Digital Social Hour
Competing with Ralph Lauren: A Streetwear Pioneer's Strategy | Karl Kani DSH #978
Sat, 14 Dec 2024
Competing with Ralph Lauren? 👀 Karl Kani, the Godfather of Streetwear, reveals his game-changing strategy! From dressing Tupac to revolutionizing baggy jeans, Kani's journey is packed with insider secrets 🔥 Learn how he built a global empire, faced off against fashion giants, and stayed relevant for over 30 years. Discover why Kani doesn't see other streetwear brands as competition and how he keeps his eye on the real prize. 💰 Get the scoop on his collabs with hip-hop legends, international expansion tactics, and the future of streetwear fashion. Ready for some serious entrepreneurial inspiration? 💪 Watch now and subscribe for more eye-opening conversations on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! Don't miss out on these invaluable insights from a true fashion pioneer. 🚀 #KarlKani #Streetwear #FashionIndustry #HipHopFashion #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #EntrepreneurialAdvice #FashionPioneer #ssurplus #streetwearbrands #caviarcartel #marcecko #rap CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:38 - Starting Karl Kani Brand 02:28 - Launching Karl Kani Shoe Line 05:00 - East Coast vs West Coast Fashion 06:49 - Hip Hop's Influence on Fashion Trends 07:37 - Karl Kani's International Success 10:58 - Competitors in Urban Fashion 12:16 - FUBU Brand Overview 15:02 - Decline of Urban Fashion Brands 17:24 - Future of Retail Trends 18:01 - Evolution of Modern Hip Hop 19:03 - Rapid Trend Changes in Fashion 20:16 - Kanye West's Impact on Culture 21:00 - Disrupting Fashion Systems 24:10 - Collaborations in Fashion Industry 26:23 - Future Plans 26:54 - OUTRO APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Karl Kani https://www.instagram.com/karlkani/ https://www.karlkani.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What inspired Karl Kani to start his brand?
Why'd you do that, honestly? You know, because they're competitors.
I don't look at them as competitors because, you know what, they were my competitors when I started. My competitors was Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren. Those are the brands we have to convince that, hey, here's an alternative to that brand to wear. Yeah, after they came out, it lumped some of us together and say, we're competitors, but that's not keeping your eye on the prize.
It keeps your eye on the prize of staying where the big money is at.
Alright guys, Godfather of Streetwear here today. We got Carl. Thanks for coming on, man.
Thank you. Glad to be here.
What a journey you've been on since 1989 in this space. That's right, yeah. The last 30 years, that's impressive, man. Let's walk through it. Back in 89, you were kind of one of the first people getting into this.
Yeah, we originated as a streetwear fashion, you know, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, started making clothes for myself and people liked it. We found a market, we saw that hip hop needed a clothing designer to represent the culture and we were there for that. So we kind of made our stance right there.
And who were your inspirations back then or were you kind of the first one doing this?
No, we're the first ones doing it. We didn't have any inspiration before us to do this. You know what I'm saying? There's nobody that came before us. There's no other brand that could say they started streetwear before Carl Canais.
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Chapter 2: How did Karl Kani's baggy jeans trend start?
That's pretty crazy. So you had the foresight to see this industry exploding then?
Yeah, well, it was more of that's like growing up, we didn't really find the type of clothing that we wanted to wear. Me and my friends were buying Levi's, but we're buying it four or five sizes bigger because we wanted to have more of a baggier fit. Yeah. And the waist was too big. So when I went to my father's tail axe and could he make me some jeans that bigger legs make the waist fit.
And when I wore that particular pair of pants, that's how the baggy jean for craze started. We finally found a way to make baggy jeans that fit someone. And that's how it kind of took off from there. No other designer had this type of fit in the stores at the time until we created that.
100%.
Holy crap. Started that back in 89. We got my own patterns, came to LA, hooked up with different factories, started manufacturing our own clothing and just took off from there.
Wow. Why do you think that movement took off?
Because it wasn't there before. And a lot of, you guys think with hip hop, a lot of kids were break dancing, you know what I mean? A lot of movement in the clothing. So loose fit clothing kind of went along with that. And too, fashion has a way of changing because jeans were skinny, tight back then. And as new generations come out, they wanted a different look.
So we kind of appealed to that new younger generation. And hip hop was all about music and fashion and street. And it didn't really have that. So we came up with the colors, the look, the fashion, kind of all tied in together.
Wow. That's incredible, man. And what was the next big trend you caught after that baggy movement?
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Chapter 3: What role did hip hop play in Karl Kani's success?
So we kind of came out with that type of look. And we also came out with a boot, which was straight up competing against Timbaland. But what we did was we put a metal plate on the side of our boot with a Carl Canelo logo on it, which kind of identified our boot to be different than Timbaland's boot. That kind of took a life of its own.
But the bigger part about it was the support we got from the hip hop community. All the artists wearing our clothing, that really took us to mainstream. Biggie, Tupac, Nas, Aaliyah, the list goes on and on of the support that we've gotten through the hip hop culture, which really just propelled our brand to the next level.
Right. That hip hop culture has so much influence on everybody. It's insane. I haven't seen a movement that powerful.
No, you know, to me, it's like, you know, you take a kid from streets of Brooklyn, New York, who had a dream. And, you know, the name Kani was a question I used to ask myself all the time. Can I be successful? Can I come from the inner city to build a brand that's going to be global? And I didn't know the answer to that, but I know if I call myself Kani every day, I have to answer that question.
Yes, I can. And so today the brand is an international brand distributed in 25 foreign countries. And Tupac's one of the main reasons why our brand is so big internationally, because they worship him like a god over there. And I have over 200 pictures of Tupac wearing my clothing organically. It was no paid advertisements or anything like that. He wore it because it was real and it was legit.
We kind of got identified to each other at the same time.
That's crazy. So he was buying it himself.
Yeah, he didn't want free clothing. He said, no, I want to buy his shit. Wow. He was actually purchasing the clothing. So what we used to do, anytime he bought clothing, we just sent him some extra clothing because he didn't want the free clothing. He was like, I want to represent this brand and make it big. That was his whole goal.
That's amazing. I wonder how he found out about it.
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Chapter 4: How did Karl Kani deal with competition in the fashion industry?
But you formed a friendship with these guys too down the road.
Yeah, you know, me and Tupac became really cool. Me and Dr. Dre and Snoop became really awesome. Ice-T was the first rapper that we met in L.A. The second day we came out here, we met Ice-T. Wow. It kind of went from Ice-T to Eazy-E. And the only funny thing, one time it was like when Eazy-E and Dr. Dre was beefing, there was one time I bumped into Eazy-E at South Coast Plaza Mall.
It was right before Christmas. And we must have spent two hours talking. All he was doing was complaining about Dre. He wanted somebody to talk to. I guess I was a guy. He was complaining about Dre. And I was sitting there talking to him the whole time. It was really kind of cool.
I just kind of felt like the respect level they had for me was kind of different because I was just a young kid just like them. But they were into music and I was into fashion. So they kind of looked at me a little bit differently than what they were doing. Like in terms of a businessman, they all respected that. That we was actually competing with brands like Guess.
Jabot, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, giving them an alternative brand to wear. But the key to make us successful, we had to make clothing that was that much better than what was out there. Not because you're young and you're cool, you think people are going to buy your stuff. Your product got to be legit, right? So we have to make sure we over-succeed in the quality of our products.
that makes sense yeah because you're up against giants that have unlimited budgets and probably hundreds of designers right and you you're the only designer at the time so yeah but the key was the only thing that they didn't have is they didn't have the streets behind them you know what i'm saying and only that too a lot of those clothing brands back then didn't think the hip-hop was going to last so they didn't really cater to hip-hop artists wow they weren't giving hip-hop artists clothing to wear they weren't featuring them in any clothing ads back i'm talking about like 89 90 91 92.
It's not until later on when they saw, man, this hip hop thing is a force. Now everybody wants to be affiliated with hip hop. Prior to this, no clothing brand really wanted to because they didn't, first of all, they didn't know if affiliating themselves with hip hop was going to deter the original customer they had for their brand.
And number two, no one thought it'd be this dominant force of what it is today.
That's so interesting. I didn't know people thought that hip hop was a fad back then.
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Chapter 5: What are Karl Kani's thoughts on international markets?
Yeah, they do. Especially a lot of the old school artists, they still do a lot of shows in Europe. Like the Big Daddy Kings, the Karis ones, the Public Enemy. Kids still want to hear those old school rap groups. One thing about Europe that I love about it is that they do their research In college, they have courses in college about hip hop culture.
Wow.
Yeah. In college out there, that's how mainstream it out. And the one thing about our brand, why we surpass every other brand who comes to Europe and try to be successful, they want to know who started this game. What's the history behind the brand? They want to read about it, get the history, get the culture about it. They want to know, what did Aaliyah wear?
Oh, Aaliyah wore a Carl Canine on her first album cover. Wow, I love Aaliyah. This brand must be really cool. Oh, Dr. Dre and Snoop mentions Carl Canine name in his songs. Oh, this is cool. So there's different things like that that you can't really talk about. You just got to be about it. You can't really shove it in their face. They have to discover it themselves for it to be really legit.
Interesting. That's cool. So history is big out there.
Absolutely, yeah, for sure.
So how long did competitors start coming once you started in 89? How many years did that take?
Yeah, I would say probably like, it took them about, I'd say 94, 95. Okay, so you had five years of just- Yeah, five years. Yeah, it was me and a company called Cross Colors, which was actually around the same time. Cross Colors was doing streetwear also, but they had a lot of financing behind them. So they were able to put the financing behind my brand and we became partners together.
We stayed together for about three years. Then me and Skechers, we had a great business together for a few years together and that helped us propel us to international market as well. So today- We currently have 10 flagship stores in Japan, which is a whole nother section of the market. Because Japan, their clothing is totally different than what we do in Europe. Japan is very old school.
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Chapter 6: How did collaborations influence Karl Kani's brand?
So you helped them. Like, why'd you do that, honestly? You know, because they're competitors.
I don't look at them as competitors because, you know what, they were my competitors when I started. My competitors was Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Guess, Jabot, Calvin Klein. Those are the brands kids are wearing. Those are the brands we have to convince that, hey, here's an alternative to that brand to wear. You don't have to wear those brands. We'll give you an alternative.
So we were very laser focused on who our competition was. Now, yeah, after they came out, they could all lump some us together and say we're competitors, but that's not keeping your eye on the prize. It keeps your eye on the prize of staying where the big money is at. Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Don and Karen, they control all the floor space in department stores.
And those are the big accounts that you had. So if they control the floor space, that's who you're really competing against. What they did was they put all the urban brands kind of together in one little market in one room. And say, okay, you guys, here's $100,000. You got to split the open to buy here. But meanwhile, Tommy and Ralph and them get all the big money open to buy dollars.
So when we start looking at ourselves as a competition, we're not doing the right thing. Keep your eye on who's really the competition, who's really making all the money, who's really doing the sales, who's really controlling all the floor space in the stores. Those are the brands for us.
Wow. I love that mindset, man, because too many people get wrapped up with their competitors.
That's nonsense. That's silly because you can't win that way. Look at those brands I mentioned to you. They're still here today. They're still around today, still doing big numbers. What happened to all the urban brands that were around in the 90s? They're all gone.
They're gone, right? Yeah, Mitchell and Nessa's gone.
Yeah, they're all gone. All those, you know, Fat Farm, FUBU, Sean John, Nietzsche, Mecca, all those brands are not here anymore, right? Why is that? Why is Tommy, Ralph, and Calvin still here? You know, we got to stay focused on what the goals really are here.
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Chapter 7: What is the future of streetwear according to Karl Kani?
So if you're not generating business and you have all these expensive marketing, advertising, and magic shows, you're not going to be able to win in this business and be profitable.
Right, because you got money tied in inventory, right?
Absolutely. Tons of it. Yeah, for sure.
Damn. Do you see the market shifting from retail space towards something else in the future?
I definitely see online shopping is going to still be huge right now. I think pop-ups is going to be really good. Like you do go to certain cities, you do a pop-up over a weekend, and then you move out. People always want what they can get. I've noticed people with successful e-commerce sites, they do websites where it's not available every day. They may say, look,
Sites only be open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So people kind of lined up waiting to get these products. When your product is too accessible, it becomes not as important and not as exclusive may want it to be.
Right. Yeah. How do you feel about modern hip hop now?
I think it's cool. I think it's a shift. You know, I think, you know, everything's about change. And I feel like once you get to the point where you complain about where music is, you may be a little too old because it's going to go where it's going no matter whether you like it or not. You know what I'm saying? I remember like when our parents, when we was growing up, it was like,
Don't wear your clothes so baggy. Pull up your pants. What is this hip hop music you're listening to? We didn't care what they said. We did it even more. Right. So to me, it's like it's going to change no matter what. So you better accept it and feel it because hip hop still be the number one influential music category, I think, for youth forever. I can't see that changing.
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