Invest Like The Best - Building Kith

“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

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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