Passionate About 100% of It

Ronnie Fieg is the founder, CEO, creative director and CMO of Kith, which he opened in New York in 2011 as an 800-square-foot multibrand sneaker shop. Before Kith he spent close to two decades at the New York footwear retailer David Z, rising from 13-year-old stock boy to buyer and designing early collaborations with ASICS and Adidas. Kith now releases more than 5,000 styles a year and has grown into Kith Treats, the Kith Ivy padel club in Tribeca, and the Ronnie's restaurants in London and West Hollywood. Fieg says he and his partner Sam own the company privately, with no outside investors. These signals are from Ronnie Fieg's interview with David Senra on Senra.

1. Working Backwards From Money. Ronnie Fieg's favorite entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs first among them, build products they want in their own lives, and the money follows. When Senra relayed a friend's line that every industry has two or three great operators and "a whole sea of mediocrity," Fieg named the cause: "the mediocrity is when you're working backwards from money." He thinks customers can see that more clearly now than ever.
2. The Envelope or the Job. At his bar mitzvah, Fieg's second cousin David Z, who owned shoe stores in Manhattan, offered him an envelope of cash. Fieg turned it down and asked for a job, then started in the stockroom the next day. He worked up from stock boy to salesperson, assistant manager, manager, assistant buyer and buyer. He credits knowing what he wanted at 13 with giving him the upper hand.
3. The CEO as Fit Model. Until recently Fieg spent 4 hours a week as the fit model for Kith's 5,000-plus annual styles, with about 20 people from materials, merchandising and design in the room. Every decision on a sample gets made live during that fitting, which he says saves time. He also refits every new fabric on an existing body, because other brands skip that step and a style that fit last season drapes differently this one. He wipes out his own closet every season and wears the new product head to toe.
4. The 10% Worth Doing. At David Z, the limited sneakers Fieg designed pulled in collectors, but those kids didn't come back for the other 90% of the store, which sold product you could find anywhere. David Z chose to chase tourists on Broadway, and Fieg wanted to serve the local collector full-time. Senra compared it to Steve Jobs telling Nike's CEO to "get rid of the crap" even though the crap made money. Fieg's version: he wanted to be passionate about 100% of what he did, not 10% to 15%.
5. Product Nobody Else Has. In 1997 David Z had Timberland make a gray construction boot, a color the brand had never produced, and it sold about 10,000 pairs in a couple of years with no internet. That taught Fieg that people line up for things they can't find anywhere else. In 2006 ASICS opened its 1990 archive to him, and he revived the Gel-Lyte III in 3 colorways at 252 pairs each against a 1,000-pair minimum. A Wall Street Journal editor bought a pair, put it on the cover of the Pursuits section, and Adidas's North America CEO saw the line from across the street and offered Fieg a project at lunch.
6. No Wholesale, No Licensing. Kith refuses both, because a brand that sells through others can't control where its product sits or how it's spoken about. Fieg described a national TV campaign undone by a half-renovated airport shop with messy displays, which customers then subconsciously tie to the brand. He calls Kith "50% storytellers and then 50% retailers." Owning the whole experience, from idea to the moment a customer walks out the door, is what lets him tell the story.
7. Online Sales as a Store Map. Fieg sets a ceiling on how much of Kith's revenue can come from the website because he doesn't want it to become a digital brand. He wants roughly half digital and half physical, so when web sales grow he opens stores to match. Online data shows where fans are, which is how San Francisco and DC got announced. He says fans in those cities are owed the physical experience, and he otherwise opens stores where he travels: Tokyo, Paris, London, Seoul.
8. Kith Means Friends. The downtown sneaker and streetwear shops Fieg shopped as a collector were arrogant and unfriendly. He named the store after the "kith" in "kith and kin" and wanted people to enjoy the space even if they bought nothing. That welcome built a community that wanted to wear the store's name on their chest before Kith was a brand. Apparel started with a cut-and-sew pant from the garment district, then a varsity jacket, and today Kith's own product outsells everything else, footwear included.
9. The Trademark Lesson. When the store opened, Fieg's attorney asked whether he wanted to register the mark for apparel, and Fieg passed because he wasn't making clothes. About 4 years later, after Kith apparel took off, someone in Italy registered the Kith mark there for apparel. Fieg had to negotiate with the person he calls a crook to buy it back and own it globally, "a very expensive lesson."
10. Serving the Customer You Have. Kith Treats began as a planned loss leader: a happy bite that let anyone buy into the brand for under $10. Fieg first tried to copy a white chocolate bread from a Club Med cafeteria, failed, then paid a deli worker $20 to blend cereal into soft serve, and it came out right. Senra assumed it was a Sam Walton move, the ice cream cart that drew strangers into his first store. Fieg said it was the reverse: Treats served people already coming to Kith, and his growth has come from serving that core well enough that they recruit others.
11. More Than They Pay For. Fieg prices against Kith's own last season and tries to give more product at the same price, or raise price slightly and add much more. He studies competitors' prices without using them. A Uniqlo tee and a Kith tee can look the same in two photos, and he builds for "the people that know the difference," which he defines as good product versus great. He thinks luxury should mean how much people love what they buy, and that many luxury houses are now over-accessible.
12. Forced to Have an Opinion. Before the internet a music video showed one or two shoes and a magazine showed 10 boots, then you walked into a store with 500, so you had to form your own taste. Fieg learned his eye riding the F train from Hillside to West 4th, watching each stop bring a different neighborhood's style. Today shoppers arrive having already seen the product on someone else, which Senra called outsourcing their taste. Fieg tells his wife he wishes he could throw his phone away, and he tells his bored daughter that boredom is when imagination kicks in.

Watch the full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFjMyFeqf3I.