Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture
Welcome to "Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture," where we delve into the essence of branding beyond the surface sheen. A brand is more than just a logo or a slogan; it's a reflection of identity, values, and reputation that resonates within our cultural landscape. Enjoy as we peel back the layers to uncover the raw, authentic stories behind the people and products that shape our world.
This isn't your average corporate podcast. Join Tom Frank, partner and chief creative officer at Merrick Creative, Mickey Factz, Hip Hop Artist and Founder and CEO of Pendulum Ink, and Jeffrey Sledge, a seasoned music industry veteran, for "Unglossy" as they get to the heart of what truly drives individual and organizational brand . In a world where where image is carefully curated and narratives meticulously crafted, we're here to explore the moments of vulnerability, pivotal decisions, and creative sparks that fuel the relationship between brand and culture.
Get ready for a thought-provoking journey into the heart and soul of branding – the unscripted, unfiltered, and truly Unglossy truth. Tune in to "Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you catch your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @UnglossyPod and join the conversation.
Unglossy is produced and distributed by Merrick Studios. Let your story take the mic. Learn more at https://merrick-studios.com
Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture
Eric Liedtke: Sneaker Culture and Eco-Friendly Innovation
How can a brand be both innovative and environmentally conscious? Eric Liedtke, co-founder, and CEO of the Unless Collective, joins us to share his visionary approach to regenerative fashion, where apparel is crafted entirely from plant-based materials without a trace of plastic. Eric's illustrious 26-year career at Adidas, during which he led major brands like Reebok and Yeezy and turned Adidas' e-commerce into a multi-billion-dollar empire, lends credence to his insights on the intersection of sustainability, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
We explore the fascinating world of sneaker culture, from the intricate design process to the entrepreneurial risks and rewards that come with pursuing one's passion. Eric recounts pivotal moments that shaped Adidas' legacy, including significant cultural and strategic shifts, high-profile athlete recruitments, and collaborations with fashion designers like Kanye West and Yoji Yamamoto. His stories reveal the delicate balance of leveraging regional strengths and fostering genuine connections between American and German teams to drive success in global markets.
Tune in as Eric discusses the journey toward a sustainable future in fashion, emphasizing the importance of eco-friendly materials and conscious consumerism. From Adidas' pioneering use of recovered ocean plastic to his current endeavor with the Unless Collective, Eric offers a compelling case for the critical role of innovation and resilience in transforming the industry. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone passionate about the future of fashion and sustainability.
"Unglossy: Decoding Brand in Culture," is produced and distributed by Merrick Creative and hosted by Merrick Chief Creative Officer, Tom Frank, hip hop artist and founder of Pendulum Ink, Mickey Factz, and music industry veteran, Jeffrey Sledge. Tune in to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you catch your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @UnglossyPod to join the conversation and support the show at https://unglossypod.buzzsprout.com/
Welcome to the "All About M.E. Podcast ," the podcast where music meets the...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
This week on Unglossy.
Speaker 2:Now the words of the Lorax seem perfectly clear. Unless someone like you comes along and cares a lot, cares a whole awful lot, nothing will get better. It simply will not. So take this seed. It's the last of the seeds of the truffle of trees, because truffle of trees are what everyone needs. So that's as you can tell, I've fallen in love with that, but yeah, and then I said, oh wow, that's a great name.
Speaker 3:I love, love with that but yeah, and then I said, oh wow, that's a great name from the top.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm tom frank I'm mickey fax and I'm jeffrey sledge welcome to unglossy, to coning brand and culture.
Speaker 1:I'm tom frank, partner and chief creative officer at merit creative. This is mickey fax, hip-hop artist and founder and ceo of pendulum inc. And that jeffrey sledge, a seasoned music industry veteran who has worked with some of the biggest artists in the business. We're here to explore the moments of vulnerability, pivotal decisions, creative sparks that fuel the relationship between brand and culture. Get ready for a thought-provoking journey into the heart and soul of branding, the unscripted, unfiltered and truly the glossy truth. Are you guys ready to talk about sneakers, clothing, apparel? I mean, you know, you guys consider yourselves fashionitos.
Speaker 4:I got a ton of questions I need to ask Eric about, just, you know, the sneaker. Not just the sneaker culture, but the process, the sneaker process. Not just the sneaker culture, but the process, the sneaker process.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm here for all Yoji questions.
Speaker 1:Well, we got into all of that with this guy. I mean I really, really was looking forward to talking to him. I mean he is a guy from my world as a brand and marketing guy that has done it at the highest level there is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so to get to talk to him and under I mean he's so humble and had I mean we really honestly could have talked to this guy for three hours if we wanted to. He had he had so many stories that he that he told, but some that he couldn't tell and some that we didn't even get to, but, um, it was really fascinating and I I love what he's doing. I mean, he's taken a huge chance, but he's following his passion and he's following what he thinks is right, which is very admirable I think he's gonna be all right.
Speaker 4:Looking at his instagram and stuff, there's definitely a lot of support he's in the companies. Uh, unless he's doing very well so far and I think he's gonna be uh fine. And the way he explained some things that I didn't understand was dope, because now I really got a better picture of his vision.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is the episode of the uns, the uns Unglossy unless.
Speaker 1:Ah, you got to put that in the title I mean Mickey, maybe there's a rap song that I write out of this that you can perform the un.
Speaker 3:We know that you're going to put this on chat GPT and make up a rap with un.
Speaker 1:Why you got to steal how I was going to do that.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know it ain't like you trying to come to Pendulum Inc to do it on your own. You're going to try to cheat.
Speaker 1:Hey, hey audience, a shortcut. The one thing that Unless did that Pendulum Inc hasn't done yet for you, but we'll get to it is you listen to this whole episode. You get a little 20% off discount. Maybe in the episode when we get deep in the Pendulum Inc down the road maybe he'll match that 20% off.
Speaker 3:We can match it. That's not an issue. That's not an issue.
Speaker 4:You know what I'm saying, we'll figure it out, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3:My guy Eric man is crazy, all right.
Speaker 1:Here we go, then let's dive in with our conversation with Mr Eric Ledkey. Unglossy is brought to you by Merrick Creative, looking to skyrocket your business's visibility and drive growth. At Merit Creative, we solve your brand and marketing woes With big ideas, decades of experience and innovative solutions. We'll draw in your target audience and keep them hooked. Remember, creativity is key to success. Partner with Merit Creative and unlock your brand's potential. Learn more at meritcreativecom. And now back to the show Fellas. Let me introduce you to an interesting cat. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Unless Collective, pioneering regenerative fashion. We're going to learn a little bit about that today. That means all plants, no plastic guys. Prior to Unless, he spent 26 years with Adidas, working on their various brands, including Adidas Reeboks and Yeezy, which, under his direction, and with Kanye West, he built a billion-dollar business in just over three years and scaled the Adidas e-com platform to reach $4 billion by 2020. Welcome to Unglossy, a guy that I know. We can't wait to talk to Mr Eric Lidke.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, Great to be here.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. I mean, we've been dying to talk to you. We got so much to get into, but you got to tell us right now where are we talking to you from. I always got to understand where you're from.
Speaker 2:I am calling you from the beautiful downtown area of Portland Oregon.
Speaker 1:I am calling you from the beautiful downtown area of Portland Oregon, portland Oregon. I like Portland. I'm a big donut fan. What's the big donut? The zombie place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's it called Voodoo Donuts, voodoo.
Speaker 1:Have you guys ever had Voodoo Donuts?
Speaker 4:Nah.
Speaker 2:I'm not a donut person. Our claim to fame is the world's biggest independent bookstore called Pals. It's like a city block. It's a beautiful place to go and get lost for a good afternoon. If you want to find a book, that's the place to find it, wow.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to start here. You are most known for your many, many, many years at Adidas. Why Adidas? How did Adidas? Why Adidas? How did you get involved in Adidas?
Speaker 2:Well, I think we all have to reflect on ourselves and what we like to do and what we don't like to do. Madison and went to work in advertising in Detroit believe it or not and started working on Cadillac and Chiquita Bananas and FTD Florist Transworld Delivery and I was getting like every Sunday night I get that pain in my belly, thinking I got to go back and I don't want to go back. I'm not having any fun, I'm wearing a suit every day and I'm like there's got to be something. This is like one of Dante's rings of hell, right? So, um, I uh. I then started thinking, okay, what do I like to do? And it's like I like to. I like sports, I like reading about sports, I like doing sports, I like talking about sports.
Speaker 2:So then I started talking to my friends and one of my best friends was working for Adidas in Germany designing shoes with legendary Peter Moore, who designed the first Jordans of all times. Rest his soul. He passed away the last year and a half. Anyway, he knew the guys that were kind of working at formerly Nike Peter Moore and Rob Strasser and they were taking over Adidas america. He introduced me to them and I found myself moving from detroit to portland oregon to be like one of the first hundred employees for adidas america back then in 1994 damn and the rest, as they say in history so you were one of the first 100 in the us yeah, it was a small setup.
Speaker 2:I mean it was like. So what happened was? Um, it was, it was a small setup. I mean it was like. So what happened was it was a distributor, right? So I think you guys all saw Shoe Dog the movie, right?
Speaker 2:So Phil Knight's pretty epic story of himself, the autobiography book, is brilliant and so, basically, nike started kicking the shit out of Adidas in the 80s and early 90s and Adidas was really just a distributor, so just a sales distributor, no real subsidiary on the ground. Peter Moore and Rob Strasser had a falling out with Phil over who knows what, but they ended up leaving that soon after you know the end of that movie time period, like soon after, like, jordan came on, like maybe year three or four, I think it was. Since Jordan was there, rob and Peter decided to leave, for unknown reasons to me, and they started consultancy and one of the first clients was Adidas, because they saw Adidas as quote, unquote the sleeping dinosaur and they thought they could help it. And so they did, and one of the things they did to help it was to take over the Adidas America subsidiary and they said, hey, we want to do this, but we don't want to move. So can we move it from Jersey to Portland. So that's one of the reasons.
Speaker 1:That's how it ended up in Portland.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. Everybody says well, how did Portland get to be the sneaker capital of America?
Speaker 1:Well, it helps that.
Speaker 2:Nike was founded here, but then some of the Nike founders started Adidas here, and then now On Running's here. Now you've got Mahoka coming up here, you've got Lululemon Footwear here, you've got Columbia Keen. It's like Under Armour has an office here. It's amazing all the different offices that are here, and so now there's just general exchange of talent all the time within all the big footwear brands.
Speaker 1:And I guess that's interesting, right, because you're still bringing in athletes. Or tell me, does it work like this, like when an athlete comes right, we all watch the movie and when Michael Jordan came, he did his rounds of all the different places. He flew out to Germany, I think, in the movie, but now when they do it. Are they making the?
Speaker 2:rounds all in Portland. So quick fact check the Nike, the movie of Shoe Dog, is a work of fiction. It's based on reality but it is a work of fiction. So Jordan and his family never went to Germany and that part was false. And the whole portrayal of the Germanic culture was wrong and interpretation by the Hollywood creators, and they're entitled to do that. But there's some inaccuracies there and I I'd like to point some of those out for you and your listeners.
Speaker 2:Rob Strasser was no Wilton Violet in the corner, while Rob Strasser was, his nickname was rolling thunder and he would walk through the halls as a as this charismatic, you know, of just giant, of a person who, who did so much for not just Nike but the industry in general, and so, and Peter Moore was a creative genius. So Peter Moore kind of comes off OK, but I'm not sure Peter ever touched a skateboard in his life. But he did get credit. I mean, he did design the Jordan logo, he did design the Jordan one, two and three, I believe. So he was the tinker, the innovator, and he continued until his last days. So those are some of the inaccuracies as I'm going to point out for you guys.
Speaker 2:But to answer your question. Yeah, I think the city of Portland started to take on this kind of snowball effect because Peter and Rob brought Adidas here and it became this duopoly, if you will, on either side of the river. Others started to come and then I can't speak about Jordan going door to door, but I can say LeBron did. I mean, lebron went from, like he said, when he was shopping himself when he was in high school or coming out. Remember, back in the day you could jump from high school to the league. He went from Nike and I think that morning and that afternoon he was at the Adidas campus. And then, of course, reebok had a big meeting with him, also in Boston. But I think there was the two-city head, because Boston's also quite a sneaker market with New Balance and Puma and Reebok there.
Speaker 4:So I've got a couple questions. So, like you know, I go back to the uh, shelltoe days, right, uh, you know, when the MC, you know the shelltoes were, um, I don't know now, but were, um, a big staple for a long time. Um, oh, hell, yeah. Yeah, you know they're kind of like I compare the shell toes to the nike um air force ones and that there's very minimal marketing spend that goes into it, like as far as like ads and big billboards, that type of shit. You don't really see that, but they're just sneakers that just sell. Stan smith's, the same. They just sell, they just sell, they sell forever. Right, what I wanted I'm leading to, what I wanted to ask you about was who's I? Well, was it your? I'm assuming you were a part of the idea.
Speaker 4:I don't know what year it started, but there was a run when Adidas did a lot of collaborations. There was a Rick Owens, there was Raf Simmons collaborations with the fashion designers, there was, you know, the Yojis, there was the White Mountaineerans, and how did that come about? I got some of those pairs here that I still wear. So I want to know whose idea was that? Even now, you have Jerry Lorenzo with Fear of Gods. You know we'll talk offline about maybe trying to get a link, but I want to know how that came about, and obviously Kanye, but uh, I want to know how that came about, and obviously kanye.
Speaker 2:yeah, I think I, I think, I think they're all very strategic intent. So, first, first part is yes, I think each of the, each of the there's only, there's only so many iconic franchises in the industry, right, and I think you mentioned a few of them from from adidas, it's, you know, it's the Shelto Superstar, it's the Stan Smith, it's the Sambas and things like that.
Speaker 4:The Gazelles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these shoes that never go away. You know they always come back. There's peaks and valleys, but they always come back. And then there's the, there's the Dunks, there's the Air Forces, there's the Jordan one, two, threes, you know, there's the. There's the dunks, there's the air forces, there's the jordan one, two, threes, you know, there's the, there's the air maxes.
Speaker 2:You know, every everybody has a certain portfolio of those franchises. I think it's, you know, and then I think that's required of industry leaders and people in the companies to build additional franchises. So one of the things I was most proud of like under my time at Adidas is, I feel like we, you know, we built on the superstar in the stand with the, with the Nomad, the NMD, with the Ultra Boost, with the Yeezy 350. I think those became icons in themselves and will last forever more, and the brand, can you know, can put them into hibernation and then bring them out and do big sales and then bring, bring them back down again.
Speaker 2:So it's all about what we call franchise management in the industry and I think when you overexpose some of those franchises is when you basically are selling too many too often, to too many places and then you almost force the collapse of that franchise and you have to put it into hibernation for a while so it can get cool again by dripping it back out again. So there's definitely a strategic go-to-market management that goes into managing each one of those franchises. And I think we all know when somebody's overplayed it, when you get an operator in there that doesn't really understand the culture of franchise management and just does too much with it, too quickly, too big, and then you get a collapse. And I think the most recent one I can talk about is vans. You know vans really went, you know, with the old school shoe to everybody. They blew that thing up. I think you could buy them at gas stations, but by the end of its run and now it's like you can't pay somebody to wear those things.
Speaker 2:So everybody has that heat and then cooling off period. So the collabs then are really critical to kind of generate that heat, if you will Like. When we started to want to bring back the Stan Smith, we went and talked to Pharrell and said okay, pharrell, you know let's have some fun with this, and he came up with a 50 colors.
Speaker 4:Oh, sorry, that was a superstar he came up with 50 colors.
Speaker 2:There's that famous picture of him sitting in the middle of like 50 colors surrounding him of the superstar and you start having some playful things. And Pharrell is such a master producer. We had him basically produce the relaunch of the superstar. And what I think I would say to the CoLab strategy is you have to take a very holistic look at your consumer and recognize that you know you are a sports company, but also understanding that you know sports is very limiting. You help people run faster, jump higher, kick stronger, but you have to also recognize that the culture of sport doesn't stop when you leave the pitch or you leave the field or the court. It goes into the hallways, into the streets, into the music venues and it lives and breathes there. And that's where I think Run DMC, you know, made it their own. Now, nobody planned that. That was just an organic thing, that these guys just really liked that silhouette and started to have some fun with it. But taking a page from that and reinterpreting that, yeah, we were very intentional about bringing Ye into the portfolio or bringing Bad Bunny into the portfolio or bringing Pharrell into the portfolio and saying, hey, let's do something and curate this and capture this culture of sport.
Speaker 2:And then the third thing that I would add to, because I think it really is important, for where I'm at today with Unless, is really looking at the world our consumer lives in.
Speaker 2:So you know, the game is one side, the life is another, but the world is also very important to our consumer. And you know what I, what we found, is is kids care about Black Lives Matter, they care about LGBTQ plus rights, they care about climate change, but they don't know how to really participate in fixing it other than carrying a sign occasionally or protesting or, you know, doing some activism. Where we thought, indeed, is why don't we? Why don't we? You know, we had this expression of our why was through sport we have the power to change lives. Well, let's let's help them change their lives in their game, their life in their world, and give them opportunity to buy into change. And so that's how we got into some more sustainability stories with Parley for the Oceans and things like that. That really started to build advocacy for the brand. But that's a lot of me talking and I'll stop.
Speaker 1:I want to get to the ocean stuff because I think that is interesting. But I want to go back to something you said about Run DMC. So that's how I feel like I first got introduced to Adidas. But Run DMC wasn't a collaboration, right? Run DMC did that on their own, and am I right in saying that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, they came out with a song, right, yeah, my Adidas, tom, that predates me by quite some time, but I think Run was absolutely, you know, picked it up on their own. They liked the silhouette, they styled it without laces, you know, they brought the tongue out, they did the whole thing. And again, this was back when, dare I say, this was an original shoe made for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to protect your toes when you're playing basketball from landing on. So there was a clear intent and engineering behind the development and design of that shoe as a basketball shoe, you know, in a pro model, in the high top, in the superstar, the low top, run DMC saw that as that's for us and we're going to do that.
Speaker 2:And they came out with my Adidas, you know, and they really started to really make some headway with that. And then they blew up and the superstar blew up as a silhouette, make some headway with that. And then they blew up and the superstar blew up as a silhouette and Adidas again was fairly, you know, not as at its peak, let's say, in America. So there was just a lot of distribution and not a lot of organization around maximizing that opportunity. They just was organically done by by run and I think Adidas tried to try to sell as much as they could, but they didn't. They didn't light the fuse, if you will.
Speaker 1:And that was yeah, you're right. I mean, that was that way was before you. I mean when you came in then, I guess in the early 2000s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was. I was appointed to the board, so I was there from 94 to 2019, but I went to Germany in 2006 after we acquired Reebok, to kind of backfill for head of brand marketing, and then I made my way into head of sport and then I was promoted to the board in 2014.
Speaker 1:So what were some of the key challenges? Right, you came in at a time where Adidas did not sit where they sit today, which I mean Adidas, in a lot of ways, sits as number two behind Nike. Maybe not anymore after this past week, who knows.
Speaker 2:But still a distant number two.
Speaker 1:Still a distant number two. But what were some of those big challenges that you had to face Because you did? I mean they are number two now, I mean a distant two, but still number two.
Speaker 2:That's over.
Speaker 1:The course of the time that you were there.
Speaker 2:When I got appointed to the board, the brand was in a crisis. There's a lot of reasons for that, but primarily the share price had cratered to lower than $50 a share from something like $220. And there was two profit warnings given within 12 months. That's never a good look. Nike just gave a profit warning. Basically profit warnings sexy word for when you, when you change your outlook what happens? They lost 20 percent in one day on their share price. So you, you, you don't please your investors when you give profit warnings, because you're basically changing your guidance and all stocks are based on future, forward, future, future facing business. So when you do that, you're basically saying we don't have confidence in our future facing business. So share price crowd cratered. We did not just one of those, we did two of them. At that point.
Speaker 2:There was so much pressure on the CEO at the time to step down. He said I'm not going to step down, but I'm going to promote the first American to the brand president role and work with him to reset the brand. So I was in Germany at the time, already for six plus years, and so I was the good American in Germany, I guess you could say, and probably the good German in America. But that's an important divide to understand. It's like it's very hard for Americans to listen to anybody as I think we can all relate and let alone be a subsidiary in America to a parent that's in Germany. And that's one of the divides I had to fix right away was the culture of being a very confident, really industry leading market but not have headquarters here. So how are we going to bridge the gap between being a German headquartered based company and really make inroads in America?
Speaker 2:And we did that, you know, through a lot of different efforts I can talk about if you like, but I think it was one of the biggest things we had was to really fix the culture of the company to get us because right now there was a lot of us and them headquarters versus the markets, headquarters versus America. You know you do this. You know there's a lot of internal dynamics going on there. You know you can only understand if you work in a bigger company or, I guess, smaller but. But ultimately I had to fix that and that was the big unlock. And then we had to write a strategy that kind of got into this how do we create the new versus? You know, just just lick our wounds from the past.
Speaker 4:I was going to ask you about that. Like working um, you know, for a German company in Germany at that time. How was the um? I don't want to say clash, but, like you said, americans tend to be like our way or the highway that we know best. You know, we know what's up and I always try to explain to people like once you get outside that border, it don't really work like that. You know, people are where they are and a lot of them are. People are happy where they are.
Speaker 4:I remember I had an old girlfriend I always go back to girlfriends, eric, because they women have taught me a lot over the years and that currently you've had a lot of them, yeah, a few anyway, anyway, um, she was, she was, uh, at that point had not. Now she's like a world traveler, but at that point she hadn't really traveled and I had come back from london and she was like I was london. I was like I was really interested, because when you talk to people in london, you know they may ask you where you're from, right, because they could hear the way I speak. But they're like okay, cool, but I'm from London. We got our own shit here and it's popping. We're not trying to be New York or whatever.
Speaker 4:She couldn't understand that at the time. She said well, if I ever go to London I'm going to let a motherfucker know I'm from New York. I was like it doesn't really work like that of the motherfucker. Now I'm from New York. I was like it doesn't really work like that. So I'm leaving all that back to you, coming from the States and saying like you know, I'm from the States but you have to kind of adjust to their corporate culture, I suspect. In a way you can't come in and be like pick, you know bull in a china shop. How did you do that? How did you adjust the german coconut? They're very stiff and they're very on point and correct. How did you do that?
Speaker 2:wow, that's. That's very insightful. I appreciate the question. Uh, listen, thank you. I'm very, I'm very curious and I'm very curious about internet.
Speaker 2:You know, from a different culture standpoint and I knowing I grew up like I. I started working for adidas in 1994, so I, you know I was there for a long time beforehand, so I'd spent 13 years already in the States working this relationship. So I knew the pressure points, if you will, and but I also knew that you know, my parents taught me to never burn your bridges and respect everyone, no matter what and who they are. And so with that kind of mentality, I would lean in, like a lot of people would go to meetings, like in Germany, like the Americans, all the markets would fly in to get the new season's products and get a kickoff and people would fly in. The meeting would be on Tuesday, they'd get it on Monday, they'd be out first thing on Wednesday and I'd be like no, I'd stay till Friday. Because I believe you know you only build relationships at the water cooler, right, you don't build the relationship when you're sitting in the back of a meeting listening to a PowerPoint or getting some product handed to you and shaking hands and getting out of there. You break bread with your brethren, you drink with your brethren, you go to the beer gardens with them. You understand their view of the world and you try to put yourself in their shoes. So I can imagine why they'd be frustrated with american mentality, saying, well, this show's not right, this toe down is not right, these colors aren't right, I can't do anything. You can imagine the criticisms that would come, because when you make something, when you create something, you're trying to create something for the world. When you're in a global position, you're trying to please the japanese, the american, the, the Australian, the German consumer, the French consumer, and they all have a strong point of view on what's right for their market. You know and this is where, like the Nikes have mastered this class, and you know it's like they control everything in headquarters and then they send it out.
Speaker 2:Germany Adidas was always like, hey, we're always the powers in the markets, so the markets would come to headquarters and just this is what we need. And so I would go to headquarters and be like hey, I want you to understand our consumers. So I'd spend a lot of time presenting to them consumer insight, information and where our consumers are going and what our retailers are saying, and so they could incorporate that into their design process. What our retailers are saying, and so they could incorporate that into their design process. So one time I think I flew over there 14 times in one year because you gotta, you gotta make a bit, and that's from the West coast, right, and that's before, like a lot of West coast flights. So I was going through Cincinnati and then I was getting back up in the plane and it's like you know, this wasn't like laid on flights, this was like middle, middle row coach.
Speaker 2:But I was young and I was, I was, I was, I was ambitious and it was. But it was that time all of a sudden set me up to be part of their team. They saw me, like I said, as the good american in germany, and the good german american that time got me the invitation to go over and join the management team. When that, when those opportunities arose after we bought um, after we bought reebok, that gave me a lot of credibility with the team there. That paid dividends for the next 10 years of my career, really, when I lived there, because they remembered that I was that guy that asked questions and didn't pound the table, and I think I'd say the same thing to tourists coming over.
Speaker 2:It's like everyone knows the American tourists. We can see them a mile away because they're the loud ones that don't really care about the cultural etiquettes of a certain place you're in or where you're at. It's like you know Americans have. I love America, right, I'm a proud American, I'm as American as you get and I always want to move home. But you know, having spent 13 years in Europe, you can see some of the some of the warts on Americans well, as they come over and just take over. You know X, y and Z plazas during the summer. So it's like it's, it is what it is. I mean, I think you have to look at that both from a cultural insight but also from a business insight.
Speaker 4:Mick, Mick, what you got to say.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean in terms of you know all walks of life all across the world. Who makes these types of decisions?
Speaker 2:So the people at headquarters are responsible for creating product and stories and marketing campaigns for the world. It's how you utilize that. So there's a couple of things I think you're getting at. So one is when I came in to try to create this. Try to create instead of having us versus them and us I basically came in and said, from a culture standpoint, we have to recognize who does what really well. And Americans design exceptionally well and they tell great stories. Okay, we're going to go out and hire an American creative director, we're going to hire an American head of digital and we're going to have an American head of brand marketing for the world. In fact, I leaned into that so much I started calling Portland our co. -headquarters.
Speaker 2:That didn't go over so well with some of the other board members, but it was important for me to send that statement that Germany was going to be the ancestral headquarters and the headquarters that was going to run financials, engineering, innovations the things that the Germans do really well. You don't want to mess with the Germans when it comes to operational excellence and innovation and engineering. You don't want to mess with Americans when it comes to storytelling and design. So could I harness both and make it an us world that would come together, and that's what we did, by putting strategic responsibilities in both Portland, Oregon, and in Herzogenark, Germany, which is the headquarters of Adidas, and so that relationship worked really well and it gave everybody a role Within that. Then those creative processes you've got general managers that run different businesses. Those people are empowered to win the consumer for originals, which is where superstars and Sambas and like all the OG Adidas product works in, as well as some new stuff like Nomad and things like that, or running or basketball or football or whatever. So those people are empowered and enabled to win their consumer. And if they think winning that consumer would be doing more with Rick Owens or doing more with Bad Bunny or doing more with Jerry Lorenzo, then they've got the remit to do it. If it works, they're heroes, and if it doesn't, then we might have to look at a change out of personnel. But we try to lower escalation levels. So those people are empowered to win those consumers and do it in a real-time venue and that allows people to move fast.
Speaker 2:I'm speaking in present. I'm no longer there. It's been four years. So Jerry came in after I left. So it's been four years. So jerry. Jerry came in after I left, so it's like I gotta say like I'm telling you how it was set up.
Speaker 4:When I was there, I got one more uh question on on your past. Then we're gonna move forward because I want to beat you up forever on that. Well, we're gonna, I guess too, because I'm going to talk about yeezy in a second. Of course, but I never understood why adidas didn't. It didn't feel like you ever really pushed the sweatsuit, like the sweatsuits were so popular in urban communities.
Speaker 1:They were popular.
Speaker 4:Still popular, yeah yeah, in urban communities. You know the three stripes on the sleeves and the three on the side of the legs, you know. And multicolors, right, I saw leather ones out sometime. I was like why don't they ever really like turn up on that apparel side for that? Well, maybe I missed it, maybe you guys are doing it and I didn't realize it.
Speaker 2:I think there's some cultural insights we left on the floor. I think we didn't get to maximize everything. I think the track suit you're talking about, I would call it the A-15. I think that's the German name. I think they call them the Firebirds in the States. But yeah, the synced up.
Speaker 2:I think I'm really looking for that to pop actually this year because, coming out of all these, the Euros going on, the Copa America is going on, you've got a lot of stripes on the pitch, you've got the Olympics coming up, there's going to be a lot of stripes. So so to me it's usually a good time and you've been, you've been killing, they've been killing it with the terrace collection, with the sambas, the gazelles, the, the specials and those things, so all very traditional three stripes. That would lend itself very nicely to bringing those, those track suits back, like back in the day we had the, you know, the, the tearaways with the buttons and everything. That was just just super, super beautiful. But but I do believe, like this is where I think your culture's never done right.
Speaker 2:So I think, listen, headquarters in germany um, they ran originals, which is where those tracksuits come from, right, the insights coming from america, who were, and I know some of the guys anthony homes. I'll tell you his name. He's a, he's a, he's a genius. I love the guy. He's been in the brand for 30 plus years. His son's actually working with us at a less Anthony Holmes jr. But he would always be like, eric, we need those damn track suits.
Speaker 2:And I was like yeah, the guys, the guys, and of course, they would or would not listen. And so it requires a a a, a a, a listening reaction as well, because I think the the interpretation of those suits in Europe is vastly different than interpretation of those in more urban areas in America. And I, I, I think, like I said, we left some of those opportunities on the floor. Probably we left some footwear opportunities on the floor too, if I'm being reflective. But for, but for the most part, I'm happy with the growth we had when I was there. We grew $8 billion in six years, so you, can't do everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you did well, you killed that. He did okay, jeffrey, he did okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, no, I never was trying to insinuate it. I mean come on now, I was never trying to insinuate, it didn't do well, they murdered. It was. You know what it is. It's just that living in an urban area, like you know mickey's from the bronx, I lived in harlem for eons, right, so you see things when you're in that in those neighborhoods, you just see them like it's like yo for a while. Girls are wearing tennis skirts. That's a fashion thing. You just see that. Oh shit.
Speaker 4:Tennis skirts are popping now you know so, and it's always like I wonder if the people, the powers that be, see that stuff, because I'm seeing it like actually seeing that every day. You're always a person as, as it is, assigned to go to south side chicago and harlem and east oakland or wherever you know the people be, or you know south side atlanta and see what's going on. I don't, I don't know. I mean, you're talking to me and mickey like real, real, real sneakerheads, right, so we're really part of the culture. So I'm just getting the I'm like a kid here because I'm just getting the chance to ask a dude who killed it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, listen, all these questions I've had for, like, 30 years, you're nailing it right on the nose If you don't have a humility in a global organization to and a desire to listen and be curious to these insights, because those insights come up right. We have adidas, has, has, has ears and eyes everywhere, right. So we're in those areas, whether it be south chicago or harlem or the bronx or or you name it we've. We even set up a um I I set up the, the a creative, a crater lab in. We call it the crater farm in Brooklyn because, exactly what you're saying, we wanted to have designers. I recruited those three. There's three really big time designers out of Nike. We recruited across it was in the press, if you're following the industry. We set them up in Brooklyn to set up a crater farm where we would bring in global people from Shanghai, from Germany, from Portland, to listen and learn to the culture that was going on and bring those insights back into the mothership, if you will, to influence design and R&D. So we were acutely aware of the need to get into the communities and listen and understand and be on top of trends that were coming, if not setting trends ourselves.
Speaker 2:So, but again, I think what you need to really as a management because, of course, I wasn't in those. I didn't have the time or ability or bandwidth to listen to all that. Those insights are coming on, but I expected our guys to. My job was to make sure that people were listening and talking and working together on those insights to bring them to life. And a lot of times those things would work and a lot of times they would fall down and we wouldn't get that across like we should. Like I said, we had more wins than we had losses in that time period. But I think you can always point to a time and place when the management has stopped listening or stopped really building a culture of listening and working together. And I think that's what you see and I can go down the line and tell you companies that are listening really well right now, those that are not, and it really usually comes from the top.
Speaker 1:So before we dive into Unless which I want to dive, I have so many questions there. Yes, let's go back to the collaborations. I mean, what were some of the favorite ones you had? I mean clearly.
Speaker 4:We got sneakers here, Eric.
Speaker 1:Guys in the hip-hop space, we got to talk about Kanye.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we got joints here.
Speaker 1:Eric. There, you go there you go.
Speaker 4:Let's start with Kanye.
Speaker 2:I mean I think I can't even keep up with you guys. I made sure we had the right people working on those things. So I can try to keep up with you guys. But listen, the one I was most heavily involved in was Kanye, because Yeezy was such a was such lightning in a bottle. I mean he came across. I did not sign him. He was signed by a predecessor of mine named Herman Dininger to the brand it was.
Speaker 2:When he left Nike. I can't really speak to why he left Nike. I can only say I inherited him as part of the job and we just got along, we worked well together. There was a mutual respect that was there. And you know I just wanted to kind of feed him because I saw that he was this creative genius. And so you know, I just wanted to kind of feed him because I saw that he was this creative genius.
Speaker 2:And so you know, we did things like build, build a sample lab in Calabasas for him.
Speaker 2:So you know, right next to his right next to his music lab, so his music studio, so he could go back and forth between, you know, making new music and also going then in looking at new samples, and so it was this really reciprocal thing that we could also.
Speaker 2:Then I could go in there and just sit with him for half a day and watch him create, and I think that was one of the most inspiring things I would do, because I could see that he was never really finished with a project, whether it be a song or whether it be a shoe. He always was tinkering and always was building on, which is why it was important for him not to have to fly to China every month to make stuff, but to have actually a real live sample room there. And that sample room was expensive right. As far as I'm aware, it was the only time a brand's ever done that for an artist to say hey, we appreciate and respect and view and support you so much that we're going to put your own sample room together, asian level factory sample room staffed with 25 people that can make product everything from uppers to toolings to everything else, make you finish samples on site so you can see and iterate before we go to Asia for final production.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute, you're telling me. So there was 25 people in this, this facility. You put up for him at all times that he was walking into and like how, how active was he? Was he going over there telling them I want this with this? Or what was that process like?
Speaker 2:You, you, you. You know a little bit about Kanye, right, so right. So I mean I wasn't managing him on the ground, but I can tell you that he was. We had a minimum of 25 people on the ground in calabasas between between the easy team, between the adidas teams, from designers to developments to sample room people, to yes for sure, wow, that's, that's verbatim. And then the other one would be yeah, he would, he would be very hands-on. If he didn't like like a toe spring or he didn't like the toe down, or he didn't like the line, the grade coming down, I mean he would get samples to see because it was better for him to iterate on, but those samples to create were very hard to do, so he wouldn't just. You know, we would go drawings and then we'd do 3D and then you'd go to sample, and we wanted to make sure that was as convenient for him.
Speaker 3:Wow. Well, you know, listen, I'm a Yoji guy. I'm going to just say it right now. I'm a Yoji guy and I think the and I think this is probably going to be like the last question we have with Adidas before we move on to what you're doing now Do you feel like the Japanese culture in terms of fashion was so ahead of the curve? Was it a culture shock for Adidas in that perspective? I have on this Yoji shirt right now. This is not the shirt. The actual shirt is this, but there's a covering over it that's actually there. This is not something that you typically would see in an American retail store. So how did you guys navigate, like these kind of budgets and cut and sews with a Yoji Yamamoto?
Speaker 2:I think, listen, I think, first of all, I think this is kind of Adidas' secret power, if you will. I mean, I think they they're very understated and I think that attracts people like Yoji to the brand. I mean, it's like Adidas has always been up, you know, we, we, we walk the talk, we say what we mean, we mean what we say, but it's not chest thumping and cowbell ringing and some of the things that some of the competitors might do. So to me, it's, it's, it's. It may not always be the strongest way to go out, but it is, it is, it is a very pure Adidas.
Speaker 2:You know craftsmanship, cobbler, you know trade, and so when Yoji's, you know, and this is, this is the brilliance of my predecessor, again Herman Dininger, predecessor, again Herman Deininger he saw an opportunity to bridge and to connect, and this is back in the I want to say the mid nineties. He thought why don't we take sport, the best in sport, and combine it with the highest in fashion? What would that look like? And that was the birth of Y3. So Y3 is basically Yoji Yamamoto's name in the three stripes Y3, coming together. And that was eons before its time. Right, there's no other collab that was even around at that time. That was just the brilliance of Yoji and the brilliance of this gentleman named Herman Deininger God rest his soul. He's since left us, but that's on a scale I can't even imagine being able to put together, right, cause that just brings in two things and with that then then they build on that with Stella McCartney and some other things that came along.
Speaker 2:But but really, what I think, what I think they saw in Yoji, was a similar, a similar craft, like like we at Adidas were crafting the best in performance footwear Right. It was like we footwear right. It was like we have this place and it's called scheinfeld, which is a local factory it's still in germany where they hand make every football boot forever, soccer boot forever for players. The players would come in, get their shoes lasted and it would be made in custom. And isn't that what yoji was doing from a tailoring standpoint and a craftsmanship standpoint?
Speaker 2:And isn't that what was so brilliant about japanese craftsmanship and tailoring? If you've been to Japan, which I'm sure you have, the craftsmanship there is unprecedented and the athletic stuff is unprecedented. So to bring those two together was just a match made in heaven, and it's been something that I've been like sometimes critical of because it doesn't move fast enough. And then I always remind myself that this isn't about moving fast, this is about the pace of still, but almost a slow, thoughtful fashion. So I think that marriage has always worked well in that regard. Some other ones maybe not, but I just want to say pay tribute to the master tailor that Yoji is and you know, and the things that he's taught me personally, obviously.
Speaker 1:As your career obviously progressed I mean, at least from what I've read about you there was a pivotal moment there right when you went from collaborations with cultural people, athletes, all of that really into this ocean conservation or more mission oriented, I guess, direction right and that kind of started at Adidas but obviously led you to where you are today with Unless. Where did that moment happen and where was that pivot from a giant shoe company to, I think, something you're doing now which is pretty amazing in that you're taking a stance in a little bit of a way and you're going to make a change? And how did that happen and what got you so involved in that ocean conservation mission which ultimately led you to UNLESS? I?
Speaker 2:think. I think there's a couple points in that journey. I mean one is so we had a strategy, you know, we had a strategy that through sport we had the power to change lives and we did that through our consumers game, through their life and through their world. And Parley for the Oceans was the piece on the world, like Kanye was the piece, the biggest piece on the life, right. So if you have like messy Kanye, you have Parley Right. And that was the biggest kind of unlock for the world was saying, hey, hey, we can make stuff out of recovered ocean plastic and make it beautiful and do the collab with kith or do a, do a um, do a performance running shoe with the ultra boost and make this out of like recovered ocean plastic. Well, who doesn't love that? Right? And that that started like a whole nother channel of product that we could create against. But also it started a journey for me and the company of like wait a minute, what is the footprint we're leaving behind? As an industry, you start to have to open your eyes to a weight.
Speaker 2:Sports is basically fast fashion because you're always trying to sell that next jersey or that next shirt. It's 70% made of polyester, which is a petroleum derivative which is, you know, basically not good for the world. It's a forever material that never really goes away, just breaks down. And so when you start to hear and see these things, and then the degradation of the ocean, you can't unhear and unsee those things right, as an individual, as a father, as a leader, you're like, oh, this isn't great. So we did what we could at Adidas and we picked the fight with plastic. We got rid of plastic bottles in our campuses, we got rid of plastic bags in our stores, we got rid of plastic beads in our beauty care product, we committed to getting off of virgin polyester by 2024 and replacing it all with recycled polyester, which is a massive undertaking. And we did all those things and we continued to build the brand and had some fun. But at the same time you know I was I was whispering myself to sleep, saying I was doing good, but I was still participating in it. So at a certain point you're like, ok, I've had enough, I've done what I can.
Speaker 2:Here at Adidas, I've been at the position of the board and the president of the brand for six years. We completed the turnaround. The share price started at 50. I think when I left it was a 319.
Speaker 2:So I feel like I checked the box and it was time for me to turn the keys over to someone else, but at the same time, I had this burning desire to say what if I went outside and try to make something not with plastic at all, not with petroleum based product at all, what if I tried to pilot a regenerative brand that was made only of plants and minerals?
Speaker 2:And could I do what I did at Adidas for the industry and cause a move towards regenerative materials and be like the Tesla of fashion, if you will? And that was something that started to get in my head, and you know I was. I was foolish enough, stupid enough, cocky enough, arrogant enough to think I could do it, so raise some money and got to work. Unfortunately, you know, I was right in the middle of covid and all sorts of challenges there, but I'm happy to say that we're alive and kicking and having a lot of fun, and we've made everything from shoes to socks, to wovens, to knits, to hats, and now we're you're starting to partner with other brands to kind of scale our audience and our distribution, and I'm firmly believing this is the next thing that's going to happen from a material revolution in the space.
Speaker 1:And I am kind of amazed by the name, right, because I read an article in the Bloomsburg. I think it was back in 2023. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but the name is really comes from the Dr Seuss's, uh, the Lorax right. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not, and I I kinda I don't know that. To me that that was kind of an interesting way to go. Um, cause, at first I was like I'm less so.
Speaker 2:We launched this, this brand, this idea, and then, you know, I was sitting at my house reading my 10 year old daughter at times she was seven and I was reading to her the Lorax by Dr Seuss. And at the end of the book, just like you said, hey, there's this, there's this one slur, the guy who, like, basically destroyed the environment, cut down all the trees, killed all the birds, killed the, killed the fish, and he's now sitting in his now defunct factory, you know, basically ruminating on how he's destroyed everything he loved. And his little boy comes up and he starts to hear the story and the onesler, the bad guy, says now the words of the Lorax seem perfectly clear Unless someone like you comes along and cares a lot, cares a whole awful lot, nothing will get better. It simply will not. So seed, it's the last of the seeds of the truffle of trees, because truffle of trees are what everyone needs.
Speaker 2:So, um, so that's, uh, as you can tell, I've, I've fallen in love with that. But yeah, and then I said, oh, wow, that's a great name. Let's, um, let's go see if we can trademark that. And we did so, we, we owed it. And uh, we're, we we're plugging away, got a cool little logo you can see, right behind me, like you know, with the little um interpretive view and uh yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 4:I got. I got a question, but first of all, congratulations. I saw you uh, I forget the name of it now, I'm blanking but you won a huge award.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, Green Cup awards last year.
Speaker 4:Thank you, yeah, so congratulations to that, because that's incredible. I saw the people that were there at that ceremony and that's a big-ass deal because there were some power hitters in there. But what caught me about it unless is, how are you? Because it's still new, so I'm not going to say did like it's done already already. But the first thing I thought was okay, this is dope, because you know you wear it and then it kind of decomposes and it, you know, it goes back to the, to the essence, you know, to the earth, you know.
Speaker 4:But in fashion, like I got this shirt on right, future, right, this is supposed, it's supposed to be an old kind of uh, concert merch, you know. So in fashion, like old is old becomes new, you know you hold on some shit so long it flips. It's like, oh, you got the, you know this, the, the adidas on, or the weather, and it become new, the jordan, re, you know reissues and all it becomes new again. But your, your clothing, obviously will not become new again because it decomposes. So how are you going to convince people to buy it? I know it's to help and save the environment, which is priority number one and key with climate change and everything that's going on, but how do you convince them to spend your money on this? But once it's gone, it's gone.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, our product will last as long, if not longer, than any of the product you're referring to, because ultimately you have to understand. Natural cellulose fibers, coming from cotton or coming from hemp or coming from you know, you name it Bamboo, are just as strong, if not more strong, and it's all about how it puts together than anything. Polyester. What's polyester? What polyester has done for us in that shirt, I'm guessing, is a blended cotton poly, probably maybe lycra, it's probably a tri-blend, which is mixtures, which is not recoverable. All those other materials, they're just cheap materials. That just gives you an opportunity to lower the price. Our materials are the highest quality you can get and will wear for as long, if not longer, than anything else you have in your closet.
Speaker 2:Think about your stuff you may have inherited from your older siblings or your parents. Those are natural materials. Those are made from wool, they're made from leather, they're made from cotton, they're made from hemp, and those things were made to last forever and be handed down. We're going back to that. We're going back to that old Rawlings shirt, that old Champion shirt, some of those more traditional crews that you had back in the day. We're giving it a more contemporary fit. We're paying attention to all the little details like stretching stuff and making sure there's no poly at all thread count.
Speaker 2:So there's no toxins you're inhaling which, by the way, everything you wear from a polyester standpoint is leaching microfibers, nanofibers, into the air you breathe and and sooner or later it's entering your lungs, unfortunately, and causing some you know some pretty negative side effects. So it's about just like you're cautious of what you drive and what you eat, you should be very conscious of what you wear as well. We just need to be more conscious human beings. But our quality will be better than better than 95 of the other products out there. It will not go away until you want it to go away.
Speaker 2:What we're trying to solve for is, when you get rid of that future shirt, what do you do with it? You put it in the trash. That trash then goes to a land, land, a landfill, that landfill. Then it breaks down slowly into micro nanoparticles that don't go away. They bleed out of that landfill into the soil and surrounding water. That then enters the food we eat, the air we drink, or the air we breathe, or the water we drink, soil that you can grow your tomato plants out of, you can grow your apple trees out of, you can let your kids know that nothing negative is coming into their body, because it all comes from plants and minerals, to go back to being plants and minerals only when you want it to.
Speaker 2:It's just a question of what happens at the end of life, and I think there's not enough companies that take responsibility for what happens to their product when it's done. What happens to this when it's done? What happens when you trade your iPhone in for the next generation? None of us can tell you Exactly. It just leeches into the environment. What happens to that shirt you're wearing? Nobody can tell you. You give it away, but that just means it's away from you. It doesn't go away from the earth. Earth it comes back to us in some sort of circular way. So when I got exposed to this through my education at adidas over a number of years, it's like the only answer is to go natural, and that's the way we lower our carbon footprint. Of course that's important, but also lower the toxins that are entering our bodies.
Speaker 1:That was a good, good answer. That is a good answer. I mean, what's the future here? How does this movement grow? How do you what? What has to happen to get this thing to grow, and what's the future?
Speaker 2:of sustainable fashion. I'm glad you asked, Tom, I'm glad you, we, we've got that. So step one is build the pioneering lighthouse brand, which is unless okay, we built that right. So so we built everything. We even did a shoe. Try and make a shoe without a piece of plastic. Try and make a shoe without glues, without polyurethane foams, without plastic or leather at all. I mean, this is an inflection point for the industry. We did it two years ago. Now we're doing better ones.
Speaker 1:And that's the degenerate sneaker right.
Speaker 2:That's the degenerate. We've done a sock. Yeah, try and do sock without plastic stretch. When you stretch something whether it be, you know, your Lululemon, your aloe, whatever it may be anytime you stretch something, you're stretching melted plastic. Right, that's what it is Not from us. We do a mechanical stretch with natural rubber latex. It comes from a natural rubber latex tree that grows in the Philippines. So every little detail has been nuanced. So we've now built that pioneering brand, that lighthouse brand, if you will.
Speaker 2:It was very important for us to model that out, because you model out what we call regenerative creation model, like not only what materials to use, how to put them together, where to put them together, how to finish them with prints and dyes and different things that aren't full of plastisol and toxins, and then how to deliver it, how to collect it, how to put it back safely into the ground. Right, that's what we call our model. Now we take that model and we knock on Nike's door, we knock on Under Armour's door, we knock on Adidas' door and we say guys, we're here to collaborate, just like I did when I was once upon a time with Parley. We're here to help you build consumer advocacy, because every consumer wants something that's better, right, but also build a movement that changes the industry from one that's producing things out of 100% or 70% plastics and polys to one that's building things out of plants and goodness. So build the model of the brand unless, show the consumers want to buy it, which they are.
Speaker 2:Collaborate with partners in whether it be H&M, uniqlo, nike, under Armour, it doesn't really matter. Collaborate with everybody and ultimately certify for compostability, because you build up a trusted name called unless, that now consumers are trusting. So if I, if so, if they see, unless on the neck label of whatever brand it is, call it y3, they're going to know hey, this y3 shirt's made a better way and it's going to go harmlessly back to ground whenever we're done with it, whether I put that in my front yard, whether I put that in my, in my, in my compost file, or whether I send it back to unless to get a discount on the next thing you know it's like. So we're trying to make this circuitous thing that is as good as any easy Supreme palace product, that doesn't make you compromise your taste for your values, but gives you that underwriting values that can uh, that can help systemically change the change the fashion industry.
Speaker 1:I love it. So let me ask you the question that we ask every guest who comes on here yeah, To take this to that next step. You talked about collaborations, you talked about partnerships. Who is the brand or the person, if you could wave your wand, that steps in and is the first big partnership for Unless.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's no secret that Kanye and I have talked about this. If you've seen a certain video, I mean he was in the early days. He wanted to buy, unless right out of the gates, and apply all this learning to Yeezy. Unfortunately, you know, kanye decided to go a different way than we did. I mean, I won't really comment on that, but you know, we all know what's happened with Yeezy in the past couple of years. I won't really comment on that, but we all know what's happened with Ye in the past couple of years, I think.
Speaker 2:So now it's a question of looking for the right visions, people that share the vision. I mean, the thing I liked about Ye is he shared my vision. He shared my vision for a regenerative future and he gets that 100%. We just didn't agree on other things the way we see the world. So I would say that I'm looking for other visionary leaders and right now the industry is in kind of turmoil. You know from the sports industry, like there's a lot of we talked about it off air earlier about, you know, some of the results that are being put up by some of the big ones the biggest one are not great and so they've got other things to deal with. So I'm looking for, you know that, that midsize visionary that wants to, that wants to change the world and create the change we need to see. And I think, uh, I think there's a few of them that I've been speaking to that I'm I'm very bullish on, but nothing to disclose today. But watch this space Fair enough.
Speaker 1:Well, man, we could talk to you, I think, for another two to three hours, but we're coming up on an hour here. I just wanted to say thank you. I'm excited about what you're doing. I think that you're in a market that, as a brand guy, I see. So many clients come to us and they're trying to figure this out. This is the right path forward. How do we do something? How do we make the environment a better place when we leave? And so I'm excited about the growth of where you're heading. I want to get my hands on a degenerate sneaker. I want to check this thing out. Is it for real? Am I going to be able to run two miles in it?
Speaker 2:We'll see they're not only in stock I would give you and your listeners well, I can send some freebies to you guys because you're being so kind to me today and you put up with my Wi-Fi last time but let's give your listeners 20% off. I can send you a code so when you go live you can listen on it if you like.
Speaker 4:Look at that Wow.
Speaker 2:Look at that I love it.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love it.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, man. It's been great to tell the story and I'd love to talk to you guys some more, so let's keep the channels open, but thanks for having me. It's been an honor to meet y'all and let's keep it going.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I love it. Folks, that is Eric Ledeke who is changing the world of fashion, and we're going to ride right along with you. I love it, unless, let's get it done.
Speaker 2:Thanks fellas.
Speaker 1:As we discovered today, all products at Unless, from the buttons to the labels, are entirely plant-based and designed to leave zero plastic waste. Check out the degenerate and much more. Shop now at unlesscollectivecom and take 20% off by entering the code UNGLOSSY at checkout. All right folks, that's our show. All right folks, that's our show. Tune in to Unglossy, the coding brand and culture, on Apple Podcasts, spotify or YouTube and follow us on Instagram at UnglossyPod, to join the conversation. Until next time, I'm Tom Frank.
Speaker 4:I'm Jeffrey.
Speaker 3:Sledge.
Speaker 4:Smicky.
Speaker 1:That was good.
