there's so much I know about lobster and the funny
thing I tell everybody is, I hate seafood,
I won't eat it for me to stare at lobsters
for weeks is like the dumbest thing in the world
to me. But you know here we are and
then you know we have a line out front,
what's up GQ, This is Dion point creative director
for concepts and this is my life and sneakers.
I grew up in brockton massachusetts a very long time
ago, probably before any jordans around the shelves.
It was a little bit of a rough and gritty
neighborhood, I'd say so getting sneakers wasn't necessarily the
easiest course of action for us. So I probably
got my first sneaker when the sky jordans came out
which was the 1985 edition of the jordans for smaller
feet, which I still have like 1000 9 right
now, that kind of gave me the appetite for
sneakers. But then I wouldn't get another Jordan probably
until the 11. It was a grueling path for
sure. Trying to be a sneaker head back then
there wasn't necessarily the uh insatiable appetite there is now
. So you could actually go in and buy a
shoot. Maybe not even just the day of you
had a couple of weeks. The Jordan one in
particular. Some of the Catalan sports I think had
them for as low as$20 times were tougher back
then. I don't think people had the uh the
deep pockets that they do now. Kids are wearing
like balenciaga's to high school, That's, that's wild
to me, oddly enough, I read about a
life in a GQ article and I was like,
what the hell is this store? It's a library
, what is it? So I booked it to
new york and checked it out and I was like
an all, but I didn't know what concepts was
at that point, I was still going to new
york to get all my sneakers were doing one 25th
, hitting every store in new york because they had
a different offering, wider assortment things like that.
Crazy 95 things like that. So I was going
up there buying you know everything, I get my
hands on and then I found out about concepts,
I found out about concepts that obeyed the shower,
some kid had the acorns on and I was like
, wow, this is crazy! Where'd you get
those? Of course, the thing you say when
you're from boston and I got them in new york
, it's your way of basically brushing people out like
you're not getting what I got so low And behold
, my brother called me, he was like,
I saw the store that they have the acorns at
its in Cambridge Cambridge massachusetts like yeah, it's in
Cambridge. So we headed over there and we were
like what is this? They had year, the
forced Air force's biotech dunks bo Jackson, they just
had this weird assortment of shoes because they had a
higher tier two count and I was just blown away
. And then from there it's kind of where you
know, nature took its course, it was like
going to a thrift store, you know like it
was exactly that feeling because you walked through this mom
and pop store that had like Birkenstocks and Minnetonka and
all these two companies and a lot of people are
familiar with and then you get in the back and
just rap music class and we'd like, we'd incense
and just like what is this? How did I
find this? And then I never told anybody about
it, I kept it to myself, you know
, I fell in love that story, I spend
all my money, I couldn't make that trip up
every week and there was so much stuff coming out
that I just couldn't keep up. So that's when
I offered to kind of come on like as a
part time gig. So I work on the weekends
, sometimes I would come in my construction clothes,
changing the back and work on like a weekday.
But again, I wasn't doing it for the money
. I had money, I just was like,
I just needed to get my access to the shoes
, he was letting me buy the shoes that cost
, so of course you're gonna buy four pairs of
something. Not that sure, I didn't, I
couldn't get out of those at risk, but I
had three of them for those that don't know,
this is the Neapolitan cherry on the tongue, it
was a no brainer. This is probably at a
time when color blocking was minimal. So it made
sense. Our allocation was probably super light. We
probably got 12 pairs of this for the shop and
playing fair. This is before online culture still too
. You know, you're seeing them show up in
magazines from Japan, you're like, what is that
? You know, clue. It's even Stasi probably
traded at 1.5 or six other sneakers to get one
of these in this. This was before the equity
was there. So this wasn't a$5000 shoe,
probably a few$100 back then. You know,
everybody that wants to work and sneakers. It's always
like, you know, I want to come in
design, I want to do this. But for
us it was always like, you had to start
in the stock room. So we memorized cues.
I knew, I knew like by hard color codes
and all that stuff, I just nerd out on
it. I kind of like being back there better
than on the floor. Then, you know,
natural progression, get on the floor. That's when
you start meeting reps and people from brands and I
think that's how the first opportunity came about for us
to do a collab was 2007 with new balance part
of this. Uh super team, 33 structure that
they had like us a life for the L.
A. There's a lot of groups that came in
and to this day, my biggest mistake, it
was the worst show I've ever worked on every time
it pops up on like someone's trying to give me
props and please burn that shoe and I'll give you
a new one. Like I hate it. You
live and you learn. So this I think is
one of our favorite new balance that we have ever
did. This is called the C Note. If
you are a real new balance, that you notice
there's something different about this. I'm not gonna say
anything more than that. We kind of did it
with this dusted toe box. For a reason.
We knew that once they kind of got worn in
, people would probably want another pair and we kept
the market pairs low. I want to say we
did maybe like 1000 or something of these for whatever
reason, like the purest, they're constantly hounded me
to like bring these back out and it's just kind
of like almost a grail for a lot of kids
that are into new balance. The new balance says
they need everything structured the right way, what factory
is made in. I mean they're like aficionados here
. I have not won yet. You know,
Virgil, there's not enough good things you could say
about him, but there's just so many sort of
little details. He puts in all his product.
He just got the midas touch. It's not on
everything for me, but especially with the forces.
I think he realized that sometimes less is more and
I think this is perfect and I honestly would have
never worn all baby blue show in my life even
though it's one of my favorite colors. Blue top
to bottom is crazy and it just works. It
makes sense. This one here. The reason why
I brought this because it's actually where full circle we're
in Miami right now, my friend James Whitner and
frank Cook sent me these. So this is one
of the shoes that's like close to my heart.
I know they go for a lot of money.
I wore the pink ones into the ground that they
sent me but they launched these in Miami art Basel
. I want to save my mask, correct.
2018 even though it might look just like, you
know, muted colors, kind of low key.
Uh, this is absolutely one of my favorite shoes
. I just, I need a special reason to
rock those. So that's one that's not getting one
. I'm a Jordan one junkie. Um, that
stems from obviously the sky jordans. Uh, so
I keep as many pairs of these as I can
. The originals. The black and red and the
black and blue. But so these come along,
they're just easier to get a little bit pricey but
they're still not as pricey as having the O.
G. So and I thought the details are cool
in the marketing last but not least if I could
reach this here. I don't think anybody's seen this
in person yet. This is the white lobster,
this is friends and family only. So it won't
be for retail, but I wanted to share this
with you guys because I thought it was cool.
This is extremely lazy. I couldn't lie to anybody
. So the reason why I picked this color for
friends and families because it's so minimal pairs. They
found an albino lobster. There's also one with these
crazy hairy claws that's like prehistoric. This story wasn't
there for me, I couldn't do anything with it
. And I was like, there's gonna be one
shoe that's limited, that won't kill people and not
have them. Like white might be the easiest to
cope with, you might have to correct me,
but I think this is our seventh rendition of the
Lobster series. Uh the first one came about,
you know, us trying to do something cool with
SB trying to pitch a project to them and they
were at that time, Inferno Hot. So they
weren't really listening to anything, even though we're one
of the first accounts in the entire world, if
not the first to carry S. B. It
doesn't mean like we just got a streamlined to the
president. You know, we had a few ideas
that kind of failed before that, that they weren't
really vulnerable. So Lobster came about. And then
that's when I kind of started working on the blue
officer immediately pitch that to them. They were like
, no, we're not doing it. Then I
got the call like six months after this. Drop
the red one that we can do the blue,
we survived the sophomore jinx. It was more so
like what are you gonna do after this? I
think it's a little lazy for us to continuously do
this. But the reality is the consumer wants it
. We're all wearing renditions of the same sneaker.
Anyway, so what's the difference here? If you
have an air Force or uptown, you got it
? 50 colors. What's the difference if I do
eight colors of this? But the real problem is
how do I sell it to you? How do
I how do I market it to you? How
do I tell you this isn't the same story?
And that's where I kind of started looking into dolly
and all these things in the art world and then
how lobster works in art. If it's a still
life painting, if it's this, they put me
in this rabbit hole and I'm like, you know
, I don't come out for like weeks and then
I opened the door to my office and like I
got it and that's when kind of all this around
you came about. So that's when it becomes fun
for me again because yeah, this is this isn't
really fun for me to just pick colors and then
after google, like is there a real orange lobster
? They found one, his name is chatter,
it's a real thing, look it up, everybody
think I'm making it up. But yeah, I'm
pumped on this one, I like it and orange
is one of my least favorite colors for me personally
, I think I work on all the packaging,
the storytelling, um the marketing plan almost the same
time as I'm submitting the shoe because I have to
have a framework of how it's gonna, how it's
gonna come out, I was gonna roll and I
was gonna be different than the last one. So
it's become a little bit of a painstaking process to
top the next one. You know, us going
above and beyond and creating this immersive experience. It's
just the evolution of footwear, right? Because how
do you keep the excitement there? If it's not
just colors? I think it's cool for them to
be able to explain it to their friends and family
to, of why they waited in line or why
they went through hell for me being a habit storyteller
in my personal life, it translates over the product
and I'd like to be able to, you know
, hopefully share that with the consumer. Thank you
guys for watching my life and sneakers. I hope
to see you guys again soon. Thank you