 For a $65 shoe technology that was groundbreaking in the first year, we sold 14 million pairs of those damn DMX walking shoes. It was crazy. 550s, 574, the 900 series coming on Strong still. I'm competing against my 22-year-old self. I mean, it's crazy in my 50s. And we flipped open that box and I pressed that button and his eyes got like that big. He's like, holy crap, you guys did it. This is what we need. We can never do that. They're like, why? Well, here it is. I just did it. I can't drag myself down to somebody else's level of mediocrity. I give it my all whether they want it or not. They're getting it because that's why they hired me. That's why I love working with Ye. We're cut from the same cloth. We ride together. We're the ying and the yang for each other. People looked at us as like the tinker and Jordan of today, but it's definitely a vibe and a flavor and a DNA to it that you immediately see it and like, that's easy. We're here with another legendary episode and I always like to have everybody introduce themselves. I'll let you introduce yourself to the world how you would like to be seen and then we'll go ahead and start breaking down the stories and history of your career. I'm Stephen Smith and I've been called the godfather of dad shoes because of my early work at New Balance, which I think is pretty funny because I was a straight edge 22-year-old punk at that point designing what would become these definitive dad shoes and made a lot of big products for the industry between Reebok and Nike and Yeezy and Adidas and a couple here and there at Fila and yeah, it's all good fun. So I have a list on my phone, correct me if I'm wrong or if I need to tap into a couple other things as well right here. So we got the New Balance 5-7-4, 9-9-6, 9-9-7, 1500. Yeah, those are all your designs. 5-50, 6-50, 5-7-6, 5-7-7, 4-28, 4-29. There's a bunch more that I forgot. I mean it's been 38 years so. Right, right. Okay and then the Adidas Artillery. Yeah, Artillery, Phantom II, the Reload. Lots of styles there. Okay. Buckeye Bauer series, ATP tennis series, lots of stuff. And then Insta Fury Pump, DMX Technology, pretty much. The logo with Reebok. Yeah, the updated Vector and then pretty much any technology that came out of Reebok came out of the team that I worked on with my two development partners, Paul H. Field and Peter Foley. We were kind of the core of the innovation team so pretty much any technology Reebok had came out of the three of us. And then Grant Hill, what Fila is? Yeah, I did a Grant Hill at Fila. I worked directly with Grant Hill and then in the end they didn't use that one and then it was kind of funny about four years ago out of the blue they decided to reissue the unissued Grant Hill. So it was kind of wild to see it show up. They got some proportions kind of wonky but it was cool to see it finally come to market. That's dope. And then the Skepta, the Airstreaks Spectrum Plus and then a lot of the Yeezy stuff. Yeah, you know I did a ton of stuff at Nike, performance running, kids, girls, toddlers, package design, track spikes, monster fly, Sean Crawford got the gold medal and the silver medal at the Olympics and the monster fly which was pretty epic because everybody else was scared of it. And then it was funny of all the shoes that Nike has in their archive and what they could have used. It was kind of cool to see Stussy pick the Cage Zoom spirit on that I did and mainly for Japan and then also the when Supreme picked a shoe they picked the spectrum with the flames which was another really cool one and that was also done originally for Nike Japan. So anyway I like to joke about that one because you know that those those two came out well we're at our peak at Yeezy and Steven's so hot right now like Zoolander that of everybody else's designs they could have picked they picked mine. Makes sense. Okay so before we get too deep into all the designs and everything like that I always like to take it back. I need you to paint that picture for me give me the era give me the lifestyle give me the family environment the home environment where where did you learn about kind of what's your family teaching you about finances as a young age like where were you guys at financially like all those different things I want you to paint that picture for me that that grade school middle school era. You know I grew up in a working class middle class neighborhood you know we we had one of the nicer houses on the street but we were certainly not wealthy by any means my parents worked their asses off for all of us to go to college because my dad never got to go because his oldest brother used all the college funds by the time it got to him there was no money left so he he made a vow that no matter what happened his kids were going to go to college wherever they wanted to go and he worked three different jobs for us well my mom was a school teacher so education was important working hard was important financial struggle was important and you know when we were young they would drive us through the the wealthy neighborhoods and show us the houses and say that's the goal that's what you need to work for work hard you can have this and so they kind of drove that into my head but also my grandfather on my mom's side was a detailed finished carpenter he wanted to be a surgeon but his family had no money so he went to go be a detailed and finished carpenter so he did house construction but one of his fortes was delicate work on church altars and so those take a long time to do yeah you know it was that precision that I think I I learned from him and the woodworking and crafting with my hand he was from that generation that believed they could do anything from electrical to wiring to construction they could build or make anything and I think he instilled that in me more than anybody that anything was possible you can do it so I've always had that in the back of my mind you know try it what's the worst that can happen if you don't try it then you've already failed so that's that's been one of my my key beliefs from him so during this time there wasn't a sneakerhead there wasn't a that wasn't a thing yet it was just like if you like shoes or if you're interested in it you know maybe you had a couple pairs you try to give them cleaner maybe you just love the shoe and you beat it up for you know whatever maybe what was what was like your kind of situation in scenario and what were the hot shoes that you had your eye on or was that even a thing later you know you got you know older it it was there were no sneakerheads there was no collecting you know I almost got kind of mocked because I I saved all my old shoes but my favorites at the time I mean I ran high school track I ran with my older sister in middle school and so they were they were my the wants were kind of focused around running although I did have early Dr. J's for some basketball because we had a hoop you know my brother and I built a hoop out in the driveway okay so was you a baller or what nah I sucked that's why I went into running okay more action sports be early days of BMX I had an old split tail banana board skateboard so that was more my thing and then motocross the kind of the individual sports so so yeah some of my favorite shoes from then I remember when the I was running in etonic street fighters that was one of my all-time favorite shoes from that period the shoe the shoe that I always wanted was the new balance super comp okay and my parents couldn't afford it so that was always a desire for me but at the time I had the first pair of waffles when they came out the blue and yellow a few Adidas countries really cool Puma shoe called the power cat that one was neat it was this cylindrical lug pattern repeated in gum rubber it was it was a really nice shoe yeah oh con converse made this running shoe that was pretty nice I had all three colors but you know in those days you got back to school season was when you got your new shoes so you choose wisely because you got one pair and you had to make it last so that's why I cherished them and took good care of them but you know eventually you wear them out because you're a kid and you and you destroy them and I had them all in a box and then you know one day I came home and my mom and thrown these things stink and they were gone I'm like no all my favorites get kind of tossed so what was it like buying your first pair of shoes do you remember that moment like you buying your first pair of shoes oh geez I think it was the it might it was us well I think back I had a pair like knockoff SL 72s that they sold at Kmart okay and I remember buying those I wanted the SL 72 and I didn't know any better those was just like them they're blue with the the stripes so I ended up with those and they you know they obviously weren't as good as as the Adidas ones so next came the converses because those were some real yeah like said at the time converse made this real running shoe man I love those I got three different colors of them and then they phased it out and that's when I moved over to the waffles the original waffle just had this little strip of suede down the toe and it didn't have the reinforced heel it was a single sheet of the waffle that was die cut and punched out and so you wore right through the heel because it was very little lugs there and then that little suede was not enough to stop your big toe from blowing through the side of the shoe and so that I sent those to tread to to get refurbished and they came back kind of looking shitty so I was like I got to get something else so that's when I went to the street fighters because they had that beautiful suede toe okay and they took a beating a man that was a that was such a great shoe the funny thing was it was early days of bright blue suede and for the entire life of those shoes they turned all my socks blue the whatever they used to die and tan the hide just bled right through everything that is funny okay so you get to now you're kind of like you're understanding just the finance side of like you know I need to work hard to be able to get things I want why you know the importance of the dollar different things like that you're you definitely know that you're into shoes you know that you need to be able to afford these sneakers if you want to have more as you said you were already starting to collect them a little bit without even kind of like realizing they're being serious about it and uh what is it what does it look like transitioning into like the high school era and everything like that because now I remember when I was in high school I was like I want to play football in the NFL and I got to go to college so I can get this I need to get a scholarship so I can go to college so that you can go for free and then I could play football that was like my biggest thing and I was like maybe I'll start my business but you know what was your like ambitions in high school how was that lifestyle yeah it was funny like I always say in some of the other other interviews you grew up Irish in the Boston area you either are the cops or you run from the cops you know you end up like whitey bulger right so you know I was going to be a massachusetts state cop so I was always trying to stay fit I ran track and at that point by high school my older brother had gotten one of the first pair of 990 new balances I had ever seen and it was shocking because you know that was the first shoe at a hundred dollars because I don't know people know but the the numbers originally designated the price points so like the 990 was 99 bucks but it you know worked out to be a hundred and again I was groundbreaking that was the first hundred dollar shoe got you um so all of those all all of the original numbers with with with the price points when they were introduced I like that and so I ended up getting a pair of 990s I love them they they wore like iron and that became my go-to shoe with that nice blown rubber Vibram bottom on it and so so going through high school I ran track go to college went to go look into becoming a state police officer but it was a half an inch too short at that time they had a height requirement really yeah so it's like the other thing I loved was art drawing and making things and and products I love stuff and so that seemed like the the alternate choice I went to art school at mass college of art in Boston continuing to run I ran anywhere from 10 to 13 miles a day I weighed about 135 pounds and I continued my running all through college so then 86 I graduate from college and it was kind of a lull and in the economy and I really didn't know what I was going to do my parents didn't know what they were going to do with this kid with the art degree there were few places that hired an industrial designers at that point as we were known a lot of it were a lot of them were consultancies I didn't want to work for a consultant I worked for one while I was in college and I really didn't like it because you're always chasing the next project and the next dollar and the next meal there was a sense of security and continued resources if you went to go pick the corporate route but those jobs were few and far between at that point because people didn't think they needed full-time design staff at that point it was it was kind of new so the the one of the kids who was a year ahead me he lived up in Lawrence where New Balance's R&D office was yeah the city itself has definitely changed quite a bit even even Lawrence where the factory was it's kind of cleaned up there's some art galleries and good old five south union street looked as good as ever last time I was there a year or two ago not but at New Balance it so it was interesting as Terry had gone and applied at New Balance because he lived in Lawrence it'd be kind of cool even though they had designers they had at the time when he applied they were hiring their first ever in-house designers they hired a guy Kevin Brown a year before I got there then they immediately had a hiring freeze so Terry gets shut down so he went started his own design firm called the design house and he ended up doing mainly packaging and graphics okay so a year later New Balance lifts the hiring freeze and we're going to go hire the second ever designer they ever had okay and so they call Terry back and he's like look dude's like you know I started my offer I couldn't wait around for a year for you come on and he was like but I know this kid he's he just graduated he loves running passionate and all he ever wore with New Balance is you should you should hire him so he sent me the info I called got an interview the next day went up there with my portfolio and it was kind of funny they're like can you do blueprint drawings and so one of the things I did at my internship that I despised was interior design and space planning so I would I would have to go do these site studies of radio stations and commercial buildings to install these these spaces and one of them was WLLH and Lowell it was their radio station I ended up doing like endless blueprint drawings going like god this has been not in this you know oh my god I don't want to do this for a living right you know just this I mean the site planning was cool you'd go measure everything and figure out where everybody's office was going to be you learned bureaucratic hierarchy and office size based on your title and craziness like that you know the president of the radio station he needed to have the door furthest away from everybody else but the closest to the door so you could come and go without people seeing them you know things like that you had to consider right so like can you do blueprint drawings I'm like can I do blueprint drawings so I laid out all these floor plans and interior design that I had done they're like holy crap you can you know and then they're like you know can you do designs so I laid out all my product designs and things that I had done through school and my projects and they're like wow you know it's it's pretty impressive and they're like oh it's it's 1130 uh kind of the we got to wrap up the interview because everybody goes running and I'm like what they're like yeah it really runs at lunch I'm like sweet can I go and they're like all right um you know we'll we'll get back to you so I go home and my mother's like did you get a job I said I don't know I said the interview seemed to go it's first real interview I haven't been on it seemed to go okay you know they seem to be interested in me and like my work and the next day I got a call and a job offer and uh so it was pretty it was pretty cool it was very rewarding um really really nice you know I live I loved working at New Balance it was my first job my heart was there and again it was literally just two of us me and brownie and um we just busted out all the designs and I liked I like to run so like why you do the running shoes I'm like okay and then you know brownie did um some of the basketball shoes and women's aerobics which was you know because of Reebok was it was a hot thing then and um but I did help out on the basketball shoes brownie would do the the uh statement model so he was working on the um the James Worthy shoe Worthy Express and then I would do the mid and the the mid price ones so that's where like the 550 came in that was a mid price shoe kind of in that in that zone of existing with the the Worthies but I did a lot of the running shoes I did a lot of weird stuff for the UK with a guy by the name of Jim Crawford because they never seemed to have time for his projects and so I would always like work on his stuff I'm like come on give it to me I'll work on it at lunch or whatever okay okay it's like I've been waiting for a year for this fell running shoe and this orienteering shoe and uh indoor court gum rubber bottom stuff so I did all this fun wacky stuff with him soccer you know good things that New Balance wasn't particularly known for in the US but they actually had a big market for in in the UK and and Ireland so you know being being Boston Irish had to help out now this would be great as going going to Ireland you know the home country so I always love working on stuff for him uh I think it was Paul Tracy was I remember the name of the players that we we did the shoes for back then but um yeah it was really cool I got to do a whole variety of product by helping out Jim and also do all do all the running shoes which you know was my passion so I got to do some perf updates on the 995 and then the 996 was kind of the first one I got I got to do the the update to it so I was like this is so frickin cool right I'm designing and updating the shoe that I run in I mean how cool was that you know like you're just making it to your perfection for yourself at the same time not necessarily for yourself still having the consumer right but taking into account the things that I learned or the criticisms of it the things I love the things I didn't like about it here was the opportunity to build the you know the perfect model of what it was so it was cool and that was kind of the first one I did and then you know later I got to do the 997 which was like a blank slate uh for that one with the development guy named Steve Burris and we did we did a lot of the big shoes there and the like the 574 was birth birth from the 576 and then they kind of stripped it down a little bit and and put on a single color bottom that I had done and out of it came this this classic design with that I I stay strap that became the definitive new balance classic so it's kind of it's kind of fun seeing that stuff never stop being in the market I mean it's crazy I mean 37 years later right it's never stopped selling so I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon either like I don't see it's like oh it's gonna it's gonna fizzle out like I think it's gonna be here for a long time I know it's it's cool to think about the stuff that I've done you know and I'm not a very egotistical person but it's it's cool to see these designs become timeless and take on a life of their own and you know they'll they'll be in the marketplace long after I'm dead and gone I mean it's it's pretty amazing I mean I've left my market so many companies but those in particular and new balance has been very nice to me even though I you know after two and a half years I left so you so you were just clearly passionate about this which caused you to like you said take on extra projects do different things because this is like a salary job yeah I love design so you're like let's do it like $20,000 a year you know I mean it was it was great it was a great entry you know and I stop and I think about it now and it's like with Yeezy and what I'm doing in the marketplace and with 550s 574 the 900 series coming on strong still I'm competing against my 22 year old self I mean it's crazy in my 50s you know I mean it's it's nuts I never thought like holy shit these designs will be being sold forever right you know I'm just doing the best I could at that moment in time for that particular brand and it's that mentality that I've had everywhere I've worked where I've never designed the same shoe twice you know each brand has its own DNA and language to it that gives it what it is you know and it's when a company would get lost or go astray where I was kind of not interested or I would become I would become the voice of that brand like this isn't right let's do this you know and then people like you're difficult I'm like no I care right and that was one of the problems a lot of the times that these companies I cared too much more than some of the other people they were there as as a bureaucrat or to keep their job and I was there to deliver excellence and it's a hard thing to do when you want to do the right thing and you want to deliver excellence and other people are there just to collect a check that's but still proves and shows right there like again we're gonna talk about the other things that you've done in your career but yeah those things would you care then that's how you get that call from the next brand the next call from the next brand and you know now it's like you said working with Yeezy doing those things because of those reasons and a lot of people like you said just come for the check and then they're just here to do anything and then they don't get to level up or hit the potential that they should have or wanted to or whatever it may be I know it's like you always want to ask them do you love do you love what you're doing right or are you just punching the clock you know I mean I was passionate about it and got got labeled as difficult because I cared and you know other people didn't care as much and to me it was heartbreaking because you have this expectation of why don't you care as aren't you as passionate as I am why don't you care right you know and then at some point those people feel threatened or they're insecure and then they figure out how to get rid of you which is the sad thing because you're like you're like you want to bring them along with you and go step up to my level of the game come on you know we're we're playing at the this is the this is the frickin Stanley Cup this is the playoffs step it up come on let's go and it's heartbreaking where they just want to stay as like a you know a farm team so you would say that energy that emotion that vibe came from like you said parents grandparents all those different things when you got into the design and you definitely started to see it when you got into the real workspace I was like hey this was instilled in me because that's what it sounds like for me from you know your past when you were younger like I gotta give it all on everything I do I gotta treat everything like this absolutely it's all or nothing and I mean that's been the rewarding part of connecting with the a because it's the same kind of thing you know when we come we came out with a product it was like everything on black 38 roll that wheel put the stack on the table and you can see where it is with that with the product where it's disruptive it's disturbing it's it's divisive where people like I don't I don't know you know because we went from like the 350 to the 700 wave runner people like what is that you know that's not another 350 exactly it's not another 350 it's the next yeezy it's the next phase it's the future we're we're constantly moving into the future you can't be trapped in the past so yeah and that's that's yeah it's funny because like you said you're talking about that now you've been on the yeezy projects but this is almost like you've been doing this for every brand you work to it what were some of the struggles that you would say you ran into uh when you were at new balance before you decided to switch you know you see how big they are now at the time we were 112 million dollars in annual sales which is still mind-blowing you think of how big they are now and then you think of how difficult it is to start a brand I mean they were maintaining a brand at 112 million Jim owned his own factories which I look back at it was pretty incredible when you think about it but they were super thrifty and I had my development guy guy named Dana Judacy he left and went to Adidas and Adidas at that point was in New Jersey and you know the run DMC era was a great blip for Adidas but shortly after that the kids dropped them nobody cared they were footlockers bitch and the business was tanking in the US I mean it's it's kind of a parallel to a little bit of what's happening right now but um they decided it was a guy uh Ron Moore he was the president of the US they decided they needed to beef it up and and save the brand in in the US for Adidas for Adidas okay so they brought in Dana another guy Dan from Sockney some pretty talented young blood and some old old guard from Nike Exeter you know we had a guy Jay Cole we had Ray Tonkel we had Dana Judacy development guy young guy Dan Ellis young guy development guy um really high high powered guys old and young guy Tony Huard and we we were tasked to rebuild Adidas in the US so Dana was like dude I know this designer he's amazing we should bring him in you know he and I were a team like that at at New Balance and so Dana called me and then they started recruiting me and they they put an offer on the table that was today's partner is shopdnashow.com are you tired of wearing low quality gear I completely understand I made a personal mission to go out and find higher quality stuff and give it to you guys at an affordable price and not only because of that I have to wear this stuff every day and I don't want to be wearing cheap clothing all the time so I want to make sure that you guys know about it and our understanding that we have a lot of cool stuff coming out as well hit the link down below or panned or wherever it may be it's going to be shopdnashow.com there's new drops every single month I'm excited to see you guys in the gear and now let's go ahead and get back to the podcast they started recruiting me and they they put an offer on the table that was double what I was making at New Balance and you know it was in New Jersey and all which was expensive living you know you find out later like maybe it should have asked for a little bit more because it was so much more expensive to live down there versus living up in up in southern mass where I lived and so I went to the New Balance guys the the operations manager I'm like look you know Dana left and he's he's trying to bring me to Adidas with him I don't really want you know I don't know if I really want to go I mean I love it here right I said but look at the number they put in front of me you know what what should I do I really didn't know you know what was the right thing and I asked my mom and dad and they're like it's a lot of money you know and and so at at New Balance I asked the operations manager I said what do you think he goes well you know the most we've got for a designer is 20 25k and I'm like what about two years from now they're like 25k I said five years from now 25k that's it for a designer and I'm like you know I really don't want to leave you guys leave him me no option you know they're gonna I can make double tomorrow right and I said I think I I think I gotta I gotta go you know and they're like all right you know that's what you gotta do what you gotta do so I made the decision to leave it was hard because I really loved it it was a small tight-knit family of people and you know it just showed what a tight-knit family it was after all these years I still stay in touch with all those people because they were like they were family you know they're all older than me because I was a young kid um half of them are dead which is you know people like oh god it's but it's the truth they were all in their 40s when I was there other than the the younger guys like Dana who was two years older than me yeah so it was weird so I left and I went to Adidas in New Jersey and we tried to rebuild the brand but the Germans had their thumb on us so hard it was hard they they they wouldn't give us permission to freely design so shoes like the artillery did get rammed through like because they they look the other way it's like yeah basket basket is the sport for the U.S. you can do the basket shoes I'm like all right great yeah I'm gonna do the best fucking basketball shoes you've ever seen in your life and so obviously I'm gonna ask you about moving to but I just made me think about the times I've sat in um at Adidas Pyrex samples and all the stuff that was happening back then you know 2010 2013 times around it but I remember sitting on the board talking to them and I was like we're presenting all this stuff and I feel like they really don't care like they're they're gonna get nothing out of this meeting like yeah it's cool for me because I'm you know a young kid coming in like helping represent and tell him you know what type of shoes we like but like they don't like those shoes over there so they think it's supposed to be the same over here yeah and it's not the same yeah I mean that's what we ran into at the time that the the first launch of the torsion shoes came out the colors were so whack for the U.S. they were maybe fine for Europe at that time they were very influenced by early Memphis design weird Miami pastels the shoes were polyurethane midsoles hard as a freaking rock and we're like dude we you know there's a we took we tried them out they're killing our legs you know the the softest one was the cushion model and it was white with green with a little purple accent on it and that was the most bearable one the others were were terrible for us for the U.S. market you know because we ran on concrete and black top the Germans ran on trail and dirt and right it was completely different market and the shoes weren't right for us the concept was neat you know where the shoes twisted it allowed your foot to move naturally from your heel to your foot foot bone structure down into your forefoot adapt and adjust it the thinking was sound but the midsoles were hard as rocks and we're like it's it's not going to fly and they didn't you know they made a small blip people look back at it now because they reissued them as streetwear and and they're cool on the streetwear side but at the time they they were not good running shoes and so it was heartbreaking because like that was my passion was running shoes and so I end up doing the takedown ones just because out of EVA and things and those actually got some traction and Adidas at that time was kind of a shit show it was hemorrhaging they wouldn't let us correct the market like said that one that one little pocket of products they allowed me to work on was the basketball shoes those shoes again became icons the artillery would not die the retailers were like yeah you know we you know you got these new shoes but give us another artillery will you and you know I ended up being kid favorite so yeah it was it was a weird time I got in one Friday and they laid off half the office and I'm like what is going on you know and then I came back the next Friday to work and they laid off half of the half that was left so we were down to a quarter staff the building was freaking empty and no email no there was no there was no email faxes you just walk in they gathered you into the cafeteria and you're like everybody yet all right three o'clock the layoffs start you'll be handed a cardboard box just literally it was very Germanic you'll four o'clock you can walk around the building see who else you work with good day and off they go and I'm like what is happening I'd never been through anything like this before and so here I was I was at least for affordability living with my older brother he worked at Bell Laboratories at the time which wasn't too far away and and Edison and I kept asking him like dude I don't know what's going on I've never seen anything like this before you know everybody's gone and so after that round they gathered us all around said all right you're looking at the core of what's left of Adidas US we're probably going to shut it down in six months the rest of you can decide if you want to keep working for Adidas you got to move to herzo or ride it out and see what happens to the rest of what's left of Adidas US so I'm like yeah this ain't looking so good and yeah 23 years old I didn't I don't want to move to Nuremberg it's not exactly a hotbed of excitement and so in the meantime one of the guys I had worked at with a new balance had had left he was an old Nike Exeter guy the guy Steve Burris and he was trying to set up this first innovation team with Paul Fireman because Reebok didn't have anything like that before and they were having this explosive growth and he was like I you know it was almost like Dana where like I know this guy you know he's a great designer he'd be perfect for this innovation team we're kind of putting together you know he should be the lead design guy so anyway finally hey Steve things are going to shit here I'd like to come up and talk to you and so I went back up there it was cool because it was it was Stoughton so it wasn't too far from home so I could actually go back live with my parents and then get another bump and pay and I went there and interviewed and again got the job within 48 hours they didn't have this team yet they were still trying to put it together so they temporarily put me in in basketball I was working on like BB4600 and 3600s and 360 jams and things like that and that was about two weeks and then they moved me into cross training and so I did I did cross training AXT, CXT, SXT models and then they finally put together this team you know they announced this team like yeah there's going to be one one senior level design position two senior level development groups everybody's like oh I'm going to get that design job I'm going to get that design job right and I was yeah I had to sit there and be quiet like I already got it but I'll just zip my lips for now and so anyway they they announced the team they brought me in and we immediately started working on on the future of pump because pump won basketball was just about to launch they were having some issues with it so Paul Litchfield and I redesigned some of the pump mechanism because it was it was failing and and and some assembly so we had to re-engineer some things so that was kind of the first thing and so then they turned me loose like Fireman was like you guys are my guys you're the blue sky guys you know don't get bogged down in this regular stuff go show them you know show me the future dream blue sky you got this is this is your job right so we just got this great budget and we kind of laid low and went into the darkness and disappeared down into the apparel team because nobody could find us down there you know we weren't in the mix we were surrounded by all the apparel people they didn't care who we we don't know what you we don't care what you're doing yeah we're busy on apparel it's perfect location nobody gave a shit what we were doing so we could operate and like in the dark in black ops so that's when we created like the next pump insta pump pump without the shoe around it you know all these ideas kind of embodied in the fury of what we were working on vertical hexalite tall hexalite dmx what became zig tech with this articulated running bottoms injection eva we got to go freely explore other industries which was very unique at the time for the for the business we went to aerospace that's where we found the carbon fiber that became what was in the graphite road which then led you know i wanted the fury was what i wanted to make first and people were so scared of that shoe they're like don't cut the midsole all the way you know do it in phases we gotta we've got to get the consumer comfortable with this this thing in in phases i'm like why compromise put this thing out there you know it's so radical like exactly because it's so radical let's take a step so we did the graphite road and then we came out with the fury with the fully separate four foot heel and we replaced all the space and support with this carbon fiber arch we were the first ones to use carbon fiber yeah and so we did the graphite road and we were trying to experiment with all kinds of things that were new at the time like water jet cutting like how do you cut this shit because i mean it's it's carbon fiber it's it's nearly impossible to cut so we we found water jet cutters and things and we went outside the industry even more into the medical devices because that's where we saw like blood pressure cuffs and things that were similar to what we were trying to do with the pump and medical device shows you had fluid control and fluid management and direction with tubings and micro valves and all these crazy things that we could then make into and integrate into these new technologies or these shoes and one of the things that we did i still have the prototype at home we called it the black widow this was the first shoe that we showed paul fireman where we took all these wild ideas of what could be for pump we were at this industrial supply show and there was this company called asf and made they made this micro electric pump like that was really small i mean really small and so i took it home and worked in my basement which is common theme these days for what i do with tinkering and fabricating and and building and i took this thing and i had some of the medical device tubing and i made this bondo enclosure around this micro pump and i connected the tubing up into the upper from a pump one and then i cut away the midsole and made this carbon fiber leaf leaf spring and embedded it in the midsole and then i had this bellows almost like an air shock and i put that in between the carbon fiber leaf spring like here and then i it was it was a bitch to do because i had to make it airtight i ran a y connector to a valve and then that went into this air shock unit okay and then i ran this pump off of a regular rectangular nine volt battery and you press the button and this thing went um and it inflated the upper of the pump one and it also inflated this air shock and i had two different release valves one for the upper one for the bottom and i painted this thing all black and i was i was big into alice cooper and there's the song black widow with vincent price does the voiceover which actually then michael jackson kind of tagged off of for thriller by using by using him as the same for the voiceover and so i painted this thing black and i put a red tongue accent on it and i wrote black widow and this hand script on it and we brought it in in a box and we showed went up to paul fireman's office and like this is the kind of thing we want to make and we flipped open that box and i pressed that button and his eyes got like that big he's like holy crap you guys did it this is what we need you know and we're gonna you know we're gonna do everything we can to crush the competition we're going to be the leaders in innovation so that one really was the key that unlocked the door to like bigger budgets uh we ended up getting our own building off campus um where we had the biomechanics guys were then integrated into our team and we worked together with them in tandem kind of the first of its kind in the in the industry and we just created and created and created and created so much that rebot couldn't digest it and you could see that you know 15 20 years later they were still in dipping into that well for the technologies which was really cool but it shows like how explosively creative we were at the time you know with those two guys kind of feeding me um materials and and and tools and putting it together and we're brainstorming and then me going off and creating these things people had never seen before that blew their minds you know like we can never do that they're like why well here it is i just did it you know that was the thing i was always up for the challenge the you know what somebody said was impossible it couldn't be done i said fuck it let's let's do it you know what do we got to lose we got the resources why not you know and then then we did this really cool that was a spin off of the black widow eventually called smart pump whereas you you know we end up getting patents on all this shit i ended up with like 50 different utility patents um which again goes back to my grandfather because my grandfather's whole life he was always thinking of these ideas and inventions and he submitted this patent for this venetian blind concept and i still have the patent model and all the paperwork from when he did it in the 60s i i kept all that myself as inspiration and and i wanted to to show him what i could accomplish so he never got a single patent and i end up with like 50 utility patents my brother has like 10 or 20 maybe he might even have more than me by now i don't know but we both went off with that drive to to honor our grandfather with these ideas and these patents and so we ended up creating this thing called smart pump that inflated itself as you walked and then it had this micro control unit like the size of a zippo lighter that had a computer in it with these micro valves and the micro valves were handmade they were piezoelectric valves handmade on a workbench by dean cayman who invented this kidney dialysis machine that was portable but he also created a segue brilliant mad scientist and this thing was so cool you you walked in it it inflated itself these valves bled off or let more air in to adjust three different air units within within the pump shoe and it had this micro brain that controlled it all that had algorithms built in that within one or two steps it knew what you were doing whether you're cutting side to side running forward or jumping and it moved the air around within the shoe to add support and cushioning as you were doing these actions i mean here was this this was 1996 okay i mean fucking crazy this sounds like 2035 1996 we created this thing so later 99 i end up at nike so we were talking about different concepts and things and i was describing this to them and they're like you're full of shit right you guys never die i said it's real go look at the patents you know it's patented it just was never it never came out we made one pair of them you put them on it look the brain woke up and came on and knew that you were wearing them and then it controlled all this thing it was autonomous it was autonomous it was really cool but the hardest thing were those valves at the time the valves would burn out pretty quick within a couple hours that mems and micro micro mechanisms didn't exist at that point there was no real 3d printing like we know it now where this thing could have existed it was way ahead of its time i mean even today as i describe it you're you're like holy shit what year was this right it sounds crazy but we built this thing in 96 yeah and then i'm already thinking like okay how do you make this even affordable to the market and all the other things along with it the creative side yeah that's great and it's like that's the other part you take your creativity and it's like okay i'm sure there's been plenty of times throughout your design process through all the companies where they're like okay we need to strip this down a little bit yeah like hold on there kid you know it's difficult having to deal with that you know because here you were with this revolutionary shoe and so when we were at Reebok when we first started our group we called it advanced concept group or ACG nine months later Nike comes out with all conditions gear so we're like we had to change our name that's crazy became our ac for Reebok advanced concepts okay but when we were still called acg people called us the any cost group because we were creating these technologies and these these products that people had never seen before using these expensive materials you know i mean so that that smart pump shoe that that that thing was going to retail for like 250 bucks at that point and okay 96 97 that's a lot oh yeah well you got to remember though the pump one was 180 bucks when it came out i mean people forget that and you know that was what a 91 that's like a 400 dollars you know i know isn't crazy and it's it's kind of funny when you think about what we do and you think about inflation and pricing again you know you asked me financial learnings and things think about what we do we're one of the few industries that's able to sell the latest version of something but we're still able to sell our 65 Mustang right so like your Air Force ones and Jordan ones and 574s right they haven't really gone up that much you know they're still under like maybe for the nikes but like the new balances still under 100 bucks think about that i mean think about a Corvette in 1990 retail price and you think about a Corvette now yeah so we're still selling the 1990 Corvette for not far from the price we sold that at in 1990 right right and you know we still obviously have the latest and greatest running shoes and things but there's still a ceiling of $200 pretty much right yeah it's so interesting when you see a sneaker hit around that $200 price point especially go over now i don't know from the sneaker head standpoint people are well is it worth it's like i'd rather get it at 190 or whatever like they're literally like so judgy on it from a $10 price point or $20 difference on a sneaker and it's crazy to see that but besides that i know we're talking about cars for a second i know you're into cars so talk about the love for cars where it all started just for a bit because you know like you said you took a lot of inspiration from hospitals airplanes cars all the different things which i see a lot of designers do yeah but what was kind of your pathway on that oof you know i love machines i love fixing things because my older brother broke all my shit so that i think that's part of what made me a good designer you know you think about it now how my you know you broke all my toys and everything but then i had a tinker with them and figure out how to put them back together and stuff so it made me a good designer because i figured out how things were made and i saw a weak point like i could make that better if i made it like that and so that it affected how my brain worked now my cousins who lived a block away they were older than me uh my great-uncle he collected fords drove a 1923 model t is his daily car back in massachusetts uh kind of a nut bag crazy to be driving that back there especially in mass i know it's funny the roads and everything still yeah 23 t wooden rims you know it goes like crazy uncle tom but they lived a block away and he built a garage behind his house bigger than the house and it was full of fords model t's model a's t birds 55 56 57 thunderbirds gt 350 hertz mustangs ford v8 sedan 32 ford rumble seat roadster not hot rods these were all okay preserved street cars then he had my my cousin had a buick gs stage one convertible which you know was amazing with the big 455 and everything in it and so i when i was a little kid we would go visit uncle tom and aunt mary and over there with the cars and so yeah a little kid you play in the cars so i pretend i was driving all these things and i would ask uncle tom like can you show me how to work on these things no i'm too busy so it's kind of a diss you know it was a a joy and not joy at the same time because i wanted to learn about them but it was joyful because you get to play in all these cars and they were funny because they bought them in the the 70s during the gas crunch you know and people didn't they wanted like toyo you know early toyotas and dotsons and things that were fuel efficient so these muscle cars and these antique cars were not desirable right so they just started hoarding them right so i would go over there and play in them all the time you know and um that's kind of where the love for cars started with them i would always go over can i go play in the cars like yeah yeah what was the first car you got that was like um i'm a car guy now like you know how you like price like prize enjoy type car so it was very funny my you know the early 80s came around and gas was getting high again so honda came out with the first crx hf okay and it was that very first generation crx and my dad was commuting to wooster from taunton where we lived and it was a long commute i mean like 50 something miles one way every day and uh so he saw this honda come out called hf you know crx which people you know equate with the the sportier version but the very first one they came out with was hf for high fuel and it got 50 80 84 i think it was it got 50 miles to the gallon back then okay it was a little 1.5 liter i think okay and a standard and so he's like i'm gonna get that because it's more fuel efficient so he gave me his old chevette which had like 100 000 miles on it and he didn't like driving this the standard so he gives me the brand new honda and he takes the chevette back and you know even though it was a fuel efficient car the thing handled like a roller skate you know i would drive the crap out of that thing drift in it and everything and it still got 50 miles per gallon so that was kind of my first one and then i kept that through college and then when i went to work at at new balance when i actually had my own income i didn't have to rely on the hand-me-down car i went and got a triple white vw cabriolet you know people mocked it for being the the gidget car but it was that year the wilseberg edition one it was triple white white leather and they had put all the gti bits in it so i mean it it went fast it handled well um and it looked really cool you know it's hard to keep clean because it was all white but i love that thing you know i would get it up on three wheels going around the exit ramps and stuff from uh 93 onto route 24 there and stoten and it hauled ass you got it you got any uh pride enjoy car now in the current time or like a little collection yeah i mean i got my 65 vintage beetle that i road race it's a historic racing car it's fast for a bug i got a 1958 Porsche 356 outlaw coupe i bought that when i moved to oregon almost 26 years ago people thought i was crazy like why are you buying that 50s car you know and at the time it was 13-5 and you could get a neon with roll up windows in it for 13-5 with maybe a cassette player a cd player at that point that's a lot and i was like i could get this cool old Porsche you know and then i drove that thing year-round studs everything and then it slowly started to keep going up in price and up in price and up in price and now it's an absurd amount of money and i i drive it when i can i certainly wouldn't drive it as a daily driver anymore um to risk what i take it out on the four sunny days we get yeah yeah sometimes i yeah last year i drove it out in the snow which was kind of fun um but it's a it's a beautiful car it's just a beautiful pure design and and it's a machine and it's it's a 50s car that you can actually drive in modern traffic you know it handles well it stops it starts it goes it's it's uh it's usable in in a modern environment other than the fear of somebody hitting it for how valuable it's become and then um i got another i got another car that's gonna appear soon enough uh that is a 1964 cheetah okay uh vintage racing car from the 60s and that was given to me by a friend that's dope yeah that's dope okay we'll probably see that on your instagram at some point uh next year next spring when aka a few months from now yeah when it rears its head okay so one of one of eight that's fire okay um all right so we're talking about the Reebok era yeah this is where were you living at you said you're back in mass now yeah i've been out there i was living back in taunton i bought end up buying the house next door to my parents and okay so you're there now you're even created some crazy stuff some stuff that still hasn't even hit the market yet all these different things and what gets you to move and where do you go next well it was funny i in 92 i went and interviewed at nikey with tinker and mark parker okay so you came to portland yeah they secretly flew me out okay sorry to interrupt the podcast but i had a quick question are you guys interested in taking your shoe game to another level but you just don't know where to start i built a full program just for somebody like you the six figure sneakerhead it's a eight week program that takes you through all the steps that you need to know we have a full community where you can engage with everybody else that's going through the same program as you have monthly live meetups where you can connect with me and other members on the inside and we set goals for each other and held each other accountable also we give away free pair of shoes every single month with different challenges if this is something that's for you or you're looking to take your game to the next level or even flip your sneakers to turn that into real estate this is the place where you need to be i can help you with finding loans and remodeling properties and getting yourself on the right path to become a millionaire if that's something that you desire if this sounds like something for you hit the link down below in the description and get signed up today this is more than just sneakers i want to see people grow and succeed in all aspects of life let's get back to the podcast interview went okay the trouble is those days you brought your portfolio and slides i had brought my own carousel with all my slides in it people don't know what that is anymore because they're not old enough they had that when i was like in grade school yeah like i don't remember it by the time i got to middle school it wasn't a thing anymore but i definitely remembered i was for like because i was i was born in 91 yeah yeah see so i brought the carousel with me with all my slides and it was me and tinker and tinker's like do you have your work i said yeah it's all in these slides so it was kind of funny you think of nike being buttoned up and corporate and all that shit they spent all day trying to find somebody to get me a slide projector so you could actually look at the slides because they told me the hr recruiter told me bring your slides so i brought slides but they the whole day they spent trying to find a freaking slide projector so so you're just sitting there like what is going on tinker had to hold him up in the window he goes boy you can draw you know and he's like just some good stuff right i'm okay thanks right so then i went home and so i never said anything to anybody nobody knew i ever went there so you just there for the day i went there for the day and came back okay and it was a big secret so i didn't hear anything so all of a sudden i get a letter in the mail you know the rejection letter i still have it i saved it uh and i was like you mfers uh that's it i'm gonna design stuff that you guys wish you had right and part of that was the motivation because i had the sketch of the fury and i went and i built the fury i designed it and built this thing that nobody had ever seen wow i'm like i'm gonna design the shoe that nike wish they had they they missed out on me and they missed out on what i did so out of it came the fury and so now this thing goes on to become this icon and you see it at you know in in the late 90s before i had actually gone to nike in the back of runners world and slam magazine there's people looking for them they're like yeah you know we're looking for this nike model that nike model that nike model oh yeah and the fury the the one Reebok shoe that was being sought after so i was like did my job right right it's it's being hailed and heralded and desired as much as the nike shoes that was my intent with this thing and it was really cool because it ended up in the london design museum it ended up in the smithsonian uh it ended up in all of these collections and and futuristic exhibits and things so it was really cool um did you get to go experience at all and like see everything nope never got to go to you know they were too cheap to send me plus i was busy creating the next yeah there was always i was creating the next yeah that was a moment in time this product dropped out what's next continue what's the next thing and um so anyway Reebok was getting really annoying and very political firemitted kind of stepped away and uh it was losing its soul and you know i when it came down to the projects i would die on the sword for them because i knew they were the right thing DMX was one of those uh you get labeled as belligerent difficult to work with because you believed in the product and you know some people politically tried to assassinate me and in the company and i fought him and i could just go see firemen and hit slap them back down and then at some point it becomes fatiguing and overwhelming and i'm just like i'm out right so earlier a couple years earlier kevin crawley from phila had been calling me like i want you come design with me i see your work you've done you know i'll give you a double what you're getting paid you know it always seemed to be a common theme and uh it's like i'm not mad it so he was working out of his garage and i'm like dude i'm going from this like state of the art facility and in stoten to like your garage right i don't know dude it's kind of risky and where were they located he was working out of his house in newbrew port mass oh okay so this is all just like popping up in the same area yeah i mean new england so there were kind of two pockets new england and then out out here and and it was because of nike in columbia daner was all here and so at that point in time at rebock phila had actually started to make a little headway into things and so i called up kevin i'm like dude i'm ready i said i've had it with this place and he's like all right let's meet up so we met up and he put out this number and i'm like sounds good to me and uh so i went to go work at phila and there i was kind of this blue sky back ops and i it seems to be my my mo was like go blue sky create the future of what these companies want so i did all this dreaming at phila very little like very little of it came out i mean i was working on their future 2a and that then became the platform that was going to go into the grant hill so i got to work on grant hill in the 2a and that and that's why that one kind of um reared its head but then they picked a different design and uh then phila was it was like adidas part two i was reliving the groundhog day where phila wasn't doing so good they had sold us a bill of goods on the health of the company they were slashing the team in portland they were slashing the team in newberry port and um finally they said they were gonna close down so that's how i got out to oregon phila had an office here too yeah and the waterfront in the ben franklin building so that's that's that's who moved me here really yeah was this so they when they opened the early 90s 97 or late 90s yeah so they wanted to steal nike people so they opened an office here and those guys i was coming out here every month and they're like you might as well just move here right so that's what i end up doing i i moved here in in uh 97 for how was your impression of the first moving to portland it's always a way different now i liked it then yeah it was very clean it reminded me of tokyo you know it was cool cleaning the streets every night the downtown was vibrant there were lots of great restaurants parking was easy it was a lot cheaper living here you know um so i i loved it so it was an easy it was an easy thing to come out and they paid you know they paid all the moving expenses and everything for it which was cool yeah around like 2007 2010 i would say was like the time where it definitely started to transition yeah more into weirdness and changing and everything more traffic more sketchy yeah yeah i could leave my house and be downtown in five minutes for a meal you know yeah and um so yeah so that's who moved me out here then they were talking about shutting down the office and it was like adidas part two we're like all right we're going to close the office you can either move to bella in italy where the headquarters is or move back to massachusetts where you started and i'm like dude i've only been here for two and a half years i'm not turning around i'm moving everything back and so that's when i got in a nike so kilgore was going to bring me into the ape what was called ape for advanced product engineering okay that team got blown up and became the kitchen and oh yeah tell everybody what the kitchen is because not everybody knows so it's funny they called it the kitchen it was kind of tinker's little innovation team but it because there was this blank space left in me a ham kind of behind the actual cafeteria and kitchen so that's why they called it the kitchen but you know the double and tondra was like we're cooking up the future in here so it was kind of neat so that's where i was originally destined to go then they had a hiring freeze then they blew up kilgores team then they had continued the hiring freeze so i had to go six months and stall out fila like yeah i gotta get my house painted i gotta get the yard work done before i can put the house on the market yeah i'm working on it i'm working on it so me and my developer were working out of my house and so then the the door cracked open for a moment there was one headcount and all of design and it was for nike id which didn't even exist yet wow okay so this is like what 98 98 99 so uh michael donahue pulls me in here's your chance i'm hiring you i'm embedding you and running you're gonna be paid by this nike id team even though it doesn't exist right they have a budget for a headcount for design so that's how i got in so i kind of stayed in running i was being paid for by what would then become nike id for my headcount and then then i got to work on all the innovation and stuff and and running and the main line as well all the bowerman product because again going back to my roots so that purity of design and being a runner it just seemed unnatural to go work on all the the bowerman namesake products so like pegasus structure yeah and then i i worked with the japan guys and that's where things like the spectrum and the spirit on and those shoes kind of kind of came about and that ekid in yeah and so i was passionate about it and the japanese and i got along really well because we're both fanatics on those those last little incremental details to make things always make things better not different but better and that became this this OCD behavior that the japanese and i have in common when they go into something they go deep and we were like the perfect match for that right attention in detail yeah so i did a lot of the japanese product for running helping them revive nike japan on the running business and then i because of the technologies i worked on track and field and did a lot of the lead spikes so it was really cool it was a great time did the max 2009 did the air units it was kind of the first time a designer had done the air units yeah so i did what became the you know the the next model after the 360 because the 360 was really stiff and hard and we re-engineered it to create what became the max 2009 of the fully uncaged max and then from there you know i can't help myself so i was dreaming of the future i did the next three steps on what the air max bottom unit should look like and out of that came the vapor max and then you know they always told you like you shouldn't be in a category for more than a year and a half i wasn't running for nine years because i loved it but i was the last person left in the category and i'm like all right what it's going on they're like well if you want to move up you got to move out and i'm like but i love running it's what i do well for the brand that i got you got to move out if you want to move up so i moved over to kids because i was i had a baby on the way and so i became the co-manager of kids with bill cas he did boys i did girls and toddler um and then what is it kids like kids running kids everything just all kids yeah all kids footwear and so because of my passion for the history and my knowledge of the past one of the first things i got to do there was take all the the retro styles and re-engineer them and make them look like the adults again because they had gotten so warped through costing and evolutions yeah they didn't look right anymore so i went through and revamped every one of the the retro styles to look more like the adults so they were real takedown instead oh god this was 2000 like four or something no like 2007 to 2009 okay because i was thinking i'm like that's what i was asking i don't know if you started thinking because i do that's what i'm asking because i was in high school 2006 2007 something like that was a freshman around that time and i that's why i said that because i remember seeing that because a lot of people of our age was like transition from youth size to adult size depending on grade school middle school high school and stuff so i remember seeing the the fix of the shoes and then especially on the Jordans it was terrible i remember they had those chunky mid-soles and they just didn't look right anymore flavor to them i was going on and uh so that was i made that a personal goal to revamp these things and make them an authentic full family so it was really cool it was a cool opportunity i did i did this crib shoe it was one of my favorites the crib mary jane for babies baby girls in particular it was beautiful i did the sundry adjust which ended up you know most of those shoes would have gotten redesigned within two years it was in the line for seven years eight years untouched uh so again i did my job i created these things that lived way beyond the expectation of what they were meant for but moving over to kids i was then vulnerable and 2009 2010 they had the big layoffs and the economic downturn and then i had you know again being caring about the product first and my career second i had made a few enemies there and got got uh basically got set up and got fired in in 2010 so okay after doing one of the biggest max shoes that's that's great i'm gonna ask you the other question after now because i was gonna ask you something else but yeah how do you go about like you said you are a disruptor yeah you are a person that is true to your colors you kind of see what you get this what you get how do you go about that and then navigating in a professional workspace without kissing everybody's ass or whatever and just finding the common ground to say hey i want to be successful in this space i don't want to get kicked out i want to be able to thrive and create these things because it's hard for people to navigate relationships and manage themselves within businesses or their own businesses with other businesses it's hard i mean i possibly lured 80 percent of it since i got fired from the job i thought i was gonna have for the rest of my life and retire from with the gold watch but those days are over for everybody there since the last six or seven years i mean they can legends and it makes no sense whatsoever um yeah so yeah i don't know i mean i've always stayed true to my mission the product the the brand and fuck it all fuck the money you know i like said i i haven't made as much money as i should have over the years compared to other people who sucked it up who played the game but i don't play games i don't play politics i play product i play excellence and i don't care who gets in the way i'm gonna make the best frickin product possible and that's what i've always stood for and at the end of the day i go to sleep at night comfortably knowing that i did the right thing because i can look back through my 38 years history every company i've been at i did the right thing and every company i've been at still sells those products that i worked on because i did the right thing um so to me the the financial goal was never as important as the product goal the end in mind um and those those products have stood the test of time i did the right thing and i feel comfortable with that uh that i did the right thing because they'll outlast me the people who are the obstacles or the people who are monetary driven they'll be forgotten short termers um but my product they were they were like my children they've grown up and they you know i want to pat them on the head like oh you've done really well for yourself good job you know and i i go good job you raise some you raise some good kids there i like you know uh and that's the way i look at it they'll outlive me that's what's cool so anyway i like that philosophical jumbo no it's it's true though because it's the same thing for like being a youtube tiktoker instagram or social media or any other business or whatever like are you chasing the views are you chasing the money are you what are you chasing are you chasing the impact like for me i can easily go to that like okay am i going to chase the views i know this video i'll get 10 million views i know this video i'll get a million views but is this along my lines of what i really want to create what i stand by what i believe in or am i doing it just for the wrong reasons and then that's when you got to check yourself and hey what am i here for i'm here for the impact of my audience i want to help them i want to teach them on you know i want to be able to do the same thing see other people grow in different levels as well so i feel you on that like sometimes it do be hard to bite that bullet but it's like you got to do it i don't know i just never never compromised you know i just can't be bothered with that i can't i can't drag myself down to somebody else's level of mediocrity when i can live superiority and give all i when i go to a company i give it my all whether they want it or not they're getting it because that's why that's why they hired me i don't want to go there and be dumbed down or be asked to you know live at somebody else's weak level just to make them feel good you you know don't wallow in mediocrity step it up to my game design things that i see holy shit i wish i designed that you know because there's there's very few products that i've seen that made me feel that way you know bruce killgore did it with the sock racer when i was at new balance that thing came out and i was like what is that right that's what i want to be making something like that you know not exactly that shoe but something that disruptive and different right and make you feel that it resets the whole market and you know i know killgore always thought i was blowing smoke up his ass when i told him that but i'm like dude it was pivotal it was life changing when that shoe came out that's what i wanted to make and it what made me want to work at nike and uh it was you know in first five years were magic like that then the second five years were just like a disappointment because it became politics and right bullshit and the fakers and the takers instead of the doers and the achievers uh compromise mediocrity i just i just can't live in that environment that's why i love working with yay it's this we're cut from the same cloth we're we're we we ride together we're the yin and the yang for each other people looked looked at us as like the tinker and jordan of today because it was you know it wasn't so much basketball it was lifestyle and we were creating the things that were disrupting the industry or giving it us giving it our all same he does with the music it's why the albums take so long is you want to give it your all you don't want to come out with something half-assed and it's the same way with the product that we create whether it's the apparel whether it's a vehicle whether it's the shoes whether it's the architecture it's like it's got to be it's got to be given at us our all and that's what i do i give 110 for everywhere i've been at whether they want it or not that's what they signed up for from me and with him we've been the perfect complement for each other because he's creatively insatiable and i'm creatively explosive and it's it's been you know you you look up a friend of mine had me look up horoscopes and the profiles of a gemini and a sagittarius which i am and we're the ultimate pairing okay because the gemini wants to go anywhere and everywhere and the sagittarius is the enabler who's like let's go i'll ride with you and seeing that was like mind-bending because it's like it was it was us you know empowering each other like he says let's go do this i'm like yeah let's go do it and we do it together and out of it comes this magic have you uh read the or listened to the book rocket fuel uh okay so it's funny because i just went through it a couple weeks ago and it talks about like successful companies and how like you said the tinkers of the jordan or whatever so and so mcdonald's and his partner like you always have the person who's the face and then you have the other person so you have essentially like the visionary and the operator right the visionary operator so but i see both of you guys kind of like we blur a mix of that yeah and you've been able to create success with that how do you think it is not even i don't even know i wouldn't say i don't know if it's like his personality or whatever but more of just like his workflow for other people that have that kind of blur because i'm in that same position right now with like my assistant and my people on my team we're both kind of visionary we're both operators we're trying to figure out how to become more you know just better with our business i think part of it is you know my track record and his deep respect for it you know you trust me i'm one of the few people he actually trusts he asked opinions and ideas and thoughts on things and we bounce them off each other non-stop and i think that's it as respect there's not a lot of people he respects like that and i delivered you know you look at the styles i did for him and they freaking broke the rules they broke the ground we did it together there were other people who tried to drag us back and compromise us and we're like no we're not doing it and again the proof is in the results look at the styles that we did they become these instant icons and classics you can't deny it and he sees it acknowledges it and rewards it and we we work together that way you know there's there's still there's the excellence that he represents and the excellence that i represent and then the meeting in the middle and how we operate together which is the magic it's hard to describe so how do you go about your new blue sky creative process in current time working with it uh you know he bounces an image off me or some thoughts and ideas and i riff and i send it back to him he riffs it back and we we send it back and forth it's like it's very much like music so you kind of work from home i work from wherever okay i mean right now it's a good time to work from home well he's in europe although i did go over there for a week with him in europe to kind of catch vibes and i might have to i might i might i'm feeling like i might need to go over again soon to connect reconnect with him although we're doing pretty good via text at this point then we you know we have a phone call every now and then when we think it's needed but i think at this point it just flows between us naturally i kind of sense and know what he wants for that so okay i was thinking about it too because i also for people that don't know we we kind of we have we officially met a couple years ago yeah at a sneaker event and then i reached out and i was like hey you want to get on the podcast and that's how we came about this but i was thinking about it before that because i'm always like okay how is somebody in the industry for this long obviously like i haven't been in as long as you but i'm like because i'm around the same type of people have we not met before and i started thinking about it did you go to all star weekend in LA was that 2018 i did not you did not no but at the time you were disappointed the position 2016 so joined him but i had to keep it quiet and it was low key yeah and it was officially announced when probably like he you know i signed so many nda's that i couldn't talk about what i was doing and adidas was very strict on like you can't say anything you can't do this you can't be there any so it's probably about 2018 he kind of said all right you're the face because i because all star weekend's always in february yeah and i remember going and i'm like i probably left just the day before because i would go down there and that's you have brought i think you have brought some samples out there probably of what the yeezys were gonna look like yeah and i remember being that because i went to the adidas event and i'm like i'm trying to think if i had met you at that or something because i said that's 707 space yeah 747 so yeah the space that they had there and i had went in but they're like because i think he was there and had just left or something and i was there with some other people that were like usawarika and nike went back and forth you know everybody's tied into each other yeah so i went in and then they were telling me about it and then that's when i had first like heard of you and they were talking about the designs and everybody was like same thing oh this stuff is going to be bad all the different stuff because you hear it and everybody's like i don't know what it is like all these weird designs and all these crazy things but that's why i was trying to connect with my head i'm like do we meet after or not like no that's the beauty of being me you know i get to operate in the background yeah um you know he he loves that because i'm not there for the fame i'm not there to tag along behind him you know uh i'm there to create with him and that's what mattered to me more than anything again even more than the money it's like let's create magic and that's what i love i love the product i love you know i'm a pleaser naturally and i want to make him happy and come out with great product and that's what we do um and i just it's it's been the best time of my career because i get to dream in blue sky and there's no corporate baggage with it it's me and him what do you think i like it i don't great let's go and that's so liberating and refreshing to me it's priceless well the thing that we have going for us that other companies don't is there's no branding and we create each style as an individual standalone style it doesn't have to be a takedown or connect to the other um but that's the thing that he says i add to it as i add the easy dna to it i'm the strand that connects it all i'm his eyes and hands and you don't need a logo you don't need a logo we're creating these art pieces but it's definitely a vibe and a flavor and a dna to it that you immediately see it and like that's a easy it's different as some of the styles that we've done because of the way he works on it and the way i help him you see it you immediately know it's a yeezy right i mean 500 looks nothing like a 700 looks nothing like a 350 looks nothing like a 450 um they stand alone but you immediately know that's the new yeezy when you see it because that's what we deliver and that's what's cool we create accessible art if it's usable you know you can only hang a da Vinci on the wall but our stuff you can use or you can collect and display it like an art piece you know and they they appreciate over time which is really cool and i think that's the way you have to view it i mean it's the way it's the way i kind of look at it so i feel that okay so what would you say were some of your uh favorite pieces that you've created you know shoes that you've created over the years that not just socially were successful but the one that you were like i feel so good about this this one was a success to me like did you know sometimes you got those projects that stand out in your eyes just like for me i can make a banger video against 2000 views and i'm like yeah i have another one to get a million views i'm like i don't even like that video i don't know you know dmx was a big one the original dmx walking because at the time like i said we were slandered as any cost group within rebalk and so we quietly went underground and created this technology that was going to be a buck 25 a pair that was going to go into 65 to 75 dollar walking shoes right and walking was kind of wavering and its popularity at the time and we came out with this thing that felt so damn good for a 65 dollar shoe technology that was groundbreaking and the first year we sold 14 million pairs of those damn dmx walking shoes it was crazy and we made all the parts in Worcester which was even cooler right you know made in us you know the technology was made in the usa massive volume and it made people's lives better and we made a comfortable walking shoe which didn't exist at the time and and out of that spawned the dmx running pieces and all of that and all of Reebok's dmx technology from that single component that's crazy that's that's one i have pride in um and that little baby girl's Mary Jane is still one of my favorites you know it was so it was the antithesis of what i was known for it's like this high performance track and field japanese technology um it had technology in it it had my slant added to it but it was a beautiful delicate little shoe because i used a flower motif on it and a repeat in the perforations and the tread even in the strap and the heel counter it was just beautifully resolved and i will say that's one of the things that the products that i've been involved in are resolved no matter what way you turn it around it looks good from every angle and i think part of that goes back to learning my craft by hand hanging out with the pattern makers at new balance seeing them interpret my drawing for the good or for the bad and when they did it for the bad i would then have to go in when it transitioned from two dimensions to three dimensions to resolve it and get it to what i saw in my head and translate it to them so that in three dimensions it comes out right and i i again i think that's a difference where no matter where you turn it it looks balanced it's resolved from any angle and i think that's one of the things as i look back retrospectively on the designs that i've done that i add to it and it just comes natural now when it's done it looks right and it's just it's part of my brain function right now when i design yeah i mean you've been taking so many repetitions and all this stuff over the years i could understand why you could just feel it and be like this yeah that's the thing you feel the form when you're drawing it you're feeling the form and the shape is your hand moves you know that's why i didn't like digital as much because you click drag click drag click drag click drag this is with a pen and pencil it's you're feeling the form and the curve and you're getting it just right the way your hand moves and i'll redraw the same line a hundred times till i get it the way i want it and you know that was the thing for me with with yay i transitioned finally from paper to pure digital working on an ipad because with the apple pencil i think was that revolution with sketchbook pro going back to the the wacom tablet as the first dabble in it but i still couldn't carry that with me the big ipad with the apple pencil that was the revolution that got me away from paper because i could actually just hit the back arrow and take away a line and then redraw it again and hit the back arrow and redraw it again till i got it to where i was happy with it you know it could be two times it could be two hundred times i've drawn that same line but it allows me to do that rather than start the whole sketch over again and redraw it to get that one line right so you just be at the house or somewhere anyway on the line airport even i gotta take a break i like to the same line like yeah i mean i've done it on planes same line 25 times and like that's it let's end it with round of questions real quick what is the greatest sneaker of all time oh you know to me it's that sock racer that kilgore did okay it was it changed the industry i like that i like that and then what is your uh prize possession shoe that you have in your collection oh like you know everything was gone i could only use i could only keep one it was those super cops but i sold them but i would say it was replaced by my original first prototypes of the pump fury okay um i think that's it with the yellow blown rubber sole that they actually reissued on the anniversary that came in the whole kit they did the the prototype series yeah uh these are questions that everybody asked me all the time so i re-asked them to everybody other question is how many pairs of shoes do you have in your collection oh jeez you know i narrowed it down probably to about 200 at one point i had about 500 but it's it you know they take up space a lot and then finally i just started to purge i like i wanted a motorcycle so i sold off a bunch of my nikes to buy a motorcycle i feel that yeah still be riding yeah yep i got it dope dope and then uh how long do you think you're gonna be designing do you think you're gonna go you know 10 15 20 more years what's it looking like whatever i can you know i i always describe myself and yay were creative sharks and if you know the like a shark stop swimming it dies right and that's kind of the way i view view creation there's definitely times where i'd like to say fuck this and go off and race my cars into eternity but i don't know if i could live that way every day i mean i like creating i like solving problems you see something like i can make that better it was never about making it different it was always about making it better and that's it's just inherent in me so i don't know i don't you know you know it's like can i afford to retire this year has been bad i've been watching my my 401k plummet so like i had maybe i can't retire yet i don't know you know 2023 has been misery for me everybody it's man economy that's a whole other conversation beyond the economy there's been a lot of a lot of stuff that's hit me hard and in this year that i can't wait for it to be over well i hope that you're able to get through it uh you know mentally financially physically everything whatever's going on yeah i mean it's hard as creatives you know introverts inherently and we we take everything internally deeply and it's harder it can swing into deep depression mode at times i'll tell you you know but sometimes out of that drives the the motivation to to leap out of it and out of it comes the new designs i don't know or you can wallow in it for a while it's a tough time right now yeah um well i want to give you your flowers for everything that you've done you've had an amazing career i'm excited to see what you continue to create as well um and i love you know learning from other people and hearing more about your story as a pleasure as always and if you could just tell the people where they could follow you and give a final message to your young self or somebody out there listening that's whether they're going through something or what they would have a little life nugget for them yeah i mean you can find me on instagram just as steven with a v steven smith or uh you know linked in on a professional level those are kind of the two main two main social media things i'm involved in um be ready for cars and not just all sneaker content but lots of cars um and things that interest me i try to you know people like i'll put more sneakers but you know what i try to display on there is things that interest me that then influence what become the designs the sneakers the cars the the apparel furniture whatever whatever i'm creating i like to give them glimpses into the the nuggets the easter eggs of where things came from the origins of it and how they formulated uh advice you know build the future you always wanted that's what yay and i talked about we were disappointed both growing up in different eras of science fiction and the dream of the future whether it's optimistic or pessimistic pessimistic we were we feel like we were let down on the future we were promised so we just said fuck it let's build the future that we wanted and that's you know that's one of those common things we have together so we build the future that we want and everybody else can enjoy it if if they so choose so do that stay true to yourself if you want to go make money fine suck it up make the money i mean i stay true to myself and my designs and build the future that i always wanted i like that i appreciate it yeah thanks for popping in we had another good episode we signed it out oh yeah hit that subscribe button and download button and all the things i forget to say that at the end every time see at all the complex cons and sneaker cons with our man here yes