March 15, 2023 • 31 mins
Welcome to Unbreakable! A mental health podcast hosted by Fox NFL Insider Jay Glazer. On today's episode, Jay takes a stroll down Fashion Avenue with world famous designer Kenneth Cole. Kenneth shares incredible stories about his upbringing, the birth of his shoe company, why he launched The Mental Health Coalition, and much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome into Unbreakable and mental health
podcast with Jay Glazer. And just a little reminder here
for everybody. In my book I'm Breakable, how I termed
(00:22):
my depression anxiety into motivation You can too comes out
in paperbook on April one. What we're trying to do
here for mental health is give it words. Let us
all have this conversation. The more we can give it words,
more we could talk about it. Those of us with
mental health issues, we're just battling the gray or just
trying to tame the roommates in our head. We don't
feel like we're in the minority anymore. We feel like
we're in the majority, which I think we are. And
(00:43):
it spans everywhere you could possibly go in the rope.
And it's also what made me successful. Overcoming these mental
health issues is what made me where I am now
brought me where I am. It's also introduced me to
some of the coolest people in the world. And one
of those coolest people in the world is our guest
this week, and it's just It's incredible the realm that
this podcast dives into, from sports to acting television hosts
(01:08):
to cooking hosts like Fiery, to musicians. But we haven't
had a designer on yet. We haven't had an actual
gangster here in a fashion world. Come on with me yet.
With that, I'm going to bring it a good friend
of mine from a long time ago. I've been friends
for ages from New York City. But now we have
something else we bond with, which is mental health, and
that is Kenneth Cole. How are you, brother, great Jay?
So if you do get a successful designer on the
(01:30):
show some day, let me know. Is that? Yeah, I
kind of fucked down one up, didn't I. I love
doing this, by the way, and I even did my homework.
I read. I read all about your journey and I
felt more I'm not sure the more or less broken
having read it, but I'm certainly more impressed, and I
feel even I feel you're fucked upness even more than
I could have imagined. But thank you. I appreciate that. Well.
(01:52):
But you're saying you feel more broken now. It's not
exactly a good plug for the book. You know, hey
read them, Rachael, But you'll feel more sucked up. It
makes you kind of look in the mirror a little bit,
which is good. I mean, it's kind of what I
guess what you wanted to make happen. So um, but
it's it's extraordinary. And we've had a lot in common
and this just kind of brings us even that much
(02:12):
closer together, which is great. But you you would text
me too that you were learning more about yourself. What
did you learn about yourself? You have to read the book,
you know. I learned that you've made a good effort
in kind of creating appropriate context that we all have
these struggles at the end of the day, you know,
we all also have a path through it. And the
degree you can build a network and support, you know,
you're that much strong report and one plus one he
(02:33):
goes more than two always and and I've often said that,
you know, long you can go fast, together, you go far,
and building that community is critical. And I think that's
what you're doing so well. And that's what that's what
I'm trying to do as well with my mental health coalition,
which will talk which I definitely want to dive into it.
You know, it's it's interesting all this I met you
(02:54):
through Michael Strand like ninety five or something along those lines,
and we spent time at his fiftieth birthday party. My book.
I think she was just coming out. But I didn't
tell him about my issues until I think two weeks
before that. The first time I ever told him, like
the first time I ever decided I can't go out
to dinner with you because the beasts out out of
the box. And I just had a horrible panic attack
(03:15):
and he's like, why have you never told me? I do, man,
I don't know with you. I just felt shame. I
don't know why. I don't make the make up the
rules of this. And his response to me was, yeah,
but I could have been there for you for all
those years. And that's this team that you're talking about,
and you know that for me now, like for thirty years,
I hit it now when I'm having a horrible day,
I know to reach out. I know his reaction is
(03:35):
going to be. And that's, you know, the beautiful thing
of us talking about this. Yeah, Michael has been great.
He's been a good, great friend to me also. Yeah.
In fact, when we launched there at the Health Coalition,
I did it on his show, and we had several
events that I was shamelessly imposed ourselves upon him, and
he never he never says no, It's just been great anyway.
He's always there to do the right thing. He really is.
(03:57):
So now here's what I want to dive before i'd
get the mental health cool listen because a lot of
people don't know this about Kenneth. He does an awful
lot on this front. He is. He's a leader in
what we're all trying to do here because we are
really behind with mental health. We're so far behind, and
how we're attacking this now and again people still are
for final words to try and open up. But I
(04:17):
like to call this mental health and a mental wealth podcast,
And I want to talk about your journey to where
you got to because for any of us who are successful,
it's not rosy. It's not a rosy road to get tough.
There's no get rich quick scheme. We all kind of
struggle through it to get to where we are. So
give us, you know, our listeners, what your kind of
moment was and how you had to struggle through to
(04:39):
get to where you are. Yeah, I will, first of all,
I struggle with the term success, but I think that's
a kind of a very dangerous concept. But and it's
very relative, and it's how you see yourself today's or
to see you tomorrow, and it's a relationship off into
other people. I'm doing great, and then all of a
sudden I see people who maybe have a different lens
(05:00):
to which to look, and then maybe I have a
whole different sense of things. But okay, so that is said,
It's been an extraordinary journey for me. I'm in business
for forty years. Actually, what I'd like to say is importance.
It sounds younger and cooler, is that this is our
twentieth anniversary, of our twentieth anniversary. But it's an expend
extraordinary journey. And I set out to try to figure
(05:21):
out how to kind of create something that people didn't
have and that people could use, and that how to
add something of substance meaning to people, to people's lives
and at the same time making meaningful. Why we did
it only because of the way we did it. And
I had a lot of this bunch of associates early on,
and we were kind of a little scrappy, and we
were trying to figure out how to kind of carve
(05:41):
our place in a very competitive business and industry. And
I knew that first of all shoes, shoes, your first thing.
It was shoes, women shoes and the women shooes and
so and I realized that you can't do this shit
forty hours a week and at the end of the day,
you know you met. It's all about compromise, life compromises
because at the end day, you can't only work. You
(06:03):
need to have a personal life and you have to
find a balance. And at the end of the day,
it's so hard to find that balance. And that's been
one of my struggles because I tend to work hard
work and then and if I turn it off, sometimes
you know, I don't turn it back on as quickly maybe,
So what is that right balance? And it's so rare,
And I find people who struggle with that because maybe
(06:24):
everything's working for them professionally, but personally there it's just
not that you've ever had that issue. And then sometimes
it's working personally, but the professional part is an aligne.
So that's the struggle. That's the struggle that I struke
that I deal with and a lot of people I
know probably deal with it. And so my business is
finding a balance so I try to address and I
believe it's not just what some people's bodies, but what's
(06:46):
on their mind. And I think that you almost have
to know what's on their mind in order to be
able to address with on their bodies and and how.
And at the end of the day, it couldn't be
just what they stand in. It needed to be what
they stood for, so and how do you balance that?
So and I think they become ultimately interdependent because absolutely
knowing you know where they are mentally or where they're inside,
(07:09):
it's hard to kind of assess what they are looking
for other than that. So it's been an extraordinary journey.
And I started in Choose, and I started the beginning
of the business section. Interesting story, we're going to save
that later on. And then in order to relate to people,
early on, I started working on an HIV initiative because
that was a struggle that was pervasive in our industry
(07:30):
and it wasn't affecting me as much as it was
so many other people around me. So and I started
doing some marketing, branding and talking about the stigma around
HIV because as bad as it was, the biggest problem
was and I believe today more people died of the
stigma of AIDS than from AIDS itself, because they couldn't
talk about it, and they were reluctant to deal with it,
and they would rather die from the disease rather than
(07:54):
openly accept treatment and be open to resources. And so
many people unfortunately we're not and it did it was
their life. So I did that for a long time.
I was chairman of VAN for fourteen years, and we
had a very profound difference in millions of people sellings,
I know that, and we changed the way research was done.
We changed the way people were able to talk about
(08:14):
HIV and treat HIV a little bit HIV and then
about I don't know. A few four years ago, I
kind of stepped back from that for a whole milliad
of reasons. And then my kids kind of were fascinated
and obsessed with mental health mental wellness, and so I
somehow refocused a lot of my resources there and we
set up an initiative. My daughter amand actually was working
(08:38):
with us in our HR department, and we set up
a program with NAMI on mental health awareness within the
organization and actult it started. It was changing the culture
of the business and of the company, and I said
to them. They wanted me to somehow work on a
perception campaign, and I was walking to do it because
this is so big and I've to realize. You said
(09:00):
that many of us have mental struggles. I don't. And
you know the who says this one and four, I say,
it's it's more that it's four and four. Absolutely, if
it isn't you, it's somebody you love, somebody in family,
in the community, of the workplace. And if you didn't
have it before COVID, you definitely have right now. And
social media is terrible. It makes you think your life
(09:22):
sucks because you're comparing yourself to everybody else's filtered fraction
of a second, or you're seeing bulleting online. We all
we're all going through something or like it's affecting somebody
who Now I agree, it's four and four. Yeah, so
we're all struggling with it. So then I said, this
is such a big undertaking. And then the problem is
is the two thirds of those who struggle with it
do so in the promobial shadows because there isn't a
mechanism to talk about it that isn't stigmatized, and that
(09:44):
isn't diminishing. You know, this is a self fulfilling prophecy
unless you have a mechanism to talk about it. So
the goal was, can we rebrand, come with a new narrative,
empower people with the tools to talk about their well being?
Massive undertaking problem, absurdly ambitious, and there's the mental health Coalition, right.
So then we formed a mentalth coation and with a
(10:06):
few friends and the namies. Well, we're going to dive
into it now. But I'm also you deflected my other
question about the early days years because I'm gonna go
back to it. I'm not gonna like job book alight,
but let's get into right now. The mental health Coalition absolutely,
because I think it's to manage, all right. So we
bring together all the mental health service providers in the
country and we said to every one of them, would
you support us in this effort to address stigma and
(10:28):
shine a light on your great work? Create a share
platform and everyone who say, we're in. So now all
of a sudden, we've got the largest coalition of a
service and mental health service pvices in the country, maybe
arguably everywhere, and now we're collect connecting me to resources
and working with the tech companies, and we're making a
profound difference in people's lives and giving people, creating resource,
attaching people to resources. Because tech, as much as we know,
(10:52):
these tech companies have created issues in many ways, they've
been the most reliable and available resource for so many people,
especially during quarantine. And you are able to find community,
You're able to connect with people you couldn't up otherwise.
So you know, and these people with the best of intentions,
you know they're struggling and they know that part of
the problem, and they also wanted a part of the solution.
(11:13):
So and is it for everybody to help everybody? How
do people get help by the Mental Health Coalition? You
can log on and we can connect your resources, and
you go to our website, you go tour Instagram page,
you can go to um and you can see some
of the tools that are available to people. So this
is going to grow exponentially as we've been you know,
we can talk a little bit about that as we
go forward. And it's been a been an interesting journey.
(11:36):
So and so. But business is what empowers, enables and
supports everything I do. I love the fashion business and
same with MEDE with football absolutely open up the doors
and allows me to talk about this brought our audence absolutely,
and I do think that fashion business has given me
a platform too, and as a two point, football has
given you that and also fashion. It's the perception business.
(11:57):
I mean, I feel like I've been the perception is
that I'm addressing you know, kind of what's on your mind.
I'm hopefully empowering it, maybe guiding it or inspiring it.
And that is what I've come to realize is a
powerful tool that's so much bigger than fashion. And so
the reason I've been able to bring all these people
together because I'm not a threat to any of them.
I'm not in the public health business. I'm not a psychiatrist,
(12:20):
I'm not a doctor, but i have the ability and
I'm more freeing people platform where I can promote and
elevate and shadow light on all the great work. So
then and then create by nature of aggregating all this
great content and individuals, and we create something so much
bigger than it is independently. So it's been very rewarding.
And I'm still not telling you about my shoe business,
(12:41):
my fashions. I want to get there because i want
to tire a little more here, but I can see
your passion for it also. First of all, this is
you being of service. And when you read Unbreakable Rights,
one of my pillars of being of service helps us
through the gray. But you find different ways to be
of service, you know, through the years, this one you
seem to have a great passion for as well. Why
(13:01):
did that come from your own issues or did you
just come from saying, man, I'm saying how much the
world is starting to struggle and I know I can
make a difference here or both, you know. It's when
we started doing this. First we launched, actually Katie, my
other daughter, launched with us together a platform how are You,
which asked and must ask the question everywhere in the world,
(13:23):
every day of the week and every language, and the
one most rarely have answered, which is how are you really?
And challenging and inviting people to engage with that. And
that was the one I did with actually with the
Kendall Jenner on Michael's Show when we launched the initiative
the challenge, and two hundred million people engaged with it
the first weekend Wow. And then we did another campaign
(13:43):
with Meta a year or so later inviting people to
do these lives one to one and we had everybody
called it every day in May and I did worked
with Oprah and her production team, and we had hundreds
of millions of people engaged. And we hopefully and many athletes,
by the way, because guys struggle with there's so much
more than women do. It's so much harder for us
(14:04):
to be vulnerable, which is so critical and at the
same time empathetic. So this process kind of inspires, encourages
and promotes and rewards that that which was the and
Michael kicked that off. I then spoke with Michael on it.
I don't remember what I spoke, but Michael was that
was part of it. So we used the platform to
be really we can to give voice to the subject.
(14:26):
So as I was saying, guys struggle and where did
your passion come from? Is it your own struggle or
is it just seeing nobody around you? Oh, So, as
we're doing this, so then someone said, so, what is
your mental health story? And I said, I, you know,
I don't know. I have to and I all of
a sudden I saw thinking about it and I realized that,
you know, I've been in a perpetual fog for several
years now, I mean certainly before COVID and since COVID,
(14:49):
And then I realized there's all these struggles independently that
you know and that I have, and I manifest and
I contextualized and I deal with them, and I've just
learned how to deal with them. We'll do that, you know,
in our own way. And sometimes I you know, I
just work harder, and I dive too much into this
(15:09):
and I'm not mentally present enough for other places where
I wish I could be it should be. And but
the more present and where I am of myself, more
more of everybody around me, and I'm a better employer
or friend parent, which is what I so desperately always
want to be. And we never quite get there, and
we never quite find that ultimate balance, but we're always
(15:31):
working on it. Yeah, because look at the secret to
go back to that work success. But I guess business
success is out working the world, not by a little,
by a lot. And there's a lot of things that
end up getting sacrificed. And you see me, right, we've
been out and I'm just on the phone looking down
and not present with anybody, and kind of what it
takes to be an insider or to outwork the world,
and and I think same for you also. It's what
(15:55):
it takes is just out working the world by you know,
not by two hours, but by a top and that sacrifice. Yeah,
so we have to commit ourselves wholeheartedly. And so how
do you do that? And what I've done that with
my business anyway, is I've made purpose part of a
business model. So and I do think they need. You know,
(16:16):
people used to say to me, well, you know, you're
running a public company, and is that appropriate to be
allocating you know, public company resources to social good And
my answer was always that, not only are those efforts
not independent, I believe they're interdependent, and they are. They
are mutually relying upon each other and then the proverbial
hand that feeds each other. And that what I've always done.
(16:37):
And I was that way before I went public, and
I've been that way ever since I went public. And
I think every company gets there. Every company in American
gets there, if not if their balance sheet, if their
hearts don't get into the balance sheet does and hopefully
it's the former, but we all get there because it's
the right place to be. And I don't think it's destination.
I think it's the journey, and it makes the destination
(16:57):
that much more rewarding if we do it right. Yeah,
I love that. I was like appreciate the toil of
the climb. I never knew I'd beat Jag Glaser in
the NFL and box so early on when I was
making ninety four hundred bucks a year for those eleven years,
those first eleven years I was doing and making ninety
four hundred bucks a year with Michael drive me back
to New York City every day from Giant Stadium because
couldn't afford bust and subway fair. You know, that's it's
(17:19):
different here between the years. During that time it was.
It's interesting also during that time I try and figure
out whether I'm happier now now that I've quote unquote
made it, or whether it's happier then when I didn't
have anything to lose. That's a good question. After forty years,
I'm very quick to tell people that I feel in
that period of time, we've built an extraordinary foundation from
(17:40):
which we can now build a business and anything better business.
And if I'm going to spend a lot of time
reflecting working in the mirror. It's like driving a car.
I'm gonna get thrown off by that first bump in
the road. But if you just gotta stay focused on
I was great advice. So and I don't know, I'm
not sure you ever get there and again maybe to
that point. You know, I believe that all my years
(18:01):
of doing this shit, that I have earned a right
to be considered. But every day I have to earn
the right to be chosen. So and that is no
easy task, but that's what makes the fashion is so
energizing and rewarding, and you can never take it for granted.
And if you do, I'm likely to be a broadcast
for the NFL. I'll be looking for to be your assistant.
(18:24):
I don't pay enough. I told you my deal, and
I'm going back to your thing. Right of my ninety
four hundred bucks a year and just getting rejected for
eleven years gave me the early days of trying to
make chemical a brand of the grind of your grind.
So I've always been very resourceful and I've always believed that.
You know, people said to me, you know, I left
what I was doing. I was working my father and
(18:45):
in a small manufactory in Brooklyn, and people say, well,
what would you have done if it didn't work? And
I said to them that was never an option. I
just never contemplated that. I just knew it would work.
But what I don't tell people is I didn't know
what it was. And I knew I would figure out
every day and that one day you may change from
the day within the next. And I was pivoting before.
That was a popular thing to do, especially in the
(19:08):
fashion business. So you just don't know what tomorrow is
the store. And again, as I said before, what's fashionable
to me isn't to you. And with special days and tomorrow,
So how do I continue to be relevant? How I
continue to be have a reason to exist? And so
at the very beginning, I had very little money, and
I needed to get a business quickly because I knew
I needed to get a return on that. And I
(19:28):
also knew then not much given than today, that sixty
seventy percent of new startup companies don't make it the
first year because they underestimate the amount of money they
need and or the time it takes to have a
return on what they have. So I know I needed
to move quickly. I named the company Kenneth Cole, because
you can usually get your own name registered in those days,
(19:48):
and there wasn't these search engines, so I could find
out the universe of labels could be available, and that
could take a year or two, and then first you
find out it still doesn't work. So I used my
own name grand Da Italy. Knew I had better chance
of getting credited from a shoe factor that needed business
than from a bank American bank that didn't. And I
designed the cool line of Lady Shoes, came back, had
to sell it. And I had two choices in those days.
(20:10):
Take a booth at one of those big fancy shoe
shows and be one of literally thousands. Or I could
take a room at the Hilton Hotel. Yeah, I love this,
this is what I love. There was maybe three choices.
One of thousands, take a room at the Hilton Hotel
where there are eleven hundred of the companies thirty four's
thirty summat companies per four and still no identity, still
(20:32):
at not an insignificant court. Or I could have if
I was really fortunate to take a big fancy showroom
in a fancy building within a two buck radius of
the Hilton hotel, and I either didn't have the money
or the means to do that. So I had a
little bit of time, and on a whim, I was thinking,
how about if I reached out to a friend in
the trucking business, and I said, if I could figure
(20:52):
out a park one of your forty four trailers across
the street from this Hilton hotel in front of one
of those fancy buildings with all my fans competitors, would
you let me the truck? You said, sure, jerk, you
can't park a bicycle in New York for ten minutes.
I wanted truck for four days. And I said, if
I could figure it out, will you lend it to me?
He said, figure it out, I'll help you. Decorated. So
(21:13):
I called the mayor's officers mayor conture at the time.
I said, excuse me, mister mayor, how does one get
permission to park forty for truck on the corner sixtepe
tent to sixtet. The answer to Sorry's son, they don't.
This is New York. We get permission only two circumstances.
If you are a utility company servicing our streets, a
teen d kind of or if you are a production
company shooting a phone promotion picture because we're going through
an I Love New York campaign in the early eighties.
(21:34):
I think we have been ever since. So thank you,
mister Mayor. Hung up the phone, went to the station
and restore change my letterhead and Kenneth go in to
Kinneth Go Productions, Inc. Wow. It courst me fourteen dollars.
Filed for a permit the next morning for permission to
shoot a full ink motion picture called The Birth for
Shoe Company. We opened for business on December second. I
had two New York Police minutes, my dorman, compliments of
(21:55):
our fine mayor, and I had Clee lights on extension,
and I had a director. Sometimes there was a film
in his camera, sometimes it wasn't. And we opened for business.
We saw every buyer in New York. They all waited online,
and the more important they were, the longer I made
them wait. And we saw forty thousand pair of shoes
(22:17):
in two and a half days. WHOA And the company
to this day is still Kenneth Co. Productions. Oh my god.
We traded on the New York Stock Exchange for ten
years and the symbolist KCP, and we keep the name
because eight today everything is a production at some level.
But I also believe that the best solution, and it
is a constant reminder, is rarely the most expensive. It's
(22:40):
almost always the most creative. That is amazing. See this, Well,
why were you deflecting? This story is incredible? It's absolutely incredible.
And so when you open the doors first, Well, so
the truck on the outside to have Kenneth Coal Productions, Like,
what drew people over to that truck? What did you
do to stand out to be different? Well, it's it's
Kenneth O Productions. And then quickly there were crowds and
(23:01):
cradstore crowds, and then people would tell each other. And
then where I'm sit out there and people come and
go to breakfast, going to dinner, and or narily these
trade shows, you know, you're locked in your little room.
But I was out there, you know, seeing everybody. So
I was able to lower them in and we saw everybody.
And at the end of the day, there was a
(23:22):
phone booth on the corner and a lot of quarters,
and I was calling the factory in Italy, and I
was changing production as every day, you know, at a
little more red, less blue, higher heel less lower heel.
And to this day it's it's still to this day
it's we are a little scrappy and agile and hopefully relevant,
(23:43):
and that's what the businesses, and that's what's required to exist.
As you start selling, choose more and more and more.
There were you were you kind of like, oh my god,
this is really happening. You know what I wasn't because
I was delusional and I just knew it would happen,
and I didn't realize at the risk reward, you know,
(24:04):
how much was this potentially at stake? And I figured
if it was wrong, I would correct course correct as
I was doing it. And if I wasn't doing it right,
had the mayor not supported this decision, I would have
found another way to get my product out there. But
I've just been a you know, just maybe a little
deligital land regard, but I have been relentless and with
(24:25):
a questions how to make an impact? Love that I
love that term relentless, and how to distinguish yourself? Yeah,
be different? Right? And you know I people are so
afraid to be different. I try to tell young guys
coming in the sports industry, right, Oh, Tom, hey, don't
be facing the crowd, be the damn crowd, be your
wrong crowd, and hearing it from you is going to
help a lot of other people also, and you know,
(24:46):
just on their journey. And I think it's basically it's
a lot of what you talked about too. I mean,
you know, be yourself, because no one could do that
better than you can. And that's different in of itself.
So you know, and and everything's okay, and we all
everybody struggles, and you know, I had this message. I've
always thought from the very beginning working force of social media,
(25:07):
I tried to in short sound bites, try to connect
with people, you know, in meaningful ways to degree that
I could. But I think we had that campaign ones
that and it was a proud member of the dysfunctional family.
And because I came throughize everybody thinks their families sucked up,
everybody thinks their family is dysfunctional. And we sold out
every time we sold out, and everybody was a proud
(25:29):
member of the dysfunctional family. And then at the Coalition, interestingly,
I'm not sure what I'm telling you this. At the Code,
we spoke to people who who openly struggled and had
mental illness, is something that part of how they defined
themselves and their individual struggles, and that message wasn't so
well embraced. And I came to realize that, you know,
(25:50):
if you feel you're the source of the dysfunction, you're
not as proud of it, you know, which is unfortunate.
But the fact that other people are open to it,
acknowledge that it exists, I think it is a big deal.
I bond with that. I connect with it. Hey. One
of my saying is I'm fucked up, but I'm going
with my fucked up this right, it's it's hey, Hey,
(26:10):
my parents took me to a therapist, my first therapist
when I was four or five, Like I was a
fucked up one. Like like, you know, I we're like, hello,
look at the mirror. Are a little bit so I Yeah,
I think I think we're all part of some dysfunction
in our families. But for me, when you say that,
I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, I'm part of
our crew. I don't have any shame, and I'm like
I connected with what you just said. I loved it. Yeah,
(26:33):
So you know, and so that is essentially, um, you know,
our goal and our objective is to be really be,
not to be delusional, and to understand and to understand
where you are and where you want to be and
then figure out and everything else is about the journey
and how do we get there. How long after that
you had the truck out there in Manhattan? How long
(26:54):
after that until you open your first door on fifteen
sixty and sixth Avenues where the truck was the And
I opened the store about a year and a half later,
but I opened a show room my first season of business.
I sold shoes to Bloomingdale's, to sacks for the Avenue,
to Macy's, to everybody that we would have wanted to
sell we picked, and then a year later I had
my own shop at Bloomingdales. I was very lucky early on,
(27:17):
but I was working. I was all the time, and
it was who I was, It was what I did,
and it is how I found pleasure. And I wasn't
married at the time, so I didn't have to make
as many sacrifices personally, but you know, but that is
the you know, we all have to balance that all
the time. We figure out how to make it all
work and so personal and professional. And then later on
(27:39):
Mattie marrying, you know, kind of community and philanthropy, and
that became the third leg on the stool. And how
he balanced that. I made that also part of the
business and it's what we do and it's how we
allocate our resources. And it made everybody in the company work.
I think it feels so much better about working as
hard as they were working because there's the way. So
(28:00):
show cuts. Is there one shoe or clothing or article
or anything that you've come out with and you're more
proud of than others or I have like a special meaning. Well,
I don't know if there's any one specific shoe or
a lot, but shoes were my thing for a long time.
And I've lived in the shoe business and arguably the
(28:21):
most typicult business that exists is that part of it
is because you know, no shoe fits everybody. I mean,
a great fitting shoe only fits a great fitting shoe
that socia only fits maybe half the people who were SIZEA,
and it doesn't been any of the people who are
seven and a half or nine or ten or so.
And you've got to inmentary all these sizes, and you've
(28:41):
got to make everything and it's got to be ready
that you know, the minute people want it, and it's
got to be available at the price they want. It's
got to fit the way they need it, and then
it's got to fit not just today but tomorrow. And
it's there's a lot of variables at play. And we're
in a lot of businesses today. We're in twenty six
different licensing businesses today and none of them are as
(29:02):
complicated as to the state of the shoe business. But
I love it in that reguard and and just think
every day, how many people want to be in your shoes.
Jee I like that. I like to say, we all
walked this walk together. There you go, right before I
let you go, I asked this to all my guests.
Give me your unbreakable moment, like the moment of your
life that should have broken you kind of broken you.
(29:23):
And because it didn't, you came through the other side
of that tunnel and made you a lot stronger. So
I woke up one morning and I realized that the
stores were all the whole retail business in the United
States was struggling, and then there was only a few
retailers left. That Macy's was about to be acquired by
Federated department stores, and and they were they were both
(29:46):
in debt up to their eyes and some and they
already had no service on the floor. And it became
clear to me that in order for them to justify
and afford this, they had to change their business model,
which meant they were going to have to get rid
of the middleman and they gonna have to source product independently.
And I realized, wait a second, I'm that middleman. So
I went back to sleep, took some asksm went back
(30:06):
to sleep, woke up, and I said, wait a second,
I don't have to be that middleman. If I opened
stores and I could become the destination, then I'm not
the middleman anymore. They are. So I changed the business
model and went public in order to fund opening stores.
Became a retailer, and and I've built got to focused
on building the brand and not just creating cool shoes
for cool people. I said it on breakall, Yeah, but
(30:29):
it isn't yeah, because it's absolutely because your business could
have gone shout fast or yeah, and that's all the
time in our business. That's that's I think how we've
survived so long as that we've realistically looked in the
mirror and just acknowledged our vulnerability and h and addressed
it and personally as well too. And I and how
(30:51):
do I spend so much time working on some of
the social impact stuff too? And business sometimes struggles as
result of it, and then I'll work, then I'll go
back to work in the business, and then the impact
work struggles a little bit, so then my golf game sucks,
because that's at least your problems. Man. We're good well, brother, Man,
I appreciate that this has been fantastic. I always love
(31:13):
connected with you. I always love to spending time with you.
Love to spend more time with you. You're a role
model for many of us, Jay, so keep up what
you do and keep that great spirit and energy and
inspiring us because I love you, love that I could
do this to help you, and that's what we do.
We're all Hey, you and I were walking this walk together.
You could take that for me if you want. Brother again,
(31:35):
I really appreciate you joining me today. It's just been
fantastic and we'll connect offline and hopefully look up this
week before you will head back. Appreciate it. I love
your brother,
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome into Unbreakable and mental health
podcast with Jay Glazer. And just a little reminder here
for everybody. In my book I'm Breakable, how I termed
(00:22):
my depression anxiety into motivation You can too comes out
in paperbook on April one. What we're trying to do
here for mental health is give it words. Let us
all have this conversation. The more we can give it words,
more we could talk about it. Those of us with
mental health issues, we're just battling the gray or just
trying to tame the roommates in our head. We don't
feel like we're in the minority anymore. We feel like
we're in the majority, which I think we are. And
(00:43):
it spans everywhere you could possibly go in the rope.
And it's also what made me successful. Overcoming these mental
health issues is what made me where I am now
brought me where I am. It's also introduced me to
some of the coolest people in the world. And one
of those coolest people in the world is our guest
this week, and it's just It's incredible the realm that
this podcast dives into, from sports to acting television hosts
(01:08):
to cooking hosts like Fiery, to musicians. But we haven't
had a designer on yet. We haven't had an actual
gangster here in a fashion world. Come on with me yet.
With that, I'm going to bring it a good friend
of mine from a long time ago. I've been friends
for ages from New York City. But now we have
something else we bond with, which is mental health, and
that is Kenneth Cole. How are you, brother, great Jay?
So if you do get a successful designer on the
(01:30):
show some day, let me know. Is that? Yeah, I
kind of fucked down one up, didn't I. I love
doing this, by the way, and I even did my homework.
I read. I read all about your journey and I
felt more I'm not sure the more or less broken
having read it, but I'm certainly more impressed, and I
feel even I feel you're fucked upness even more than
I could have imagined. But thank you. I appreciate that. Well.
(01:52):
But you're saying you feel more broken now. It's not
exactly a good plug for the book. You know, hey
read them, Rachael, But you'll feel more sucked up. It
makes you kind of look in the mirror a little bit,
which is good. I mean, it's kind of what I
guess what you wanted to make happen. So um, but
it's it's extraordinary. And we've had a lot in common
and this just kind of brings us even that much
(02:12):
closer together, which is great. But you you would text
me too that you were learning more about yourself. What
did you learn about yourself? You have to read the book,
you know. I learned that you've made a good effort
in kind of creating appropriate context that we all have
these struggles at the end of the day, you know,
we all also have a path through it. And the
degree you can build a network and support, you know,
you're that much strong report and one plus one he
(02:33):
goes more than two always and and I've often said that,
you know, long you can go fast, together, you go far,
and building that community is critical. And I think that's
what you're doing so well. And that's what that's what
I'm trying to do as well with my mental health coalition,
which will talk which I definitely want to dive into it.
You know, it's it's interesting all this I met you
(02:54):
through Michael Strand like ninety five or something along those lines,
and we spent time at his fiftieth birthday party. My book.
I think she was just coming out. But I didn't
tell him about my issues until I think two weeks
before that. The first time I ever told him, like
the first time I ever decided I can't go out
to dinner with you because the beasts out out of
the box. And I just had a horrible panic attack
(03:15):
and he's like, why have you never told me? I do, man,
I don't know with you. I just felt shame. I
don't know why. I don't make the make up the
rules of this. And his response to me was, yeah,
but I could have been there for you for all
those years. And that's this team that you're talking about,
and you know that for me now, like for thirty years,
I hit it now when I'm having a horrible day,
I know to reach out. I know his reaction is
(03:35):
going to be. And that's, you know, the beautiful thing
of us talking about this. Yeah, Michael has been great.
He's been a good, great friend to me also. Yeah.
In fact, when we launched there at the Health Coalition,
I did it on his show, and we had several
events that I was shamelessly imposed ourselves upon him, and
he never he never says no, It's just been great anyway.
He's always there to do the right thing. He really is.
(03:57):
So now here's what I want to dive before i'd
get the mental health cool listen because a lot of
people don't know this about Kenneth. He does an awful
lot on this front. He is. He's a leader in
what we're all trying to do here because we are
really behind with mental health. We're so far behind, and
how we're attacking this now and again people still are
for final words to try and open up. But I
(04:17):
like to call this mental health and a mental wealth podcast,
And I want to talk about your journey to where
you got to because for any of us who are successful,
it's not rosy. It's not a rosy road to get tough.
There's no get rich quick scheme. We all kind of
struggle through it to get to where we are. So
give us, you know, our listeners, what your kind of
moment was and how you had to struggle through to
(04:39):
get to where you are. Yeah, I will, first of all,
I struggle with the term success, but I think that's
a kind of a very dangerous concept. But and it's
very relative, and it's how you see yourself today's or
to see you tomorrow, and it's a relationship off into
other people. I'm doing great, and then all of a
sudden I see people who maybe have a different lens
(05:00):
to which to look, and then maybe I have a
whole different sense of things. But okay, so that is said,
It's been an extraordinary journey for me. I'm in business
for forty years. Actually, what I'd like to say is importance.
It sounds younger and cooler, is that this is our
twentieth anniversary, of our twentieth anniversary. But it's an expend
extraordinary journey. And I set out to try to figure
(05:21):
out how to kind of create something that people didn't
have and that people could use, and that how to
add something of substance meaning to people, to people's lives
and at the same time making meaningful. Why we did
it only because of the way we did it. And
I had a lot of this bunch of associates early on,
and we were kind of a little scrappy, and we
were trying to figure out how to kind of carve
(05:41):
our place in a very competitive business and industry. And
I knew that first of all shoes, shoes, your first thing.
It was shoes, women shoes and the women shooes and
so and I realized that you can't do this shit
forty hours a week and at the end of the day,
you know you met. It's all about compromise, life compromises
because at the end day, you can't only work. You
(06:03):
need to have a personal life and you have to
find a balance. And at the end of the day,
it's so hard to find that balance. And that's been
one of my struggles because I tend to work hard
work and then and if I turn it off, sometimes
you know, I don't turn it back on as quickly maybe,
So what is that right balance? And it's so rare,
And I find people who struggle with that because maybe
(06:24):
everything's working for them professionally, but personally there it's just
not that you've ever had that issue. And then sometimes
it's working personally, but the professional part is an aligne.
So that's the struggle. That's the struggle that I struke
that I deal with and a lot of people I
know probably deal with it. And so my business is
finding a balance so I try to address and I
believe it's not just what some people's bodies, but what's
(06:46):
on their mind. And I think that you almost have
to know what's on their mind in order to be
able to address with on their bodies and and how.
And at the end of the day, it couldn't be
just what they stand in. It needed to be what
they stood for, so and how do you balance that?
So and I think they become ultimately interdependent because absolutely
knowing you know where they are mentally or where they're inside,
(07:09):
it's hard to kind of assess what they are looking
for other than that. So it's been an extraordinary journey.
And I started in Choose, and I started the beginning
of the business section. Interesting story, we're going to save
that later on. And then in order to relate to people,
early on, I started working on an HIV initiative because
that was a struggle that was pervasive in our industry
(07:30):
and it wasn't affecting me as much as it was
so many other people around me. So and I started
doing some marketing, branding and talking about the stigma around
HIV because as bad as it was, the biggest problem
was and I believe today more people died of the
stigma of AIDS than from AIDS itself, because they couldn't
talk about it, and they were reluctant to deal with it,
and they would rather die from the disease rather than
(07:54):
openly accept treatment and be open to resources. And so
many people unfortunately we're not and it did it was
their life. So I did that for a long time.
I was chairman of VAN for fourteen years, and we
had a very profound difference in millions of people sellings,
I know that, and we changed the way research was done.
We changed the way people were able to talk about
(08:14):
HIV and treat HIV a little bit HIV and then
about I don't know. A few four years ago, I
kind of stepped back from that for a whole milliad
of reasons. And then my kids kind of were fascinated
and obsessed with mental health mental wellness, and so I
somehow refocused a lot of my resources there and we
set up an initiative. My daughter amand actually was working
(08:38):
with us in our HR department, and we set up
a program with NAMI on mental health awareness within the
organization and actult it started. It was changing the culture
of the business and of the company, and I said
to them. They wanted me to somehow work on a
perception campaign, and I was walking to do it because
this is so big and I've to realize. You said
(09:00):
that many of us have mental struggles. I don't. And
you know the who says this one and four, I say,
it's it's more that it's four and four. Absolutely, if
it isn't you, it's somebody you love, somebody in family,
in the community, of the workplace. And if you didn't
have it before COVID, you definitely have right now. And
social media is terrible. It makes you think your life
(09:22):
sucks because you're comparing yourself to everybody else's filtered fraction
of a second, or you're seeing bulleting online. We all
we're all going through something or like it's affecting somebody
who Now I agree, it's four and four. Yeah, so
we're all struggling with it. So then I said, this
is such a big undertaking. And then the problem is
is the two thirds of those who struggle with it
do so in the promobial shadows because there isn't a
mechanism to talk about it that isn't stigmatized, and that
(09:44):
isn't diminishing. You know, this is a self fulfilling prophecy
unless you have a mechanism to talk about it. So
the goal was, can we rebrand, come with a new narrative,
empower people with the tools to talk about their well being?
Massive undertaking problem, absurdly ambitious, and there's the mental health Coalition, right.
So then we formed a mentalth coation and with a
(10:06):
few friends and the namies. Well, we're going to dive
into it now. But I'm also you deflected my other
question about the early days years because I'm gonna go
back to it. I'm not gonna like job book alight,
but let's get into right now. The mental health Coalition absolutely,
because I think it's to manage, all right. So we
bring together all the mental health service providers in the
country and we said to every one of them, would
you support us in this effort to address stigma and
(10:28):
shine a light on your great work? Create a share
platform and everyone who say, we're in. So now all
of a sudden, we've got the largest coalition of a
service and mental health service pvices in the country, maybe
arguably everywhere, and now we're collect connecting me to resources
and working with the tech companies, and we're making a
profound difference in people's lives and giving people, creating resource,
attaching people to resources. Because tech, as much as we know,
(10:52):
these tech companies have created issues in many ways, they've
been the most reliable and available resource for so many people,
especially during quarantine. And you are able to find community,
You're able to connect with people you couldn't up otherwise.
So you know, and these people with the best of intentions,
you know they're struggling and they know that part of
the problem, and they also wanted a part of the solution.
(11:13):
So and is it for everybody to help everybody? How
do people get help by the Mental Health Coalition? You
can log on and we can connect your resources, and
you go to our website, you go tour Instagram page,
you can go to um and you can see some
of the tools that are available to people. So this
is going to grow exponentially as we've been you know,
we can talk a little bit about that as we
go forward. And it's been a been an interesting journey.
(11:36):
So and so. But business is what empowers, enables and
supports everything I do. I love the fashion business and
same with MEDE with football absolutely open up the doors
and allows me to talk about this brought our audence absolutely,
and I do think that fashion business has given me
a platform too, and as a two point, football has
given you that and also fashion. It's the perception business.
(11:57):
I mean, I feel like I've been the perception is
that I'm addressing you know, kind of what's on your mind.
I'm hopefully empowering it, maybe guiding it or inspiring it.
And that is what I've come to realize is a
powerful tool that's so much bigger than fashion. And so
the reason I've been able to bring all these people
together because I'm not a threat to any of them.
I'm not in the public health business. I'm not a psychiatrist,
(12:20):
I'm not a doctor, but i have the ability and
I'm more freeing people platform where I can promote and
elevate and shadow light on all the great work. So
then and then create by nature of aggregating all this
great content and individuals, and we create something so much
bigger than it is independently. So it's been very rewarding.
And I'm still not telling you about my shoe business,
(12:41):
my fashions. I want to get there because i want
to tire a little more here, but I can see
your passion for it also. First of all, this is
you being of service. And when you read Unbreakable Rights,
one of my pillars of being of service helps us
through the gray. But you find different ways to be
of service, you know, through the years, this one you
seem to have a great passion for as well. Why
(13:01):
did that come from your own issues or did you
just come from saying, man, I'm saying how much the
world is starting to struggle and I know I can
make a difference here or both, you know. It's when
we started doing this. First we launched, actually Katie, my
other daughter, launched with us together a platform how are You,
which asked and must ask the question everywhere in the world,
(13:23):
every day of the week and every language, and the
one most rarely have answered, which is how are you really?
And challenging and inviting people to engage with that. And
that was the one I did with actually with the
Kendall Jenner on Michael's Show when we launched the initiative
the challenge, and two hundred million people engaged with it
the first weekend Wow. And then we did another campaign
(13:43):
with Meta a year or so later inviting people to
do these lives one to one and we had everybody
called it every day in May and I did worked
with Oprah and her production team, and we had hundreds
of millions of people engaged. And we hopefully and many athletes,
by the way, because guys struggle with there's so much
more than women do. It's so much harder for us
(14:04):
to be vulnerable, which is so critical and at the
same time empathetic. So this process kind of inspires, encourages
and promotes and rewards that that which was the and
Michael kicked that off. I then spoke with Michael on it.
I don't remember what I spoke, but Michael was that
was part of it. So we used the platform to
be really we can to give voice to the subject.
(14:26):
So as I was saying, guys struggle and where did
your passion come from? Is it your own struggle or
is it just seeing nobody around you? Oh, So, as
we're doing this, so then someone said, so, what is
your mental health story? And I said, I, you know,
I don't know. I have to and I all of
a sudden I saw thinking about it and I realized that,
you know, I've been in a perpetual fog for several
years now, I mean certainly before COVID and since COVID,
(14:49):
And then I realized there's all these struggles independently that
you know and that I have, and I manifest and
I contextualized and I deal with them, and I've just
learned how to deal with them. We'll do that, you know,
in our own way. And sometimes I you know, I
just work harder, and I dive too much into this
(15:09):
and I'm not mentally present enough for other places where
I wish I could be it should be. And but
the more present and where I am of myself, more
more of everybody around me, and I'm a better employer
or friend parent, which is what I so desperately always
want to be. And we never quite get there, and
we never quite find that ultimate balance, but we're always
(15:31):
working on it. Yeah, because look at the secret to
go back to that work success. But I guess business
success is out working the world, not by a little,
by a lot. And there's a lot of things that
end up getting sacrificed. And you see me, right, we've
been out and I'm just on the phone looking down
and not present with anybody, and kind of what it
takes to be an insider or to outwork the world,
and and I think same for you also. It's what
(15:55):
it takes is just out working the world by you know,
not by two hours, but by a top and that sacrifice. Yeah,
so we have to commit ourselves wholeheartedly. And so how
do you do that? And what I've done that with
my business anyway, is I've made purpose part of a
business model. So and I do think they need. You know,
(16:16):
people used to say to me, well, you know, you're
running a public company, and is that appropriate to be
allocating you know, public company resources to social good And
my answer was always that, not only are those efforts
not independent, I believe they're interdependent, and they are. They
are mutually relying upon each other and then the proverbial
hand that feeds each other. And that what I've always done.
(16:37):
And I was that way before I went public, and
I've been that way ever since I went public. And
I think every company gets there. Every company in American
gets there, if not if their balance sheet, if their
hearts don't get into the balance sheet does and hopefully
it's the former, but we all get there because it's
the right place to be. And I don't think it's destination.
I think it's the journey, and it makes the destination
(16:57):
that much more rewarding if we do it right. Yeah,
I love that. I was like appreciate the toil of
the climb. I never knew I'd beat Jag Glaser in
the NFL and box so early on when I was
making ninety four hundred bucks a year for those eleven years,
those first eleven years I was doing and making ninety
four hundred bucks a year with Michael drive me back
to New York City every day from Giant Stadium because
couldn't afford bust and subway fair. You know, that's it's
(17:19):
different here between the years. During that time it was.
It's interesting also during that time I try and figure
out whether I'm happier now now that I've quote unquote
made it, or whether it's happier then when I didn't
have anything to lose. That's a good question. After forty years,
I'm very quick to tell people that I feel in
that period of time, we've built an extraordinary foundation from
(17:40):
which we can now build a business and anything better business.
And if I'm going to spend a lot of time
reflecting working in the mirror. It's like driving a car.
I'm gonna get thrown off by that first bump in
the road. But if you just gotta stay focused on
I was great advice. So and I don't know, I'm
not sure you ever get there and again maybe to
that point. You know, I believe that all my years
(18:01):
of doing this shit, that I have earned a right
to be considered. But every day I have to earn
the right to be chosen. So and that is no
easy task, but that's what makes the fashion is so
energizing and rewarding, and you can never take it for granted.
And if you do, I'm likely to be a broadcast
for the NFL. I'll be looking for to be your assistant.
(18:24):
I don't pay enough. I told you my deal, and
I'm going back to your thing. Right of my ninety
four hundred bucks a year and just getting rejected for
eleven years gave me the early days of trying to
make chemical a brand of the grind of your grind.
So I've always been very resourceful and I've always believed that.
You know, people said to me, you know, I left
what I was doing. I was working my father and
(18:45):
in a small manufactory in Brooklyn, and people say, well,
what would you have done if it didn't work? And
I said to them that was never an option. I
just never contemplated that. I just knew it would work.
But what I don't tell people is I didn't know
what it was. And I knew I would figure out
every day and that one day you may change from
the day within the next. And I was pivoting before.
That was a popular thing to do, especially in the
(19:08):
fashion business. So you just don't know what tomorrow is
the store. And again, as I said before, what's fashionable
to me isn't to you. And with special days and tomorrow,
So how do I continue to be relevant? How I
continue to be have a reason to exist? And so
at the very beginning, I had very little money, and
I needed to get a business quickly because I knew
I needed to get a return on that. And I
(19:28):
also knew then not much given than today, that sixty
seventy percent of new startup companies don't make it the
first year because they underestimate the amount of money they
need and or the time it takes to have a
return on what they have. So I know I needed
to move quickly. I named the company Kenneth Cole, because
you can usually get your own name registered in those days,
(19:48):
and there wasn't these search engines, so I could find
out the universe of labels could be available, and that
could take a year or two, and then first you
find out it still doesn't work. So I used my
own name grand Da Italy. Knew I had better chance
of getting credited from a shoe factor that needed business
than from a bank American bank that didn't. And I
designed the cool line of Lady Shoes, came back, had
to sell it. And I had two choices in those days.
(20:10):
Take a booth at one of those big fancy shoe
shows and be one of literally thousands. Or I could
take a room at the Hilton Hotel. Yeah, I love this,
this is what I love. There was maybe three choices.
One of thousands, take a room at the Hilton Hotel
where there are eleven hundred of the companies thirty four's
thirty summat companies per four and still no identity, still
(20:32):
at not an insignificant court. Or I could have if
I was really fortunate to take a big fancy showroom
in a fancy building within a two buck radius of
the Hilton hotel, and I either didn't have the money
or the means to do that. So I had a
little bit of time, and on a whim, I was thinking,
how about if I reached out to a friend in
the trucking business, and I said, if I could figure
(20:52):
out a park one of your forty four trailers across
the street from this Hilton hotel in front of one
of those fancy buildings with all my fans competitors, would
you let me the truck? You said, sure, jerk, you
can't park a bicycle in New York for ten minutes.
I wanted truck for four days. And I said, if
I could figure it out, will you lend it to me?
He said, figure it out, I'll help you. Decorated. So
(21:13):
I called the mayor's officers mayor conture at the time.
I said, excuse me, mister mayor, how does one get
permission to park forty for truck on the corner sixtepe
tent to sixtet. The answer to Sorry's son, they don't.
This is New York. We get permission only two circumstances.
If you are a utility company servicing our streets, a
teen d kind of or if you are a production
company shooting a phone promotion picture because we're going through
an I Love New York campaign in the early eighties.
(21:34):
I think we have been ever since. So thank you,
mister Mayor. Hung up the phone, went to the station
and restore change my letterhead and Kenneth go in to
Kinneth Go Productions, Inc. Wow. It courst me fourteen dollars.
Filed for a permit the next morning for permission to
shoot a full ink motion picture called The Birth for
Shoe Company. We opened for business on December second. I
had two New York Police minutes, my dorman, compliments of
(21:55):
our fine mayor, and I had Clee lights on extension,
and I had a director. Sometimes there was a film
in his camera, sometimes it wasn't. And we opened for business.
We saw every buyer in New York. They all waited online,
and the more important they were, the longer I made
them wait. And we saw forty thousand pair of shoes
(22:17):
in two and a half days. WHOA And the company
to this day is still Kenneth Co. Productions. Oh my god.
We traded on the New York Stock Exchange for ten
years and the symbolist KCP, and we keep the name
because eight today everything is a production at some level.
But I also believe that the best solution, and it
is a constant reminder, is rarely the most expensive. It's
(22:40):
almost always the most creative. That is amazing. See this, Well,
why were you deflecting? This story is incredible? It's absolutely incredible.
And so when you open the doors first, Well, so
the truck on the outside to have Kenneth Coal Productions, Like,
what drew people over to that truck? What did you
do to stand out to be different? Well, it's it's
Kenneth O Productions. And then quickly there were crowds and
(23:01):
cradstore crowds, and then people would tell each other. And
then where I'm sit out there and people come and
go to breakfast, going to dinner, and or narily these
trade shows, you know, you're locked in your little room.
But I was out there, you know, seeing everybody. So
I was able to lower them in and we saw everybody.
And at the end of the day, there was a
(23:22):
phone booth on the corner and a lot of quarters,
and I was calling the factory in Italy, and I
was changing production as every day, you know, at a
little more red, less blue, higher heel less lower heel.
And to this day it's it's still to this day
it's we are a little scrappy and agile and hopefully relevant,
(23:43):
and that's what the businesses, and that's what's required to exist.
As you start selling, choose more and more and more.
There were you were you kind of like, oh my god,
this is really happening. You know what I wasn't because
I was delusional and I just knew it would happen,
and I didn't realize at the risk reward, you know,
(24:04):
how much was this potentially at stake? And I figured
if it was wrong, I would correct course correct as
I was doing it. And if I wasn't doing it right,
had the mayor not supported this decision, I would have
found another way to get my product out there. But
I've just been a you know, just maybe a little
deligital land regard, but I have been relentless and with
(24:25):
a questions how to make an impact? Love that I
love that term relentless, and how to distinguish yourself? Yeah,
be different? Right? And you know I people are so
afraid to be different. I try to tell young guys
coming in the sports industry, right, Oh, Tom, hey, don't
be facing the crowd, be the damn crowd, be your
wrong crowd, and hearing it from you is going to
help a lot of other people also, and you know,
(24:46):
just on their journey. And I think it's basically it's
a lot of what you talked about too. I mean,
you know, be yourself, because no one could do that
better than you can. And that's different in of itself.
So you know, and and everything's okay, and we all
everybody struggles, and you know, I had this message. I've
always thought from the very beginning working force of social media,
(25:07):
I tried to in short sound bites, try to connect
with people, you know, in meaningful ways to degree that
I could. But I think we had that campaign ones
that and it was a proud member of the dysfunctional family.
And because I came throughize everybody thinks their families sucked up,
everybody thinks their family is dysfunctional. And we sold out
every time we sold out, and everybody was a proud
(25:29):
member of the dysfunctional family. And then at the Coalition, interestingly,
I'm not sure what I'm telling you this. At the Code,
we spoke to people who who openly struggled and had
mental illness, is something that part of how they defined
themselves and their individual struggles, and that message wasn't so
well embraced. And I came to realize that, you know,
(25:50):
if you feel you're the source of the dysfunction, you're
not as proud of it, you know, which is unfortunate.
But the fact that other people are open to it,
acknowledge that it exists, I think it is a big deal.
I bond with that. I connect with it. Hey. One
of my saying is I'm fucked up, but I'm going
with my fucked up this right, it's it's hey, Hey,
(26:10):
my parents took me to a therapist, my first therapist
when I was four or five, Like I was a
fucked up one. Like like, you know, I we're like, hello,
look at the mirror. Are a little bit so I Yeah,
I think I think we're all part of some dysfunction
in our families. But for me, when you say that,
I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, I'm part of
our crew. I don't have any shame, and I'm like
I connected with what you just said. I loved it. Yeah,
(26:33):
So you know, and so that is essentially, um, you know,
our goal and our objective is to be really be,
not to be delusional, and to understand and to understand
where you are and where you want to be and
then figure out and everything else is about the journey
and how do we get there. How long after that
you had the truck out there in Manhattan? How long
(26:54):
after that until you open your first door on fifteen
sixty and sixth Avenues where the truck was the And
I opened the store about a year and a half later,
but I opened a show room my first season of business.
I sold shoes to Bloomingdale's, to sacks for the Avenue,
to Macy's, to everybody that we would have wanted to
sell we picked, and then a year later I had
my own shop at Bloomingdales. I was very lucky early on,
(27:17):
but I was working. I was all the time, and
it was who I was, It was what I did,
and it is how I found pleasure. And I wasn't
married at the time, so I didn't have to make
as many sacrifices personally, but you know, but that is
the you know, we all have to balance that all
the time. We figure out how to make it all
work and so personal and professional. And then later on
(27:39):
Mattie marrying, you know, kind of community and philanthropy, and
that became the third leg on the stool. And how
he balanced that. I made that also part of the
business and it's what we do and it's how we
allocate our resources. And it made everybody in the company work.
I think it feels so much better about working as
hard as they were working because there's the way. So
(28:00):
show cuts. Is there one shoe or clothing or article
or anything that you've come out with and you're more
proud of than others or I have like a special meaning. Well,
I don't know if there's any one specific shoe or
a lot, but shoes were my thing for a long time.
And I've lived in the shoe business and arguably the
(28:21):
most typicult business that exists is that part of it
is because you know, no shoe fits everybody. I mean,
a great fitting shoe only fits a great fitting shoe
that socia only fits maybe half the people who were SIZEA,
and it doesn't been any of the people who are
seven and a half or nine or ten or so.
And you've got to inmentary all these sizes, and you've
(28:41):
got to make everything and it's got to be ready
that you know, the minute people want it, and it's
got to be available at the price they want. It's
got to fit the way they need it, and then
it's got to fit not just today but tomorrow. And
it's there's a lot of variables at play. And we're
in a lot of businesses today. We're in twenty six
different licensing businesses today and none of them are as
(29:02):
complicated as to the state of the shoe business. But
I love it in that reguard and and just think
every day, how many people want to be in your shoes.
Jee I like that. I like to say, we all
walked this walk together. There you go, right before I
let you go, I asked this to all my guests.
Give me your unbreakable moment, like the moment of your
life that should have broken you kind of broken you.
(29:23):
And because it didn't, you came through the other side
of that tunnel and made you a lot stronger. So
I woke up one morning and I realized that the
stores were all the whole retail business in the United
States was struggling, and then there was only a few
retailers left. That Macy's was about to be acquired by
Federated department stores, and and they were they were both
(29:46):
in debt up to their eyes and some and they
already had no service on the floor. And it became
clear to me that in order for them to justify
and afford this, they had to change their business model,
which meant they were going to have to get rid
of the middleman and they gonna have to source product independently.
And I realized, wait a second, I'm that middleman. So
I went back to sleep, took some asksm went back
(30:06):
to sleep, woke up, and I said, wait a second,
I don't have to be that middleman. If I opened
stores and I could become the destination, then I'm not
the middleman anymore. They are. So I changed the business
model and went public in order to fund opening stores.
Became a retailer, and and I've built got to focused
on building the brand and not just creating cool shoes
for cool people. I said it on breakall, Yeah, but
(30:29):
it isn't yeah, because it's absolutely because your business could
have gone shout fast or yeah, and that's all the
time in our business. That's that's I think how we've
survived so long as that we've realistically looked in the
mirror and just acknowledged our vulnerability and h and addressed
it and personally as well too. And I and how
(30:51):
do I spend so much time working on some of
the social impact stuff too? And business sometimes struggles as
result of it, and then I'll work, then I'll go
back to work in the business, and then the impact
work struggles a little bit, so then my golf game sucks,
because that's at least your problems. Man. We're good well, brother, Man,
I appreciate that this has been fantastic. I always love
(31:13):
connected with you. I always love to spending time with you.
Love to spend more time with you. You're a role
model for many of us, Jay, so keep up what
you do and keep that great spirit and energy and
inspiring us because I love you, love that I could
do this to help you, and that's what we do.
We're all Hey, you and I were walking this walk together.
You could take that for me if you want. Brother again,
(31:35):
I really appreciate you joining me today. It's just been
fantastic and we'll connect offline and hopefully look up this
week before you will head back. Appreciate it. I love
your brother,
Fox Sports Radio News
Host
Jonas Knox
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