is. You know what I'm saying? I think that that was such an eye-opening moment for me just to understand him a bit better through the shoot and through that entire day that we spent together. And the result of it was exactly what I was expecting it to be and hoping that it would be people that respected Jerry and understood his impact on the culture, seeing him in that product, in that way, I think, really struck a chord. And I think that that's a big part of the DNA of the brand is that chord is continuously striking these emotional chords. It's kind of like playing an instrument.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really getting her and her son actually, who's an incredible kid, to help really make them understand the purpose behind why we wanted to shoot Jerry. And it was mostly because I felt like people in our market already viewed him as such an icon because his stories about him and the footwear that he wore on the show in our world, which was studied because it was on mood boards and became a big tumblr moment that people spoke about. And it's funny because when I was speaking with Jerry on set, so basically they got him to trust that it was going to be great. And he didn't know much about the brand. He doesn't know much about this world. And when I started to have the conversations about the footwear that he used to wear on the show, he had no idea that he was this guy that people looked to in that way. He was like, what? So I showed him some of the photos and he was surprised by it, which is.”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That one's actually a really interesting, and that's a good example of how long it could take for some things to come to fruition. Basically for about five years, I wanted to shoot Jerry and it became one of these bucket list moments for the brand and myself being such a big fan of Seinfeld and the show. But more importantly, what Jerry has meant to New York City. And I always felt like he was a poster child for everything that we felt growing up in the city. So that took a lot of time, but basically I became friendly with his wife, Jessica, who I met through another friend, through a mutual friend. And I started to have conversations with her about the vision of what it would look like for me to shoot Jerry. And we met about it a few times. And it was a very slow process of”
2024-12-03 · Invest Like the Best · Ronnie Fieg - Building Kith - [Invest Like the Best, EP.399] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source