 I've always found that the biggest reason why no one does this is because it takes a certain level of crazy and a certain level of consistency that many people don't have and if you're crazy enough to keep on waking up every day to put something out there that no one cares about and eventually they could care about yeah then you're good go for it make a brand but if you're so hurt by the fact that someone's not gonna care about your thing or that ten other people are gonna get way more shine than you because they figured out some cheat code or thing you know all good I just think that many people are so afraid to fail so afraid of what people are gonna judge in them that they are so afraid to even put something out there that they created for someone to judge this is starved storefront the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth today's guest is Michael chairman founder of the clothing brand market do you remember the trends that would ignite and spread like wildfire throughout your high school you'd be walking down the halls and see everyone else wearing some new accessory some new item you had no idea where it came from all you knew is that you had to be in on the fad well Mike was the kid behind one of those high school fads he created a shirt so popular that he got expelled for selling it on school grounds if he wasn't voted most likely to succeed in his high school yearbook it was a missed opportunity to predict the future his career has taken him in many different directions and it's a credit to his savvy and flexibility and he's been able to navigate the cutthroat world of fashion with such success so listen in as we cover everything from how he ended up designing one-off jackets for the likes of Lebron and Kanye what he's trying to personally solve for in creating a brand and the inspiration behind creating a $30,000 Swarovski basketball now back to the episode welcome to the podcast on today's show we're talking to Mike founder of market yes sir thanks so much for joining for people who don't know tell everyone a little bit about what market is yeah so you know market is a brand based out of here Los Angeles I started in November 2016 originally started off at complex con a flea market I showed up with five t-shirts five hats one of the shirts was a shirt that said Frank Ocean with the Nike swoosh at the time when he came out with that album that had the song Nikes on it it was kind of an amalgamation of all these things that was happening in pop culture smashing it together you get something special the next day after complex con I put a website called swoosh Frank Ocean calm it did $50,000 in sales the next day and I woke up to my phone just like vibrating and I was like oh it's all the chargers broken and no it's like my Shopify just going crazy so six hours later that day after I was like I'm moving out of my friend's second bedroom I'm you know all this I'm good I'm gonna get a car I was like I had just moved to LA after a failed brand venture living my friend's second bedroom I didn't really know what I was doing and when that all went down I was just like oh crap moving out everything's all good six hours later got the trademark and Benjamin from Frank's team had to give all the money back but obviously I yeah I knew why yeah and it was just a moment of me of reflection to be like I could just do this legally and take things in pop culture smashing together move quick at the speed of the internet I could have something pretty special so in reality it was a more of a learning moment for me to be like oh no I just got to re-approach this differently I cannot have this be something that you know I treat like my traditional fashion brand in the past where for seasons classic trade shows the whole thing this was all built on the idea that I knew how to go from concept to final creation I didn't need anyone else to help me get there I worked in a place called the Nike Bowery Stadium which was and I know I'm just riffing off into left field right now but I got started in the whole industry by you know landing a job at the Nike Bowery Stadium which was essentially a creator space in downtown New York that gave me and like 12 other kids access to an entire basement of machines to basically deconstruct jackets and make custom one-on-ones for their entertainment marketing business you know and maybe like Jeff Hamilton but LeBron James come in sits down with us we designed him a jacket Carmelo Anthony Kanye West back when he was a Nike all those kind of things I'd sit at a table with him one other illustrator we would design the jacket within five minutes and I would basically then show you your jacket designed like you'd be like I want to drag and dunking a basketball and I would literally make you a drag and dunking a basketball on the back of a jacket within five minutes designed on my computer I would show it to you and then we'd spend the next two weeks downstairs making it you know and so that whole experience is what actually led me to where I am today because working there is what I afforded me the ability to buy some of the machines at a fraction of the cost because the agency running that Nike space was like we have all these machines we're gonna go into storage you guys want them I bought a heat press and a vinyl cutter and that's how I started my first brand literally cutting reflective polka dots putting them on the socks making it so that I could keep myself safe while I was riding my bike at night it's more than I want to have you on is because my world was tech now it's real like development and I've always just been amazed at how brands are created and to me it just feels like so foreign like I have no idea how it goes next thing I know I'm on your gram and LeBron's got something you're wearing Jay Balvin posted a video yeah with one of your shirts dancing it's just dancing yeah and it's like you're not even tagged the brand's not even tagged and I'm just like how does that happen yeah you know and it's something that like I have no idea about and I think our listeners are probably in the same boat not to give away all your secrets but no but it's the same mindset and thinking like I would look at a building that has been distressed and disheveled and I'd be like how the hell is this gonna become a real business how is this gonna become whatever you see it being you know I mean and so I've always found that the biggest reason why no one does this is because it takes a certain level of crazy and a certain level of consistency that many people don't have and if you're crazy enough to keep on waking up every day to put something out there that no one cares about and eventually they could care about yeah then you're good go for it make a brand but if you're so hurt by the fact that someone's not gonna care about your thing or that ten other people are gonna get way more shine than you because they figured out some cheat code or thing you know all good I just think that many people are so afraid to fail so afraid of what people are you gonna judge in them that they are so afraid to even put something out there that they created for someone to judge because fashion is the most judgeable thing ever because it's something that you wear to represent yourself when you think about yourself you think about yourself like so when you mentioned culture basically you're like putting culture out there on your brands on your clothing when you say culture I guess like like you're there's a lot of broad like when you said like Frank Ocean and Nike as an example like two things that were at the time I've sat down with a lot of street artists that's exactly how they view their their art yeah do you view it the same way it's like a commentary in a sense you know like I think for me at first it was like when we approach things like taking a Nike swoosh and putting it on to a Converse Chuck you know and then the Braun wore it before the NBA finals and then literally I made a fake thing that I posted on my Instagram that said the NBA has fined you know the brand for essentially tampering with players and if you really read the art like the letter I posted on Instagram it was all misspelled and disheveled and fake but like no one knew high somebody hype you posted it kids made it go fund me and they were trying to like support the brand out of this crazy moment like we were getting fined by the NBA but it's all about the I like to say this a lot the simulation of the streetwear brand it's the idea that you can bring kids into our universe and make them feel like they're just a friend hanging out every day instead of it being this like bullshit thing of like line up buy a t-shirt go online cop the shirt wear it your friends know you're wearing supreme cool where's the actual engagement in that where kids actually having a real community outside of maybe the kids who are reselling supreme and making a business out of it that's a community I don't think the community really is rooted in like skateboarding anymore or any of those things yeah you get to watch kids skateboard but supreme isn't giving you a platform for you to go also be a part of that they're not and so I recognize that now think about platforms like Facebook Instagram all that shit they've given you a place for you to be you and I'm trying to do that with in clothing well I don't think you were the first person to ever have some spelling errors on the internet definitely not you know people didn't get that it can be forgiven yes for sure one one thing I wanted to ask you about though is when you were designing these jackets for LeBron or let's say like even going forward to J Balvin dancing in a grocery store in your jacket is the idea to then have these superstars wear the apparel and turn that into a product line that you sell or is it just to create awareness of the brand as a whole and say look what we're doing it's a natural fluidity you know the idea that I can just go call the brawn and wear a shirt it doesn't exist you know it's special moments that come together within pop culture for those things to work so for instance with LeBron is a great example we did our crocs collaboration and we did our grateful dead and we fuse it together I did a shoe we did a whole apparel collection of these mountain climbing bears taken off the grateful dead thing the whole shoe had the mountain climbing bears climbing all over the shoe was all tie-dye it was a perfect amalgamation of all the things that were popular within pop culture at that moment and LeBron wanted it he called his friend his friend called me I got the product LeBron within 24 hours LeBron wearing it in the bubble riding a bike you know and got shot by paparazzi just like big dude on a little bike fucking riding you know that shit and then walking into the tunnel like wearing it right I couldn't pay for that I couldn't pay for it if I tried I couldn't like convince someone to do it for me he has to decide to do it you know how much do you spend on these design like how much time do you spend is it a team do you guys sit down yeah through certain things or is it as simple as like it just comes to you and you riff grateful dead was a good example of that happened right in the beginning of pandemic I was locked in my house like locked in you know I basically hired this dude deadhead he was the authority of all things you know dead amethylia like you know I hired five of the top designers across the dead community that I thought were like the dudes who were putting out the best stuff within that world and then I ended up hiring one of the guys who you know worked with us on freelance and realized he could be great for the team but I think that that project was just an example of like perfect storm holy trinity of everything you know if you told me that I can access bears lightning bolts skeletons and this icon called steal your face like all that kind of shit it's like it's a one in a million you know so the LeBron wearing it or any of those things happened from the one in the million moment happening but it's kind of identified through like the creative process that you go through and just I guess the right rewind a little bit like the grateful dead thing was probably three to four months of work in design I'd say realistically though two real weeks of design but I designed like 18 capsules for that because I was so hyped on grateful dead in general I did grateful dead yoga grateful dead basketball like grateful dead van like you know all this shit we ended up buying a 1969 VW van renovating it new engine wrap the whole thing you know and put it up on donut media and basically did like a whole thing with that I mean there's just pockets of all these little universes to explore and I think that a lot of times people just go surface level you know I mean like you can go get a grateful dead thing you could slap their logo on a shirt and you could sell it you'll sell a lot of them guarantee it just like if you do the Snoop Dogg collaboration you put his face in a shirt it'll sell but if you actually went and invested a real amount of time and thought process into it you might be able to come out with tax I feel like such a dad talking to you I just feel so like like my brain doesn't think like that but it's so like awesome just to see how it goes in your head I'm like a coffee in my veins like it's like it just goes and I love I love how like committed your team is to the social media company you have like people all over on social media on tiktok always doing cool stuff I mean it is like constant constant because it's meant to be that you want to check on our Instagram because we're your friend not because I'm going to sell you a cool t-shirt today and why was that important to you I was that did you realize like on your journey that brands it was the one thing brands weren't connecting with on a deep level they were just like here look at this pay us every to wear it buy it and we're out I only go check the brands that I like when I want to buy something when they've advertised something that's interesting to me that's pretty much it not because I'm waking up and I'm like I need a pair of really strong pants today it's like no I know what I like and I know what I need I think that it's just it's missing the mark sometimes of like how our marketing to consumers because kids these days they go on Instagram not to just be marketed to themselves right like they don't want to brand just be pushing shit we get enough targeted ads and things that we think series listening to us and whatever you want to be able to log on and just be able to smile right you don't go on to Instagram just sit there and be mindless and you end up coming off their depress when you see a bunch of mindless transactional shit and to me that's what's missing in the entirety of all this stuff and frankly I think like part of this is giving sauce out to a lot of brands out there who just think that doing cool editorials and all that shit's what's going to sell your product I think that's bullshit I think that yes cool editorials all that stuff's great but if it's not coupled with some kind of real connection to your consumer and why they care you're missing the mark fully you know and it's like but I kind of extends itself to probably any industry were there any brands that inspired you or like that that you saw doing a good job of it that you wanted to emulate was more my friends yeah like I saw one of my friends this guy Scott Turner he was just posting a bunch of like stories like it got to the point where he's like you know those little mini dots and like you're just sitting there clicking through all this stuff and you get to look at memes and funny stuff and whatever and that's where I started it I hired him to be like yo why don't you just like post all your memes here and then you know I handed the phone to like four to six the kids in my office and I said do whatever you want go post your funniest memes go walk around the office and be like yo Diego what like what are you doing today what should you like what's your favorite brand just doing this stuff that you're like what would you ask your friends what would you do if you were just hanging out and that got more reaction than the sexy $40,000 photo shoot at different converse or the you know dope ass production of a cool video or like any of that stuff and frankly it's like it's disappointing sometimes because you're like I put my heart and passion in this photo shoot but it's sometimes about the more authentic real and attainable things that make it possible you know and make someone feel like you're on their level not that you're speaking down to them because that's what a lot of brands do you know you said that you had that moment of realization where if I can do this legally and and you know move fast and break things as they say so like what was your first step in doing that like you were thinking like oh I need to raise some capital or or what that was the last thing we did I mean you know this has been a bootstrap brand for a very long time when I started this thing it was just like keep doubling down keep doubling down I ran an agency on the side of the brand that would pay for the brand I did work for every record label I helped many clothing brands develop their product design it you know I have my friends brands that I helped design for it was just like whatever I could do and I was doing a bunch of customization events for you know Nike Adidas like Reebok all these people in traveling the world just basically like making that dough put it right back into the brand and just doubling down every time I was paying just my rent to just live but all the other money was in the company you know and so for me it was just constant double down double down and I wasn't thinking about how I could do it for me I was doing it for the team I was giving these kids opportunities that they would not normally have and I recognize the way I was treated inside of a workplace was always like shut up do your job go to the corner don't talk like I'm your boss I'm your og you do not need to give me your ideas I will give you my ideas and I think that that's utter bullshit because I'm not smarter than most these kids they just don't have as much experience as me you know and so I can articulate myself way better than a 25 year old kid in my office who this is his first job but I'll tell you right now that kid understands my community better than I do and I can admit that a lot of my employees are fucking smart and it's just because they don't know how to talk to an adult that sometimes they get shit on you know but I recognize that like you know as we bring on more senior people into our company CEO all that kind of stuff it's recognizing I tell each and every one of them you're going to be comfortable with the 25 year old walking into you and telling you that you're wrong but they cannot articulate it the right way and you can't get hurt by your ego you know all this experience you have all that shit because that kid's probably more right than you are you know and it's like an interesting nuance that you don't find in most companies and so I try to empower these kids and like my first employee who was an intern is now one of the heads of marketing you know and like that kid is a boss now like he's stepped it up and like he's making a real salary he's doing real things and like I'm proud to say that he's grown from literally like just some kid used to DM me graphics on Instagram and like you know that was one of the first kids I handed the phone to and just said go don't don't ask me just go fail make it wrong do it right like you will get through it because I'd rather see failure to get to success than a bunch of fucking perfect shit because that's bullshit it's totally true I don't see like our team yeah yeah literally like they're hiring like Lexi our social media manager is like hiring people under her at the moment and she's a rock star yeah she's so good I think that's actually why I became an entrepreneur I hated the whole boss thing yeah it was like wait I'm tied to your success that doesn't make and you're gonna take credit for all of it I'm out like I was against it was so black and white to me that's why my employees should have equity that's why they should be involved that's why it's not just me in the highway it's like no like even you know like we had to change our name during this year it was based on those moments where I sat on my team and I gave them the opportunity to tell me what they felt first before I just made a decision for the company before I decided where we went how has that been received the changing of the name so far I think it's really positive because it's less about a rebrand and more about recognizing who we've always been you know we are the market of the internet we are market of the people we give a platform to kids to be able to be safe in a safe space on the internet is a safe space as far as clothing brands go because this is a community that you can share and give and take not just we give you and you receive it's funny like we run a discord channel where kids can all engage is very much like old forum kind of vibe and two kids from our discord started dating and like we ran a discord design challenge and like these kids are like submitting the sickest designs I've seen and so it's just cool to start realizing like you're creating a real community you're creating a place it's fostering these people who either a dream to be working here wish they have their own brand or just are the avid consumer and give them an experience that they can all enjoy has anything changed for you like during covid so we have we had a couple brands on where as soon as like facebook got super tight on some of their guidelines and basically canceled like deleted their facebook page and they took all this time to build a real community with all of these people thank god that didn't happen and it happened and then they had to go recreate their own but they weren't allowed on facebook or instagram anymore and so some of these brands that we've spoken to have basically did something bad or they just don't know someone good enough it and yeah from what we can tell they may yeah that's for sure the case but they also just created a second ad account and so one of the ad accounts was getting blocked because it was like a black friday and they wouldn't allow them it's a woman's product so it's not anything it's not cbd it's not like anything that facebook doesn't like yeah but it's the circumventing stuff that's what's yeah and so they got destroyed they got canceled that's why you get smart about a person who understands ads and not yeah basically their person screwed them but it but in this whole thing it was like awful oh my god i can't believe you just lost our whole community and they created their own app and on their app is different forums different accountability chats like people started dating through their forum it's bananas and she was showing me and i was like this is so amazing that you know that moment and now they just text everything's text orders now yeah and so basically that problem has created an opportunity for them and yeah and it's just all about you audible that's anything in life right and i think that's like even for us in this moment it was about audibling in a smart way to make sure that not only are we getting a name that we're excited about but leaving this name behind with respect and honor because it's not about just like wiping your hands clean but it's really about actually making sure you're connecting with the community and transitioning smart well let's go back to to the name change so you were originally Chinatown market right and how long did you have that name for November 2016 okay so initially from what i've read is that you were inspired by the markets in the Chinatown section of district of new york city specifically the t-shirt shops on canals street which are very much like you can buy fuck you fucking fuck shirts i love to york like it's like all the novelty like bootleg fun like just t-shirts for lack of a term so is it fair to say that you liked the do whatever you want slapping on t-shirt like that you know that freedom the rapid creativity you were trying to emulate and inspired by so like when when did you start seeing pushback on the name when did that start to become an issue if you've had it since 2016 you know i think that there there would sometimes be like conversations but i think you know it it takes certain conversations to help open your eyes in a larger way because when i started the brand it was like oh yeah i'm not creating something to hurt anyone like i'm doing this thing because it's inspired by t-shirt shops on canals street in new york that's in chinatown and so you know you start to like build up this almost like framework like oh yeah nothing when i'm doing wrong but then and you start to have those conversations which i think we started within the past year was like close friends of mine you know people in the industry and you know for every one of those kind of people there was an opposite where i would have my friend who is chinese call me and be like fuck that bro you got to stay as what this is like they don't fucking get it and i'm like that's nice dude but like this isn't about me fighting some good fight over a name that i created out of in five minutes out of some like moment it's recognizing that i got to listen to people who may not be my customer may not even care or anything but it's affecting them and recognizing that first and foremost is key to this whole thing because i think like you could easily ignore all of it and be like screw it we're fighting the good fight protect the brand but it was like no we had to listen to the community make sure that we transitioned smart and left it behind with respect so that we didn't just tarnish the name of china town we tried to say hey no we recognize it's not a name for us to own let's leave it behind with respect let's work with these different organizations to make sure that we're donating in that time and through that transition making sure that would yeah as i said doing it right so sure it was definitely a wild time and you know a huge question mark going through trying to figure out how to rebrand a clothing brand that's been established and all that kind of stuff but i think landing on what market was it recognized that we're not changing who we are we're not abandoning the brand of where we came from i think it's just all about continuing to solidify who we are so as we double down on that stuff it's just continuing to be who the brand's always been and that's kind of the nice part is like by having market we're not losing market out of our name and you know as well i don't think people really realize like how much the craziness of getting a new name was and that's not a pity or anything but i think like people are like why don't you guys have a new name yet what's up and we're like yeah actually it's because trademarks take a really long time or you know three times lawyers told us sorry it's not going to work yeah we're well in that vein were there other names that you considered yeah i mean i won't share like i might uh still use them but you know it's one that i will share is like my first clothing brand was originally called ice cold new york i then at that time was shut down by these guys who own the own the trademark for ice cold and clothing those guys never used it ended up becoming an abandoned mark i literally have the word ice cold tattooed on my arm because that's what i thought the brand was going to be called and then i had to change the name to icny which then became this thing of like i see new york you know what i mean as visibility night riding like it was the greatest audible in my life so it's kind of funny and ironic that i've had to change my brand name twice each time you know my first brand i changed the name because i originally was ice cold new york so i launched it the whole thing had to change the name this time changed the name and i'm like god damn and you know like but at the same time that god damn has nothing to do with like you know that experience i think it just has to do with yeah man like i just want to be creative and make products that people love like i'm never here to go create something that would offend people or hurt you know especially an underserved community like that and it's like you know when you really took a step back you had to recognize like china towns weren't a place where you chose to live you were relegated to live there that was somewhere where you were forced to live because you couldn't live or anywhere else and some families did not have that choice so in that experience i had to recognize that and you know that's through lots of conversations and making sure you're not just hearing the story you want to hear i wanted to ask you like what are you solving for like what are you personally solving for as far as the clothing brand goes no as far as like you mike it's just personal development you know like making sure that sir i could very easy not very easily because it took a lot of crazy work but like build up a brand by myself and do it all myself at one point i was shipping designing you know doing everything i think as you continue to grow it's just recognizing like you got to surround yourself with people who know more than you people who can help answer those questions and set myself up for success by making sure that i admit that i don't know everything because you can very easily act like you do i'm sure you built the same thing in real estate anything else because there's a lot of nuance to every single thing that you go through and i think for me it's like admitting what i don't know and recognizing i need help or i'm in a situation where i don't know how to deal with that thing that just happened in my office or this employee did this to another one or whatever and sometimes i had to call five people to be like what would you do and the more that i've gotten good at just talking to other people communicating setting myself up so that i have other advice and perspectives it's helped me get through a lot of shit you know but as far as me right now it's just continuing to take the next step as a quote unquote boss you know and walk the line of being a friend and a boss because you can't be both but at the same time like i'm not some drill sergeant and i'm not going to just whip people to death i want them to feel motivated i want them to come with me in lockstep and feel like they're motivated as what i'm doing is what they're doing you know and it's the same thing you said earlier of like you know the boss mentality i'm doing this for that guy it's like i want these kids to actually be vested into the future success of what this business is and if i can do that and help them understand with that then i found success for you do you want to IPO or do you want to ultimately take this brand i mean then like my whole thing since day one has been about shaking up the perception of what a clothing brand especially a streetwear brand can be because remember when i went into urban outfitters my first like month of being in business because i knew them from my last business and i remember seeing like tweets from different people in the industry being like this brand is dead it's over like blah blah blah and i'm like actually the brand who's did that is now gone that doesn't exist anymore and you know all those people who say that i'm like you're the idiot because you're not recognizing that what i'm doing is i'm giving kids access to be able to experience my brand something that you're not doing and you're not realizing that by excluding them they may not ever want to shop with you ever how do you do that though how do you how do you do that by giving kids access by saying so like instead of it being this limited edition one you know 100 products only on my site you can go get an urban outfitters you can go get a version of my shit at urban outfitters or foot locker or north shrooms okay you know and that's north shrooms urban foot locker like all different types of tiers god so you put it everywhere but that's all different product it's all a different experience footlocker might be a totally different experience in north shrooms and it's all that idea that those shoppers don't overlap but i also recognize very early that like swaley or you know bad example like scott district ended up wearing the brand or like these like random celebrities were getting the product not from me sending it to them by their stylish walking urban outfitters by you know because those people that's where you go shop to get the cool gen z whatever it's like all that stuff was ending up on people because it was sold at the store that many people shop at and by giving myself a wider range i was able to attract a wider range of audience and i recognized through all of that sure you can go really hyper specific we could say like i like making beaded bracelets and i'm going to go focus on the beaded bracelet market for girls from 16 to 24 but it was like no i want to make a unisex brand that's just about positivity di wide you know kind of culture and this idea of like being super transparent with everything you you fail and succeed on and that is being human you know and so just trying to make a brand that felt like a friend when you were working with these other brands deep was this really obvious to you was it so obvious that they were basically like straight down the middle they believe this was like i can see this in tech where it's like here's our audience 25 to 34 70 percent male they make this much money we're just going to keep going with them and we're going to join them on their life journey yeah i mean we even have to keep ourselves in line sometimes because i all get a sick idea that makes them crazy but i'm like this isn't not our business you know we need to focus a little bit like what like what's a crazy like a bowling ball or something like footlocking women's came to us and said we want you guys to make a whole running tights and sports bras and you know all that i'm like that doesn't make sense you should make tennis apparel that'd be cool yeah but like realistically making a sports bra it just doesn't make sense you know if i can make a shirt that everyone wants to wear guy girl doesn't matter great you know but my business is not about getting into sports tech apparel you know like i did that with my last brand and i know how hard it is to compete with like someone who's making a really nice garment you know i used to make running socks and people would send me emails complaining about how their feet were wet i was like do you not understand that shoes work by keeping moisture in and so it's not just your sock you know you expect your sock to just reject water like so you know it's like a lot of nuance of the industry in general and just consumers being very non-educated but thinking they're very educated okay why do you think most brands miss this the part of like how to connect with an audience more of like being everywhere more of a shotgun approach because everyone's so focused on the product everyone's so focused on how do you move more how do you sell more and by doing that no one's being creative in the process so you're saying they have the wrong target so for you the way you look at it is create something that's you spend a lot of most of your time on design creating an excellent product that fits we spend a lot of time on marketing we spend a lot of time on like what the experience is and like how can a you know a kid come into our ecosystem not feel forced to shop and just like come in and hang out come sit at this table with us and come talk you can talk to us for a month then you might decide to buy you might talk to us for six months and never buy from us but you're still engaging you're still pressing like you're still seeing what's going on and you're telling your friends about it and one of your friends might buy it you know and i'd rather that than to be one of those brands that's like ever i need to get you every drop you know because that's a very focused consumer and if you fail for them a few times you've lost them but for us you don't care if our product isn't the best one for you because you realize one of the future jobs might work for you and our content will be fun to watch and what is the price point of all your it's like from high to low man i made a 30 000 Swarovski basketball we're really yeah no joke sold a few of them you know hand encrusted that's amazing you know so that's an example there all the way down to like chotchkes you know i mean keychains and stickers and all that i made ping pong tables i made basketballs i've made beanbags i've made you know anything i made every sporting good you can think of with a smiley face on it to me the the ceiling for that is like target dick sporting goods like i don't think about my business is small i think my business is ubiquitous as possible because when i originally put out a smiley face on a t-shirt i recognize this is the most universal icon in my life it's something that was on you know this cabin that my grandparents built and we used to go into Colorado and like that is this big-ass smiley face on it and that's why i just started playing with a smiley face i slapped a smiley face onto a basketball never been done before you know maybe it's been done for some time but we were the ones that popularized the smiley basketball i've sold probably just as many basketballs that i have t-shirts which sounds crazy especially because you're a clothing company and we're especially because the brand name originally was Chinatown Market you think a brand called Chinatown Market has the authority to sell sporting goods you know what i mean? apparently they do that's pretty amazing exactly and so to me i get psyched because i'm like smiley sports at Target at Dick's Sporting Goods so that a 12 year old kid who is living in a world of just do it can go get something that says you can do it too not it has to be the most intense i gotta be renaldo i gotta be you know rafa i gotta be any of these guys and it's like why create that mentality for kids who probably never get there i always wish that i could go to the nba and dunk but i never was going to so i quickly realized when i was a you know sophomore in high school probably want to start making t-shirts my nickname in high school is Mikey merchandise i got expelled from high school Mikey merch? literally Mikey merch that's amazing you know i was selling t-shirts at the back of my car i got expelled for selling and distributing on campus like charges that someone would get for selling drugs and i got expelled for selling t-shirts my parents called the principal office like you're fucking crazy you know what i mean but did they resend the expulsion? i mean no they have a lot of them but it was i mean that shirt i was selling used an image of a kid like at my school that was like it looked like his face was on a scanner and i put it onto a shirt the kid didn't get one he fought someone in at my school for the shirt like and it basically like wanted one i had him sign a photo release it was like a whole moment in like you know my sophomore year high school and the shirt got banned you know it was like a whole thing and remember like i took like a photo in front of like the school gates like holding it being like my shirt got you know it was like just that moment and so that was like the first moment for me that identified i could probably do this for a career you know like people actually reacted to something that i created because i was like you know anything else i'd ever done no one fucking cared no one like you know sure you do this that in the third when you're in high school like you're just a fucking kid you go to parties you you know whatever but that was the first time i felt real i felt valid i'm gonna go out on them here and say that your high school has not asked you to be their graduation speaker but they should oh they should for sure but they will never realize it because i would probably you know what i mean just like i think parson so i went to parson school of design for one year this is not a generalized comment because there's definitely a lot of talented people in my class but i'd say 99% of the people that i went to college with have shitty jobs don't fucking know how to get out of where they're at like they don't know how to even really excel in the industry and while they were out partying while i was at parson's my freshman year as college like i was going to work i was getting home at 10 30 at night i was hustling trying to set myself up for success in the industry not how do i go to greenhouse or the next club in new york or whatever and like be cool because i was just like this is what i want to do for us my life i'm not going to college and having this opportunity for nothing and like my parents you know i was fortunate enough they said we have enough to be able to help you out for one year but if you want to go to college for four years you're gonna have to pay for it i ended up at the end of that year applying for scholarships i didn't get any you know i applied to fit them because i was like fuck it they didn't give me any scholarships and in my head i was like i'm more talented than most of these motherfuckers and not some like some egotistical way it was because i wanted it more i knew how bad i wanted it i would do anything for it you know i got arrested trying to get a job for that dude jeff staples in new york city because i was either gonna move home because my parents said you either move your ass home and you're gonna live in the house or you can go to fit them and i was like fuck that i'm staying in new york i literally printed a bunch of posters at the parson's print lab i covered jeff staples route from where he lived to where he worked i figured out where his apartment was i covered all those streets with those posters and then getting arrested that night for graffiti you know repasting and i was in holding for two nights got out and there was all these articles on like hype beast and all this shit about shameless self-promotion i was just trying to get a job you know but i knew that that's what i wanted to do i would do anything for it you know and so you kind of look back at that and that same fire energy and aggression towards getting what i wanted is being unafraid to fail and you know many kids would just never do it because they think about the embarrassment of what it would come if they didn't get it to fred ever reach out or anything like maybe not then but after that jeff uh yeah jeff uh so no yeah i mean i had an interview with him he sat me down and he was like mike you're not just gonna walk in here and get a job designing like you're gonna get coffee sweep the floors like and i was gutted dude i had just gotten out i was just like fuck like i came dressed up like you know i had boat shoes on with some khakis like i was all like i'm getting a job uh and i remember i came home and i didn't cry but i was just like i was so down like dude i just went fucking holding for this like you didn't give me a job and then fast forward four weeks later i landed that job at nike you know working in a basement with my dream of like all these machines and all these creative people who now work at supreme and every other clothing brand that you know today and like you know at that time i didn't realize what i was surrounded by i didn't realize the people i was working with i mean i think in general i think college i mean it just sets you up to be on the treadmill yeah it's overrated it's a society unless a kid actually understands what he wants to get out of college because i could guarantee 90% of people who went to college didn't know where they were going it's a continuation of the path that they were also changes like for you even even like you doing all that work to get that job only to be told no or only for that job to reveal itself to you as something you don't want to do so i went to business school and i was like i'm going to go to consulting after and i'm like that's such a vague thing to think in college like i'm going to go into consulting somebody's like what do you mean sometimes this is like so dumb but it's a good story i love it though yeah what ended up happening was i ended up this like i was in the application process and it got intercepted and this guy's like let me chat with let me chat with Diego so we set up a chat and i'm like oh it's dope my my you know my thing got intercepted i'm gonna like i'm talking to the team leader i got it you know and so we do a zoom or it wasn't even zoom it was go to meeting at that time and he's like yeah so like real quick i just wanted to jump on the corner with you like i looked i saw i looked you up all this stuff and he's like you'll never work here and i just wanted to tell you that and i was like gutted like right and i was like what do you mean he's like you'll never work here he's like look i know who exactly who you are he's like you're gonna come in here you're gonna be on my team and you're gonna want to rewrite the rules and you're gonna want to do it a different way because you're gonna tell us this way is broken and that's who you are he's like i've i've looked at everything you've ever done that's what you do he's like you're a creator he's like go be an entrepreneur go make way more money than all of us and you'll have a life and you'll have time so go do that never apply here again i mean at first i would have said fuck you but i think i would have said all of me all of me do you feel like like he like saw into your soul 100% yeah i felt naked do you know that guy now no like i should i know i know i really like i look back on it because as much as i at first was like what the fuck i was like actually maybe he actually nailed you homeboy he read a piece of paper and he was like i know everything about you because that's a pretty ballsy thing to say to someone that you know you don't know but he didn't want to waste his time and he didn't want to waste my time and he was right because that's who i was at the time respect yeah i mean it's yeah for sure i mean he brought you in there to waste your time but but besides from that i think those moments in life yeah i'm just surprised why he even would take his time to do that yeah same and at the end of it he was like you're gonna make more money than us and you're gonna be more successful than all of us and people will remember you it's kind of funny and i was like you would make that kind of prophecy i went from crying to like uh uh and then i'm like and then i asked like i like why don't you do that that's the question fucking idiot yeah you gotta go back like but something like that just doesn't happen that doesn't happen and like yeah but honestly you know everyone's solving for like i think they're gonna talk about it's easier to see other people's problems it's either defense or offense in life and and like i'm just all offense all the time and most people aren't like that not because they can't be i just it's because of what they've been told or you know the way society has impacted their ability but the good news is all it takes is like a boss like you to like go oh this is oh what oh he's listen oh what he's listening to me and then they go tell their mom like yo can you believe mike like we're taking my idea and now you've influenced that mom or that dad being like wait what oh yeah dude no i mean like literally my warehouse kid can walk over to my design team have an idea it's online by the next morning and the shipping out the next day you know and that's stuff that literally happened where one of my warehouse guys had a bunch of ideas he's like you know posting on his own social like i'm sowing i'm doing all this shit making all this stuff and now he's in our atelier room all he does is a sew all day you know that kid was literally packing boxes so it's that personification that like another one of my warehouse kids he ran our whole warehouse but he's like i really want to sew so i was like cool three days a week you're gonna sew let's see what you can do prove it to me you know do you have any any like dream collapse or any things that just shaking up the luxury world fucking up media fucking up like what does that mean what does that mean specifically to to you like what is shaking up the luxury world mean does it mean like making it super cheap does it mean like like in my my head takes me to a different place than it takes you well because i would think that the creating a Swarovski basketball is already shaking up the luxury world in a sense i guess but but it seems like there's more to i'll be honest that it's more doing what they do already like i'm just taking an object and i'm crystallizing it whereas like i'd want to go into a Prada or you know a luxury brand and go like shake up what they think they should be making for their fan base you know i mean i want to shake up like how they even approach it design perspective bringing this whole bootleg mentality of like deconstructing and reconstructing very DIY kind of approach we'll shake up these like very you know kind of institutional based brands same thing with like a Nike where it's just like it will never happen but it's just like when i took the converse chuck and i put a swoosh onto it at the end of the day that needed to happen that's pretty cool every kid wants it that's like pretty dope right and but sometimes i think that it's recognizing that as much as we all dream we're not going to be able to actualize those dreams for those brands you know and so a lot of times what i've lived my life doing is ask for forgiveness not asking for permission because the only reason why i collaborated with converse at least in my opinion because i got their attention we first bootleg the converse put a swoosh onto it they're in like flight club for a thousand dollars now we don't sell them we don't do anything with them but those things became an enigma and a collectible and it's all about playing on those tropes and being able to like give kids something that they could never get and i think that that's the unfortunate thing with these antiquated brands sometimes it's just like they have an amazing sauce that they hold onto but they're not able to unleash it because they're guarding this like property do you have a whole team that deals with them though like with these brands that are trying to come out with you i think about like my design team has to go through like 15 revisions right so it's like yeah i could hire a guy for it but that's a you know it's a full-time thing what little i know about the high-fashion world i do know that all of the top brands are constantly searching for the the newest and best designer coming up to shake things up i read about it all the time and it's kind of like how tom ford made a name for himself and and you know you think about it mark jake yeah there's a long history of people who have signed on to big labels and shaking things up so to speak but to me and to be honest i'm not an insider at all but to me an outsider yeah at all to me an outsider and that's all it matters yeah it doesn't seem like any of these designers are ever successful at shaking the the limbs of the tree do you feel like and and i could be totally wrong on this but do you feel like that it's because these brands are too big to have the tree shaken like that yeah i think that you know i give credit to guys like Virgil you know over at Louis Vuitton and you know he's pushed it he's been able to do it for every person who hates on that guy you're not recognizing that this man has been able to do things that no other designer at a luxury house has been able to break through you know and i respect that just like that's why i get excited about that camp too um i mean just because he hasn't worked at a luxury house and gotten shaken up a brand yes he did it with Adidas but i also argue that like Adidas literally just said go make a brand and we'll pay for it you know and like we'll get some cool marketing tail out of that i think about it less than maybe i mean yes that's probably the biggest example of it maybe i'm fucking wrong is like to say yes cogni was handed the keys and it was just a go like i have friends who work for that that whole camp and like literally kind of be like i want a factory in Wyoming and they'll be like cool factory in Wyoming will be on a boat from Germany happening and it'll be there by next week and we're going to build it and then he'll have it built and he'll be like i want it two miles away and they'll go move it two miles away they were at one point where and this is a maybe top secret who knows that i'm not on any idea with Adidas so who cares but they were literally like going to build factories on planes for them to fly with wherever cogni was going you can think about how expensive that is and the cost of just scaling that but those were like the way that they were thinking right and like that's pretty crazy that's crazy but it says that's how much he was able to go fuck up the brand and help them think differently because a he gets to push the needle for them do good business big sales that's great i think that it just helps people to think about the brand way differently and so you associate easy with adidas and then you immediately bring more value back to the adidas brand and by letting him go fuck it up you now like adidas that much more we're in the process of maybe doing a television show where it's multiple seasons every season is effectively a different story and so season one is all about tracing like the seed of coffee and how it ends up in your cup and all kind of like there's like Netflix shows that like how it's how it's or explained or things like kind of I hate that but it's almost like it's okay I don't mean to it's an easy human thing to do where I find the thing that's closest to whatever it's like chef's table meets like planet earth but anyway another season of this is like slash how I built this yet kind of another season of it is like like I'm keep inviting things I know stop talking yeah in the television show an idea of of season two would almost be like fashion and so instead of a seed being a literal seed it's like all these designers sitting here and how they eventually decided to put fake on all Gucci's new line but tracing the whole thing so now they got the letters the dies the thing and then all the way to like it being an aspen and somebody spending whatever they're spending on it and just that full circle is that as interesting in real life as it is in my head because in my head that's interesting like that those decisions being made it's just hard to like it's hard to have it be authentic right when everyone's sitting there with a bunch of cameras on them from the beginning concept part that is very hard to capture authentically because it could be me literally driving down the road and I'm like Dingo we are this right now bro yo this is crazy I got this fucking idea and then you guys got to go recreate that on some fucking okay you know film it's hard to do black and white with you know yeah non-union actors but at the same time they are meetings right no but like it's possible but like you go watch the show like the hype on HBO you're gonna kind of be like this is kind of fucking stupid like why is Quavo or fucking what offset or whatever the authority of fashion and like sure he's a rapper who wears clothes but like does he understand how clothes are made does he have you know real taste in making clothes and he lose things hey maybe he does so you know sorry offset if I'm shitting on you at the end of the day I think that it's just like it's an interesting setup and how do you document it properly so that doesn't feel so performative you know what I mean like anything because it's like yeah it's nice to say make a big idea but like those big ideas don't just happen by putting people into a room you know it happens from like a special person like you having an idea to build this and then you guys all call each other and you're like we're building it not because you guys sat in a tv show and like made it so that's the hardest part I find that's good to know there's more of the journey than than just it's the journey right because yeah you can go talk about the like that can be more of a talking head saying like you know this is the journey in the beginning you know we did this these people have been working on this concept we can do a market for one of the yeah it's just for sure I mean trust me we're building our own like reality show as it is right now are you yeah so it's awesome because it's like every time someone comes to my office it's like walking into the fantasy factory so you're literally like you know like everyone's like there's not a tv show of this and I'm like but how do you fucking document all this yeah it's a lot running chaos happening at all times I'm running around the office like I got an idea do you have bodyguards? let's do this no I god knows yeah definitely not but oh yeah sorry I was like bodyguards I was like oh big black big black but oh man it's just yeah it's like do you skateboard around trying to visualize it I wish I mean it's just I'm a runner I just like I all of a sudden get an idea and I run to like the area where someone is well before we wrap anything you're working on right now that people can expect this winter this fall do you even follow the guidelines of seasons when it comes to what you do there's no guidelines we could have an idea tomorrow you know if something happens in pop culture I'm gonna react to it I mean frankly like it's just about keeping the creativity fluid and just having fun with it if I'm not having fun then I'm not gonna do it you know and I think at the end of the day I'm just always trying to make sure that this place is a personification of what I originally wanted to build but on a way higher level and I think that I'm just always striving to find that balance and happiness in my life which is very not there you know at the end of the day it's this constant churn and what makes you happy five years ago doesn't make you happy today and so I'm always trying to make sure that I don't get lost in this like what's next thing because maybe it's not that I'm just not happy right now but I think that I always live my life and the ship is always sinking to motivate myself to go that much harder to tell myself to be in the gym shooting when everyone else is partying or all that dumb metaphor and I think that I'm just making sure through all of that that I never lose sight of my life and personal mental health because I think I spent a lot of years sacrificing everything for my dream and I think that many kids out there I've definitely been a part of it of encouraging just mindless hard work but I recognize it's all about balance you see it now more than ever within sports culture entertainment all those kind of things and it's just like I recognize that I could go through the same thing if I keep going down the path that I'm on and the pressures that come with building a bigger business the pressures of hitting goals the pressures of people liking the shit you create anything like that talking to people therapy in your life like being communicative when things are hard I think is the thing that I had to learn a few years ago that I never had therapy in my life I was like I'm busy I'm fine like this is cool it's like no you start losing your mind you get stressed more than you've ever been and I think I just you know for me it's about making sure that I'm always continuing to talk call people advisors friends therapists etc because this is a message for kids in everywhere because it's like we all think we're mentally strong and can handle all the problems but you can't and I guarantee your parents probably didn't fully equip you to handle them either we all got our own pitfalls things we miss things our parents taught us without realizing it that are our disadvantages and we have to continue to honorable with that to make sure we can stay around for many years being creative and having fun yeah that's super smart I've you know when I was in tech I was solving for money and so I was like but forgetting yourself literally yeah I mean didn't go to the doctor didn't go to dentist didn't which didn't seem to do as well didn't go to like weddings yeah and I did that for like four years I missed my mom's birthday last year you know what I mean like it's to that point where like I think actually you know it was this year and it was in the middle of the name change our mom's birthday was August 18th we announced the name August 16th or no sorry August 10th and we August August 16th we announced I was so busy so all over the place I fully forgot I couldn't believe I forgot my mom's birthday you know what I mean and it was like moments like that where I was like oh shit we're like I don't I forgot to call my brother on his birthday you know and he thought luckily he was in the mountain somewhere and he's like oh you must have tried to call me like oh yeah like fuck you know so that's why I was asking what you're solving for yeah I'm trying to solve for balance you know and every time you level up it's very easy to lose some part of your life that is just there to make you happy because you're sacrificing that for the thing you really want which is success but for me success isn't money success is being able to do the thing that I want to every single day success is finding that happiness and like I also recognize I worked at Jama Juice in the taco shop in high school I never want to do that again that's why I wake up every day working as hard as I can because I want to make t-shirts for us in my life you know I want to be creative for us in my life I don't want to put myself in a box and you know or not put myself in a box I just want to like don't want to lose sight of why I got into this in the first place it's a love of the game I just love doing it well in that creative aspect when you ever get in a creative rut is there a technique or something that you do to kind of recenter yourself and kind of take a moment last night where I'm like working on a collaboration for My Chemical Romance which is like totally crazy one for us because it's a totally you know new universe for some of our fans and etc and I was having a hard time because at first I'm just feeling like I'm designing a bunch of merch for My Chemical Romance and it's not that exciting and you know Grateful Dead's one thing because as I said before it's lightning bolts bears and skeletons it's easy but like with My Chemical Romance I had to really think like how am I going to make this iconic how am I going to push this to the further thing and I was sitting there for hours smoking weed just relaxing trying to think about it sitting on my desk my hips are killing me because my fucking body's falling apart I'm like sitting there and I'm like I just need to get up and so I took the dog for a walk came back sat down and it just came to me you know what I mean but doesn't happen every time you know I didn't get the luxury to I haven't had the luxury in the past two or three weeks to sit down and do emails during the day I'm going to get home and I'm going to have like 350-400 emails I'm going to have to sift through try to respond to then mentally be on top of all the progress we have coming out but I love it you know what I mean and also we're in a playing time we're like we're scaling we're trying to add people to the team so I will have to do this forever but yeah it's exhausting you know yeah it's hard and I think like my team works just as hard as I do you know and so I think I'm always also trying to be conscious of that and make it easier for them you know so while I'm going through shit I'm trying to make sure they're good trying to make sure everyone's good you know and I think that's always the biggest stress that people don't recognize about running your own business is like it's easy to think about the little shit you got it on your back bullshit all your yeah yeah the spot's dirty or whatever it's like that's just a tip of the iceberg right you know what I mean all of it's on your back yeah for sure so I love it thanks for coming on man no guys thank you big time where can we find you everyone can find you absolutely guys so yeah yeah you want to you want to find us guys it's just at market on instagram obviously marketmarketmarket.com I think it literally is like market social guy on twitter because we like to play this whole fun idea I have like this persona who runs our twitter and on tiktok I think it's just market market market so yeah you know guys I think all around appreciate you guys having me on here I think for any you know kid out there it's just don't be afraid to fail pleasure chatting today yeah thank you guys