How a Nike Collab Rewrote this Brand | Severino Alvarez Ep. 6

27:43So fast forward. Yeah. There's a few guys and gals that either still work at Nike, Jordan brand, or some of them have moved on to bigger and better things. And I'll mention his name. He's still a dear friend. His name's Ben Kirshner. I would say that he was a fundamental and still is probably one of the most pivotal people to get the ball rolling. He didn't have any oversight for the direction and the design and the oversight of the project itself. That was all me and my team. But he opened a door. He basically took my deck that he asked me to prepare because he would proofread. Again, Ben Kirshner is a very remarkable guy.

28:35He's done everything from Kyrie Irving to Kevin Durant to Odell Beckham. Their shoe designs. Everything that you see, Kyrie, Devin Booker. He's basically Devin Booker's number one guy as far as the creative side of everything goes. Oh, wow. Fascinating. He's doing creative direction for Chevy and General Motors right now. Oh, geez. He's doing creative direction for the Phoenix Suns. Anyways, I don't want to make Ben's head too big. Too big. no i'm just playing ben's a great guy but we'll just get him on the podcast after you and we'll

29:08Chris Cruz:just play your episode first and then we'll go to him next he's a great guy to have on his stories are endless and they're amazing but yeah he he saw my my story and what i had put together and i remember i remember it like it was yesterday he literally called me and he was like sev and again just a quick note yeah for the last couple of years prior to this this deck which is like the golden egg deck um yeah i mean there's no other drink brand that's done a collaboration with a nike shoe um not officially i think that they have dabbled you know the heineken dunk was not an official heineken wasn't yeah that wasn't an official nike shoe exactly this is the only drink that i at least in my research that i found it was the only official collaboration with nike from a drink company and drink brand to actually like they have the tiffany's nike they have all the other collaborations with and then artists and other people who make their tom sacks and all the cream but yeah even so very few food and bev collabs have ever happened as under the nike program especially as skateboarding is its own animal which we can get because sb is a part of nike but sb to nike is jordan to nike it is a totally separate division nike at jordan brand do not correlate oftentimes they correlate less with each other than they do together they're basically separate entities under the same umbrella same yeah i'm following you sb is a tough cookie to crack you're dealing with ex-skaters who you know i hate to say it but it's true a lot of them have chips on their shoulder they grew up rough and now they have the opportunity to be the final stamp of approval and they're going to make sure that they really like you and what is going on here.

30:58Which again, I appreciate that. A lot of times, of course, are always the deciding factor for a project, not with skateboarding. To be honest with you, they could care less sometimes about the revenue generated. They want to do something that the skateboarders don't look at and go cheesy, corny.

31:15Chris Cruz:Yes. They're looking at their actual like loyalty, their tribe and go, if we put something out to this tribe that actually causes them to look at us and go, you've lost your taste. You've lost your way. It's more costly to them than going, Hey, what's the return on investment we're going to get on this? They're going to go, it's going to destroy your existing tribe. That is your greatest loyalty, your multiple spenders. These people are coming in twice to three times getting something. So if you break them up, this is a bad move. And if you think about it, skateboarding has been driving Nike's supply chain and revenue generation for the last 10 years.

31:51Skate SB SB is the SB dunk from 2007 or 8 with the Tiffany dunks first one all the way till I would say 2023, maybe 2024, because things have definitely taken a dive. But back to what you said is they realized that skate culture was actually leading the world of fashion. you know 10 years ago before that prior to 10 years ago there was not skaters walking at louis baton fashion shows now there's more skaters and extreme athletes walking at lvmh shows than ever before and that just shows you that the sb team was smart for what they did because they knew that if they were to go corny and do something that didn't resonate with their base all these skaters were going to dip off and go to adidas they were going to go to new balance they were going to go to whatever other brand that kept the skater feeling like he was protected and not be solicited out for the sake of dollar generation by nike so that's going to rewind come on in saw the story and he hit me up and again i told you i had pitched a few things in previous years that he's like bro how am i going to get this in front of those people this isn't going to work and so basically as a friend he was just shutting me down saying bro like i believe in you and that's a great idea but that's just not gonna fly with nike nope that's not gonna fly here so it would only go a few steps until i would have to get the drawing board well okay believe it or not when i got the opportunity with harritos and i gave basically about a i didn't need that much time i think about a week um because again like subconsciously i had this stored in my mind about the story and why this was important to the world um and he saw it and i got a phone call and it was like bro i think you actually have something right here that is substantially um you know there's a substantial chance that you're gonna get put in front of the right people and i remember it wasn't a week after that that i got a text and said you're gonna get a call from

34:07Chris Cruz:um a few people at sb at the time well they're very interested in talking to you and let's go that i mean i remember i i literally i think i probably cried i think i called i i called my wife and i'm like she's like are you okay are the kids okay and i'm like everybody's fine like i think nike might have accepted this project as like on their list and when when they accept the project it's basically you got to go through a bunch of legal you got to make sure contracts are signed but it's a really good stage to be at with hey we're taking our time at nike to consider this in the pipeline schedule um and then quickly after that it began to roll out and um the conversation started to where i think within 30 days post those texts i was on with nike signing a non-disclosure um to basically roll out not only what the beginning of my project was but it wasn't as cool as knowing i was going to do the project but what was cool is a project with nike is a minimum of about 18 months it's 18 to 24 months so the time that you start the project your shoe or product won't come out until at least two years later okay it's a long it's also cool because you get to see a schedule you know at this time it's 2021 and i'm getting to see shoes that i never knew were coming out and i get to see the next 18 months of releases and i'm like holy cow you guys are releasing this much product for my shoe and they're like we're nike this is what we do so yeah um before i get too much on a tangent that's basically the initial um that was the initial rollout it was it was a deck that i had put all my ideas all my experience and why it made you design the shoe then too like was that the shoe was my design yeah okay dang bro why do you think it resonated so well with the the the sneaker world street uh street culture and um the skate community like we'll end with the harito story there like why do you think it resonated why do you think that landed you know i think it goes back to skateboarding it it was being picked up worldwide i had people that are rich schnobs and and very aristocratic going i like haritos yeah and i like skateboarding and then you had everybody from the subculture that had already been identifying with heritos and i think it's one of those things there's several other things throughout history and even current day that we all resonate with um right whether it be a sport an old tupac or biggie album for the older generation um but it's just one of those things that i think it was easy to see the resemblance and the market made in a plethora of people's lives like i said like it doesn't matter if you had it at a house if you had it at a taco shop or if you saw it in mexico or in texas or la when you were there i think 99 of the people that I went and talked to about Haritos had a retention of the brand.

37:41They already had seen it somewhere. And they're like, I think what it was is it brought a smile to people. When they see the logo, it makes them remember a good time, a party, or an experience that they shared with loved ones. And that's where the - Connected. It resonated deep there. It happened. Yeah.

37:59Chris Cruz:Okay. So let me, with the last little bit of time we have together, Let me ask you a couple core questions around brand partnerships and why that matters. Cause you have so many things sent to you on a regular basis. Like you're like, if anybody doesn't follow you on Instagram, like just you not, they're not even unboxing videos, like an influencer or a content creator unboxing videos. It's literally you like getting your mail. And you're like, I got this, this, uh, this custom Lama Rosoco sent to me today. This, and this other, like, um, a lot of these other, like Louis Vuitton items are sent to you and that are collector level stuff that nobody's getting.

38:34And so my two questions are,

38:37Chris Cruz:if you could think in, in, in going like rapid fire here, my first one is why are these brands sending these things to people? Why does it even matter? And what do brands need to be thinking about with brand partnership that, what, that they're not thinking about? Like what, what, when you start talking to brands and you start going, this is why you need to think about brand partnership. This is why it's important. If you could think through that, those questions and give me your thoughts. I'd love to hear what you're thinking. Yeah. Well, I gotta, I gotta be honest. A lot of the stuff you see is purchased.

39:06Now the brain's thin me stuff. A lot of stuff. I

39:09Chris Cruz:get a lot of, that's a good clarifier because now I need to know how much money you make so that I could start buying the things that you buy. No, just joking. No. So, I mean, again, this all started back in the day before I even had the opportunity with Blitz, Jadaritos and a few other brands that yeah again and it's funny because people are like wait what so a financial advisor takes your money and he spends it how he has been educated to make you more money which reciprocates him making a large percentage of money off of your money yeah um i was able to prove myself to a group of wealthy people that are kind of in this network together and it keeps growing and there's people that have passed away in families that I don't work for.

39:57And there's been new families that have come in or individuals that have trusted me with luxury goods. They've trusted me with experiences and selection. There's a lot of product out there. And my thing that I joke around with is rich people don't know how to spend their money. They have so much that they don't know what to buy sometimes so i think having somebody like me that i guess trustworthy

40:26Chris Cruz:so you're almost like a luxury goods buyer for some of these people too yeah for sure and that's what it started with opm and other people's money um that's where it started the brands you know lvmh i i got invited to all the shows early on because of how much i was spending at the brands you know 95 of that was other people's money i'm giving yeah i'm getting a runway bag for this miss and this mister wants a new watch from rolex well they're all going under my accounts of course the brands they want to know who my clients are but i'm not giving any of that away instead i'm building up my rapport with each brand to where you know louis vuitton's looking at it going oh my gosh this guy's 29 years old and he spent over a million dollars in the last three years here what is going on yeah so that's when the free stuff comes that's when the gifting comes because now that i establish my rapport and i start to elevate myself i get to pick and choose hey prada you guys weren't really cool to me this year so i'm gonna go shop at the way they now hey loeve hey bottega hey louis yeah um it's almost like it's a game of cat and mouse they want i feel you that's what brands want they want revenue roi and i think what they've come to find out is there's a balance between gifting and experience gift like hey fly me to paris fly me to long blonde for fashion week you pay for it and in reciprocity i'll make sure that this guy that hasn't shop with you him and his wife spend fifty thousand dollars with you next week so like you You know, and these things are kind of like these vague agreements.

42:08They're not contracts, but again, it's built on rapport.

42:12Chris Cruz:So fast forward. But these brands know that these key individuals represent a larger market. And so there's a reality of like, hey, if you don't understand, in the same way that I think about like the way ideas spread, if you don't understand the people that spread ideas, Seth Godin talks about this a lot where the idea virus, Like who are the people that are tipping points, catalysts who in and of themselves are this big, but they have the ability to spread something quicker. And you may not know anything about them, but they can spread something and they have this spreadability about them. And if brands can go, if I can get one or two of those connected to what we do versus influencers or content creators, like sometimes it's more important to find the people who have that connection to a deeper, broader world that may not have notoriety and fame, but are actually more likely to get you where you're going than going.

43:05Chris Cruz:All right, let's get so-and-so to post about us. It's a very different way to look at it. Very different. In fact, I stay away from influencer marketing. that is the death of authenticity to me and it's the death of genuine um style i have and again no hate i have friends a vast majority of the high level friends on instagram that i have get stuff all the time yeah but you're picking up product every day and hey shampoo try it Yeah. Deodorant. Try it. At what point does the viewer look at you and go, do you really use this stuff? Do you really? This is the next wave of influencer marketing that is going to crash.

43:51Chris Cruz:It's crashing. Because it's going to go, wait, this was the old infomercials. You no longer trust this person because they're associated with it. Interpreted. That's all it is. And half the time on QVC, people are falling off the ladder that they're selling and breaking their necks. You know what I'm saying? You go back and QVC bloopers. That's what's happening on social media nowadays is you have these college athletes or whoever it is selling stuff. And their excuse is, well, they're paying me. But I'm like, bro, you are devaluing your brand. Because in five years from now, when the next influencer takes your spot and you're trying to look for a real job, these people are going to look at what you've done and said, everything that you've said to your base, your audience, has been disingenuine.

44:34disingenuine. It's been dis, it's been so disassociated who you really are. That's that I pride myself.

44:42Chris Cruz:That's the reality. And that's why I think I'm seeing some of the things that I'm seeing with influencer marketing. One of the pivots when, when, when an influencer or content creator sees that reality in the future, the, one of the pivots I see them make is they actually either start their own brand or they start to get equity in brands that they are doing that to pivot away from that inauthenticity is going, this is actually my brand now and I have equity in this brand. And so it feels a little bit more authentic, even though it could be like the smallest percentage of equity, it allows for them to feel a little bit more authentic than simply I'm getting paid for it.

45:18Yeah. A hundred percent.

45:19Chris Cruz:Okay. So let's, let's, uh, let's do this. Let's end with some of my, my, uh, fire questions here around. And then I, I'm going to finish. My last question to you is going to be what is the craziest item you got behind you that you like talking about because it's a museum behind you of curated specialty goods that people would like i want to i want to fly to greenville honestly my dream right now one of my dream ideas is fly us to greenville to your space and do a garage tour with you of all these items you got that i'm like dude there's there's only four of these in the world like this is like this is the equivalent of an art piece that's hanging in the Museum of Modern Art.

45:58Chris Cruz:This thing right here, there's only four, and there won't be any more made, and he has one of them. Yeah. I want to do that video. You check your schedule. You're more than welcome at the spot, man. We'd love to have you here. It's an easy flight, too, to Greenville. It's not far for us from Nashville. Okay. All right, so I want to do a game of a little bit of, like, iconic or irrelevant because I know you got some spice to you, and I like the energy that you bring to when it's, like, push comes to shove. All right, so who's building an iconic brand right now, and why do you see that? Who's doing something like they're doing it right.

46:26Chris Cruz:And here's why. Is there anybody that stands out? You know, I, I, I, I've never been indifferent to Steven Malbon. Okay. The reason that I was a little bit adverse, I would say would be a great word to what he was doing is because I was so burnt out from collaborations. Collaborations is what Malbon specializes in. Even though for people who don't know Malbon, this is, we're talking golf. We're talking Malbon golf. Steven Malbon is the founder, the creator. Good guy. He is a golfer. He knows the golf world. And he's honestly, in the last 10 years, I would say that he's always known golf well. But I see him educating himself and putting himself in places to grow his level of knowledge and wherewithal in that realm.

47:18Because golf has been hijacked. Everybody's doing golf. Oh, man. I was going to ask you about golf.

47:23Chris Cruz:I know that you got so many hot takes on golf right now. Your eyes lit up the moment you said golf. Yeah. But I would say this, Steven Malbon is somebody that I think is pushing the initiative. He's doing collaborations that at first, like I said, I was adverse to him. I can't deny that he's doing a great job. He's opening up key stores and key cities that are off. Like for instance, he just opened up Austin, Texas. A lot of brands would go to Miami, New York, LA, maybe Chicago, maybe, but it's like, he's going to these places that need what he's providing. And overall, I think that him and his team have been doing a really good job inside the luxury good space.

48:02I like a few brands, but I'd be, I mean, I just would be lying to you if I said that there's not a lot of intentionality, I think in high luxury right now, if there was, there's a lot of sameness, I think that I'd love, it would be Bottega Veneta. I think Bottega Veneta has stuck to what they do and who they are. Their price points reflect that. And yeah, so I would say Bottega. I would not say the same about a lot of other LVMH brands right now. I think they're corny. I think they're run by people that have no taste. And after a while, when money becomes the only one priority, you lose the style aspect and this is what i love to tell people style is what you make look good i don't care if you go to goodwill what you walk out of the vintage hats we're good style fashion is what the world in the mainstream tell you you need to buy to be cool there is a balance i i like fashion i like buying things that are cool but it's become so lopsided that I'm really disheartened by the fashion community.

49:20And this is actually an important thing that I want to mention. I think that a lot of it has to do with, so I'm 38 years old. When I grew up in my early 20s, I saved my money to go to Louis Vuitton and buy a$500 wallet.

49:37Chris Cruz:I remember my brother bought his first Louis Vuitton wallet, his only probably Louis Vuitton wallet to be honest with you. So when I say first person only, I remember that process of him saving the money, going to the Louis Vuitton store. I think it was King of Prussia Mall in New Jersey. Yeah. Yeah. And that is cool. You actually, there's so many things going on there. You saved, which you denied immediate gratification, which is a beautiful thing. To deny yourself immediate pleasure for the goal of achieving something that does cost time and time is money is a beautiful thing. What's happened is, and again, younger kids are going to hate me for this.

50:17And this is a state, I'm generalizing, but we have a lot of broke kids. There's a lot of kids that have basically said, well, I don't have the money, nor do I have the patience to save the money. So I'm going to try to lopside everybody's belief into deep clothing is cool. I'm all about vintage. I love vintage. But that doesn't take away the prestige and the name of these brands that have been around for hundreds of years. And now these kids will say, oh, I don't like Louis.

50:50Chris Cruz:I don't like Patek Philippe. Yes, you do. You just can't afford it. and now you're telling all your friends that goodwill or the vintage clothing is the new louis baton when in really reality it's not you're just tricking everybody to believe that it's cool when it's what you can afford so bro you're like this is why i like talking to you because the forecasting the trend setting the insights okay so what's a brand that's losing its edge i got two the there's thing it's edge nike is losing its edge i think that nike has the ability to spend money it's like uh it's like spacex man a rocket can blow up and cost a hundred million dollars yeah they're just gonna rebuild it and shoot another one up tomorrow because nike just got a new their ceo who has been with the company for a really really long time and so that he i think he was an intern when he started there and now he's the ceo of the company so that's the maybe the promise of nike turning but you are right they are losing that edge a lot Especially on collaboration.

51:52It all has to do with no against. I'm not about the woke and the political stuff. But when you have a bunch of people, that agenda is not sports athletic gear, which is their pride and joy. It's making quality products for quality athletes. I mean, again, bro, what is a 300-pound person doing in the basketball sector? yeah i'm just being honest like they don't know what product is they don't know what a vertical jump is they've never jumped out of their shoes before so i'm just thinking like that is where nike went wrong years ago i think they're slowly getting back on track the good thing is that they have the money and i believe they have the wherewithal to know that what they were doing was not getting them good places yeah another one's louis vuitton i hate to say it oh you said it you said it with even pharrell doing his stuff and yeah i mean i love it i'll always love lv it was yeah it was the brand that i admired and i have i aspired to be able to wear it when i was

52:58Chris Cruz:young it was luxurious it was well tailored i got the bag my wife wants saved in a in a file i'm like here's the louis bag i'm saving up for for my wife here in the google drive yeah yeah but Yeah, I think that, you know, Virgil did a really amazing job incorporating street culture. And I'll tell you this. I love Pharrell as an individual, as a musician, as a futurist, and as a creative. Hands down, one of the greatest. I mean, Skateboard P. We know all. Pharrell is Skateboard P. We all used to, I was just frontin', baby. Like, we all know that. And he's a cool dude. I'll tell you this. if you have to put your face on a product yeah sell it which nigo and him just did yeah their faces are facing each other on a louis vuitton product why would you ever have to put your face even if you're the creative on louis vuitton a 200 year old brand one of the world's earliest luxury brands to sell it that's obnoxious to me that on top of just pumping out fast fashion this is why i asked that question this is why i asked that question well those jeans that i wore are tried those got sent back really quick because those were a size 30 so it said they looked like they were size 38 bro at least those were size 38 to 40 and they were the smallest size that louis made meaning was all if you buy a two thousand dollar pair of jeans you still have to take them to your local tailor to spend another hundred bucks to get them hemmed up at stuff the way that fits you and that's obnoxious i'm sorry if these brands are gonna be doing stuff like that so yeah i love it i love it we're gonna need to do a part two we need to do a part two so tell me one item that you're like hey in this space i love this it could be the rare one not a rare one you're turning around you're doing like you gotta grab something that you're like hey this thing right here and let me explain it if you had to grab something grass something let me grass something and so for those of you that are just listening he's literally walking around i don't even know the script footage it's not it's not massive i can't see the whole room but he's and it's there's boxes of brands i'm seeing supreme stuff tom sacks nasa chair uh i'm seeing i think i see a north face oh man what is it look at this gold this is gold it's gold oh gosh what is this this people you're gonna need to watch the episode to see this ramoa okay and it's a ramoa for those that again are not in this space is a luxury um uh bag brand that makes all kinds of kind of luggage gear and all kinds of things oh my briefcase but i call it but that's not just a briefcase no it's not just a briefcase it's basically where you would hold the launch codes to your nuclear missiles so i might i might have to be sending this off to israel pretty soon you know because yeah there's a lot going on over there so do you yeah how many of those are there of that one you know they get they gave that to me a few years ago just through all the stuff that i'm doing with them and all the purchasing um it's a beautiful like gold five five or ten of those five i love it i love it no there's so good stuff in here oh here this is a really cool and i gotta show you this yeah show me show me so as a gift several years ago louis vuitton when my children were born sit me and and these are things that like louis vuitton doesn't sell but they make for people sometimes this is a coloring book stop that they made uh for my boys so louis vuitton sends you a coloring book for your kids and the coolest thing about it is it comes with stop oh oh louis baton uh colored pencils so you know like little trinkets like this you know dollar figure it might not be worth yeah that money but it's just the cool thing of like oh it's gonna be remembered forever yeah exactly um i think a to basically be needed because we got a lot of cool stuff in here i think you're gonna need to get your hands on it sometimes we're gonna we're gonna fly out i'm gonna i'm gonna schedule that we're gonna fly out and do it we're gonna do it bro thanks for taking the time with me today dude thank you guys i appreciate it i hope you all hope you guys have a great weekend and i look forward to seeing you in person man yeah