Lakai
Take a look below for the full-transcript of the interview, and be sure to check out Final Flared which releases later this week. Enjoy!
For those that don’t know, tell us a little about Lakai and how it got started?
Lakai started in 1999, sort of as a natural progression for the founders Rick Howard and Mike Carroll. They had a foothold in other aspects of the skateboarding business and I think footwear was sorta the last thing they hadn’t tackled. There was a little bit of necessity too. There was some unhappiness with where they were at the time and they just thought they could do a better job putting a team together and how they took care of the team. It’s the same concepts they had built their board brands around. They were where they were and they didn’t think things were being done as a reflection of their values when it comes to the business part of skating and that they could do a better job in that respect. They sorta learned the rest along the way
Tell us a little about the creative process. How much involvement do the team riders have in the designs? Are some more involved than others?
Definitely. It all boils down to who the rider is. Some guys are in here every step of the way with shoe design and other guys are just like “you guys know what you’re doing and are probably a little bit more in touch with the market, so do something that’s gonna work for me at a retail level.” Some guys want to go for the sales aspect. Some guys are more about what they want to wear, and then some guys try to find the balance in-between. The process starts with the 3 seasons. Once we start building the line-plan in regard to the pro shoes, we look at the guys that are performing well at the time and if that’s the case we focus on doing re-colors for them. That’s really what it boils down to when we start working on new shoes. If a guy’s shoe slows down, or never really got traction to begin with we’ll start trying to pay attention to that when we’re going into the line building. But if a guy’s shoe is performing it’s just a matter of re-coloring it. It makes it a lot easier.
Typically how many colorways do you work through? I’ve talked to companies that will literally work through hundreds of color variations before they boil it down to 3 or 4 for that season.
Yah, it just depends on how many seasons we’ve colored. It comes back to basic stuff. Start with black suede, start with probably a white leather and then start with something that’s a little more colorful. And then if a shoe does well and you’re into the 3rd or 4th season of recoloring it then it really opens it up to go crazy with the colors. At that point it’s established to retail obviously, and it opens it up for you to do a little more with it. So that’s a big part of how many options you bring to the table for a season. At the beginning it’s usually pretty standard. You do three colors, two safe and one kinda out there. If it hits and things progress you start bringing more and more colors into it. A lot of it depends on how many seasons it’s been in the line.
The holiday catalog came out a few weeks ago, any stand outs you’d like to mention?
Holiday isn’t a big line for us in terms of new styles. It typically doesn’t do well internationally, it’s more for domestic so we tend not to dump a bunch of new styles in the line. It can tend to hurt styles if there’s not so much of an international presence. So it’s mostly just re-colors.
Going into Spring, this line will be our 10th year in business so we’ve done some shoes that are based around that theme. We brought back sort of a cult favorite which is the Staple as part of the 10 year package. We’ve also done some colorways of Rick and Mike’s Select shoes for obvious reasons since they’re the founders of the company. We then have a Lucas shoe and a new Biebel shoe, and most of the rest of it is based around some brighter colors for some of the existing shoes.
When will we start seeing those?
You’ll see that go online at the beginning of January.
With more and more non-skaters wearing Lakai’s, DC’s, Supra’s and Nike SB’s to name a few, is that a market that Lakai is deliberately going after or avoiding?
If anybody tells you that they don’t rely on sales outside of skateboarding they are lying to you. If you are strictly going to rely on core skateboarders to drive your business with skate shoes, you’re not going to survive. It’s the awful truth I guess. There’s just not enough people that skate to sustain what it takes to run a shoe company. It’s good, but you just hope that the people you relate to outside of skateboarding, I mean there’s not a whole lot you can do to control it and we don’t actively like pursue who those people will be, not because we don’t want to but right now we’re not really in a position to do a ton of marketing outside of skateboarding, so it is what it is. I just hope what we do within skateboarding translates outside of skateboarding and the right people gravitate towards it.
Where do you see distribution going? Are you making more of a play for the online retailers, or consciously trying to support the smaller skate shops?
I think we try and do a balance of both things. We need both facets of it to really thrive in business. I would hope that a lot of the retailers that are more established have an online channel set up as well as their brick-and-mortar stores. I guess it’s hard for every single person to compete in the online market but we don’t consciously single out that we need to do this much business online vs. not, we just try and help people that are taking those steps to build their online programs. But I think both aspects are really important. Some of our retailers that have been in business longer online we sort of naturally focus on a little more but we basically look at who’s ahead of the curve with it and make sure we’re doing everything we can to help them.
Fully Flared was one of the best received skate movies of this decade. What did it do for the brand?
I think it did a lot. Going back to what you were asking me earlier about opening people eyes outside of skateboarding, I think Fully Flared did that mainly by the intro alone. Even if you don’t really skate when you see that it’s pretty appealing. I think just by virtue of that we’ve sort of brought in people from outside skateboarding. It’s funny for so long up until the release of the video I always heard people refer to Lakai as sort of the old man brand and that kids and the new generation couldn’t really connect with Lakai. A lot of the guys on the team were older and these kids just didn’t really grow up looking up to these guys. I think after the video came out we were able to connect with that generation a lot more. When I go to events, demos, signings, etc. the age range of kids that I see is definitely younger than its ever been. So I think we were really able to bridge that gap in that age range especially. There was definitely a problem with sort of the 12-16 year old kids. The older guys got it, they’ve been in skating forever and they know who these guys are but some of the kids they just couldn’t relate.
So now you’ve got 13 year old kids talking about Guy Mariano’s part…
Right, and up to that point they had no idea who he was and they couldn’t understand why there was all this hype around him. They just couldn’t get it, but then I think it finally resonated.
Will there be a sequel or a follow up to Fully Flared? What can we expect there?
We’re about to release the box set Final Flared. That will have all the unused footage, alternate edits, an hour long behind the scenes documentary that traverses beginning of the video, trials and tribulations, Guy coming on the team, it runs the whole gambit of the drama that went into the whole thing. There definitely was a certain amount of drama associated with the whole process. I think if you’re remotely interested in skating it will be interesting for people to watch it. The package also has a Blu-ray disk which has a completely new edit of all the HD footage. It’ll be the first skate video to be released on Blu-ray. It also has a book that comes with it. It’s a three disk pack that has all the stuff we weren’t able to put into the original release due to time constraint issues. We basically went back this year and packaged up all the stuff we’d like to have included in the first release.
That’ll be it for us, at least directly through Lakai. Girl will start working on a project through Chocolate which will pretty much be all the same riders that were in Fully Flared, so that’s the next thing that’s up as far as videos go. But it won’t be an actual Lakai production. That was it for us.
Really? One and done?
Yah, we’ll do some online stuff but as far as setting out to do another Lakai video I can’t see it happening soon. For starters, the video doing what it did as a shoe video was sort of an anomaly in itself. Typically shoe videos don’t really do that well so I think we lucked out in that respect and we should just leave it at that. We did it, it’s done, and let the guys do their board video projects which is what they would typically focus on anyway.
Quit while you’re ahead?
Yah, sorta. Never say never, but for now I think as far as marketing goes we basically dumped 4 1/2 years of marketing budget into making that video. It’s done, we definitely got the results of it that we were after, and now it’s time to do different things with those marketing dollars.
What changes or innovations do you see coming in skate footwear over the next 3-5 years?
My guess, and I think everyone’s hope is that we’ll evolve back to a cup style construction but much more streamlined. The vulcanized thing has been hot for the last 5-6 years and I think people are probably gonna start looking past that pretty soon. There were two things that were inviting for people in terms of vulcanized shoes, one is the cost obviously. You can probably get two pairs of shoes for the price of one cup sole shoe especially when they were really tech will all the gadgets, air-bags, and whatnot. On top of that I think people got sick of those big bulky air-bag shoes. The newer shoes have a better silhouette, much more streamlined, so I think it’s going to be a combination of matching that streamlined look but with a cup or comparable construction. Have it keep that streamlined look, be more fitted, maybe be a little more comfortable. Have it work technology into the sole so there is a little higher level of comfort with it. Just trying to incorporate something that’s more durable, has better comfort but still keeps that streamlined, sleek not-so-chunky look that the vulcanized stuff sort of captures.
What about color trends?
I think it’s all cyclical. There’s always room for color, it’s just how much color. Right now we’re seeing there be room for tons of color in our lines. Honestly it’s always a crapshoot. Up to two seasons ago you couldn’t put a red shoe, green shoe, purple shoe in a line but now we’re seeing certain styles that have all three of those colors. It’s really anyone’s guess with that stuff. You gotta hope your line is balanced enough to capitalize on everything by making sure everything is there.
Same for low/mid/high-tops?
Yeah, I can’t really see the high-top thing lasting too much longer but like I said it’s anyone’s guess.
Is the current state of the economy changing things in the skate industry or at Lakai specifically?
Yeah, of course. We just have to really tighten our line-up and don’t put stuff that’s iffy in there. We have to be really careful about making sure we have a line that’s 90% styles we know are guaranteed. I think the real blow-back we’re gonna see from that is for people’s lines that are good from start to finish, there are probably going to be some styles that take a hit. Not because they are bad styles but because people can’t take in as many SKU’s. Styles that are otherwise good and solid are probably going to suffer a little bit. That’s probably the main thing we’ll see in the next 6-8 months. It’s obviously forcing people to shop smarter, a lot tighter, and more focused. Fortunately I think we’re in a good position at the moment due to the popularity of the the brand. We’ve had the right styles the last few seasons and I think people’s confidence is high. The sell-through has been good at retail which really helps people’s confidence with us, but I think on the flip side if you were a company that had a season or two with iffy styles I think those are people that are going be affected the most. You’re definitely going to see adjustments in the amount of SKU’s people bring in and the line’s they bring in. If you were established and doing well at retail, you’ll be ok. Maybe not as many SKU’s on the wall as you once did, but it’s going to force everyone to design a lot smarter.
Any advice to our readers out there that might be looking to get into the skate industry one day?
I guess my advice is if you love it and you’re passionate about it by all means. It takes a while to get into a position that will help you support yourself. For me I’ve been doing this for 15 years now. I started sort of at the bottom. I was fortunate to be involved with people that are my friends which helps you keep your commitment to it, but at the end of the day I love skating. I’m so fortunate to be able to work in an industry where I’m working with my friends and I love what it is. I think if you have that commitment you’ll go far. That can be said with anything. Do it because you love it, not because it’s a way to make money.
Nice segue…tell us how you went from the early 90′s Real team to Lakai?
I started at DC/Droors/DUB after my pro-skating stint. I was friends with Ken (Block) and Damon (Way), I actually skated for Droors and DC in the early days. DC started to take off around the end of my pro skate career and they offered me a job. I was there for 3 1/2 years, had some great times over there and then it just got to the point where these guys (Rick and Mike) thought that they could do their own thing and maybe do things a little differently in a way that they felt was more favorable to the team guys and at that point I guess I had a little bit of a falling out with DC. A lot of it boiled down to just Rick and Mike leaving, and me being disappointed that they had let those guys go and that resulted in the parting of the ways for both of us. Fortunately, I was able to end up with those guys pursuing the goal of making Lakai what they thought it should be. I hope we’ve done a good job in achieving that goal. I’d like to think we have. That’s pretty much it. It went from pro-skating to DC to here, and I’ll have been here 9 years December 1st.
Since day one?
Since day one. I came on board over here as the team manager for all three Podium brands: DVS, Matix and Lakai. And then as all the brands started to grow they each needed their own special attention and just by default I ended up being the guy that was passionate about Lakai and willing to do the extra work and keep things on track in addition to the team. I think out of necessity I ended up being the brand manager. I was the guy doing everything to keep it going day to day. And that’s how it worked out.
Features:
- Optimal Ankle Support And Comfort
- Perforated Panels For Increased Ventilation
- Nubuck, Canvas, Suede Or Synthetic Leather Upper
- Full-Length Shock Absorbing Insole
- Interlocking Breathable Mesh Tongue
- Durable Double-Stitch Toe Cap
- Tacky Soft Rubber Outsole
