In a world often dominated by major cities like New York, London, or Los Angeles, building a brand outside those hubs can feel like an uphill battle. But for the founder of Unheardof, the groundbreaking lifestyle and sneaker store in Cincinnati, success comes from grit, patience, and a deep connection to community. With over 25 years of experience, from working the floor to designing sought-after collaborations, he shares the hard-earned wisdom of starting small, learning every part of the business, and never losing sight of your roots. This conversation dives into the challenges, triumphs, and the next chapter for a brand that’s quietly shaping the Midwest’s cultural landscape.
What was the original spark moment that inspired UNheardof?
So I started out at 15 at a skate shop called Triple A Skate Shop in Florence, Kentucky. Within a year, I became co-manager of the store alongside the kid whose family started it, that was Alex Davis. He eventually became a professional skateboarder. Later on, they decided to close the store, it just became too much for them. After that, I went to work at Anonymous Skate Shop, which was kind of a rival at the time, but they were about 25 minutes away. Same story: within a few months, I was running the place. I became the manager and later a partial owner.
I’ve always skated in skate shoes but as I got older transitioned into wearing lifestyle sneakers. We used to buy adidas Rivalrys, Campuses, Converse All Stars, Air Force 1s, 2s, 3s, mostly all-white pairs, and we’d customise them: colour them, write on them, doodle on them like they were backpacks. We even skated in New Era hats, different colours and styles. I didn’t have the biggest bag of tricks,maybe 10 that I was really good at, so I knew I had to stand out in other ways. That meant dressing better than everybody else. So I’d skate in stuff like Air Max 1s because they had flat soles. That was kind of a cool twist back then.
Around 20 or 21 years old, I had this vision: I wanted to open a store that blended skate and lifestyle. I wanted Air Maxes and Superstar Shelltoes on the same wall as SBs and skate shoes, maybe not mixed together, but in the same space. The idea was to merge two worlds. People always use the term “streetwear,” but personally, I hate that word. What we were doing was taking brands and merging them with skateboarding, creating something unheard of. Sure, places in Europe, Japan, New York, or LA had done this before, but in Ohio? Never.
The name UNheardof wasn’t just about doing something new for Cincinnati or the Midwest. It was personal. It was a tribute to my sister Erika, who passed away when she was 15. I was 18 at the time, and it changed my life. UNheardof is the “little sister” to Anonymous, just like she was my little sister. When I was at Anonymous, the founder, Nick Aso, taught me so much about art, lifestyle, skate culture, and how to design skate decks. I took that inspiration and ran with it. I got my first skateboard at 14, and within two weeks, I was at a screen printer trying to make a T-shirt for my own skate team. We had a logo, shirts, the whole thing, and that’s really where it all began. Then I started working at the skate shop, learned Illustrator and Photoshop around 19 or 20, and started designing shirts and decks. That’s how the Anonymous brand evolved. When I opened UNheardof, the goal was always to build it into a full-fledged clothing line.
All those life experiences, all the different places, they all shaped you to do it yourself.
Exactly. I picked up tricks and trades every step of the way. Through the ups and downs, whether I learned from mistakes or great moments, I applied all of it to this journey. That’s why I go so hard for shoes like the adidas Rivalry. No one wears that shoe, it’s not a Dunk, it’s not a Jordan, it’s not a New Balance 550. But now, people treat it like a grail. It’s in the top five of their collections alongside Jordans and Yeezys. And to be honest, that was the vision from the beginning. I knew if I could make that shoe just as good, or better than those hyped products, I’d build a core following. People wouldn’t just add adidas to their rotation, they’d be adding me too.
And now, people are buying our T-shirts, our hats, and buying other adidas sneakers for the first time. But this vision? It started when I was 14. It felt like a lightning bolt to the head, like, “This is what I want to do with my life.” It just took this long to get here. That’s why I asked you earlier: if it took you 25 years to become the next GQ Magazine, would you keep working at it? Because that’s what it took for me.
The first time I saw you was your adidas collaboration adidas x Unheardof Rivalry “Erika’s Poem” and then you dropped “Grandma’s Couch”. Then it was just hit after hit, you blew up fast!
For a long time, when I quit skateboarding, I hid. I was kind of embarrassed. I had been so active in the skate community and had real dreams of working in the skateboarding industry. It didn’t happen so when I stopped skating, I kind of disappeared. Unheardof fell off a little too, just because I felt like I couldn’t show up at the skatepark anymore. Physically, my body couldn’t take the abuse, or I was going to end up paralysed. That’s my biggest fear. So the “coming out” party, was when I made Erika’s shoe. I didn’t care what the internet was going to say. I didn’t care what the reaction would be. I made that shoe for her and for her friends.
And for 20 years, there was this whole group of girls who never had closure. That shoe was me telling them: Yes, I’ve been feeling this pain too. But I’ve also been working on this story, for this long, to finally share with you. I made that shoe for them. For them to find closure. For them to feel like they could finally move forward with their lives It was emotional for me, man. The second shoe was for my grandparents, to let them know: “Yo, the reason I stayed out of trouble all these years, didn’t get addicted to money, didn’t get lost in drugs, alcohol, or partying… the reason I didn’t become what society told me I’d be, is because of you.”
They were married for 78 years. My grandma lived to 106, my grandpa to 98. They helped with the design of that shoe. And I knew: if Erika’s shoe checked out, and my grandma’s shoe checked out, then by shoe four, I could finally just be me again. The Bridge Shoe was for the kids, those who showed up to all these events. The third woman in my life… is the city of Cincinnati.
I can’t really tell a story about my mom. She was murdered, stabbed to death. She was a drug addict, pretty much a prostitute. We grew up in a rough house, kind of like Baby Reindeer meets Hoarders. A lot of messed up stuff went down in that home. You can’t put that on a shoe. So instead, I put little pieces of her in every shoe. Because she’s the one who always said: “Follow your dream. Be creative. Don’t give up. One day, it’ll hit.”
When I did the Bridge Shoe, I was thinking about how she’s the one who told me to go skate in Cincinnati. At the time, it wasn’t safe. It was dangerous, riots, high crime, real tension between the Black community and police. And then there’s this children’s home… My mom had a manic episode one night and dropped me off at an orphanage. Thank God my grandma came and picked me up that same night. Most kids don’t have that.
That’s why Cincinnati became the third woman in my life. I skated there, it’s only 12 miles from where I lived. It was a 30-minute skate, or a 2-minute car ride. But where we come from, people don’t leave their house. Their street. They’re stuck, addicted to drugs, to poverty, to pain. There’s real American poverty here. Mental health breakdowns. Abuse. Horrific stuff behind closed doors.
So for five kids to skip school and skate to downtown, through smoke grenades, horses trampling people, bullets flying, just to do tricks in the streets… that was wild. Like South Park meets Stranger Things. We were 14, 15 years old. That’s where I learned how to manoeuvre in the streets. That’s where I learned street culture, not from fashion, but from living in it. The Bridge Shoe was meant to bridge two worlds:
- Kids who never left Northern Kentucky
- And kids from Cincinnati who never crossed the bridge the other way.
The Roebling Suspension Bridge was built by a French engineer and went on to inspire the design of Tower Bridge in London. There’s even a plaque inside Tower Bridge that acknowledges the influence of our bridge. The children’s home, those kids didn’t have a grandma to pick them up when their mom lost it. That was their last chance, before the streets. So I made the shoe for them. That’s why we did the bridge shoe, the custom box, the boat ride, and we donated the proceeds to the children’s home. I don’t like calling it an orphanage, but that’s what it is. That was the purpose of it all.
Hearing how you’ve taken all that pain, and turned it into something that spreads joy, It’s powerful.
Absolutely. That’s why when the Piggy Runner came out, it was like, I can finally be me again. I can have fun with it now. People say I’ve got this unexplainable energy, this presence, but I’m also a crazy hard worker. I’m blunt. sometimes “It has to be like this.” But at the same time… I don’t take anything too seriously. The Piggy Runner was really the turning point for me. That was when I felt like, I can just be me now. It was the world saying, “Hey, we accept you for who you are.” We love that you’re a little wild. We love that you’re dyslexic and you’re not worried about reading or writing perfectly. We love that you want to tell dick jokes, butt jokes, poop jokes.
A lot of people were like, “Man, I’d love to come, but I can’t afford it.” So I’d say, “Alright, you’re four hours away. If you can drive here, I’ll cover your hotel. I’ll leave a T-shirt in the room.” I support those people because they’re the ones who said, “Erika’s Poem is my favourite shoe. That’s my grail.” And I can tell the difference between someone who’s jumping on the hype train and someone who says, “Just so you know, your story changed my life.”
Brands like Jordan or Nike spend millions on marketing and activations. adidas has never done that in North America, especially not through a retailer. Tons of people work with adidas and no one even notices. No one cares. The fact that people support me, and they’re like, “This is my prized possession”? That means everything. So I said, if I’m throwing this Blink-182-style rockstar party for the release, you need to be there. You’re my guest. Come through. Let’s have a good time. That’s what the Piggy Runner symbolised: I can be myself. I can have fun. I don’t have to follow just what the brand wants. I don’t need to push some political message or box people into this or that. I can just be me now. I can be free. And that’s what the Unheardof brand is about.
You, and adidas, seem to really get it. These aren’t forced cultural moments, they’re organic. They’re real. And that’s why they matter long term.
I agree. It’s funny though, on the corporate side, even within adidas, people are always fighting against it. It was just a small group in North America saying, “Let’s give this a shot.” Now it’s grown into something global. But even within North America, there are people saying, “You can’t do this.” And somehow… we’re still getting away with it.
UNheardof started in 2008. It’s now 2025. Has the meaning of the word “Unheardof” changed for you?
Honestly? It’s still the same message. It still means the same thing to me. Like I said earlier, “Unheardof” is the little sister to the Anonymous skate shop. Back in the day, Cincinnati had one of the top five skate scenes in North America, definitely top five. Our shop, had a sick team. The videos were dope. All the pros came through and shot photos here. This was around ‘99 to 2010. Cincinnati became a legit hotspot. The meaning hasn’t changed. Every day, people walk into the store, whether they’re from Cincinnati or just visiting, and say, “I’ve never heard of you.”
And they look around like, “Wait… are those skate decks? Sneakers? What is this place?” Even my Nike SB rep still struggles with the fact that we sell both Nike Running and Nike Skateboarding in the same space. But I show them, this is all culture, this is all me. You’ve got graffiti, that’s Scribble Jam. You’ve got skateboards, that’s Anonymous. You’ve got industrial metal, that started in Cincinnati. You’ve got the pork industry, the bridge that helped build North America because the Ohio River was the major artery. We’ve got Mr. Red, the first mascot in Major League Baseball, from the first pro team. So when people buy a logo tee, sometimes it’s just a dope shirt. But other times, people go off like, “Yo, it’s this guy Phil. He started this brand. He’s done collabs with Nike and adidas…” You know? Nothing’s changed. We’ve just matured over the years.
You’ve recently started a cut-and-sew brand? How did that come about?
I’m not going to put out crap. I’ve made stuff in China, in Europe, right here in Cincinnati. I bought fabrics from Italy and Japan. I’ve supported women who studied fashion here locally, they made our “Made in Cincinnati” line. And I failed. Over and over. But I’m finally working with a new factory that feels right. They’ve done some really solid pieces, socks, packaging. I think I finally found the one.
We design and screen print all of our t-shirts right here in Cincinnati. But even now, with the tariffs and everything going on, we’ve only just found what I think is the right factory in China. The quality has to be right. The materials have to be right. The embroidery needs to be clean and spot-on. The hardware, the trims, the ribbons, everything needs to be dialed in. We can’t make fast fashion or low-quality products just because “Unheardof” is having a moment right now. I could easily put out a jacket or tee just to make a quick buck, push out subpar product and still sell out, but that’s not the mission. I want to create legit, high-quality pieces that truly represent what we stand for. I’ve worked with over 30 factories in the last 17 years trying to master cut-and-sew.
I feel like we’re in a great place. The personality of this store, the people who work here, the people who walk through our doors, this place is for everyone. We’re not gonna say, “You’ve got to land a switch tre flip” or “You need 10K followers to shop here.” It could be a kid hitting the Kobe raffle for the first time, or someone who can’t skate well yet, and we’re like, “Hey, here’s a board for 20 bucks.”
We’re downtown. In the heart of Cincinnati. And from day one, this place was built for the city, by the city. Our city’s growing every year, and we’re proud of where we come from. When you’re building something from scratch, it’s all on you, and I definitely feel that.
How you blend skate culture, sneakers, pop art, graffiti, and local Cincinnati history all in one space?
Honestly? I don’t think there is a right balance. It’s just me. I don’t know if I personally have the right mix, but everything I’ve experienced in life is represented in this store. And it’s not just my story, it’s Cincinnati’s story. You learn that this is where German immigrants came to North America. The nickname used to be “Porkopolis.” You hear that Cincinnati was once the poorest city in the U.S. and then learn it also hosts the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany. It’s the birthplace of professional baseball. And a lot of people don’t know, Scribble Jam started here. If you Google it, you’ll find out it’s where Eminem got discovered. He did an MC battle here. It was the largest breakdancing, DJ scratching, and freestyle battle event in North America.
So all of that? That’s what makes up this store. That’s what makes up the city. After a few years, people were coming in from Australia, London, Japan, break crews from China. It became a thing. Some of the best graffiti writers in the world are from here. They were involved with Scribble Jam and the graffiti murals. And now we host the Blink festival every three years, the largest outdoor animation and light art festival in the country.
All of that is Cincinnati. But all of that is also me. My family escaped Germany after surviving the Holocaust. I tried out for baseball. Played for a while, got cut. I was a hometown soccer star until puberty hit and I got slow and chubby, and I got kicked off the team. That crushed me. Then skateboarding came along. I was an intern at Scribble Jam.
That’s why the name “Unheardof” became “the little sister”, it’s for all those younger kids in this town who might not become pro skaters or footballers. But maybe they walk into this shop, hear our story, and leave with a sticker or a keychain or a tee. And maybe, for just a few days, or a few moments, they get to be the cool kid because they came to Unheardof.
I love how you pull in local landmarks into the space itself. How important is that for you, to make the store an extension of the city’s story?
It’s definitely intentional. We positioned the store exactly where we are because we knew we’d get tourism every day. We’re one block from the Reds’ stadium, one block from the Bengals, six blocks from FC Cincinnati’s stadium. And all the hotels? Right across the street. Messi’s dad literally walked by the store today, waved at us and we held up his shoe! But yeah, it was by design. People come in all the time, here on work trips, never been to Cincinnati. And we get to tell them, “Here’s where to eat. Here’s where to grab ice cream. Here’s the other shops to check out.”
We built the store to reflect the city and my personal background. So when someone asks, “Why’s there a bridge in the store?” I can tell the story of skating across the Roebling Bridge for the first time and seeing the city, and how that moment inspired a shoe. The building across the street, which I really want to buy, used to be this high-end store called Gidding‑Jenny. Look it up. It was like the Louis Vuitton of its time, purple carpet, purple bags, purple walls. It still has these ornate ceramic crown sculptures outside, it’s priceless. You can’t even touch the building. It’s vacant now, and no one knows what to do with it. You can walk around here and see traces of Italian, French, and Dutch culture everywhere, but mainly, it was the Germans who settled here. I love how it’s all layered in.
What is the process like when you’re designing a sneaker with so much meaning? Did you come to adidas with a story? Or did the idea evolve naturally?
When the opportunity came, it was Greg, my sales rep, and Tony, a product line manager, who brought it to me. Greg and Tony wanted to bring energy back to adidas, to make it hot in the streets again. Our store is incredibly diverse. We’re in the middle of the city. People from all walks of life walk through our doors every day. I’ve been able to connect with so many people, different cultures, different backgrounds. And while we might not look alike, we’ve been through similar things. Maybe it’s different vocabulary, different details, but the emotion is the same. At the end of the day, poverty is poverty, and mental health is mental health.
When they asked, “What would you do? How would you do it?” I said: mental health is the drive. That’s the foundation behind everything. Because mental health doesn’t care what colour your skin is, it can eat anyone alive if we don’t address it. So I said, “I have a story I want to tell. I want to tell my sister’s story.” She never got her flowers. And as soon as I said that, she never got her flowers, I knew the idea. Grandma’s Couch had already been designed as a Nike shoe that never released. It was a failed shoe. But now it had a second life. So chapter two was already written. Chapter three was “The Bridge” shoe. It was nearly finished, I just needed to fine-tune a few details. So when I walked into that adidas meeting, I wasn’t pitching a one-and-done. I said, “I want to tell three different stories.”
And I’ve got to give props to Greg and Tony, those guys fought for me. They went to bat not just with adidas North America, but with the global team. They said, “This is what he wants to do. This is how the shoes are going to look. We believe in this. Let us do it.”
Then once I started working inside the adidas system, I met two amazing people: Stacey and Caroline. Stacey’s the one who handles the CADs, helps develop the shoes, and coordinates with the factory. Caroline’s the colourist, she manages all the Pantones and builds Illustrator files. So 99% of the work? That was me, at home, on Illustrator, during COVID. I was reading my sister’s poetry, talking to my grandma, designing the shoe right there at my desk. I’d send the files out to Oregon, and from there they’d push it to the factory. The factory would send me a sample.
The shoe called “Erika’s Poem” went through six or seven samples, because the factory just couldn’t hit the level of quality I was aiming for. It took time. But through that process, I built a real bond with Stacey and Caroline. We started learning each other’s design language. It wasn’t a big team, it was just us. But we got into a rhythm. I’d test things, trial and error, and send over new versions. That’s where I am with the brand now. I want to push boundaries. Try things a shoe hasn’t seen before.
When you released the original Grandma’s Couch, I remember seeing a video where you were sitting with your grandma. What was it like designing that shoe with her?
Back when I first started skating, I was getting flow boxes, free shoes from brands. I went from having one pair of busted shoes for a whole year, then handing them down to my little brother, to getting new shoes every two weeks. My grandma would always ask, “How do you have these shoes? Where are they coming from?” She didn’t get it at first. But as I started working more, I was giving shoes to my grandparents for Christmas. We never got shoes for birthdays or holidays when I was growing up. So when I started earning and skating, I made sure everyone had shoes, my siblings, my friends, my grandparents. Shoes became a symbol of love, of giving.
So my grandma, even in her 80s and 90s, had a sneaker rotation. She had Nikes, Yeezys, she was rocking wild colourways. She didn’t always know the names, but she felt the culture. She saw how people responded. She’d go to church or the grocery store, and people would stop her to ask about her kicks. When we designed the shoe, she didn’t believe it would be real. I’d sit with her and my grandpa, we’d sketch together, they’d write out “adidas,” draw flowers. I’d scan those drawings, put them into Illustrator, and send them to the factory.
We brought her to the first Grandma’s Couch release. She was 100 years old. 500 people lined up, not for me, for her. Taking pictures, asking for autographs. It was beautiful, but it overwhelmed her. The flashing lights, the noise, it was a lot. We were planning the second pair for Mother’s Day that May, but she told me flat out, “I can’t do this again. I’m throwing in the towel.”
I begged her, “One more, Grandma, this next one’s even better.” But she said, “There’s no way.” So I pushed adidas to speed up the process. I said, “Don’t worry about the timeline, just make the shoe.” But unfortunately, she passed before she could see it. She joined my grandpa, wherever they are. The shoe arrived right after. And I just couldn’t do it, it was too emotional. So we paused the release. Waited an entire year. In between, we dropped the Bridge Shoe, then the Piggy Runner. And finally, Grandma’s Couch 2.
It’s a story everyone can resonate with. Everyone has that family member they’re sentimentally attached to. When the second one came out, it almost completed the story, if that makes sense. Everything you’ve done is so well articulated. It sounds crazy to say, but designing a product isn’t the hardest part, well, it’s not easy, but lots of people design good products. What’s harder is telling the story behind it. And I really feel like everything you’ve touched has turned to gold because of the way you present it and share its message. Thank you, I appreciate that.
You’ve worked with numerous local artists in Cincinnati. How do you decide who to work with? What makes a partnership successful?
I think it all comes down to organic relationships, just natural conversations. Honestly, the coolest person I’ve worked with in Cincinnati is CF Payne. He’s older than me and a famous American illustrator, not super famous right now, but when he passes, he’ll be considered one of the all-time greats. He’s done covers for Mad Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Time, portraits for Congress and The White House. Plus, he’s a Cincinnati Reds baseball legend.
I’ve worked with him on several projects. When we first met, he was kind of indifferent but then, as we collaborated, he got really excited. He came to a release, saw the energy, and was hyped. We sold all the prints, t-shirts, decks, he loved it. Another artist is James Marshall, aka Dalek. He’s not originally from Cincinnati but has ties here. He came to Scribble Jam, is part of an American graffiti crew called DF Family, and was a student of Murakami, one of my inspirations.
I always wanted to work with Dalek but heard, “You can’t afford him; he’s a real artist.” Then, when Instagram blew up, I just DM’d him and said, “Hey man, I worked Scribble Jam, I got you water when you were here. Would love to do a skateboard collab.” He replied, and we made it happen. Now, I tell him he’s my biggest inspiration, and he writes back with doodles or notes. He’s even moving to Cincinnati soon, so it’s a full-circle moment. For me, it’s always been about starting with organic connections, building those snowballs before the snowman.
I love that. All organic relationships. Everything you do feels purposeful. UNheardof isn’t your traditional store; it’s part skate shop, part culture hub. From the outside, it might seem eclectic or even random, but to you, it all makes sense. How do you decide what to stock? What’s a power piece? Is it purely your taste, or do you analyse data? How does that process work?
Most brands we carry are ones I genuinely like and think are dope. Some brands like Fucking Awesome or Butter Goods caught my eye because kids were really into them, and people asked about them. So I reached out for accounts.
Back in the day, we carried brands like Hundreds, 10 Deep, Crooks and Castles. We even did a collab with Rogue Status that got us on Hypebeast in 2008. That was a time when street culture and skate culture were really mixing. Nowadays, the big names are Supreme, Stussy, Palace, but those brands want to run their own stores, not be in someone else’s doors. So it’s a challenge to find brands for your store now.
In a time where digital-first seems like the only way to scale, how do you balance that with the realities of growth, and what does long-term success look like?
Our real focus is on our private label and brand, being a voice not just for Cincinnati, but for the Midwest. We want people to travel here for that “weekend in the city” experience, think of it as a smaller Palace for the Midwest, like if Palace had popped off in Manchester or Newcastle instead of London. When I went to the UK, I met Greg and Gareth from Palace. They mentored me for a day and really pushed me to keep working on our private label, keep trying factories, push the envelope, and take all the pieces of experience to make something new. At the time, sourcing was a nightmare, pulling materials from multiple places, trying to assemble here. Factories wanted minimums of a thousand pieces, which I just couldn’t afford. We’re talking a quarter-million dollars just to make a product you don’t know will sell.
Greg and Gareth really inspired me not to give up. They came to America, skated with my mentor Fat Nick, who started Anonymous and Scribble Jam. Skateboarding connected all of us. It’s a very tight-knit community. Retail is moving online, and to be honest, most of my experience with you has been through the internet. It’s not easy to just visit Cincinnati. Why are you so focused on keeping the in-store experience alive? I’ve heard great things about how you and your team operate, but why is that part so important? Because if you build a foundation in-store, in your community, city, region, you build something no one can take away overnight.
If you rely only on online, it can disappear tomorrow. You’re running a business without long-term security. We focus on brick-and-mortar because when someone visits us, maybe just once, they should remember it for life. I want people to say, “When I went to North America, I went to Cincinnati, and UNheardof was the second coolest store I visited.” If it were in New York, it might be number one. That’s the reputation and experience we want to build locally and globally.
People come here and say, “Damn, this is wild.” Sure, there are funny Twitter and Instagram moments, but nothing compares to walking into the store, meeting the staff, feeling the music and vibe. To me, you can’t have a real brand or identity without a physical space. Honestly, 95% of our business is walk-in, in-store. We get all this limited product, and we give it here first because for years, Cincinnati wasn’t given much opportunity for brands or these types of products. So we fight every day, even with our success. Once you post this and see the engagement, we’re still not getting the jellyfish, you know what I mean? It we still fight those types of battles. That’s why I want those products in-store first, to give our area first dibs.
Are there any upcoming projects or teasers you can share? Anything you’re excited about?
The only thing I’ll say you can put in print is that Pork Chop’s just getting started.
Finally, if you could go back to a younger kid, or someone just popping into the store, what advice would you give to someone dreaming of launching their own brand or business in a city like Cincinnati?
I’ve been asked that for 25 years, and the answer is the same today: pick up a broom and go to the shop. Kids come here all the time and ask, “How’d you do it?” I tell them, I started by cleaning toilets and taking out trash. Everybody wants the glam but nobody wants to do the work. I’m giving you the chance to learn. This is like college, I’ve got my PhD in this. I’ve been doing it 25 years. If you want to be a clothing designer, go work in a screen printing or embroidery shop. Learn how the machines work, what quality looks like.
I had 30 manufacturers tell me I couldn’t embroider in a certain spot. But I know better because I’ve done it. The backing looks good, it doesn’t rub your ankles. Have I sold a million pairs of socks and become rich? No. But I have a product people love and say is the coolest pair of socks they’ve ever worn. That’s my PhD. Because I worked in embroidery and printing, I know what’s good.
I tell people: go learn how to sell shoes at a running store or Foot Locker. I worked at Foot Action for eight months when I was in limbo. I needed money to survive, but I kept skating every day. I learned how to sell Jordan’s, Reebok Classics, stuff I didn’t even wear, but it’s footwear. I learned how to sell socks, shoe cleaner, hats, all that stuff. You need to learn that before you say, “I want to open a store.” You can’t become a pro race car driver if you’ve never driven a go-kart. You can’t run a marathon trying to break two hours if you don’t know how to tie your own shoes.
You have to learn the basics and build from there. That’s what I tell kids. They want stores like mine in Cincinnati, but that’s a big problem, people want to jump straight there. You gotta start small, build a snowball before you try to put the carrot on your snowman. Build your foundation.
