Annotations (20)
“There was no way that I wouldn't work on product and make product that I felt was missing in the market. When you start from there, when you understand the consumer on that level, the intimacy of that relationship that you have with the consumer, and then you become the buyer/merchandiser of product you're bringing in, you're now working with the brand.”— Ronnie Fieg
Kith's Product Philosophy · p. 8
Creativity & Innovation · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Creation engine: consumer intimacy reveals market gaps
“Even though the stores are all very different from one another, purposely different from one another, because what I really don't like is what luxury brands do. They have this copy-and-paste formula for spaces. Wherever they open, they're all the same. And the problem with that is when you open too many, then it starts to go basically in the opposite intention of wanting people to feel luxurious, but then it actually has the opposite effect because the experience becomes too accessible.”— Ronnie Fieg
From Collector to Creator · p. 4
Business & Entrepreneurship · Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Standardization destroys luxury through over-accessibility
“If I need to be a great decision-maker and make decisions that I won't regret, I need to be on my A-game. And I've learned and have become very experienced in guiding this ship. If you want to be a great businessperson and a great creative, it comes with a lot of sacrifice. I also don't think that I would be thinking in this way a few years ago.”— Ronnie Fieg
Passion and Process · p. 20
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Peak decision-making requires total lifestyle discipline
“I think it's familiarity but without knowing that they were looking for that specific feeling. When you're able to give them that feeling, but it feels familiar, I think that that's what we've been able to do so well: understand what people would want before they know they want it.”— Ronnie Fieg
The Seinfeld Campaign · p. 2
Business & Entrepreneurship · Psychology & Behavior · Creativity & Innovation
DUR_ENDURING
Familiarity plus novelty creates desire before awareness
“I started helping hip-hop artists that were coming in: Nas, AZ, Wu-Tang Clan, Busta Rhymes, Mase. Those were my heroes. Hip-hop music was just as important to me in my life than anything else. I bought turntables; I would shop vinyl at Fat Beats. I got to see why these different stars and heroes of mine liked the product that they liked. And I became a culmination of all of their taste of liking different products for different reasons. I used to help Wu-Tang buy their Wallabies.”— Ronnie Fieg
From Collector to Creator · p. 7
Culture & Society · Business & Entrepreneurship · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Cultural leaders reveal trends before mass adoption
“It never works well when one party wants to do something more than the other. But when we had this give back, which we gave some of the proceeds back to the school, it was a moment that I thought that Jerry was proud of, to be proud of that moment. But it didn't jeopardize any of the product aesthetic of the product that we were making at the time, because the capsule in the collection for Queens College was really strong.”— Ronnie Fieg
The Seinfeld Campaign · p. 4
Business & Entrepreneurship · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Equal motivation required, product quality never compromised
“Even though we have so many moments throughout the year, they're all baked about 18 months before the moment happens. So there's so much care and thought process and conversations that happen that lead to these great moments that have made the brand.”— Ronnie Fieg
The Seinfeld Campaign · p. 4
Operations & Execution · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
18-month planning horizon for iconic moments
“For about five years, I wanted to shoot Jerry. It became one of these bucket list moments for the brand and myself, being such a big fan of Seinfeld and the show. But more importantly, what Jerry has meant to New York City. I always felt like he was a poster child for everything that we felt growing up in the city. I became friendly with his wife, Jessica Seinfeld, who I met through a mutual friend.”— Ronnie Fieg
The Seinfeld Campaign · p. 1
Business & Entrepreneurship · Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Five-year patience to earn trust for iconic collaboration
“When I first started speaking to Jessica, she was straight up like, 'Hey, it would need to make sense. There needs to be a reason why.' And I said, 'Of course. That's the only way it would work for us as well.' It was the story of us opening in Brooklyn, me living in Brooklyn, but then also being born and raised in Queens, and my family being from Queens.”— Ronnie Fieg
Building a Brand While Telling a Story · p. 12
Business & Entrepreneurship · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Balanced motivation required for collaboration success
“That process and that experience that I had with those amazing individuals, celebrity or not, I got to get into people's heads to understand why they like certain products and why they were buying certain products. And when you help thousands of people, imagine then learning the inner workings of people's brains, of why they like things.”— Ronnie Fieg
From Collector to Creator · p. 8
Psychology & Behavior · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Thousands of customer interactions reveal purchase psychology
“The sales rep came to me with a catalog. The catalog was basically an archive of styles. He asked me, 'Would you be interested in picking one of these to put out as a bring-back of a retro style?' So I'm flipping through the pages. I saw that style and my eyes popped out of my head. I was like, 'That's actually a shoe that I loved, that I owned when I was a kid.' And I showed him pictures of me wearing it in 1990, and he was like, 'That's perfect.' He sent me a CAD of the shoe.”— Ronnie Fieg
Kith's Product Philosophy · p. 9
Creativity & Innovation · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Personal nostalgia fueled first design collaboration
“I started working at David Z in the stock room. All these boxes of shoes that were coming in, I would be responsible for creating stock numbers for them and consolidating them in a stock room. So I got to open up these boxes and discover product for the first time in that way: one-on-one time with new product coming in one after another. I'm opening all these different iterations of boots and shoes.”— Ronnie Fieg
From Collector to Creator · p. 6
Operations & Execution · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Stock room immersion created product intimacy
“I think for every incredible creator in this world, and we're talking about creators in any category, whether it's architecture or art or music or product, any great creator is basically sharing his or her DNA with the world of their experience that is then translated through product. Some people are born, I think, with this need to spread their experiences and emotions with the world. And some people spread them differently, through art, through music.”— Ronnie Fieg
Kith's Product Philosophy · p. 11
Creativity & Innovation · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Creation translates personal DNA into medium
“It has to be, for me at least, the consistency of the experiences that we've had internally has made us professionals at that with our consumer and with the consumers that we want to cater to: understanding the way they think and the way they interact with content and what they want to see from product. And you have to really become the customer and the consumer to then understand it on that level, which is what I am. At the end of the day, I'm just a product nerd.”— Ronnie Fieg
The Seinfeld Campaign · p. 3
Business & Entrepreneurship · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Becoming the customer enables professional-level understanding
“I get to the store and there's a line three blocks long to buy the shoe because of this article that came out in The Wall Street Journal. All the stores had lines, and we sold out of all the pairs by the end of the day. Now, during this moment, the adidas office moved in across the street from me, and the president of adidas was there, looked out his window, saw this line, came downstairs and came in and asked me what's going on. He's like, 'Did you take your lunch break yet?”— Ronnie Fieg
Kith's Product Philosophy · p. 10
Business & Entrepreneurship · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Physical proof of demand opened doors instantly
“When I started to have the conversations about the footwear that he used to wear on the show, he had no idea that he was this guy that people look to in that way. He was like, 'What?' So I showed him some of the photos, and he was surprised by it, which is even more so the reason why I love this guy so much because he never did anything in his life, in my opinion, to appear cooler than he actually is.”— Ronnie Fieg
The Seinfeld Campaign · p. 2
Psychology & Behavior · Culture & Society
DUR_ENDURING
Authentic influence unconscious, never calculated for appearance
“If you're not the hardest-working person you know, then you're not working hard enough. That's another iteration of that. It's a competition within yourself of being the best version of yourself. I want to do that in every facet of my life, not just in my work. I want to be the best dad that I know. I want to be the most efficient person I know with time.”— Ronnie Fieg
Building a Brand While Telling a Story · p. 12
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Self-competition drives excellence across all domains
“My sister got her first credit card, and she was so excited to spend money on the credit card. She asked me to come shopping with her. They didn't have her size in the shoe that she wanted, but she was like, 'Ronnie, buy something. I want to spend money on the card.' I was wearing a pair of shoes that my parents bought me for my birthday, Flight 95s. I loved them so much that I was wearing them but also had them in my hand.”— Ronnie Fieg
From Collector to Creator · p. 5
Psychology & Behavior · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
First collector instinct: preserve what you love
“When you think of the first time you became passionate or fell in love with something, I have a few of those categories in my life. I'm a big collector, and I collect a lot of different things, but I collect them for myself. I think that what the term means now, to collect or to be a collector, has been overshadowed by social media and the need to share what you collect with the world, instead of the passion that I have of collecting for myself, a very different feeling.”— Ronnie Fieg
From Collector to Creator · p. 5
Psychology & Behavior · Culture & Society
DUR_CONTEXTUAL
Intrinsic passion versus performative collecting
“I wanted to create an experience where everyone who shopped with the brand felt like they were at home and felt like they had a lot in common with the people who were helping them. And it became this space for like-minded individuals that cared about product in similar ways than I did. That's where the name came from. It came from the phrase 'kith and kin,' which means friends and family. I liked the four-letter word. I thought it was unique.”— Ronnie Fieg
Building a Brand While Telling a Story · p. 12
Business & Entrepreneurship · Culture & Society
DUR_CONTEXTUAL
Brand name embedded community intention
Frameworks (1)
Familiar-Plus-Novel Product Creation
Creating products customers want before they know they want them
A systematic approach to product innovation that combines familiar elements with novel features to create products that feel both recognizable and fresh. The framework leverages deep consumer understanding to anticipate desires before conscious awareness.
Components
- Build Consumer Intimacy
- Identify the Familiar Anchor
- Layer in Strategic Novelty
- Ensure Balanced Motivation
Prerequisites
- Direct customer-facing experience
- Deep knowledge of product category history
- Access to customer feedback mechanisms
Success Indicators
- Products sell out on launch day
- Customers say they didn't know they wanted it until they saw it
- Media coverage emphasizes the unexpected combination
- Collaborators remain equally enthusiastic throughout process
Failure Modes
- Product feels like a gimmick without substance
- Familiar element is too nostalgic and dates poorly
- Novel element alienates core customers
- Partnership motivation imbalance creates friction
Mental Models (4)
Patience as Strategic Weapon
TimeThe ability to deliberately wait years for the right moment, resisting the press
In Practice: Fieg demonstrates waiting five years to execute the Seinfeld collaboration and 1
Demonstrated by Leg-rf-001
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation
PsychologyUnderstanding that actions driven by internal passion produce qualitatively different outcomes than those driven by external rewards.
In Practice: Fieg contrasts collecting for personal passion versus collecting for social media validation
Demonstrated by Leg-rf-001
Apprenticeship Model
Decision MakingDeep expertise comes from starting at the bottom and learning every layer of a system through direct experience. Skipping steps leaves gaps in understanding that undermine later decision-making.
In Practice: Fieg describes starting in the stock room and progressing through every role at David Z
Demonstrated by Leg-rf-001
Scarcity Value
EconomicsPerceived value increases with scarcity and decreases with abundance. Luxury brands that scale too quickly through standardization destroy the very scarcity that created their premium positioning.
In Practice: Fieg explains how luxury brands undermine themselves by making experiences too accessible through cookie-cutter store designs
Demonstrated by Leg-rf-001
Connective Tissue (2)
Film directing and cinematography techniques applied to product storytelling
Ronnie Fieg applies his deep knowledge of film, particularly directors like Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally), to create product storytelling through short films and visual campaigns. The connection is that great film directors know how to create emotional resonance through visual narrative, and Fieg translates those same techniques to showcase products in ways that create lasting emotional impact. Just as a filmmaker uses setting, pacing, and character to evoke feeling, Fieg uses location, product presentation, and cultural touchstones to make products feel like part of a larger story.
Fieg discusses his lifelong passion for film and how he applies cinematic techniques to Kith's visual storytelling, particularly in the New York Love Story campaigns
Japanese craftsmanship philosophy of purposeful detail and process reverence
Tokyo's product culture demonstrated to Fieg that every detail must have purpose and that nothing happens without great reason. This mirrors the Japanese concept of monozukuri (the art of making things) where craftsmanship is elevated to philosophy. In traditional Japanese craft, there is no distinction between the maker and the made; the process itself is sacred. Fieg adopted this worldview where product creation is not just about outcomes but about the reverence for the process itself. This stands in contrast to Western mass production mindsets where efficiency often trumps intentionality.
Fieg describes how his first trip to Tokyo transformed his understanding of product by showing him a culture that cared about process and detail at the same level he did
Key Figures (2)
Jerry Seinfeld
8 mentionsComedian and actor
Iconic comedian and New York cultural figure who Ronnie Fieg pursued for five years to collaborate.
- Seinfeld had no idea he was viewed as a footwear icon in streetwear culture
Mike McLaughlin
2 mentionsASICS sales representative
Glossary (2)
CAD
DOMAIN_JARGONComputer-aided design; digital technical drawing
“He sent me a CAD of the shoe”
kith and kin
ARCHAICOld English phrase meaning friends and family
“It came from the phrase kith and kin”
Key People (3)
Jessica Seinfeld
(1971–)Cookbook author and philanthropist, wife of Jerry Seinfeld
Nas
(1973–)Influential rapper from Queens, released classic album Illmatic
Wu-Tang Clan
Legendary hip-hop group from Staten Island
Synthesis
Synthesis
Migrated from Scholia