How Jon Buscemi Survived Being Sued By NIKE And Sold 100K Sneakers | Blueprint

[Music] designer creative director and sartorial socialite John Buscemi struck gold when he imbued luxury goods with hip-hop swag this is his blueprint how did the experience of growing up in EPM Dee's Long Island in the eighties inform your experience I've always said that I was very lucky to grow up where I grew up in the time I grew up in the place I grew up because of those reasons the EP MDS and the rock hymns and the biz's and all that stuff I grew up in a crate it like a kind of like a quote unquote like Queens vibe like in Uniondale Long Island where was like upper-middle class black and Latino families that were like making it in New York we're like peace Brooklyn and Queens I'm moving to Long Island so I was influenced by all this crazy like city [ __ ] early on because of that migration from from you know the boroughs into Long Island you know Trevor Smith Busta Rhymes and his brother Paul like lived down the block from me my talent show in junior high eighth grade I was in seventh grade and the eighth graders put on like this talent show and it's like Busta Rhymes and Charlie Brown doing Big Daddy Kane are aw like that's my junior high school experience you're now in like junior high school are you thinking about fashion at all is like a profession in real time in seventh grade sixth grade seventh grade we were running a business of customizing like sweatshirts t-shirts hats for people in our neighborhoods that moment was a real transition for me because making money at 14 years old 13 years old like you know decent money you know I mean like money that like a parent would make and then finding sneakers with that so by the time you're in high school how many pairs do you have you know the amount of sneakers I had was like a serious issue like a problem you know what I'm saying I wasn't just buying one we were buying the you know one two Rock one two stop whatever the kids say nowadays I imagine that your parents are like what is going on here they were never not supportive of anything they understood it and I kind of compartmentalize it in the house so enough where they didn't like catch like - I didn't catch too much heat but I moved out of the house right after high school so that eliminated that problem for them and you know I went to work on Wall Street after college okay where'd you go to college I went to st. John's for a year and a half and I got got kicked out of the school I mean I guess you were asked to leave I was asked so I was asked to leave because of my grades how did you go from college dropout to working on Wall Street so I'm at this party and it's August and it's right before everyone's about to go back to college so all my friends are there that are in college friends that aren't in college and then this kid shows up a kid who is basically the dumbest person in my high school very popular but not very bright pulls up to the party in a 355 f355 spider silver I'll never forget it Ferrari so we're all like grilling him and he's saying I I've been working on Wall Street I'm working for my uncle I had a firm on Wall Streets an investment bank ba ba ba ba ba you know I'm killing it and we're all like obviously but when you're 19 you don't know the whole backstory so the party ends and he's about to leave and like we were pretty tight in high school because we played the same sport and we just like knew each other and I was like dude let me talk to you for a second like what's really up because I'm not going back to college like and I like I like what's happening here you know I'm gonna be a part of this exactly let me be a part of it so he goes you know what the firm is hiring I said Oh word okay he got me an interview I'll never forget the the interview the woman the head of Human Resources Adrienne and I get to Wall Street it's 10 Wall Street actually that's the the address this is the interview if I told you to shovel [ __ ] against the wall for a year and you'd be a millionaire would you do it I said yeah she's like signed this paper you start tomorrow that was it I was like whoa so I started as a broker working for this firm I didn't know what it was at first so the reason I'm like sounding optimistic is because when I first started it was like yo this is sick I'm working on Wall Street I'm wearing a taupe suit like I'm not making a lot of money but I have a couple bucks this is I'm killing it and then I go to find out you know later that it's not the most it's not the thing that's on the most up-and-up but I'm a 21 year old 22 year old kid making like hundreds of thousands of dollars and then 99 the market crashed it was like I lost my entire business I was making basically $0 right how quick was the transition from I'm killing it to I'm unemployed and my like life has come apart very quickly very quickly but I was young enough to know that like I'm 25 at the time I'm good so I've always been around and this is a whole long story but I've been connected to skateboarding my whole life I've skateboarded throughout you know my teens and all the way up until around 1998 where I quit and I was taking my business a little bit more seriously but I'm connected to this industry my friends are like the captains of the industry so I I packed my car and I moved to Cal I just drove the California one of my best friends is Eric Koston who's one of the biggest skateboarders in the world he let me live with him and I stayed here for four months looking for a job and I'll never forget it's about a week before Thanksgiving I'm here for four months and nothing happened for me and it was like devastating I'm in Eric's car about to like figure out my like journey back to the East Coast with my like like my pockets empty and nothing probably go live with my dad I get a phone call from my friend way and he's like I'm at DC Shoes they just hired these dudes from Nike they're about to like blow this brand up it's gonna be killer like sick environment they're looking for people like you I'm like what's that mean they're look they're looking for people that know about sneakers what is the position that they want offering the position was a product line manager that was the name of the position but it was really like a trend forecaster I got to travel to dozens of countries because they were everywhere and I worked on the international side of the business I went to Germany for the first time for a trade show called ESPO it's the biggest trade show show in the world for sports and there was a shop a Nike store right outside of this this show in Munich and the entire wall was Nike Air Force One an NYC edition in Germany and I realized everyone wants a piece of what we've been doing in New York and DC one of the piece of that and and we tried to bring that you know that that vibe to the rest of the world when you get that job though you have no experience in footwear parallel anything having to do with the industry since you were customizing things as a junior high school kid right um how quickly were you at you did you just sort of like jump in and fake it till you made it or like how did you feel how did you figure it out I had no [ __ ] clue what I was doing none but they didn't hire me to like know it Excel and word and to like be able to have a meeting it was more like we need to know like why you dressed like this why you know these people get us help us with that so how does your time at DC come to an end so I'm at DC one of the best experiences of my life I have basically my PhD in Footwear after two and a half years as your creative I got bored you know and I just said you know I need to figure something out so Greg lucci who actually worked at complex I think are on the early days he was in LA and I met him through Greg Johnson who owned snafu and situation normal and they were gonna start this American Italian thing and I'm in DC and I had an idea to start a brand called gourmet which was a streetwear brand based in food who was like oh my god let's all do this together so we joined forces I moved to LA we started gourmet so we launched it the capsule show down an angel or an sands and East Village and nothing happens because it's 2007 the recession hit it was just like a complete nightmare we made all these samples it was sick we had sweat suits from Italy cashmere hoodies we were way ahead of the curve and nothing happened so we come back the next season and Greg Johnson had an idea to deconstruct the Jordan and Luke was like we should do the 7 and the 11 so we took a Jordan 7 and 11 we deconstructed it like a Chuck Taylor just made out of canvas and we put it on a ked sole we went to the trade show with six colors and we went from doing nothing to selling like 15,000 pairs of shoes and like like like one trade show it went completely bonkers we went from this like Italian American sportswear brand to a sneaker company like overnight they're not wholly original the modified formula equals success for gourmet but the brand would have to tangle with it tighten in order to move forward how many of these did you have to sell before it landed on Nikes radar the first season we sold we sold about 10 or 15,000 pairs I forget what it was it was the next season it hit the press yeah [ __ ] hard it didn't get on their radar for about six months okay but it was the worst time to get on the radar actually because it was the time that the thing went like this and we made all this product that's it like in print up in like containers on boats coming to this country that is like okay you can't sell any of this stuff anymore I don't know if you ever been served no lawsuit they throw it at you kind of and they're gone it was like a 50 count federal lawsuit trademark trade dress infringement like we're gonna like blow you to smithereens when you came up with the idea did it cross your mind do you have a conversation about this this may attract the wrong kind of attention okay so I don't know if you remember what the names of the shoes were but we named the shoe the cease and the desist so yes we knew this is the best part so week our lawyer calls their lawyer and says what we want to talk right and then we don't hear anything back basically we have to respond to the lawsuit in the court so what we do is we counter sue Nike for antitrust some one of their sales reps told someone at DQM Dave's quality meets that if you sell gourmet you can't get Jordans anymore that's huge problem that's a huge antitrust problem and we had a document from Dave's quality meats saying this Nike sales rep said this to us they call us immediately come up to Portland get up to the room they look at us they're like we're all like well-dressed we're wearing Nike our attorneys like cool guy they're just like wait a minute who we got the wrong paperwork here these are these are just guys that are trying to like pay homage look it's wrong we knock their product off so they were like look take the guns away you know what I mean just don't don't make these shoes anymore we said good we shook their hands and they were very gracious you know so what do we have here this is the federal lawsuit the plaintiff Nike Inc versus gourmet the defendant March 20th 2008 you've got the federal seal there and everything they just sent you a list of all the things that they own just think just in case yeah just in case oh did you want to design this okay maybe you should fall back yeah you resolve the Nike situation without them repossessing your entire life exact which is positive but I imagine this puts the business in a somewhat precarious situation what really killed the business forgetting about pointing fingers at people was Nike Adidas and vans really kind of just like started to own the lifestyle shoe space where independent brands were kind of owning that Lane it's hard to compete against you know people with billion-dollar budgets so and along with some mismanagement and not running a business correctly it kind of just started the fizzle as a part of my exit strategy for gourmet I'm launched I'm gonna launch my own brand okay but it wasn't really a brand per se it was more of a project and I always say this it was a project than the fact that I wanted to launch some items that I thought would be dope real simple so I put a collection together of what the fly is dude in the neighborhood would be would need like that was like kind of debrief so I made like the sickest handmade leather weekender bag that was like you could fit a small man in was huge I made the sickest dog leash with a 18 karat gold clasp with a leather pull I made a coffee sleeve like $150 like calfskin hand-painted gold handle like Java jacket I did a leather tie and then I made 100 millimeter sneaker how did the idea for the hundred millimeter come to you I've always been enamored by the Hermes Birkin bag it's been like something that's always been on my mind from the cultural part of it the allure of it the whole I just just something about a coveted product always like kind of gets me off I just love that I drew the sneaker deconstructing a Birkin bag onto like a classic you know sneaker silhouette and it was just an idea it was just kind of like a concept but what if you took a handbag and made it into a sneaker at the same time my friend Nino Scalia contacted us as a group to relaunch ice cream sneakers with Pharrell this has just happened to happen during the same time this is like this 11 2012 this is 2012 early 2012 mid 2012 we're having this meeting about ice cream sneakers and we're showing Pharrell things we've done a corm a dozen sweet the things we've done in our past he's like cool cool cool we're there with his team and I'm going on to like the next slide on my computer and then I go click on my Adobe Illustrator and instead of like a project that I was working on to show him to get him excited about what we could do for ice cream that shoe the 100 mil 100 millimeter the the most famous shoe that is in this brand he sees and it's just like it's almost like the world stopped for him for a second he was just like concept he just like got up he started like he like took his hat off he's like what the [ __ ] is that thing what what what is happening so I explained to him this is just a concept that I'm doing for my own brand which I'll be launching very soon and it was the details are very there weren't any details I was just kind of thinking about starting this project so we leave I start privately meeting with Pharrell over this kind of like we're gonna this isn't gonna be a shoe for the buscemi brand it was more like we're gonna launch this shoe together and he was gonna put it in his line and be like the collaboration like John Buscemi designs a shoe together with BBC or he had be line at the time which was like the high end BBC brand so then I meet with him for the last time to show him the final sample and he's like you know I've been thinking I think I think I just want the shoe for me and then I'll name it debut shemy and I was like for real I was like kind of like grabbed my stuff and was like you know man it's not gonna work for me and I just like bounced basically then I got a call later from like someone from his squad and it was like you know [ __ ] like I was like do like kind of a letdown but like I get it happy was on the radio at the time like he was popping you know but major letdown for me but funny I launched my brand you know and we went on to obvious glory with the brand and the shoe kind of just set this thing off why does it take 24 hours to make one of these pairs of sneakers okay so there's a few reasons the soul and then the upper of the shoe the soul is the quickest thing to make it's made out of 100% natural rubber is a few hour process to make the sole and cooled down so we're adding numbers together to get to 20 for each shoe has hand-painted edges on every edge of the shoe which takes an immense amount of time so you have to paint the edge and you have to let it dry and it's a four-step process and then sanding and then they paint it one last time around the edge so it's overdone and a way it's not necessary I can say but from a style and a look standpoint it's amazing and also from a from a lasting so the edges of the leather will never fray and it'll be perfect for till the end of time it just takes a long time to do how do you go about putting together the pieces to finance buscemi as a line and you know at how does it transition from being this sort of broad array of luxury items into a more focused Footwear line we influence the greatest stores on the planet to buy this shoe and in turn people that shop at those stores were influenced very quickly as well I think Justin Bieber gets those shoes because he's in Toronto at serpentine that only carried Rick Owens they carried wrath they carried like all these dope brands was very curated and then one day he shops at that store all the time and he goes in and there's three colors of that shoe it's a cosine thing you know we we got we got co-signed by the best stores in the world in turn also the shoe look dope and that's how it happened we didn't send the shoes to beaver we didn't send the shoes to puff we didn't send the shoes to JLo these people all bought them at influential stores around the world so you take it to market in 2013 yeah so 2013 and in February of the next year in 2014 we get our own showroom we went from selling to five stores around the world to 50 stores and 50 stores buying 10 times the amount of shoes that the first five bought so it was like you know we went from doing you know 300 pairs of shoes to three four thousand pairs of shoes and and you know the price at $1,000 for exactly so it was very very life-changing experience for me buscemi you've done it more or less by yourself obviously with collaborators but it's it's you do you prefer that paradigm to having to negotiate with people I think at the end of the day when I went out to do this on my own and not knowing that running something by myself would be successful now in reference it--and you bringing it up makes me think the thing that I've been most successful at has been something that I've done on my own so although I do love collaborating with people I think at the end of the day when you're doing something this specific you can't have too much noise so we we recently moved to this space because we outgrew our own space we had a space in West Hollywood which was like a live work situation which is really dope but we outgrew it we moved to this space because of the uniqueness of it and also the neighborhood this is an old recording studio and also our neighbors are like partisan films like Michelle gondry and his crew so it's like a lot of great it's just like a dope vibe over here how many people were work for Buscemi in total we're just shy of 40 that's where you want to be at right now I think so yeah I mean for now you know lean me that doesn't include the retail staff which eventually will grow yep but yeah that's where we're at it's a good is a good size with the hundred millimeter sneaker a certified success buscemi now looks to expand his product line beyond its defining star I've noticed part of your success along the way has been the ability to articulate and commodify your experience growing up even up until gourmet in because in many ways that is an expression of the sort of you know fundamental principles and interest that you had as a kid going with hip-hop does it ever surprise you as time goes on that like that experience continues to keep you so far ahead of all these major companies and other people in the space I mean that's amazingly said and that's what drives me you know the people that we've been surrounded by everything that we've done in our lives everything that goes back to hip-hop or whatever we did in New York City you see what we've done in this little group of people in New York and you see what's happening around the world it's all based on kind of this little period of time like almost everything your first two jobs you got without any experience strictly off of networking and a good talk game or are you conscious of how you sort of network within communities and do you feel like the talk game do you work at that or is that was it are these just sort of inherent things that are part of your personality I think that's because of my personality and I always stuck up for the like like the fat kid that was getting beat up like back in elementary school I always liked sticking up for people and I think that comes off in like it isn't an eighth thing that's like a it's a subconscious thing so when I'm talking to someone people feel comfortable with me maybe and they give me a shot and also luck right I got very lucky for the people that I've been surrounded by you know growing up in New York and the hip-hop scene and the skateboarding scene and like the people that I'm connected to are all very influential people on the planet you know and that like goes a long way and then it's like oh you're at this because I knew this person and then now I'm at a job interview and I know like 14 people that work here already so like I'm already good you know what I mean so it's like part of this like network this New York Network that kind of has helped me a great deal on was just being lucky you know I would imagine in making sneakers like this there are you know forces that are sort of want you at every turn to try to like cut corners on costs for this or that how is it that you stayed so true to your sort of luxury intent of the product you know when it comes to the product we needed to separate ourselves from everybody else and step above to actually compete that was part of the ethos and the mantra and like after the dust settles of the social media hype and this guy wearing in and that guy wearing it the person who's the end consumer has to be like why did I just pay for this is there sort of a double edged sword and having such an outside success with one specific item within your product line for sure we're known for this high top you know 100 millimeter or sneaker but as the brand grew and especially over the past two years we've we've kind of fanned out a bit so there's the percentage of that shoe that was kind of like the bulk of the hundred percent the visitor in the beginning has you know it's it's definitely diversified for now we've launched women's we'll be growing that we launched small leather goods or we'll be growing that and then eventually looking to do some fly apparel when you were doing gourmet you're going up against these Titans within the footwear industry you're now going up against you know storied fashion houses that have owned a luxury market for literally century you know plus what is the key to competing in that space for us to stay relevant I think what we're gonna do is since we're connected to the street a bit more than where they are like I wouldn't say stealing but they're definitely appropriating what we do and what we've created I'm actually gonna go right back to where I came from and do really cool partnerships collaborations with people that I respect that have relevancy in this industry did you ever have any expectation as a kid buying sneakers even getting in started at DC that you would be able to achieve this level of success if my mother was still alive she would tell you that when I was at a very very young age I used to say that I was gonna be successful and I was like it's just basically hip-hop like hustlers dream you know what I'm saying like we grew up in a hip-hop community I grew up listening to hip-hop I was obviously in the skate scene as well but hip-hop really is the foundation of everything I do right so I always want to have a better car than my friend I always want to have the better sneakers I won't have more money than you like that's always been the basis of it so yeah the answer is a 100% yes [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Complex

Views: 255,027

Rating: 4.90168 out of 5

Keywords: sneakerhead, complex, complex originals, sneakers, news, entertainment, current affairs, young man, culture, cool, edgy, funny, complex tv, complex media, jon buscemi, john buscemi, nike, epmd, fashion, noah callahan bever, reseller, gourmet, buscemi 100M

Id: 8xMAAMQvtlw

Length: 27min 20sec (1640 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/VelvetBlueOcean]

I just want to take a minuite to thank you for posting this, it was really inspiring.