Chris Green on Why The Best Fashion Stores Don’t Chase Scale

**Imran Amed** (0:04)
Hi, this is Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF Podcast. It's Friday, August 7th.
Christopher Green has spent nearly 30 years learning retail from the inside, starting at 16 stocking shelves, and later running the buying for independent retailers Need Supply and Totokaelo.
When those businesses closed in 2021, he says it was the lowest point of his career. But it also shaped exactly the kind of store he wanted to build on his own. That store is Ven. Space, a small self-funded menswear shop in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens. This week, named one of the best fashion stores in the world by BOF. Ven. Space has no outside investment and no e-commerce, anomalies in a US retail environment that has spent the last decade racing towards scale.

**Chris Green** (0:58)
In Tokyo, the cost is very different.
And you can have a much smaller space, and it can be extremely specialized, and it can be extremely light on product. And they can do that forever, which is amazing. And I think that's the mentality of the brands that I want to work with. I want to continue to work with brands like that, that have that same mentality. There's no rush to be gigantic. The rush is just to be as good as you possibly can be.

**Imran Amed** (1:25)
This week, Chris joins me to talk about building an independent retail business entirely on his own terms, why the best stores don't chase scale, and how the feeling of a place, not the transaction, is what keeps people coming back. Here's Christopher Green on the BoF Podcast.
Chris Green.

**Chris Green** (1:47)
Yes, sir.

**Imran Amed** (1:48)
Welcome to the BoF Podcast.

**Chris Green** (1:50)
Thank you.

**Imran Amed** (1:50)
This is the first time you and I have met.

**Chris Green** (1:53)
It is.

**Imran Amed** (1:53)
I'm really pleased to have you here. Congratulations on being included on our list of the best fashion stores in the world.

**Chris Green** (2:00)
Thank you.

**Imran Amed** (2:01)
I am so curious to learn about how you do what you do, and how you have created this store that's built such a strong reputation in such a short period of time. But first, I want to learn a bit about your background, as always.
It's my understanding that you actually started your career or your education in a military college. Is that right?

**Chris Green** (2:35)
Yeah, I did go to military school.

**Imran Amed** (2:37)
Okay.

**Chris Green** (2:37)
I went to a public military school.

**Imran Amed** (2:41)
You grew up where?

**Chris Green** (2:42)
In Richmond, Virginia.

**Imran Amed** (2:43)
Okay.

**Chris Green** (2:44)
Yeah. That's actually where I started in the industry with, at the time, it was called Blues. So I started in 1997 at Blues and it evolved into Need Supply.

**Imran Amed** (2:54)
Oh, really?

**Chris Green** (2:55)
Yeah. So I was like employee three.

**Imran Amed** (2:57)
How old were you in 1997?

**Chris Green** (2:59)
I was 16 at the time.

**Imran Amed** (3:03)
Yeah, 16 at the time. So that was your first job?

**Chris Green** (3:04)
That was one of my first. Yeah. I actually worked at a few places in retail. I did some back stock at Abercrombie and Fitch at the mall.

**Imran Amed** (3:11)
Okay.
So you weren't one of the naked guys in the front with your shirt off? No, heck no. I was in the back.

**Chris Green** (3:17)
But yeah, I got linked up with Blues and it moved from...
It was like a college store. It was recycled denim. It was two founders who were running it, Chris Bisola and Jason. And they were doing something that nobody in that town was doing. They were buying used denim, selling it at a premium, recycled Levi's, that kind of thing.

**Imran Amed** (3:43)
Yeah, that was pretty...

**Chris Green** (3:44)
Which is really cool back in the 90s.

**Imran Amed** (3:46)
Yeah. I mean, in the 90s, I used to go when I grew up in Calgary to get like vintage denim. I go to Value Village.

**Chris Green** (3:52)
Yeah.

**Imran Amed** (3:53)
But you could buy a pair of amazing 501 jeans for like five bucks.

**Chris Green** (3:58)
Yeah.
And I think those guys started it because they didn't want to work for anyone else. They wanted to work for themselves. And then it moved. It moved into like a popular shopping district in Richmond called Cary Town. And then it evolved. It turned into contemporary brand. So we were carrying Miss 60 and Diesel and Nudie and things like this. And then it branched out of just like the vintage.