Ronnie Fieg - How Kith Went From Streetwear to Luxury Without Selling Out

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Mark Mastrandrea (1:00)

What does Kith cost you personally that people can't see?

Ronnie Fieg (1:03)

That's a great question, man. Everything.

It's cost me everything.

Mark Mastrandrea (1:08)

Ronnie Fieg is the founder, CEO and creative director of Kith. One of the most influential lifestyle brands in the world. He's built an empire around his personal taste, turning his point of view into collaborations with BMW, Nike, Giorgio Armani and more.

Ronnie Fieg (1:22)

Give people more than what they pay for. That's the motto. I'm interested in people connecting to the brand. The minute the curiosity goes away, it could all go to zero.

Mark Mastrandrea (1:31)

Ronnie opens up 15 years of the Kith Archive, showing us how he thinks about product and stories that he's never told publicly.

Ronnie Fieg (1:38)

People are moving without purpose. I'm not cut from that cloth and I don't come from that era. Really, the brand is my life. So the end point is when I die.

Nobody knows this. I haven't told this publicly, but...

Mark Mastrandrea (1:58)

No paid ads, no influencers, no wholesale. This man has built a monster without doing the stuff that everybody says you have to do.

Stay till the end. We're going to give you guys the full playbook on how he built Kith. I want to tell you a quote that I heard from Colin Brookley, Asics' Swart Style Director. I spoke to him last night about you.

Ronnie Fieg (2:15)

One of the best people, by the way.

Mark Mastrandrea (2:16)

One of the best. What he said about you. You know exactly what people want. You're obsessed with over delivering value for the price.

You always think as the consumer. You never want someone to pay X and get Y. You are a stickler on quality and you will never cut corners for margin.

You are the best in class in your commitment to the customer. He had a lot of things to say about you, but he just said it was a maniacal obsession that you would just never cut corners, which makes sense knowing the end product. So let's just go fucking deep into product. Why don't you just walk us through your actual process of a spark in your head to getting it on the shelf? I think a lot of people are very, very curious what that looks like.

Ronnie Fieg (2:59)

So that process can range in so many different ways. Product is created in a million different lanes, I would say.

We have so many different ways of doing things, but when we think about footwear specifically, because that's the quote that Colin gave you about footwear, I spent 15 years on the floor, on the sales floor, like seeing, imagine like being a buyer and open to, call it 50 brands of footwear, and seeing product quarterly for what these brands are offering, but then also having the knowledge of why people gravitate towards certain product, like what they like about the product.

Mark Mastrandrea (3:42)

And is this just you being maniacal with asking questions when consumers come in?

Ronnie Fieg (3:45)

Yeah, because I was a salesperson first for years, for 10 years, I was selling footwear, right? So, when people would come in, their questions and curiosity back then before they were led by social media or led to like certain things because of seeing other people wearing it, they would come in and I would say 50% of it was functional, and 50% of it was fashion, you know? And on both ends, I got to see why people liked product. So, the spark, the idea that I have on making certain product always stems, I think, from that, from having my own sense of individuality and like liking certain things for my own reasons. My own reasons are building blocks for 31 years.