Complex CEO: Aaron Levant – Street Culture, the Convergence of URL and IRL, & Why Curation Is the Highest Form of Innovation

26:40But what happened was people on the show floor who were setting up started to put on Instagram. And these moments, like Travis Scott came onto the show floor the night before, and there's a bathing ape from Japan booth with a Lamborghini wrapped. And Travis came and stood on top of it, took a picture and posted it. And all these things started happening. And people started to see what this world that we had built looked like. And literally between 48 hours out from opening to opening, we sold almost 20 ,000 tickets. Right? But you imagine my nervousness level. because we lost all credibility. But the Instagram sharing of what the event looked like, everyone saw it and they go, oh, and people literally bought tickets in 24 hours.

27:18Between 6 p.m. the night before the show opened at 9 a.m. the next morning, we sold 10 ,000 tickets overnight. 10 ,000 people did not decide to come until less than 12 hours before the doors opened. And I got, I showed up the next morning and I saw a line wrapped around the corner. I thought I was toast, I was done. And it ended up being obviously amazing and set the stage for where we are today. And in a way, I thank Kanye for canceling on us because if we would have been successful, it would have been an asterisk. We're successful because of him. We actually were successful without him, which I believe reinforced the product that we're building, which was the experience.

27:54It wasn't about the music. It was about the core thing that we had created. So I would say that is my on the edge of professional failure and extreme triumph and testing my will as a human. That was that moment and pulling through and having the fortitude to sit there and not cancel it and say, I'm going to go down to the wire and risk everything and just pull it through.

28:16The Gstaad Guy:That's a beautiful story. Thank you. Really, really beautiful. And I actually remember that picture of Travis Scott with the wrapped Lamborghini, the Bape Lambo. It's a good one. That might've been the one. So thank you, Travis, for saving ComplexCon. That's amazing. I guess it's also proof that you knew where the puck was going. All these names you're mentioning and the conviction you had in ComplexCon as a thing, no one shared that conviction, not even the customers until they saw it. People have to see stuff. Yeah. They can't see in my head. I had a grand vision. They needed to see it. And if you see it, they'll buy a ticket one hour before.

28:53So you had to go all the way to the edge.

28:56The Gstaad Guy:It's crazy how simple we are, I guess, as humans. We need to see it to believe it. Yes. And what were you trying to give the fan and consumer at that first convention? What were you hoping they would see and experience? Yeah. Some of the early insights beyond the like Comic-Con for sneakerheads, right? Like that's a very dumbed down ideation of what it was. But I would, as a person who was in the industry for a long time, see these things happening and I would get invited to them. Like a brand like Nike or a brand like Adidas would spend all this money to build these really cool experiences with their athletes, with their fashion designers, and only a few select few buyers from retail stores and press would get invited to these really impressive events where they build these monoliths to brand.

29:41They would invite people in. You'd have these intimate experiences with talent. You'd have first access to the product. And that for me as like an attendee was really cool. So it was the want to take that and democratize that experience to the actual fan and the actual consumer. And a lot of what's happened, I think, in the world is like, you know, what used to be very exclusive or hard to access and how do you democratize that to a lot of people and give the actual fans an ability to access that and engage with that so a lot of the time was spent just explaining that idea to the brands and saying no don't just invite a hundred press to this event or a hundred amazing you know now we say creators whatever it is i'm sure you get invited to a ton of events right they want you to come there and create content it's like how do we open that up and getting these brands understand we want you to come here you're nike i want you to come here, bring Kendrick Lamar and Kobe Bryant.

30:30I want you to release six new sneakers. I want Virgil Abloh to be there customizing shoes with kids. I want you to spend millions of dollars on building out this amazing experience. And then I want all your competitors to be right next to you doing the same thing, which is by the way, an idea that they're allergic to, right? Cause they're like, oh, we want all the attention. So also not just democratizing that one experience, letting them do it right next to all the people they're competing for market share with. And everything I just said that I listed off actually happened. Nike did all those things.

30:57They came with Kendrick Lamar, Kobe Bryant, Virgil Abloh, exclusive shoes. So that was the sell-in and getting people. It had never been done before. So literally like coming to them, this new concept, getting them to get comfortable with that and also invest and bring their most important brands and talent. It was like a year of a roadshow showing up at everyone I've ever met's office and explaining this to them in person and getting them to commit in a, you know, nine to 12 month window. Wow. Yeah.

31:24The Gstaad Guy:And if you don't mind me asking, is the business model to sell that experience to brands or the ticketing side more so? It's a mix. Like the ways that an event like that makes money, there's ticketing, there's brands buying space, there's sponsors, there's merchandise. Those are kind of the main ways. I would say non-endemic brands like soft drink brands, car brands, technology brands, spirits brands. Those are kind of the main drivers of the revenue. and then some of those other brands like the coolest small streetwear brand that has something very cool and exclusive um those are kind of i see as content that's what kids are coming for i would say above music above you know food above anything else they're coming to get access to exclusive products um that you can't buy anywhere else in the world and that was you know that road show that i did talking to the brands is convincing them again to invest and bring the talent but also create product that will only ever be available there and nowhere else so there's a reason to come here you think about value proposition that's the value proposition it's like i can only buy this sneaker in this place in this time and if i don't get there on that real to buy it again i know there's also a big art tie-in yes and in my late teens i was introduced to art through kanye west album covers of george kondo yeah and then with takashi murakami and leu vuitton and that exposed me to Japanese art and New York art as someone who knew nothing and would have otherwise had no exposure to art at all.

32:53The Gstaad Guy:And I saw that and much more come together through Complex and through ComplexCon. Can you tell me more about that? I would say art is a huge aspect of ComplexCon, a huge aspect of my personal career, my passion, my partner, Mark Ecko, him as well. We both started it as like graffiti writers, streetwear designers, right? This is kind of baked into our ethos and how we got to where we are today. So Mark, I will give him all the credit. I had the base idea for what ComplexCon was and I pitched it to him and got it kind of like off the ground. And he came in and said, we need to have, he called the host committee and we need to invite luminaries from art, music, culture, design to come in and help shape the programming and help be the chair of the committee to help shape what the event is.

33:40And his idea was to bring in, on top of what I think already would have been good, to bring in Pharrell Williams and Takashi Murakami. Pharrell would be the host and chairman of the event and Takashi Murakami would be the art director and on the host committee. And that was a very aspirational idea, right? At that time, you know, Murakami obviously is a huge blue chip artist, shows a Gugasian, right? But also if you follow him, he's also a guy that likes to break boundaries and do unexpected things, like put out a rap album with a Japanese rapper in Louis Vuitton last year, right? Like he does very edgy things.

34:08So when Mark reached out to him, he immediately was interested in the idea, which we're obviously honored to work with him. And he came in and literally designed the posters, the packaging, the show experience, the merchandise down to the wristbands that you wore, right? And it was incredible to collaborate with him and bring art at the center of the event. And we collaborated with many other artists and designers, but every year we have now deemed kind of an artistic director each year of ComplexCon for the last 10 years.

34:34The Gstaad Guy:What seems insane to me is that when this started, this convergence of media that you're talking about, a sort of like generalist media of people that have so many interests that becomes this one category of interests at ComplexCon has actually also grown to become somewhat of a career category, this generalist sort of career. and I think Virgil Abloh was a big ambassador of this sort of thing. He walked and worked also what complex is as a person. Did you see that coming as well? Virgil's a great example, whatever you want to call it, multi-hyphenate, right? He was a DJ, he was a designer, he was a brand, he was a card designer, he did everything, right?

35:22maybe he saw himself as an architect I'm not sure but he really was a renaissance man and I think there's an entire generation of people could be you know the complex generation and I don't know if the new Gen Z Gen Alpha considers himself part of the complex generation but I want them to no one wants to be pigeonholed into one thing much like the way they're reading and watching habits happen through our media I meet people and they tell me they're you know they're in business school but they're also a content creator and they also have their own streetwear brand or they're also a crypto investor right this like and you meet them almost sometimes it sounds like almost comical all the things they say they're doing but i think they're serious and people strive to to try a lot of things and experiments maybe some people are successful at all those things um but i think it's actually fascinating because i think when i was growing up i'm around 40 something years old you know i felt like it was like and probably going back to my parents generation you would be defined as one thing you go to school you learn this one thing and that's what you're going to do for the rest of your life you're an accountant you're a lawyer you're this and that's who you are and like there's no coloring outside of this box and i think this is much more interesting and much more fulfilling probably even if you're not good at all those things

36:34The Gstaad Guy:this podcast is brought to you by pube bringing you interchangeable charm jewelry hand painted with enamel on sterling silver allowing you to celebrate all the things you love and all the things you might question through interchangeable styling silver bracelets bangles whoop charms mini charm bracelets rings cufflings and much more and all customizable through our 3d builder on poubelle.com that is poubelle p-o-u-b-e-l dot com thank you so much for watching and now back to the podcast what's funny is that there there seems to be like these large boxes that fit a lot of smaller boxes but there is lots of overlap between them like there's there's a marketeer i love called seth godin who says of course one of my favorite one of the only books that i refer to constantly is the purple cow okay fantastic and i love that people like us do things like this thinking that archetype of a complex lover has most things in common with the other archetype of the complex lover and they look up to a Virgil Abloh or even a LeBron James or even a Kobe Bryant and even a Pharrell Williams who on paper are entirely different but have lots in common that are actually hard to translate that make the same person a fan of all of them what do you think it is about those categories of goods and products and culture that make these complex fans and lovers bond so deeply while if on paper sneakers and art and it wouldn't make sense if you tried to force it together but somehow it all works the way it does that's a question i'm not sure what it is i think there's something some kind of interconnected mesh and fabric of that culture that works really well together and um while obviously street culture has permeated luxury with you know virgil being appointed louis vuitton and then pharrell and all these things um i think it's like a common common shared passion common shared interests kind of like going back to what i said like you see someone on the street who's similar to you this is like nod right we know we're all interested in the same thing we're like two different guys walking down the street with whatever a louis vuitton bag a general one like that doesn't really say anything there's no common interest between those people but if two people are wearing the virgil air force or ones or the aj ones right like okay most likely it means you're somewhat uh informed on this design this ideology it means you like a certain type of music you're interested in a certain type of experience you know there's a it really cuts through and i'm not sure what that is other brands and other products you know maybe people who love watches have that you know there's a shared interest right but other general products even general fashion and luxury products don't share that same type of common bond amongst the people who buy them and own them so i think this is a very interesting across hip-hop across design sneaker culture fashion there is this weaving between the things that really is a common passion a common bond amongst those people and it forms a community which there is no organization that's forming that community right some people are like on the association of this association this is like an unofficial internet community that like brings people together by default not by actual organization right it's an it's an organic bond i think the first time i noticed an organic bond like this is probably like skate culture 100 or the skateboard or even just skate clothes had that same, I don't belong, so I belong energy?

40:17I think that's a really good analogy, yeah.

40:19The Gstaad Guy:Is there also an overlap with skate culture with complex? Yeah, I think it's really hard to define what complex is. And I don't think anyone, myself or Mark Echo or anyone at the company could perfectly define it. And that's probably what's good about it is that we can't quite put our finger on it and pin it down. When you look at like street culture or street wear or hip hop, right? You go back to a few things and even like the most popular and oldest streetwear brand of all time that's still around and still credible is Stussy. Stussy is a surf skate brand, right? From a guy in Orange County, but is the most popular streetwear brand in the world, them and Supreme, right?

40:54Supreme is a skateboarding brand, but it's a streetwear brand, right? So there is a very deep rooted connection between streetwear, the complex generation, skateboarding, where the roots come from. You know, you go back to early hip hop, even something like Beastie boys is adjacent to skate culture right so i think this is all birthed out of that whether by design or organically so those are kind of like some of the you know you talk about like the eva like the evolutionary chart of like you know atoms forming and molecules and becoming organisms right it all goes back to like i think early hip-hop culture early skate culture is morphed into what we see

41:28The Gstaad Guy:today i think building community is a fascinating thing but building a very very large business as a result i find also incredibly fascinating i know that complex con today is actually quite a small part of what complex is business-wise can you tell me more about the business of complex and how it functions yeah um you're right events while they're i think they're some of the most recognizable things if i walk into a room in japan or london people seem to know complex con because when that event's happening a lot of people are sharing it on social and it kind of organically takes over the airwaves but it is the smallest piece of what we do so media and publishing is by far the biggest piece of what we do um creating 3 500 to 5 000 pieces of content per week original content that we create and we're publishing it across everywhere from tiktok instagram snap youtube our website and lots of other places everything from long form hour plus long podcasts like this to you know snackable size shorts reels tiktok style content static images video, other social, other new forms of interactive content.

42:36We're focused on our website where you can go and interact with us and create your own content or re-rank our lists, right? Articles. So that is over, I think 150 to 170 people are working on that on any given day, creating 3 ,500, 5 ,000 pieces of content per week. Wow. So that is a massive infrastructure. And that's just in America. And we have teams in Australia, teams in the Middle East, teams that we just launched today, korea teams in china doing the same thing and starting to build those businesses up in local language and local relevancy to what's going on in their geo um so that is like the complex industrial complex of just creating a content and everything that's happening from hoke hogan is dying to the latest sneaker release to an album review like we're just constantly creating an original content there um the second biggest piece of our business and growing the fastest is the commerce side that is where we have turned complex not just from a site that editorializes these are your best sneakers or the best jeans or the best hat we are actually now selling those things and turning into a full-scale complex con year-round like online mall if you will and we are creating a prolific amount of product exclusive collaborations that you can only buy on complex and we go out and we partner with let's say the biggest musicians the biggest visual artists in the world and we create exclusive product and that could be like takashi murakami for the los angeles dodgers exclusively for complex or playboy cardi in the nba or today i did something with netflix and mcdonald's and k-pop demon hunters and we are creating really really cool exclusive product that are usually three-way collaborations so the most complex pun intended idea of a collaboration if we're bringing three or four visual artists brands sport team entertainment at properties and apparel brands together to create one collaboration that's exclusive for complex so like just like the cross section of all cross sections that's crazy um and then on top of that you have our events business which spans complex con which is like a 70 000 person music festival um with 300 brands and um attendees from all around the world too i just got back from complex con in hong kong which was over 35 000 people jenny from black pink headlines so talk about the shift into having women there and then we have our food festival family style which is now going to be 10 events this year 15 10 to 15 000 people per event we invite the best restaurants from all around the world to come into a city like bringing restaurants from new york or japan to la create an exclusive menu item with a streetwear brand or with the musician you can only buy their merch item and a menu item um that's growing really fast and then also complex retail stores LA and New York and now soon to be all around the world and then the latest addition to the complex family is um our partnership with Swiss Beats and Timberland around Versus which is a live stream music competition show where we bring together some of the biggest acts in hip-hop R &B and in the future hopefully K-pop and rock as well and expands genre where you get Gucci Man and Jeezy battling each other song for song and nine million people tune in live um to Brandy and Monica on the R &B side, or when he was still alive, DMX and Snoop Dogg battling each other song for song, which is a really exciting thing we're doing now.

45:49That's awesome. Yeah. And there's more, but that's a good overview of all the things in the complex universe.

45:55The Gstaad Guy:It's really incredible. I'm doing my best to bat my tongue and not use the complex pun over and over again. It's hard. The through line I'm seeing here is the curation. that there is such deep curation happening at all elements of the business from the content side to the events the live streams it just all seems like curation is what fuels this ship and curating with these massive businesses on the partnership side seems like it comes with some some crazy challenges i'd love to understand how how that side of the business even works partnering nba with playboy cardi and yeah and mcdonald's like this is just it's crazy i think you're right i think curation is the hardest thing to scale curation is probably adverse those two ideas are adverse with each other right um i think we've done a good job of that of course never perfect always going back and looking what we could have done better and when are we doing too much um when could we have curated better but i think that is the skill set that you can't really find on paper you can't really take a college course for right like having great instincts to be able to go like who feels right what feels right right now in culture where is this brand this person this piece of intellectual property at and it's kind of interest level consumers their taste level what goes well with each other i would equate it to being like a chef and you're trying to figure out the right ingredients that go into this cake or this amazing menu item um they don't give up Michelin stars for creation, but hopefully we would get one if they did.

47:29And, um, you know, I think that is a skillset that I've helped hone over the years. Mark Echo, my partner has an amazing palette for culture and taste and design and being able to look across all these verticals, right? Art, music, fashion, culture. Now we have this new X or Y access of like creators, content creators, streamers, where do they fall into things? How do they fit in? Um, and be able to look at what would go together well and what if you put them together i think is the hard part like this huge brand this huge let's say content creator put them together is that corny or is that cool it's very easy to make something corny right and we've we've had that mistake before right but i think that is the hardest part it's like sometimes people just think oh 10 million followers 50 million followers oh that's good no it's actually not that easy right like sometimes those people don't have real authenticity or authority or license from their community to be able to make a product or to sell something or to um you know even be in a certain piece of content or be a complex con so i would say i spend a lot of my day thinking about what is the right mixture of ingredients and how do you test for that with a person or try to onboard a person

48:42The Gstaad Guy:in the company that is really strong on curation and knowing where the puck is going versus where the buck is yeah i don't think there is a good way i think that you have to spend time with people they probably have to come in to the company and you spend a lot of time sitting in rooms spitballing what would this be do we have good ideas right we're um someone told me when you go to widen kennedy and you try out there to be in the advertising business that they have like um a test where you sit there and come up with 50 ad campaigns in like an hour and just write them down on like post-its right it's like a muscle memory and it's like you know continue trying and iterating is like a something it's like a muscle you can hone creativity i don't know if i subscribed to that exactly but i thought it was an interesting analogy the way they try to test for creativity and actually build that muscle within people so i think it is there's a lot of time sitting and kind of spitballing bouncing things off and you ultimately don't know and there's also been times that we thought something was amazing and it fell short it was a great idea but only this many people got it and thought it was cool or sometimes it was so big and kind of over the top that it was like a backlash it's like it's too mainstream it's too um it's too mass right so trying to find that it's just right you know it's just right amount of vanilla in that scone or whatever how does the business of the curation side of things work for the brands when you represent the brands and put these partnerships together there is 2 000 brands designers and personalities that I have built relationships with over the last 30 years of my career.

50:14So there's no like, there's never formal representation. It's never contractual. It's always like we have a good relationship. We build trust sometimes over a decade or two, and we find ways to work together. And they're interested in the unique ways that we can bring a brand or a visual artist together with the biggest musicians in the world or the biggest sports teams in the world. So it's trust plus access and good taste is the three levels of ingredients that make all sides be interested to work with us to bring together these, what we call make the impossible collaborations possible. And that's kind of our mantra when we're sitting around thinking about it, like what could we come up with that if everyone, if someone saw this, they go, oh my God, like how did that happen?

50:56You know, it's kind of the feeling, obviously we had nothing to do with this when you saw Supreme and Louis Vuitton come together, like every consumer of the world was like oh my god this is incredible this must be fake it's you know too good to be true how can we evoke that emotion in people are there any specific examples that you think

51:12The Gstaad Guy:were just insanely emotionally invoking yeah i think the best example which is in the last year takashi murakami for the los angeles dodgers in partnership with shohei otani um it was a game in japan uh where the los angeles dodgers were playing the chicago cubs in japan in a game called the Tokyo series at the Tokyo Dome. Obviously Otani is the biggest hometown hero in Japan. If you've been to Japan recently, he's on every bus stop, every green tea bottle, every store, every billboard. The guy's a living God there. So to bring him together with the most famous Japanese artist in the hometown game, design the uniforms, design the hats, design the bats, balls, glove, Takashi Markami throughout the first pitch of the game.

51:56They design trading cards together. They both sign them. Those cards are worth a million dollars now. There's only two of them in the world. signed by Murakami Notani. So we brought high art together with baseball, which the idea of the art of sport is something I've coined. This ongoing program, we're bringing art and sport together, two things, again, you wouldn't suspect to see together. That was kind of the magical moment. You know, the dust was sprinkled on and everyone was rejoiced around this. Wow.

52:22The Gstaad Guy:You mentioned the baseball cards. Yeah. I know collectibles have always been top of mind for those who are involved in them, but I think now they're top of mind for even people who are not where do collectibles fit into the complex story i think collectibles have always been a part of the complex story but not by design people who are passionate about things that we make or the things that we talk about whether it was first i think it was sneakers it was rare supreme it was all these things now is extended to things like pokemon cards baseball cards and other types of rare collectibles i think watches are on the periphery of our universe as well um and i think there's something about this fan or this consumer who loves collecting and showing um their passion through collectibles obviously you saw logan paul come out one time everyone was boxing matches wearing his um pokemon card on his neck like a necklace i think he ended up selling for 15 or 16 million dollars just a few weeks ago crazy um so yeah i think this is a combination of already passionate fandom shifting categories real value in the covet era like these things went from being like oh these sneakers or this card was worth a couple thousand bucks to now things are worth millions or tens of millions, right?

53:30So I think it's become a really interesting part of the vernacular. And I think the kind of COVID pandemic area only compounded that, you know, now it is a part of our universe.

53:40The Gstaad Guy:Do you have an internal archetyping or ranking stack for the types of complex consumers for like the super fans versus the voyeurs versus the medium fans? Someone might have it. I don't think we have it at the company. I think advertising agencies and brands, I've heard like, I don't know if you ever met with like a big sportswear brand, right? They have these things, they give me this word, they're like, this is Steven. He's a 28 year old from Atlanta who does this and does that. And then they're like, this is John. And they like break down these like fake customer, this feels very contrived to me, but they're like, this guy is really leaned in and he's passive and he's waiting in line for sneakers.

54:19And this guy is buying at Foot Locker and they kind of describe their consumers. I just felt so unnatural to me. So I hate doing that. So I think we just try to do great and like if some people are fanatical fans on this end of the spectrum and some are passive fans, that's fine. You know, we don't value anyone any more, any less and try to segment these people like like they're a data subject and try to, you know, put them into the lab somewhere. Yeah. I don't think we think about it that way.

54:45The Gstaad Guy:I think that's a good thing. Yeah. Even though I kind of do that for a living. Yeah. An archetype. Yeah. Archetype for a living. the media side of things and the amount of content you guys churn out i find fascinating especially now at a time where i feel attention spans are halving and people consume a lot more headlines than they do full-fledged articles i know you guys 100 percent you guys put a lot of work into good journalism and lots of long articles how do you feel about the headline consumption versus the depth consumption no matter what we're not going and defy gravity we are in a snackable attention span environment you know tick tock 15 second is the increment right um reading a snapshot of an article on social how many people actually go down the rabbit hole and read that article whether it's from us the new york times the wall street journal right and obviously those guys have amazing reporting and journalism that you know long form you know investigatory journalism it takes months right um but i was looking at the date actually yesterday when we do write really meaningful long-form stuff the amount of attention we get even as from a small people a small amount of people is going really deep and they're spending a lot of time with that content so we've actually come to the realization even the last seven days that like while some of our efforts were really moving towards the last even last five ten years is around you know focused on social focused on short form focused on you know almost clickbait headlines for the it's the it's the curse of being in the media business right you're rewarded for engagement um i believe there is a re-emerging value in depth and you see that with something like substack right while we're talking about people seeing headlines and click bait and social substack is also exploding substack is about deep authority over whatever it is that author is about and you see some of the best authors in the world who come from new york times or journalists writing long form pieces so i think you know we're having the world is a fragmented crazy place but but we're having massive growth in short form attention and I'm seeing a real sustained growth in long form attention.

56:48And this podcast, which we're gonna do here for over an hour today, podcast as a category is growing. So somehow it's everything everywhere all at once. And we're seeing deep, deep storytelling and deep interest for long periods of time. And I have attention for two seconds and I'm catering to both, which is like, you know, crazy.

57:08The Gstaad Guy:How do you see those two things exaggerating over time? It's hard to say. I'm looking at the media landscape and I'm looking at all the trends. We were talking earlier, live streamers and creators. Some of these guys are getting people to watch their stream for hours at a time. We're talking about this podcast. We're talking about articles. We're talking about, you know, social, you know, like a story on social might be the shortest form of attention, right? You're just kind of clicking through it. I find myself when I'm kind of being compulsive or doom scrolling, like clicking through stories or flipping through reels or shorts very quickly.

57:45It's evolving that there's something that's going to happen that I haven't seen yet. A new form of content, a new platform, a new something that might be something new altogether. I don't think it can go any longer than podcasting or, you know, live streaming. So hopefully the place we land to is like, we're at two extreme ends, right? Extremely long and extremely short. I liked it. I thought the world was better. We're somewhere in the middle where this large group of people that are paying barely any attention will be paying a medium amount of attention. And hopefully it goes from here to the long end of attention.

58:16I'm not a big fan of the super short engagement because I think it's fleeting. You have Instagram on your phone? I do. Okay. You probably woke up this morning before you got out of bed. Maybe you looked through some stuff. Maybe you like something. There's some marketer on the other end of that thinks, oh, I've got great engagement on this post. If I asked you right now, what are the three things you liked this morning? I'm not sure you could recall it to me.

58:40The Gstaad Guy:I can't. It's a fleeting memory. It doesn't really mean anything. It didn't stick with me. But I remember when I went to Coachella in 1999, the first year that happened, I can smell it. I can feel it. I remember watching your first podcast episode, I believe it was with Eric Schmidt, right? I remember it, right? I can see it in my mind. So there's something to be said here for real attention, real memory creation, whether that's IRL or I remember watching Pulp Fiction for the first time, whatever that thing is, it really had my attention. And while there's a lot of this happening, I don't think it means anything.

59:11And I'm not sure it does anything for anyone, especially not brands who are paying money to advertise next to that stuff. Because what did they get? They have a false perception of success. So I really hope it comes to the middle. Yeah, I hope so too.

59:26The Gstaad Guy:I tried to recently understand what happened to me with sneaker culture. And if that's an industry thing, if it's a me thing. And seeing the resale prices crash makes me think maybe it's an industry thing. But then again, the ultra rare only became more sought after. But everything in the middle has kind of gone down. On my side, I feel like it was just kind of this exhaustion of the game. and feeling like Nike and these big companies were just innovating less and repeating more. Maybe I just aged and became the classic older guy who says things used to be better and the younger guys are as excited as I once was or maybe there's some truth to it.

1:00:16The Gstaad Guy:Do you have an opinion on that? Sneaker culture specifically? Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of things happen. I think like any natural trend curve and sneakers was a long time. This isn't like a NFT bubble, right? For lack of a better example, sneaker culture has been percolating since the 80s, right? People are getting robbed for Jordan shoes, et cetera. But particularly in like the wave around the, let's say 2013 to 2017, where it was really ramping up. And that's where you saw things like the Virgil Abloh 10 and, you know, Pharrell, NMDs and all these things that were really getting a lot of attention.

1:00:50what you saw was the brands really uprooting the supply and demand economics so what initially was interesting about sneaker culture was there's a limited amount of these nikes you can only buy in japan or this limited release of these you know jordan shoes and first they were making 10 000 pairs and as they saw the demand grow and then they were going to their direct to consumer pipeline and not relying on the retailers they went from making 10 000 shoes to 100 000 to 200 ,000 to 2 million on a quote unquote limited release. So they literally just changed the rarity structure and it was no longer rare.

1:01:27And at the same time, there's a fever pitcher and everyone being interested in it. It was at the center of popular culture and they just oversaturated the market. And I think that equates for the majority of the collapse of the resale price. And of course, like any trend, you know, when something gets in the white hot space, there's a very famous quote from Jay-Z in a New York times interview. He says, you never want to be in that white hot space. You want to be right below that sneakers and sneaker resale and stock X, all these things were at the center of conversation for probably too long. And it just inevitably like what goes up must come down.

1:01:57And I think the people are so interested in wearing cool shoes and looking cool and having things that are differentiated, but no one thinks they're rare or valuable, but something like Yeezy on the other end of the spectrum, it was never limited. He was always making 2 million pairs. It was just great design. It was great industrial design, if you will, look cooler than wearing, you know, a pair of generic Adidas, right? So I think that's always going to exist. If you have great design, people will buy your product, but no longer are we operating on this like trading card rarity structure of sneakers because these are big global conglomerates.

1:02:28Their goal is to make as many shoes as possible. And when no one wants to buy your running shoes at the store, they're going to buy these rare ones. But now actually things have flipped. What's the most popular brand right now? it's on right they just went back to great design of an industrial product yeah that's true because the the false narrative of the rarity is gone i guess the substance wins in the end of the because the the rarity was artificial yeah and a great design wins and the great design and function

1:02:54The Gstaad Guy:but yes what categories are you particularly proud of in terms of this great design and function winning very clearly in the world in general oh that's a tough one um maybe in your world so it's Yeah, look, I think I'm always fascinated by sneaker design. There's so many amazing designers out there. We went from kind of like in cars, right? We went from this era where you'd see like concept cars years ago at an auto show or concept sneakers on some Instagram and they felt futuristic like you're in the Jetsons, right? And now all that stuff is coming true. Cars, sneakers, you're seeing like these industrial designer dreams become realities.

1:03:32And I think that's a really cool place to be at where everything looked the same for 30, 50 years. So I think the future is now, for lack of a better analogy, is really starting to happen across multiple categories. I just got back from Korea. We were talking about it. I went to this company, Gentle Monster, where their internal design team who designs sunglasses designed a building. And every retailer I went to there, every brand had built their own building from scratch. so I like architecture and I like brands so the ultimate expression was in a brand builds their own architecture here in the States you find a cool building on a prime street here in Beverly Hills or somewhere and you redesign the interior of a building you rented there they're literally building skyscrapers from the ground up as an ultimate expression of brand it's crazy yeah what

1:04:18The Gstaad Guy:do you think it is about Korea in particular or Seoul in particular that allows that to be very unique to Seoul it's my first time in Seoul so I was taking it all in and there it wasn't this was a commonality amongst multiple brands obviously gentle monster being the bar of the most impressive i went to a smaller streetwear brand i'd never heard of called this never that um if you go back i suggested pick it check it out they had a 15 story building a brand for a brand i've never heard of um with a cafe an art gallery in the basement a pizza restaurant um then they had two concept retail stores on multiple floors and then their corporate office above.

1:04:56And it was really like, just like minimalist, mid-century modern type of design. It was sick. So there's something in the both, I think, culture there and maybe even in the going back when like maybe every American designer lived to do that, but like the banking loan, construction loan thing, they're allowed to do that. I didn't dig too far into it, but the guy alluded to like, there's a way to actually get real construction loans to be able to do this for like a small business. So it's like regulatory banking environment combined with this great aesthetic around design and culturally korea is the center of the world right now what's the biggest form of music it's k-pop right um i think a lot of the coolest up-and-coming designers are from korea so korea is having a moment much like different countries in europe have had or japan has had where the new fresh ideas i believe right now are coming from korea actually today we launched complex korea um funny enough so you know i think this is the center of the world in many forms of

1:05:47The Gstaad Guy:of culture music and design did that stack of art hospitality outlet clothing outlet design elements all in one all under one roof start in korea when because i'm seeing that a lot now this is a a derivative of many things you know i think the oldest department store in the world i could i think is harrods in london yeah and you go there what do they have on the bottom it's a market they have a restaurant they've got you know home beauty you know fashion right this idea so this was the the prototype at the highest level right and then there's been lots of different iterations of this department store model then barney's in the u.s and then i think the the current prototype of the kind of repackaging and rebranding of that harrods idea is like door street market right you go to the one in ginza you go to the one in london in la and new York, it's very unique, interesting design space that is almost feels like an art installation, but is retail, it is experience, it is food.

1:06:48And then the products being exclusive, right? So I think that Dorsey market is the modern archetype for that. And then many brands have created their own derivative of that derivative. Maybe it goes to Harrods. Maybe there's something before Harrods, you know, I'm not sure. I think we're going back to like, you know, the sook and, you know, like the market right and there's food there's goods we're trading so this is all like you know we're trading spices we're buying cloth it all goes together it's true where do you think the future of retail goes from here with the the where digital is as well yeah we're going through a very interesting point in the world and particularly in america um you read about a few years ago a lot of retail bankruptcies the mall is dead right even the idea of creating complex companies in reaction to retail bankruptcies, the mall was dead, brands going from a wholesale retail model to a direct-to-consumer model, building their own stores and reaching their customers directly online.

1:07:42And even Nike, what's the downfall of Nike? Recently in the stock price, right? They had what they consider very publicly the slip from going from a wholesale model to a direct-to-consumer model because that was the trend of the day. That worked for them for a while. But seeing customers in real life, being at Foot Locker, being in these places is actually important. And you're seeing a trend of Gen Z going back IRL. the mall is a cool place to go again. So I think we had an over correction. We went over digital, over direct to consumer and all these brands that launched. I'm a DTC brand. I don't wholesale, I don't this.

1:08:13Everyone's unwinding that now. And we're going back to experience really mattering people spending time together with their friends in real life really mattering. And what's a good place to do that at the mall or in a retail environment. So brands are now over investing in experience, whether it's their own brand stores are being in multi-brand retail environments. and that difference, even multi-brand retail environment, whether it's a mall or some kind of curated mall experience like what Harrods is or what Dover Street is, that's becoming really important. I don't think that's going to go away.

1:08:41I think the abnormal part of the timeline is when we went and separated everything and say, I'm just going to deal with this one brand, digitally only. I think experience, going back to what we talked about before, being able to feel it, to have the memory, to smell it, to sit down in a brand's restaurant, right? You see all these luxury brands are opening restaurants, Gucci has Osteria, Louboutin's opening a hotel. You know, hospitality meets brand and retail in that unique combination, I think is really, really important. A24 just opened, I think, a restaurant in New York, right? I think you're gonna see more of that, not less.

1:09:18And it all comes back to like, do you have a deep emotional connection to this brand? And how do you create that? It's spending time with them. We've met online before. I'm gonna have a much deeper emotional connection to you because we sat here and did this, looked at each other in the eye for an hour, right? I'm not going to forget this. Our FaceTime call was great, but we're literally bonding here. So I think how do you bond with brands and products and services? They should sit down with you for a while.

1:09:44The Gstaad Guy:Very well said. And as you were saying that, I was thinking about my breakup with Nike. Honestly, I think it happened when they tried to get me to stop lining up outside of Nike Town, Oxford Circus. Yeah. and that was such a big part of my my saturday mornings as a kid and i was forced to get on board with the sneakers app and just make that experience digital instead and that just changed the whole thing for me there was no more community there's no more conversation and uh it makes a lot of sense digital is great it's a it's a piece of a whatever octagon you know what are all these other pieces when you try to rely on that alone i think that is a downfall of any brand product service personality right i think you know you want to talk about these streamers their their main way of interacting with their fans is having them watch them online but they're all showing up in real life um and engaging with fans sometimes too many fans it becomes dangerous right so like i show speed walks on the street he gets mobbed by fans but like people like to feel like they're a part of something and that's hard to do online speaking Speaking of the streamers, I know that that's a category that you are now in and that you also worked on in the past with some live shopping.

1:11:00The Gstaad Guy:That's quite alien to me. I've never watched the live streamer, never done any live shopping. Can you tell us more about how all that works? Yeah. Well, look, live shopping is an old idea. I had the pleasure of having lunch with Barry Diller, who's the founder of QVC and HSN. Obviously a prolific entrepreneur in his own right and really learning about that business, which was home shopping television. and you watch on TV and you literally pick up the phone and you call. There's something about making shopping experiential. You're hearing on HSN and QVC going back to the 80s or 90s, whenever they launched, this guy, this fitness influencer made this blender and he's talking to you about it, or this TV personality made these shoes, or this George Foreman made this grill, right?

1:11:40They're there talking to you about it. So it's about beyond going just like a print ad where someone's standing there holding it, we're bringing this and it's a two-way conversation. You can call in and talk to them. So this idea of interactivity, which is like a form of digital experiential retail. And that worked very, very well. And those were billions and billions of dollar companies. And then as e-commerce happened, those companies faded. But then we had this thing in the middle, which is like live stream video meets shopping, right? And I was on the early end with my last startup called Network.

1:12:07We were kind of like one of the first or the first in America to do live stream native commerce. And this was big in China. There's a company called Taobao that Alibaba owns that I believe is doing like 500 billion revenue or something. And one time they did like 90 billion in one day on something called Singles Day, which is like a shopping holiday. It's like a holiday about buying things. It's like their version of Black Friday. So, you know, this is taking the QVC, HSN, home shopping television model, putting it on your mobile phone with instant click and purchase. And it ranges from like celebrity selling things to exclusive things to massive.

1:12:42China was really built around sale, like extremely cheap things, like Timu with live video type of thing. And in America, my version of that was celebrities debuting exclusive products. DJ Khaled comes on with his new Beats headphone that's designed by the street artist Retina. You can only buy it in that moment, right? And creating urgency and almost like this Twitch-like experience with shopping. I was probably too early. I think I was more like the MySpace of live shopping. And now a few other companies, including TikTok and ByteDance have come and turned those into tens of billions of dollar businesses.

1:13:12but now it's become more promotional, right? It's selling vitamins, it's selling cheap stuff, it's about price and volume and speed and aggregation across thousands of influencers. And it's a really interesting business. You hear a lot of people talking about that's the next big wave in America for a retailer direct to consumer. But it looks more like a three-sided marketplace where it's not a brand selling something to a consumer. It's a brand allowing a talking head or an influencer to sell their stuff in exchange for an affiliate fee, selling to a consumer. So it becomes this triangle. And that's the Chinese model.

1:13:47And that is literally probably going to be a trillion dollar business in China and is going to be a massive, already probably estimated somewhere, 60 to a hundred billion dollar business in the US. Wow, that's huge. Yeah, absolutely huge.

1:14:00The Gstaad Guy:I know lots of the listeners today are definitely loving all that you're talking about. And they have this voice in their head telling them to do what they love with their career. and that's the dream to do what they love. And they're on the complex careers page and trying to apply to any job and get any job. And they're likely finding it harder and harder to stand out given where technology is and how hard it is to stand out for a role. I think now that the tools that we have exist and AI exists, people are confused on what parts of themselves they should develop and also market to businesses.

1:14:36The Gstaad Guy:Is there anything in particular that you're looking for in people that you hire, particularly the next generation of hires that may not have five, 10 years of work experience on their resume and may actually have nothing on their resume. What is it that stands out to you as the CEO? It's a few things. I think it's a really good question. Right now, the world is changing at an exponential pace. We all know this. This has been well documented. Nothing I'm going to say here is going to add to that. but it does relate to hiring and candidates and people in their own career in a very interesting way.

1:15:10Number one is you have the ability or this theoretical person who wants to break their career to go and do anything and actually build it. Before you would have these ideas and you couldn't, you need an engineering team to build the product, right? Or you need video equipment or, you know, a team to do this type of thing. You literally can just, with an iPhone and AI, you can do almost anything. So I would highly recommend everyone prototype it, make it and post it online or send it to us, right? And show, demonstrate that you have the ideas and the acumen to action your ideas. Cause there is no barrier.

1:15:45You literally can build an app, you know, with vibe coding now, right? So there's, you know, someone who didn't have experience working on an engineering team or building product or all this stuff. I'm using tech. You could use content on the content side. You can just publish content. If your content's good, it will rise to the top. The biggest threat to us as a publisher is independent content creators such as yourself, right? I don't think you're a part of a larger media company or an ad network or something. You just create great content and people react to it. Before I have 350 employees.

1:16:15I have a massive overhead. That's a burden. That is actually a detriment to me. You're light and nimble. You go out there, you create content on your phone and the whole world loved it. And now you're creating long form content, independent creators, independent web designers, independent brands, they're the biggest threat. They're eating away at the carcass of large historic media companies, whether it's Conde Nast or Complex. I think we're much more nimble than, let's say, Conde Nast, but like there is no rules and nothing stopping. You know, there's no more gatekeepers. You know, it's like the analogy of record companies and independent artists.

1:16:50You can now go find a digital strip and put your music right on Spotify. The question is, are you savvy enough to make people notice it and some music good enough. So I don't think they need to worry about how they should get me to try to hire them. They should create something, put it out there in the world, get reaction from the real world. If it's good enough, I'm going to go track them down and say, I need to hire you. Right. I want to, I'm begging you to be on my team. If you do something really dynamic, I'm finding, and most likely by the time I've done that there, I'm too late because they've already broken through and they don't need me anymore.

1:17:17Right. So, you know, again, I think there's a lot of talented people out there and now there's no barrier and no lack of resources stopping them from in whatever respective field you are in I believe the barrier is almost zero now I love

1:17:31The Gstaad Guy:that you're saying that I think I've heard that a lot in the entrepreneurial category of if you have the idea to be an entrepreneur then go out and do it but I think as you're saying it's also true for companies people want to work with like just if there's a role that you think works for you pretend you're already in that role do the work of that role you have the resources send it in and yeah i think people noticed that someone contacted me the other day they said i have a great idea for you someone i know who actually used to work for me and um i responded great what is it you know and they said you gotta sign this nda because you're gonna steal my idea and i was like no no i'm good like no thanks i just see where you're coming from um you know i just think people just do stuff you know and be unscared and unapologetic to put themselves out there with like pitching me on something, putting something out there in the world.

1:18:20You know, ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything. And, you know, I think that people should be more entrepreneurial in trying things and failing and doing it fast fail iteration at a rapid rate, whatever that may be.

1:18:34The Gstaad Guy:Fully aligned. Do you think there's value in being a first mover in that case and gatekeeping an idea and with the fear that someone's going to rip off the idea and launch before you do? It's been proven that first mover advantage is not always a good thing. There's a great TED talk talking about a laundry list of businesses that was like YouTube before there was high speed internet. Great idea. The underlying business conditions didn't allow it. A 56K modem didn't allow streaming video, right? You know, numerous examples of things that were too early. I just said I was the my space of live shopping in America.

1:19:08There's a company now called Whatnot that's worth$11 billion that is doing something very similar to what I did. they were better at technology they came second and they iterated on the model facebook is a clear example and even facebook i think spoon win well documented if they didn't acquire instagram then they would probably be in the dust right and continue to be acquisitive and make acquisitions because being first is not always an advantage there's something new some new ideas some faster person or some iteration on the model or on the format or on something and also right time right like being too early can be bad and it doesn't mean you're not original it doesn't mean something but it does mean that you can be too early even if you're smarter better funded etc very well said

1:19:50The Gstaad Guy:yeah on this podcast we always play a game of a la poubelle versus fantastique a la poubelle in french is to the trash the things we'd like to throw away change and hopefully work on while fantastique are the things we'd like to celebrate and see more of can you name a couple of things in either category that you'd like to throw in the trash and change and a couple of things you'd like to see more of and celebrate um in broadly in life yeah or in your category okay or look things i'd like to see less of is people being inhibited to like throw in the trash people inhibited to try things my entire career has been predicated on rapid iteration trying and failing I did an inventory on myself last week.

1:20:37I realized I've tried 25 businesses in 27 years. Wow. So, you know, at a few years, that sounds like I got lazy, right? So, you know, some of those extremely successful. Some of them I lost millions of dollars on. Some of them just kind of faded off into the night and they weren't that great. They were, you know, big nothing burgers. Most people I meet, I have hundreds of people who work for me currently and thousands of people over the years. all of them have ideas. And I talk to them, you know, whether it's for a side hustle or a passion project, or they want to be a musician, or they want to do what you do and be a content creator, right?

1:21:12Most people never try. So the thing I'd like to throw out is the lack of ambition for people to try and fail. And there's a real stigma in this world about failing. Everyone is scared of failing. They're afraid it's going to put egg on their face and they're going to be like a, you know, a black stain on their career, on their reputation. You know, you, we sat here and talked about one business that I've done, and maybe I've got three that are real successes. That means there's 22, 23 that are absolute failures. We didn't talk about it. Thank you for still inviting me to the podcast. I must be a huge stain in my career, right?

1:21:44So I think that's the biggest thing that I can really try to is the stigma around trying and failing. And like I'm 42 years old, I'm still trying and failing late in my career. I'm established. I have a lot to lose reputationally. I'm going to keep swinging. Hopefully if I look back at the next 25 years, I'll try 25 more businesses at least one per year a new project a new something and I think no one really does that um beautiful and you said things I'd like to throw out and things I'd like to celebrate and see more of yeah um I didn't go to college I um dropped out of high school in the 10th grade I never finished high school wow I got a GED through a high school diploma through this program that like um you could do online in the mail I did that in the 10th grade and I started working full-time.

1:22:30I understand college is something that's necessary for, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be a doctor. There's certain professions that legally require you to have this degree and this certification. But, you know, this idea that I was working full-time at 15, 16 years old, and I started iterating and started trying, and so many people I meet, they're going into college. And I'm not against college. Did you go to college?

1:22:52The Gstaad Guy:I did, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you went to a great Ivy League school and you learned a lot, and you're very smart. And there's nothing against that. And I meet a lot of, there's a lot of people who work for me who are very, very smart people. I just think for certain people like myself, especially who have learning disabilities, I'm dyslexic, I don't read well. I think they would be more well-suited in life just getting out there and going. So I want to encourage people with either not college educations or not even high school educations to get out there and start because that doesn't mean that you are less capable.

1:23:25and I would argue if you look probably statistically at the successful CEOs that a lot of them didn't go to college and I think I want to popularize that idea and again, nothing against colleges. I would love for them to give me an honorary degree to Harvard or any of the things, I'll take it but I think there's a lot of people who aren't going for that so we really want to press on the lack of education. I think only now with AI. Will lawyers be a thing in the next 10 years? Maybe, maybe not. There's a lot of professions that formerly college taught you. I think we're going to a world where like, you just got to go.

1:23:56Going, you know, I have this saying and I'll end this point on this, which is like, ask for forgiveness, not for permission. And, you know, while everyone else is standing around pontificating on what they should do or how to do it or learning, I'm just going. And that's my mantra.

1:24:11The Gstaad Guy:Just do the thing. Yeah. It's not that deep of a thought. It's just go. Yeah, I love it. Well, Aaron, I really appreciate you taking the time today. Thank you. This was an incredible conversation for me. I'm a fan of everything you've built and everything you've worked on. Thank you. So it's really cool to understand the way you think, understand the why behind what you've built. And I'm excited to see how you continue to navigate this very, very quickly changing industry that in some ways we both find ourselves in, but in many ways that you're steering the ship of, to be honest. So thank you.

1:24:44The Gstaad Guy:I'll be here creating 25 more failed businesses. I know just one of them will be a home run again, at least. I hope so. At least for all of them. Yes. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Stardguy podcast. If you're keen to learn more, please follow along by engaging with our social channels on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple podcasts. And we look forward to seeing you next week. Merci beaucoup. A la prochaine. And a big hug from the Stardguy.