Chapter 7 of 12
A brief history of the brand
At the beginning of the new century, Hip-Hop was becoming more and more mainstream. The rise of the internet revolutionized the distribution of music, CD's were slowly making way for MP3's, and the vinyl industry was suffering. The Fatbeats store was not doing very well, and most of the team quit one by one. Gee went to work behind the bar at de Duivel at first. Then, eager to turn one of his hobbies into a job, he took a position as a Junior Product Manager at Sony Music. However, the corporate look into the industry, the "strictly business" side of it all, and not being able to work with his friends made him question his choices. After two years, he understood this wasn't the type of job he wanted to spend his life doing.
One day in 2003, the two friends met at de Duivel for drinks, and Gee mentioned his dissatisfaction with his day job, and how he was thinking about starting something completely new. To his surprise, Edson said he felt the same way and suggested that they start something new together. He talked about his trip to China and mentioned the mountains of shoeboxes he saw. They both love sneakers; they know and understand them. Why not make this their business? The obvious next question was: how? As you may recall in the previous chapter, Edson travelled to New York as a teenager to buy sneakers. Around '92, his younger brother Tim visited NYC with his mother, and they stayed at a B&B in Jamaica, Queens. Their host's son struck up a conversation with Tim, and they connected over their shared love for sneakers. He and his friends showed Tim all around town as they travelled by metro to hidden mom and pop shops in Fordham Road in the Bronx, Fulton Street in Brooklyn and Jamaica Ave in Queens. Far away from the relative safety of the Manhattan high streets, these stores had a lot more heat laying around, and for way better prices. So when Tim returned to Amsterdam with a bunch of neck breakers of his own, he suggested Edson save some money and come with him next year. Every time they went, they would add more and more of these streets and shops like they were drawing a treasure map. Over the years, they would bring many of their friends with them to New York to go shopping, and Gee was no different. By then, Gee had been to New York with Edson and Tim a few times before, and every time he would come back with gems. Furthermore, all of their friends wanted to have the shoes they came back with, so he knew there was a market for this. Therefore, when Edson suggested doing what they have been doing for themselves for years, but to do it for others in bulk, it all made more than sense to him.