Building the Streetwear Empire Kith | Ronnie Fieg

Ronnie Fieg is the founder, CEO and creative director of Kith. At 13, he turned down an envelope of cash at his bar mitzvah to ask his cousin for a job, then spent 15 years working his way up from stock boy to buyer at David Z. He explains how growing up in Queens and working on 8th Street shaped his taste, how his first ASICS Gel-Lyte III collaboration landed on the front of The Wall Street Journal’s Pursuits section and why he still designs every product for himself first. Ronnie describes why Kith refuses to wholesale or license, why he opens new physical stores as online sales grow and why he believes luxury should mean how much people love what they buy. He also details how a failed white chocolate bread idea became Kith Treats, how he prices product so customers get more than they pay for and what he felt seeing all 1,800 of his shoe designs laid out in chronological order. Ronnie shares how an obsession with padel led to Kith Ivy, why he is expanding into hospitality with Ronnie’s and why growing up before the internet forced him to develop his own point of view. Show notes: https://davidsenra.com/episode/ronnie-fieg Made possible by Ramp: https://ramp.com AppLovin: https://applovin.com/senra Deel: https://deel.com/senra Chapters (00:00:00) You can’t work backwards from money (00:04:43) “Keep the envelope. I want a job.” (00:10:25) Why the CEO is also the fit model (00:18:43) The childhood shoe that launched his career (00:20:52) The Wall Street Journal, a line down the block and a visit from Adidas (00:26:48) Get rid of the crap (00:31:09) What luxury should actually mean (00:32:40) Why Kith doesn’t wholesale or license (00:38:24) Building the opposite of an arrogant sneaker shop (00:40:39) The Italian crook who registered Kith’s trademark (00:52:02) How a $20 deli experiment became Kith Treats (00:55:11) Serve your customers, don’t chase new ones (00:59:35) Always give people more than they pay for (01:02:41) Seeing 15 years of work laid out on the floor (01:12:00) Growing up before the algorithm (01:25:46) How a padel obsession created Kith Ivy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Senra?

  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 for money. Say more about this.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  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 ever, if not your favorite, right?

• 0:20David Senra?

  One of them, yeah.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  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 going to change his own life, right? And I felt like even then, when 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 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 to my business. It's just naturally there because when I grew up,

• 1:06Speaker 01

  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, you know, when they were 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 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.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:58David Senra?

  But how does like a 12 or 13 year old kid get interested in like fashion? Is this coming from like hip hop culture? Like what was going on in your life where it's like, man, I want to, I want to come to school, dress and fly?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  So I'll tell you. So, so growing up, um, up until fourth grade, uh, my parents sent me to a, 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 PS178. 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.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  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,

• 3:03David Senra?

  I remember this.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  We're really, we're really big.

• 3:05David Senra?

  We're around the same age. I remember this.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Yes. So it was, it was, are you 82? What are you?

• 3:09David Senra?

  84.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:24David Senra?

  Dude, I had knockoff Tommy Hilfiger. I literally bought, bought it at the swap shop in South Florida. We had no money.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  It was a big thing.

• 3:30David Senra?

  And then I got called out at school. You want to hear an embarrassing story? I didn't even know. Some, you know how these hustlers in South Florida are. They took old Wendy's uniforms, like Wendy's, like the fast food place. You would give them like, uh, like a.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  A collared shirt.

• 3:43David Senra?

  A collared shirt, right? And I go to the swap shop because we have no money. And like you have these like street vendors, right? And I'm like, oh, this is Tommy. I didn't understand what was going on. And I wore it to school and they're like, dude, that's a Wendy's shirt.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  A Wendy's shirt.

• 3:55David Senra?

  I remember me like 12 and like devastated that I'm wearing a fucking fast food costume. Not costume, what's it called? A fast food uniform with a fake Tommy Hilfiger screen printed on it.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  That's insane. I don't know. I don't think things have gotten, you know, that far.

• 4:12David Senra?

  Dude, I haven't thought about that in 20 years. I can't believe that.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  That's really crazy. There were a ton of fakes going around. And even though like back then, you know, a $65 or $85 shirt was like.

• 4:22David Senra?

  This was $10. I should have known by the price.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, you should have known by that. I could have told you back then. You needed me as a friend. You know, I would have kept you safe. But in, in, in school, that's what really, that, that style, like what we were seeing around us, that was, you know, that's what we really wanted to be. And my older sister, she was working and making money buying product for herself. 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 kind of 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, I buy bar mitzvah. You know, my, my mom's first cousin, my second cousin, who was David Z, he owned shoe stores in the city.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  He offered me an envelope of cash because he knew that my parents were paying off for my bar mitzvah party with the money I was getting as gifts. So he offered me, like, I was going to the bathroom during the party and he gave, offered me like an envelope of cash. And I told him, keep the envelope. Um, I want a job. I was 13, you know? And he was like, are you, 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 stockroom 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 stockroom in 8th Street, which was like probably the most important part of my upbringing

• 5:53Speaker 01

  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 because 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 Papayo 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.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  So like today, when you see like the obsession over kids and 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 ASOL and Technica and Red Wing. And we had Polo, like the Polo Cookie Boots and the Hiking Boots, the R-Lex Boots and Timberlands, um, Trezeta, Dolomite, like all, Bear AKU, like all these Gore-Tex, uh, hiker boots.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:36David Senra?

  But when do you go from like admiring what other people are making to saying, hey, I'm going to do my versions of this?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  That came, that came later. So that like, I worked as 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 slash manager.

• 7:58David Senra?

  So this was just you learning the business, not thinking like, let me ask you a question. Maybe like I should start here. If somebody doesn't know who you are, you say, hey, what do you do? How do you describe yourself?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  I do a lot more than design. So I'm the CEO, creative director and CMO, I would say of the company. So CEO, CMO 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 because I do a lot. And a typical creative director wouldn't be doing the buying or merchandising. And I do, I do most of those things. So I have my hands in everything.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  In everything product wise, and then I designed the spaces. I'm heavily involved in the full like 360, 360 degrees of the business. You know, even down to the experience that people have when they walk in. The F and B portion of what we do with Kit Treats and now Ronnie's. So there's a lot that I do, so I can't really describe it. And it's hard 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, I've just added on.

• 9:17David Senra?

  You're kind of like, I met you outside and your car is very interesting. And I like stuck my head and it's like, oh dude, this is nice. And you're like, welcome to my world. You're kind of like building your own entire world.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and by the way, like I'm head to toe in my product, socks and underwear.

• 9:34David Senra?

  We don't have to see that, but I will take your word on it.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Just take my word for it, and I'm really living the product. I live and breathe the product that I create and I'm building product for myself. And I think that people know that, so they know that there's a lot of love that goes into it. So if I'm building product for myself and I want to wear the product that we make. You know, I also, up until very recently, was fitting four hours a week. I was the fit model for the product that we put out. So the brand puts out like more than 5,000 styles a year of product between men's, women's, and kids, and accessories, and footwear. We built a universe of product and it's been a really great evolution from the beginning. So if you ask me what it is that I do.

• 10:17David Senra?

  The answer is everything.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I'm a world builder, you know, like I built myself like a world that I live, that I live in.

• 10:25David Senra?

  But this is interesting, why would it be important for you to be the fit model? Because literally like this is.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  For me, first. 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 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 the fitting. And if my, you know, the team is all there, so I have like 20 people at a fitting and you have your material, your materials team, you have your merchandisers, you have your

• 11:11Speaker 01

  designers, 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 got to fit that too. I think a lot of these brands cut corners. I've spoken about this 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 did that happen? I came back to 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.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  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 it, it doesn't fit, it fits like shit. So I'm very meticulous to every detail, only because my closet, every season, I wipe it out and then it gets replaced with a new season. So if I'm going to be wearing the product, it better fit properly, you know, as I'm like the representative of the brand.

• 12:25David Senra?

  I want to 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 costs. 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

• 13:08David Senra?

  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've used the word like love, like several times. We started the conversation, we're 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 going to wind up with the money anyways.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:49David Senra?

  So the love of this, let's go back to like the story you're saying, I'm kind of learning like the, almost like the mechanics of the business as a kid.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:56David Senra?

  Right, this is before you're like, I'm learning how the, how the business exists or a part of the business exists, before you kind of put your own spin on it.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:03David Senra?

  So when, when you're like, hey, I actually have my own ideas, like, so me and you both know Jeff Selaznik, who's on this show.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:09David Senra?

  And he told a very similar story, where he was just like, man, I was obsessed, I was like eating in every single restaurant, I was like the weird kid that come home at, from after middle school and watched PBS cooking shows. And then he's like, then I'm like eating all these restaurants, then I'm creating media about this, and he's like, you know what, I got my own goddamn ideas on how this should be done.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:30David Senra?

  When was that turning point in your life?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  I was so fucking obsessed with footwear, you know, so like when Kit opened, and we'll go back, I'll go back to your question in a second. When Kit 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 going to rewind back because I was a footwear guy, you know, and strictly footwear until 2012, 2013, right? So I was basically buying, you know, upwards of $30 million at retail a year from, from so many different footwear brands.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  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, as the weather actually got warmer and the, you know, the seasons kind of extended, and the winter kind of like shrunk to like three months, you know, instead of the four or five months that we were used to. Because 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.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  So I helped David transition from brown shoes and boots to athletic footwear. And he knew that I was like obsessed with sneakers, so I was going to these trade shows and helping open new accounts, new footwear accounts, and then starting as an assistant buyer, being put on some of these accounts. And we built an incredible business with Anasuka Tiger, which is ASICS. And it wasn't sports style yet, it was just Anasuka for what we were carrying. But the sales rep knew that I was a sneaker head and knew that I was collecting product because 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

• 16:41Speaker 01

  fibre in the midsole, and it was, kind of looked like a spaceship. And it was the first like iteration of that kind of shoe, was a basketball shoe.

• 16:48David Senra?

  But were you buying to flip?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  No, back then there was no flipping.

• 16:51David Senra?

  Okay.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  I was buying a second pair because I loved them so much.

• 16:54David Senra?

  Got it.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  You know, and the Air Max 95, the Neon 95s were like, the design language was just something we'd never seen before. I like, I was just gravitated to it, towards it, you know? Come 2006, when I helped build Anasuka Tiger to a multimillion dollar business for David, they knew that I was heavy into footwear collecting, they knew I was a sneaker kid. So they opened up the archive for me and they were like, hey, you know, do you want to look through some of these styles and work on it? And I was like, what do you mean by work on it? Oh, you could create your own version of the shoe. And I was like, oh. So David was already doing this with boots back in the day, but they weren't branded like David Z on the boots, but they were considered SMU, which is, which is called a special makeup.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  So he was doing it with Timberland. In fact, like in 1997, David had an idea of making a gray construction Timberland boot. And Timberland never made a gray boot in their history. It was mostly like for performance purposes in browns and blacks, you know? If you were either wearing it for construction or wearing it to hunt, like they were really into the performance aspect of the brand. So David's idea of making a gray construction boot was like. I was like, holy shit, what is that? Like, people saw that and were instantly, like, we sold like 10,000 pairs of that boot in a couple of years, like, it just, with no internet, right? So like, people coming into the store and, you know, that was a product that we had.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And I saw that as a salesperson on the floor. I saw how people gravitated towards something they couldn't find anywhere else. So when ASICS offered me the opportunity to work on a shoe and I'm looking through the catalog, I found a shoe.

• 18:35David Senra?

  How old are you when this is happening?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  This is in 2006, so I was 23.

• 18:42David Senra?

  Okay.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  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, was crying, I was eight years old. And she, she brought me a pair of ASICS Gel-Aid 3s for 50 bucks or something, instead of buying me a pair of pumps that were like 110, 120.

• 19:00David Senra?

  I wanted the pumps too. The thing, ch ch ch.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was just, that just wasn't happening, right?

• 19:05David Senra?

  Yeah, no.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  The D Browns or the Victory pumps, like, they were incredible. So I had to wear these Gel-Aid 3s 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, and I was collecting and at that time.

• 19:21David Senra?

  So when they're opening the archive, they're meaning, hey, these are past models, we're not doing, they're not manufacturing, they're not creating anymore?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 19:27David Senra?

  Okay.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:28David Senra?

  And so like, why did you take your?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Old, old catalogs.

• 19:30David Senra?

  Interesting.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, from 1990.

• 19:32David Senra?

  That's even better, because you just mentioned how important it is to have product that's differentiated, you can't get anywhere else.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  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 Pata. And that's how the silhouette came back in 1990. We created that shoe and it took off.

• 20:11David Senra?

  Well, even back then though, when you're like, okay, they offered me a silhouette, I can come out and spin on this, was your North Star just like, hey, I'm just gonna make the shoe look like what I would wanna wear?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 20:19David Senra?

  So still same to this day?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Like, a hundred, it's always, I'm always creating product for myself. That's the red thread through all the product, at least the men's product and even the kids' product of what I want, wanna put my girls in. And now with the women's product, it's like, my wife, my mom, my sister, you know, three different generations. And I, I, I know what my wife wants to wear, I know what my mom wants, I know what my sister wants, like, and I'm, I'm really designing for the people, either if it's not for myself, it's for somebody that's the muse, you know? And I think that, um, on the footwear side, 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

• 21:06Speaker 01

  a few pairs, but one of the, 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. Like, like the shoe, my specific, because it was an article about like limited shoes.

• 21:34David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  And then there was a picture of the shoe that I worked on, uh, in the Pursuit section on the top, like right next to the word Pursuits, it was like right there. There was a line down the block and 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? So like, because I'm doing, I'm buying and, um, you know, I'm, I'm working on this project, but I'm still managing the store.

• 22:03David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Right? Like the flagship store, which was 556 Broadway between Princeton 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? He was like, yeah, and I had the Wall Street Journal there, the copy, because my mom called me, I picked one up.

• 22:18David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  So he's like, let me take a look at that. And he's looking at it, he's reading it and he was like, so you're behind this? 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 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?

• 22:38David Senra?

  Whoa.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  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 Broom Street.

• 22:54David Senra?

  What's Gold Bar?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Gold Bar is, it's a beautiful lounge, uh, that was like the first of its kind to be kinda like, when all of 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, 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 four 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 was thinking one day, I was like, what am I gonna do with this shoe?

• 23:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 24:00David Senra?

  You still have a full-time, more than full-time day job?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Oh my God. So this became a pretty substantial business where we were selling, where we were selling these products that I was working on.

• 24:10David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  And, you know, it grew and grew and grew and that became a, a pretty, a pretty big business relatively quickly.

• 24:17David Senra?

  Well, where's the money going? When you say it's a big business, it's going to David, right?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  It's going to David.

• 24:20David Senra?

  So it's not you? You don't have any kind of equity, economic tie, nothing? Essentially just talent?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct.

• 24:26David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Correct. And I was, so I was the buyer, I was a curator for this product, and then I was also like a general, like managing also the shops, right?

• 24:37David Senra?

  So it's very similar to when I asked you, what do you do today?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:41David Senra?

  Everything.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Basically, it was a little bit of everything, right? And he had a team, he had, he had a team of people, but I was young, energetic and leading a store that was for the masses. When I first started at David Z, it was a subculture. By the time I became a buyer for, for David Z, it was for the masses. David took the route of like opening stores on Broadway and catering to the tourists. I wanted to be about the local and I was very much into the culture of collecting. So I was already starting to collect footwear way before then and I was trading with Japan and product that David wasn't carrying, I was collecting Nikes at this point.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  So, uh, and I, and David had a Nike account for a brief time, but at that time, there was a lot of, um, competition with these individual businesses that were, were kinda like running game with a Nike account. The Nike account was a big deal back then, you know? Because that was, that was the brand that was driving a lot of the revenue. So he didn't have Nike. So I was trading and I was collecting, uh, because I built great relationships in the industry. But basically in 20, uh, in 2009, I already started thinking about, hey, like this is, this is incredible what I'm doing, but also like, I feel like I could be doing this in a way where I could cater to the consumer that's about this product full-time.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  And not only when I'm releasing this product, they're coming in.

• 26:09David Senra?

  What do you mean full-time?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Full-time, meaning when I was working on like these type of projects, like that ASICS shoe, for example, that kid that was buying that ASICS shoe was not necessarily shopping at David Z for other seekers. That, that kid that was focused on collecting and about special athletic footwear, like elevated and very limited athletic footwear, was coming back for the product that I was creating, but it wasn't coming back as a daily consumer.

• 26:35David Senra?

  So the idea is like, we have this very special differentiated product, but it's 10%, I'm making up numbers, 10%, and there's 90% of stuff you can get anywhere.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 26:43David Senra?

  Why don't we just focus on the specials, is what you're saying?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Right, right. And I wanted to do that, but that wasn't, that wasn't the roadmap for David, you know?

• 26:49David Senra?

  I got a funny, I got a funny story though, because like you mentioned Steve Jobs being one of my heroes. And I love that he's just completely unfiltered. And so, uh, this is like a few years before he died and at the time, some, there was a new CEO of Nike. Because he, he loved brands.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:02David Senra?

  And he's like, Nike's one of the greatest brands of all time, he thought Sony was a great brand, Polaroid, Apple, he was like, love, love people that like build these, really like these brands.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Soulful brands.

• 27:11David Senra?

  They evoke emotion, is what he would put there.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Correct, exactly.

• 27:13David 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. He's like, just get rid of the crap and focus on the good stuff. And it's exactly what you're, the realization you're having at this point.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  But the crap was still generating a lot of money.

• 27:27David Senra?

  Yeah, but Steve didn't give a shit.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And I don't give a shit. So that, that's where me and Steve are like, 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.

• 27:42David Senra?

  Man, that's an important insight. I don't wanna skip over that.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:45David Senra?

  That's super important.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:47David Senra?

  Like, let's be like, I'm spending 85% of my day on stuff I don't care about, like just get rid of the crap. Because this is what we were talking about earlier off camera and maybe we'll bring this into discussion, is just like, you feel it. Like, you feel when there's like love behind what people are doing.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Substance.

• 28:02David Senra?

  It's just like, they do things that are non-economic decisions, right? The idea like, let's go back to Steve, where it's like, he insisted that you can't open MacBooks, you couldn't open the Mac back then. But when you did open it, it was beautiful, it looked like it was like a piece of art and everything was organized. No one was going to see it but him. And that was his point. He's like, I don't care if another people see it. And he learned that from his dad, who was a carpenter. He's like, you're not gonna use a, he goes, listen, we're building a cabinet or a dresser, you put it, what do people do? Put dressers on the wall, you don't see the back of it. So people use, people that don't give a shit, they use crappy wood. We're not gonna do it because we know it's there.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  And that's the difference between being such an active founder and being the end user of the product that you make.

• 28:43David Senra?

  It's also what's required for greatness. Patrick O'Shaughnessy is like my brother, one of my closest friends, you went on his show and we were talking, we were upstairs with one of the greatest entrepreneurs living right now, he's just this maniac, just obsessed with operational excellence. And we were talking about his, his competitors and stuff. And Patrick made the observation, he's like, man, it's amazing, he's like, everything is shit. And it doesn't matter what. Uh, category or industry companies like, there's like two to three guys. There's like two to three guys in every single one that are doing great shit and then a whole sea of mediocrity.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yep, and, and the mediocrity is when you're working backwards from, from money.

• 29:15David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Right? So when it's, when it's about the money and not about the product, you could see that. It's transparent today to people, I feel like, more than ever before, actually. As like this generation starts to like steer back to substance as you see vinyl start to pick up. You know, and as you see like the mom and pop stores, mom and pop stores kind of have this resurgence into people looking for discovery. People want to discover things in, in real life. And I think that the digital world has cheapened information and information comes in the form of art sometimes and it's like, you know, you could pass over certain things by not touching and feeling them. You wouldn't understand the substance within the product.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  So I'm a firm believer of that because I come, half my life is pre-internet. Kind of like yours, right? And I think the pre-internet portion of my life.

• 30:10David Senra?

  Half our childhood, we should say. No, because like the internet came around like early, like I was on AOL in like 97, 96.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 30:16David Senra?

  So like half the childhood.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Right, but, but, but that wasn't influential internet.

• 30:19David Senra?

  No, no, no, you had to call the internet when we were kids. And literally, like, I gotta call up the internet. And like, oh, mom's on the phone, can't call the internet. And then when you're on the internet, they can't call you because the line's busy. I tried to explain this to my daughter and I even went up and looked on, and I, you can find this on YouTube. The noise it would make, just like, what is this? I'm like, I was calling the internet.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  That's so funny, man. It really, that's really true, but like the first time you were influenced by the internet was really in the blog era. So the blog era, the development and the beginning of the blog era was right when I was putting out my first product at David Z. And they were interested in the products after that Wall Street Journal article. They were interested in what was happening and they were even writing for the right reasons back then, where it was before brand deals. It was a hobby.

• 31:06David Senra?

  Again, go back to love.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 31:08David Senra?

  Doing it for love.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  I don't ever want to 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 could give you more confidence. Like, I want to 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.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  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. But 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.

• 32:37David Senra?

  So how do you, how do you avoid that with KISS though?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  First of all, we don't wholesale. Second, we don't license.

• 32:44David Senra?

  Why is that important for somebody that's outside of your business?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Because then you can't control how those products are spoken about and where they're placed and how they're merchandised. Then you can't storytell around the product. You could storytell top line by creating these TV ads and then you're walking in the airport and there's some fucking little rinky ding 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?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  So I wanted to walk people through the full experience, you know, from ideation, you know, through walking out the door, walking out the kit 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.

• 34:07David Senra?

  Why?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  I don't want to become a digital brand. The touch point, the touch and feel.

• 34:12David Senra?

  So you're purposely foregoing more sales. This goes back to the love and not how the conversation started. It's like, can't work by first 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 kit.com, right? As opposed to going in your stores.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:32David Senra?

  It's like way better experience that you control the whole story, the whole experience.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  We're controlling, 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 and it's on its path. But I always wanted to be half digital and half physical. So I want the physical to grow at the same rate is what I'm saying.

• 34:54David Senra?

  Okay.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 34:55David Senra?

  Yeah, it's not like, okay, wait, we're at 50% like.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Stop making, stop selling product on the internet.

• 35:01David Senra?

  Yeah, we'd be kind of, that might be a good idea. It's like, sorry, the website's closed for a few days.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 35:06David Senra?

  You gotta come back.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  By the way, there are some brands that do that and then create demand because they go away for a little bit. You know, um, Supreme does that in their off seasons, which I think is really smart.

• 35:15David Senra?

  So are you using the, the sales online as a, as a, as a sign that, hey, I need to increase the amount of physical footprint, the amount of physical stores I have in the real world?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:25David Senra?

  Okay.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and I think that because I've done that, the brand is in a really unique place. Because, you know, I, I open stores where I travel.

• 35:34David Senra?

  Well, say more about this.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, New York, Miami, LA, and then Tokyo, for example. And then as I started to visit Paris for Fashion Week, Paris became the next focal, you know, focus for me. And then as I started to visit London, London became a focus for me. Korea, Seoul became important in fashion. So I started to visit Seoul and that's when I figured, you know, it would be a good time to open up a store in Seoul. I think the growth that we've had is, has been substantial. You know, as we're planning on opening now, the news is out, we're opening in San Fran, we're opening in DC. And we have the data of how many people are shopping online, like I mentioned before. Those people need the experience, the physical experience of the brand. They can't only have a digital experience if they're a fan of the brand. I feel like I owe that to them. I have the responsibility of giving them the full, um, experience for the company, you know, for what the company can offer at least.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  So that's really the mindset around, uh, the growth.

• 36:26David Senra?

  This is a privately held company, right?

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:27David Senra?

  Do you have investors or no?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:29David Senra?

  You own all of it?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, me and, me and my partner, yes.

• 36:32David Senra?

  You mentioned going to Tokyo. There's this crazy, you probably know about this, like one of the best pizza, you wouldn't expect to find the best pizza in the world in, in Tokyo. But it's like one psycho guy.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  That's not true. I expect to find the best of everything in Tokyo, but you go ahead.

• 36:44David Senra?

  Oh, good, good, yeah, maybe, what is the, um, somebody said this to me, they're like, you're, the way you make podcasts, like you have a Japanese spirit. It's like, uh, shh, shh, what's the craftsman, the shokanen? Where it's like, it doesn't matter if you're like sweeping the floor or making sushi, it's like whatever you do is like.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  You need to be the best.

• 36:58David Senra?

  Shokanen, yeah, exactly. Whatever you do, it's just like, you take it very seriously and be the best at what you're doing.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  That's right. You maximize the potential of any one role.

• 37:05David Senra?

  Yeah, and so this guy, I, I went to the pizza spot. I forgot what it's called, but like people that hear this will know what it is if they've been there. It's cause like, he does three kinds of pizza. You can't make any modifications. You can't say, oh, can I get nut? The answer is, I'm gonna make these three and make the best.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 37:20David Senra?

  And then he'll just, when he's done for the day, he just closes.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  That's it. He's done.

• 37:23David Senra?

  Yeah, it just like closes. So if you're a privately held company, you said, what came to mind now is like, well, all these brands get overexposed. And they get overexposed because they have the pressure from investments, shareholders, like you gotta grow, grow, grow. But for craftsmen, it's like, I don't know, I make three pizzas. I do this forever and like, this is what I want to do. So you could, if this is a concern of yours, like stop or slow down.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  No, I do.

• 37:47David Senra?

  Exactly.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I do. In many instances I do, but it's not in the sense of shutting down the website or, right? That, that would be the extreme. And I also definitely am not going to make three pizzas. I'm like, I have, I'm very ambitious to do, to maximize the potential of what the brand can do. And the brand has expanded way beyond footwear and apparel.

• 38:11David Senra?

  I mean, you just walked in here and you're like, hey dude, the filming in the man is really nice. Next one we should do, we should do in Ivy. To your point, you're just like, well, I don't really have any ceilings on my ambition and I can like, take this into hospitality and other spaces too.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  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, and actually, we, we actually didn't start off as streetwear. We started off with a, with a cut and sew pant, uh, out of the garment district in New York. And there's, there's a long story about that. 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, that happened because people were, I created community around the store, right? And how did that happen?

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Because at the time, like I said before, like I was collecting and I was a big into the culture of, of product in downtown in New York. But the stores that we're 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 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?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  So the concept of KIF, 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 going to buy anything. So that's what fueled me to open this, this 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.

• 40:33David Senra?

  They explain what the difference is then compared to now? What was the initial thing? You were just selling people's product?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  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, in, 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 this fucking crook out of Italy that went and registered

• 41:22Speaker 01

  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, 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 of 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 KIF, the small 800 square foot space in the back of atrium, then expanded

• 42:07Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:18David 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.

• 43:02David Senra?

  They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day, and increased 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?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Only footwear. And then apparel was like a rack.

• 43:28David Senra?

  Are these footwear that are only the collaborations you're doing? You're doing, it's still the same thing when you were at David? Small percentage collaboration?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  David was not a top tier distributor of product.

• 43:40David Senra?

  Okay.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  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-

• 43:52David Senra?

  What does that mean, top tier distribution?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  I'll explain.

• 43:55David Senra?

  Okay.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  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 Sporting Goods gets to buy into.

• 44:15David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Okay? The whole premise behind the KIF space was to have the best footwear wall in the world. And that was going to 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, and as a merchandiser, and as a salesperson, I, I had enough knowledge of knowing how to do that, like, and curate the best wall in the world.

• 44:50David Senra?

  Okay, so you combined this like, industry knowledge with the fact that at this point, you're over 10 years deep into just being a-

• 44:56Speaker 01

  A collector.

• 44:57David Senra?

  A collector.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  From 95.

• 44:59David Senra?

  Exactly. So even, even longer.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:02David Senra?

  So you then combined the two into the very first KIF store, which is, again, 800 square feet.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Right. And, but then I also, because of the relationships I'd built, opening these accounts at David Z, and also buying from these accounts of David Z, I was able to build amazing relationships where I was then working on product with all these brands for KIF. So we had top tier distribution from these brands, but then we also had collaborative product that I was working with these brands on, you know? So we had very limited product, and that was keeping people coming to the door for very special product, but they were also coming to the door to see this, that the special product that these brands were releasing. So there were like, major release dates for all these brands for different product, and we were one of the, you know, I'm sure you heard of Virgil.

• 45:47David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  You know, and, you know, Virgil and Nike worked on incredible product, you know, KIF was one of the main retailers to carry that product in the States. You know, and then Yeezy product with Adidas, for example, there are a lot of other products that sit within that tier, where KIF would become the main destination for people to come and buy those products. And, and we built, we built a community around that. And then, from that point where apparel started to sell at the rate that it was, the growth that we had for our brand, for our house brand, for our fashion brand, for KIF, was surpassing any demand that we had for anything else. So, as we started to open up more doors, you know, we then, you know, had that offering for different communities in different cities.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  And as we saw the success of the different stores, we understood that our reach was global. And today, for example, when we have a release of product, like, you know, we just released a big project with BMW, that was about a month ago, I would say.

• 46:48David Senra?

  Is that what I just saw outside?

• 46:50Speaker 01

  That's from the last project.

• 46:51David Senra?

  Okay. But can I, can other people buy that? Or is that something you did custom for yourself?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  No, that was, we had 47 of those made.

• 46:57David Senra?

  Okay.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  And 47 stood for the years between the M1 and the, and the XM, because those are the only two one-off M cars that BMW ever created.

• 47:05David Senra?

  Okay.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  So like, for example, you can get an X5, and the X5 will, there'll be an X5M, but there's a regular X5. For the XM, it was only an M version of that car. For the M1, there was only an M version of that car. So 47 years between them, and we made 47 of those, of those-

• 47:23David Senra?

  Did you have one of the 47? That's what I just saw?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah.

• 47:26David Senra?

  Okay.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  I have two of the 47, because it came in purple and black.

• 47:28David Senra?

  Of course, I'd have both.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Of course I do. So, so when we worked with BMW, I'm bringing this up because globally, in Seoul, Tokyo, France, London, New York, Miami, LA, Dallas, Chicago, there'll be lines outside of every door that we have, globally. Now, I know that there are very few companies that do that, that have the demand in different cities and release something and on, you know, on release date, you have lines outside the space. I know that there are other brands that do that, but I don't ever take that for granted. So, we know that we have global reach, and at this point, with the power that the brand

• 48:09Speaker 01

  has, and the ambition that I have to grow outside of just product, that's where KIF Ivy is born.

• 48:17David Senra?

  Explain what KIF Ivy is.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  KIF Ivy is a membership club for avid paddle players, but also for people who want access to a spa, a very elevated spa. And there's a private dining room with a viewing experience, and there's a gym, and there's a shop. It's 16,000 square feet in the top floor of a building in Tribeca, and then there's three courts that people can play paddle on upstairs. And then we also have an Arowan Juice Bar, the first Arowan Juice Bar in New York in that town.

• 48:46David Senra?

  That went viral when it came out.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 48:48David Senra?

  This before me, me and you even met.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:50David Senra?

  And I was just like, I saw that everywhere.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was, it was pretty insane. And that, that has become a really special place, especially for me. And when thinking about the space, I really built it first for me, like I do with anything else, whether it's a product or a space, I'm doing it for myself first, because I know that my eye for the brand, and the lens, has been a consistent lens for 15 years. That expanded what the brand can do through a hospitality lens. I love that portion of the business now. And that idea then like, started to trickle into like what I'm doing now with Ronnie's. So Ronnie's is a fine dining restaurant in London, and Ronnie's Pronto is a gourmet

• 49:35Speaker 01

  sandwich shop with a window and a patio in West Hollywood. And now I have plans on what I'm going to do to bring that to New York, which I'm working on now, which will end up happening at the end of this month. As I have a book here that speaks to 1,800 designs, because I spend a lot of time on footwear.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Footwear has always been the anchor, but now serves as a small, a much smaller piece of the business because the Kith product has surpassed anything that we've done categorically in the brand. But as we get into hospitality and I see the opportunity of growth, you know, outside of product, that's what I think the future of the brand will look like. It'll be, there'll be like multiple categories that sit outside of product.

• 50:20David Senra?

  What's the better business? I know you're not now, you're not doing this for money. Obviously, you're very successful, but like to me, wouldn't product be a better, it's a better financially performing business than hospitality? Am I wrong on that?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  No, you're right on that.

• 50:31David Senra?

  Okay.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  You're right. You're right today. You know, you're right today for my business.

• 50:36David Senra?

  Got it.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  So like I gave the brand the opportunity to grow organically and maximize its potential. I'm planting like larger seeds in other categories of business that I plan on growing organically and authentically. I won't force the growth, but if I feel like there is demand above and beyond what it is that I'm doing, I'm going to try to expand that. And I think that we've provided this like experience for people who live in that area near Tribeca. I think that Kith Ivy has changed. I know that I have, I don't think, because people have told me that that space has literally changed their lives, living there. Because you know, like for that kind of experience, you used to have to travel outside the city.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  You know, outside New York, maybe. So I think that being disruptive in the way that that is and being polarizing in the way that we, that we show up is a part of the DNA of what we do, you know, as we try to disrupt other categories of business. But it's hard for me to describe and get into like stories that sit two or three layers under the surface if, if you don't first understand what it is that I do.

• 51:51David Senra?

  One thing I am curious about is like this very unique decision. Like why put in Kith Treats? Like, where did that idea come from? You did it early, but like where did that idea come from? Like, why even do that?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  When I expanded the Brooklyn space, I wanted to add 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 lost leader, or I thought it would be a lost leader. So originally, it was going to be a white chocolate bread space that I had for the first time in Club Med.

• 52:35David Senra?

  White chocolate bread space?

• 52:37Speaker 01

  So if

• 52:38David Senra?

  What?

• 52:39Speaker 01

  I traveled to 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 and B portion of the store. That's where I came up with the concept. I was like, people need to smell this. Because when you walk into the cafeteria, it's 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.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  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. So I, I saw a box of cereal as 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. 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 going to 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.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  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 created.

• 54:15David Senra?

  But then you said initially, you thought it was going to be a lost leader. So it's just like, I'm just going to 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?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:27David Senra?

  Is that the idea or no?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  No, no, no. It was like people that were coming to the shop.

• 54:30David Senra?

  Oh, it's the reverse.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 54:32David Senra?

  Okay.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  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. 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, and start building a new consumer.

• 55:11David Senra?

  I'm glad you said that because it ties to back to where this, this like tangy we've been going on in the most beautiful way of the conversation. It's like, well, yeah, but I just want to focus on like the 10 to 15% that I really love and not this other stuff. And the reason I thought of the ice cream as the first, because I just read this very obscure biography of Sam Walton. 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, he did not have what you had where like, I have the people already, how do I continue to serve them, which we're going to? He's like, I need to get them in the store. So he put like an ice cream cart out front. He'd do popcorn, he would do all this.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Trying to figure out how to get more people in, extract more people.

• 55:50David Senra?

  Which is why I drew the analogy and you're like, no, no, I already have the people, this core group of really, revealing, really special, almost like, and I mean this in a, the, you know, in like a positive way. It's like this cult-like following.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:03David 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?

• 56:09Speaker 01

  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.

• 56:23David Senra?

  And then you knew this because you, remember, go back to that story about the gray Timberlands, right?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:28David Senra?

  This is pre-internet, right? It's like, if you serve this cult-like following that you have, they will go out and recruit other people on your behalf.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And they'll walk into the store and just stand there. And he's like, it happens multiple times a day where I have to like, like, excuse me, or do you need help? Or, 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 13, $1,400 a foot, which is what luxury brands are spending.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  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 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,

• 58:45Speaker 01

  you know, what 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.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  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 want to post two pictures next to each other, you could post a Uniqlo 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.

• 59:35David Senra?

  Say more about how you think about pricing, though.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  I always feel that 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 study the market just to have the knowledge, but it's not, I don't necessarily apply that as to how we price our product. We look 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.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:00:30David Senra?

  Have you read this book called The Luxury Strategy? It's a red book with white letters.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  I haven't.

• 1:00:35David Senra?

  Okay, I'm going to send it to you because it goes into, I think what you're hitting on is 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 pricing is like shortcut for us. Like we're all busy and it's like, if you actually increase the price without reinvesting into the product, it makes the, in some categories, it makes it more desirable and it actually increases the line and the demand for it.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59David Senra?

  You're saying, no, no, I'm not trying to maximize and charge, it's some kind of psychological trick.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  That's a bubble, that's a bubble. What you just mentioned.

• 1:01:05David Senra?

  Well, it's, it's very enduring in human nature, actually.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07David Senra?

  But my, my point being is like, it's like, but I don't want to just make money for the sake of making more money. If I'm going to charge more, I want them to get more value. Is that, am I understanding what you're saying?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  100%. 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 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 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 felt like they've been part of the journey and we've, we've

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  gone so far, like 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.

• 1:02:11David Senra?

  You can see this in this book, right?

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  This, this book is different because.

• 1:02:14David Senra?

  It's just the footwear.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  The footwear is collaborative and I, I had 15 years under my belt before working on this product. Like the first shoe was 15 years later in my career. Wear 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 bit, a much bigger delta than in this book.

• 1:02:39David Senra?

  Would you make another book just on apparel?

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  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 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 knew I had like six to eight months to design the space. So I knew I was going to have an empty space. We already took the space. So my archivist, his name is, uh, his name is Jordan Bloom. I had him lay out all of my footwear from day one in chronological order.

• 1:03:15David Senra?

  Is this the picture I just saw on Instagram?

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:17David Senra?

  Yeah, that's dope, man.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  So, so that, and it's actually, it's in here. So the first, um, the first time, 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 going to see the progression. It has to be in person. 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.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  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 or so released pairs, and then there's another thousand 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 going to have a digital version of the index 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

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  of the book, which I felt was really cool. And then people will obviously be able to buy the book there. And then for those four days that the show will be open for, we also have panels with each of the four biggest collaborators, which are Nike, Adidas, New Balance and ASICS. And there's some 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 going to feature what I'm calling the Ronnie's meal. So there's two sandwiches that really blew up. One in London called the OG Burger. And then one in LA in West Hollywood called the Wagyu Pronto.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  And the Wagyu Pronto is a Wagyu pastrami sandwich. And then the burger is this Wagyu burger. It's incredible with our own, with our own sauce and kind of like this mix with sauteed 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 for the first time in its original form, because we brought it back one time with a Navy sole, but there's a shoe that really, that really put me on the map when I opened Kith called the Salmon Toe.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  It's a Salmon Toe ASICS. And it's a Gel-A3 in this salmon, the whole toe was blocked with salmon and there's like Navy on the quarter with white stripes. It's beautiful. So a miniature version of those shoes will come in a small shoe box. And then that would 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. That will launch for the exhibition, where we're launching the exhibition, which I can't name right now. And then the truck then gets positioned in front of the flagship store 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.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  So then I'm going to have like the Ronnie's truck stationed there. We're going to launch also delivery for the full menu out of a ghost kitchen, which will happen, I think the end of October.

• 1:07:09David Senra?

  Deal 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 Deal. Many of the top founders I know have personally invested in Deal after using their product. And what they discovered is that Deal is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deal 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.

• 1:07:51David Senra?

  The founder of 11 Labs has a great description of the value Deal can give your company. He said, "We built 11 Labs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deal 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." Deal is trusted by over 40,000 companies and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business by going to deal.com/cenra. That is deal.com/cenra. 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.

• 1:08:36David Senra?

  And like, I think of Balenciaga now is kind of like not my, I don't want to insult him. I was like, this is like, you know, not my thing. 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?

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08:48David Senra?

  Like Warren Buffett has this idea where it's like, well, if you want to invest in a company and, and in an industry, go around asking all the leaders in the industry and say, hey, you got one bullet, you can take out one guy, who is it going to be?

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:58David 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 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. And I didn't, so I was, 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, I'll send you some good biography recommendations. He essentially redid his stores almost like, 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, because he would not only design, but he would also physically like sew everything together. He was like one of the few coutours or master couture, whatever they called. And, but I thought that idea of like, okay, your career, in his case, I think it's, he

• 1:09:41David Senra?

  started relatively late, let's say it spanned 20 years. He can go back and be like, what was I doing 18 years ago?

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. But as an artillery that he was, like he, to, to me, 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 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.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  I've become the most well-rounded, 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, it stands for so much more than just the product at face value. It's, to me, it's a timeline 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

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  current, you know, based on certain events or based on certain news and 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, when my first store opened or all the stores along the way, I have product that-

• 1:11:27David Senra?

  Your life milestones are anchored to the products you are creating. This goes back to again, why the soulful, we talked before we started recording, it's like, when I says like, what I'm trying to understand is like, I can't understand the way you push your work until I understand the personality of the person that developed the ideas.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:44David Senra?

  I seek to understand who the fuck is sitting across from me.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:47David Senra?

  Like, why, how the hell, I ask you, like, you're 13, how the hell do you get interested in shoes? And so like, then it's like, oh, think about the culture he's in, think about where he's living, think about what he's listening to, think about what is around him. It's like, you can't understand Ronnie unless you understand everything that happened then.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Taking the, like, going back to that, like, taking the, taking two buses to high school, the Q 17 to the Q 30, 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 Fourth, when I used to work at Eighth 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, you know, they create communities and then they, they get on the train in packs. And like, along the way from 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.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  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, 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

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:13:56David 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 essentially synthesizing it, putting it in your head, and you're saying, hey, what's my spin or take on this?

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Like, what's my opinion on it? Like, back then, when you go, when you went shopping back then, you, you were forced to have an opinion, because you wouldn't have seen everything. Like, if you were to see, 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, you see 500 different boots. So it's like, you're walking in and you're, you were forced to have an opinion. Today, people will walk into a store and know about all the product before they walk in. So they've already seen someone wearing it, a photo of it, a lookbook of it, a campaign of it.

• 1:14:42David Senra?

  They're like outsourcing their taste to somebody else.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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.

• 1:14:56David Senra?

  I feel like I get the vibe, like you wanna live in more of like an analog world.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Man, fucking hell I do. 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, fashion is very cyclical. I feel like 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.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  I wanna travel and shut my shit off and just not have a connection to the internet, you know?

• 1:15:49David Senra?

  Something we had when we were kids is like, you were just forced to be bored and alone with your own thoughts.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  And my, my daughter's like, I'm bored. I'm like, that's great. That's amazing. They, you have to understand, that's when you use your imagination, when you're bored.

• 1:16:01David Senra?

  But that's also where difference comes in. We, I would just, I just flew to Milan because I, I meet a lot of founders, like entrepreneurs, like, I meet a ton of them. And I met this guy named Luca Ferrari, he does this company called Bending Spins. And I remember having lunch with him back in like February, and literally the lunch was so like jarring, because he was describing how he builds his company and, and ideas I've never even heard of anywhere else, especially for, he's, he's RH too.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26David Senra?

  And I was like, dude, stop, you gotta run that back. I pulled out and I, 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. 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, because I didn't even know they existed. So I was forced to, he was essentially like, he was in a digital world, but he was like how we were in kids. He was just like, I only had my own thoughts and my own thinking, and because I was involved in my own thoughts and my own thinking, not influenced by everything else, because I didn't pay attention.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:12David Senra?

  This is where you get the creativity, this is where you get the centric stuff, this is where you get actual differentiation.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, that's very similar in the sense that like, Queens played such a big part in my life, because Queens, you get to see so much. It's just, New York City is honestly the most inspiring place in the world, because there's so, there's so much thrown at you every day. Even if you, even, I'm talking about outside of digital, like just walking around, you, you get to see so much. So in the sense of what I want to accomplish, it's beyond the typical cookie cutter retail brand, you know, concepts that have, have helped shape these brands that we all know.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  I wanna sit way outside of that and I want, I want the brand to be doing so much more than that. So if you knew exactly what it is that I, that I do, within the context of the culture with, within, which is what I'm in today, like the product culture or the retail culture, understanding how, how wide we've expanded beyond the typical retail space is pretty extraordinary. But where we go from here and how it could expand from there is even like, is even greater than that. So I'm trying to not have any boundaries in the way that I think about the business, if that makes sense.

• 1:18:38David Senra?

  This is actually a really important point. And I have certain people in my life that I go to, they're kind of like this like living board of directors. And what a lot of the case is, is like, you're obviously ambitious and driven, every single person that's gonna be on the show is ambitious and driven, I feel the same way, but like, there's certain people in my life that like, you'll talk to about what's going on, like, oh, you have like this weird ceiling that like actually doesn't exist, like, why don't we just rip that fucking off? Because it doesn't exist.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:03David Senra?

  Do you have any like-

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  That's corporate structure, though.

• 1:19:05David Senra?

  But like, no, but like in your own personal life, when you're thinking about directing your company, you're saying, hey, man, I got, I got, I got big fucking dreams. I got stuff that's, it's not, I don't think of myself as like, I might be part of this culture, but like I can expand out of it, I can do whatever I want. I'm not looking left and right, I'm focused on what I wanna do. Do you have anybody in your life that's just like, can like peel the top off your head and be like, hey, man, you have no, no ceilings, you have no limits?

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  My partner, Sam, has allowed me to do that. Yeah. My business partner. And he's always been someone I could speak to, who has given me the energy to go and chase whatever it is I have in my mind. I listened to an episode, one of your episodes this morning, I'm not even sure what it was, where you just ramble about Steve Jobs, it's incredible, right?

• 1:19:47David Senra?

  That's how you know he listens to the show.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  The, the episode was about simplicity.

• 1:19:52David Senra?

  Oh yeah, how Steve Jobs kept things simple.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:19:55David Senra?

  That's for my other podcast founder, I think it's episode 349 or 350.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:58David Senra?

  Somebody looked it up, see if I'm right. We'll get to episode number-

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  That would be pretty remarkable, actually. But, but when, when, it's similar to when Steve Jobs got into music. It's like, what the fuck is Apple doing getting into music, right? And I'm sure it raised a lot of eyebrows. But for him to, for him to take on that initiative, and he, he had shareholders and had a lot more pressure than I did from the financial standpoint.

• 1:20:20David Senra?

  349.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Wow. What are you up to now on Founders?

• 1:20:25David Senra?

  432? Where's Ian? He published it for me yesterday. 435, something like that? Yeah, I'm gonna do, I end every one. I'm like 435 down, 1,000 go, and 1,000 never ends. Cause people are like, oh, you're gonna do 1,435? I was like, no, no, that's like, I'm gonna do this till I'm dying.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  It's, it's actually incredible, man. It's, it's really incredible. Cause I just like, I go through my workout and you're just fucking wow.

• 1:20:46David Senra?

  Dude, I'm walking to dinner last night. The crazy thing is, you know, Michael Ovitz? Like, just every time I come to New York, I text him. I was like, cause I just, I care a lot about him. First of all, like I looked up to him before I even knew who he was. I was making episodes on him. And we become friends and he's just a fucking wild man. Even in his, I think he's 82, he's still fucking crazy. And dinners with him were absolutely insane. I won't even, I'll tell you off camera what happened last night. I'm walking to dinner and some dude literally taps me on the shoulder and he's listening to Larry Gagosian, 325. See if I'm right about that for, for me.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  There's a fucking whiskey over here.

• 1:21:15David Senra?

  Yeah, and he's like, dude, he goes, I'm, I'm in fucking sales. And he goes, I listen to this to hype me up over and over again. Cause essentially Larry Gagosian built a billion dollar empire with a phone. Like he's just a salesperson.

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  325.

• 1:21:27David Senra?

  Boom, 325.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Look at that.

• 1:21:29David Senra?

  And, and so that, but I do the same thing. Like I'll go back and listen to him cause they're like, it reinforces the lessons and it hypes me up. Anyways.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  What is, what does that do for you? Hypes you up?

• 1:21:37David Senra?

  Like, I, I really think, so the reason I brought up Balenciaga earlier, the reason I think like me and you would get along is like, I'm doing it for like, I have soul in the game. Like I thought, first of all, I think podcasting is a miracle. I think what we talked about before we started recording, to find that any subject in the world that you wanna listen to, you will find somebody who's gone deeper than any college course in existence.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 1:21:56David Senra?

  And anything you wanna learn, you can learn on demand, for free while your eyes are busy.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  In this format too, which is incredible.

• 1:22:03David Senra?

  I thought it was remarkable when I discovered in 2010. I still think it's a fucking miracle to this day. And so what I would say is it's like, I, I make the podcasts that I want to listen to. And then I think there's like a, so there's a bad part of this and I'm gonna ramble a little bit. But like, you know, like my mom was like fundamentalist Christian. So I was like forced to go to church every Sunday, right? And it's like in the South. And unfortunately, like, you know, this took a bad turn. She wound up having breast cancer and I like, she would try to initially pray the cancer away. Like that's how fucking extreme it was. And it took me like two years to convince her to go to an oncologist. I don't wanna start fucking crying now, but like to the point where I'd had to drive, she was so stubborn in her religious views. I'd had to drive from Miami where I was living to Orlando where she was living to every time she had an oncologist appointment.

• 1:22:47David Senra?

  If I didn't show up and I didn't drive her, she wouldn't go. And she wound up dying a fucking horrific death. So like, I obviously don't wanna get into that now. But what I would say is like, the benefit of growing up in church, and I didn't realize this until, you see this on Founders, like I kinda have like the Southern like preacher thing. Cause I'm very fucking, I consider myself an evangelist, not a, I'm not a journalist. I'm an evangelist for entrepreneurship. And so like, the way I think about everything that we're doing is it's like, man, the reason that religions or cult-like followings or brands thrive is because of repetition over time, over and over and over again. So for me, it's like, listen, episode 349. I read the book, I recorded it, I edited it, I listened to it before it came out and I published it. And I bet you I'd go back there and I still forget some of this shit.

• 1:23:32David Senra?

  So I will go back and I think that people overestimate. We forget that we forget. We forget that we forget. And I think going back to great designs in the book, great books that you freaking read, great podcasts, great movies. I've seen Godfather 2, I don't know, 15 times. I still learn stuff. I've gone through every single episode of Game of Thrones, I don't know, 10 times. I still take notes on it. And so that's what it does for you. It just reinforces these lessons and like gives me energy. And then inevitably you're gonna run into some today, maybe not today, maybe it's tomorrow, but definitely next month, two months, you're gonna run into some fucking problem in your book, in your business. And you're gonna be like, man, I need like another set of eyes on this. Or like, oh, then you remember, oh, this is what Steve Jobs, this is how he kept it simple. Or this is what he did, so.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  And I, I'll definitely apply some of that stuff. But let me tell you something, folks. For everyone who's listening right now, if you can create content that you can then go back to, to hype yourself up, you fucking made it in life. So congratulations to you for that.

• 1:24:29David Senra?

  So we have another podcaster, cause I'm also obsessed with other podcasters. It's just Jackson Dolls off camera. And there's actually a funny, can you pull up the tweet between me, you and Sam Hinky about this? And so I, I spend a lot of time with other podcasters. I think Jackson's one of the most talented people. We talk a lot about like the business and like he, you know, other podcasters will come in and like shadow what we're doing. Cause we're trying to, you know, operate at the very highest levels here. But there's a, the tweet exchange between Jackson and my friend Sam Hinky. Sam is talking about me because I was talking about like, when I listen to, I listen to every episode before it goes out. And sometimes I find myself like laughing at stuff that happens. So Sam Hinky responds to this tweet where I'm talking about laughing. He goes, "Good luck competing with the maniac that cracks himself up while recording his solo podcast, which he remembers because he loves listening to his solo podcast."

• 1:25:14David Senra?

  Then Jackson is sitting off, off camera here, he goes, this is, this is July 22nd, 2025. He goes, "He once told me, he just loves podcasts so much, but there's simply not many great ones. So the rational conclusion is that he usually finds himself listening to his own episodes again."

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Yo, if you're listening to yourself as first option, that's crazy. But you know what?

• 1:25:34David Senra?

  But again, what are you doing?

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Making it for yourself. That's incredible.

• 1:25:37David Senra?

  It's the same thing.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  I think you might be the only one, but, but I love that.

• 1:25:41David Senra?

  Let's go back to before I interrupted and started rambling to, you were talking about Steve Jobs of music.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  I wanna, I wanna touch on Ivy because.

• 1:25:48David Senra?

  Okay, go for it.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  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, I spent the season in Miami and I got introduced to Wayne Boych. Wayne is the founder of Reserve. Which is, he builds like paddle courts, also built like a membership club in, in a seaplane in Miami. And I used it as my office and we were playing paddle 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.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  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 this sport was gonna grow. And as this, as the season went on, I came back home. And then for the next six months, all I heard about was paddle. People wanted to play paddle and didn't have a court to play on. I creatively direct a Wilson tennis, but that's been behind the scenes for quite a while. And we started a new line called Sport Professionals, which is like an elevated tier that sits within Wilson. And I helped them through that, through design.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  And coming back, I was like, let me start to apply some of these ideas that I have around, around tennis, but in a very different way, because it's a way sweeter sport. 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, 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 major sport in the space, in the space, that really excited me to wanna take on the sport and help shape the identity of what it would become.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  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 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 paddle, a lot of these players are wearing Kit Ivy products. Because Kit Ivy's a membership club, but the product is sold on, on the website, on the, on the kit site. So you could still participate in the brand if you're playing paddle 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

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  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 360 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 paddle. Like what should paddle feel like? Cause paddle 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 pickle. So like in which direction will this sport go?

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:29:27David Senra?

  I think that's a perfect illustration of like your idea of world building.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:31David 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. I think we film at Ivy and we focus on, I think you have a very unique, almost like filmmaker view on world building. But dude, thanks for taking the time. This is awesome.

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  Appreciate it. This is great.

• 1:29:49David 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 400 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.