Episode 11
NEWS: Hoonigan Bankruptcy, Nike CEO Changes, Forgotten Cars & Kicks Collabs, Genesis Prepares For Le Mans, and More
In this episode of Cars and Kicks, the Jacues Slade, Erik Valdez, and Nick Engvall, discuss a range of topics from childhood memories to grievances with electric cars, particularly Tesla's 12-volt battery issues. They delve into Nike's leadership challenges and the implications of recent changes in the sneaker industry. The conversation shifts to the automotive world, highlighting the impact of leadership on company culture and performance, with a focus on Hoonigan's bankruptcy and Genesis's commitment to racing. The episode concludes with reflections on the importance of details in both the sneaker and automotive industries, emphasizing the connection between performance and brand success.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to Cars and Kicks
02:36 Grievances in the Electric Car World
08:12 Nike's Leadership Challenges
15:54 The Impact of Leadership in Automotive
23:47 Hoonigan's Bankruptcy and Its Implications
50:13 Genesis Racing Commitment and Future Prospects
All of the links you need: https://www.carsxkicks.com
The Cars and Kicks Show is hosted by:
Jacques Slade is a multifaceted creator that explores the world of footwear and sports through the lens of culture. Through sneakers and golf, Jacques has cultivated an industry leading voice in the industry that can be seen online and on television. Or he is just an idiot. The jury is still out on that.
Erik Valdez is a husband, father, actor, producer, and creator, whose passion and knowledge for cars is unmatched. You might have seen him on shows like General Hospital, Graceland, or Superman & Lois. He’s driven in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, the Baja 1000, and the number of cars he’s owned would rival the how collections of many sneakerheads.
Nick Engvall is a consultant and creator who helps brands make more authentic connections with their customers. His obsession with cars and sneakers both toe the line of unhealthiness that is best described as, overly passionate. If he’s not recording podcasts, he’s probably at the burrito shop or chasing down ocean sunsets.
Transcript
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome to the show. This is Cars and Kicks. And as we always start off Cars and Kicks, we have a custom intro. And for this one, guys, I wanted to go back, go back a little bit to our childhood. So it's more of a, we got your cars, we got your kicks, you in the mix, we got your cars and kicks.
I wanted to keep it simple, just nice and easy.
Erik Valdez (:see, for some reason when you said go back to our childhood, I figured it's because we're all like, you know, in our middle ages now. And I thought maybe I was gonna go back to like some 90s hip hop or something like that. That's I didn't I didn't know you meant like nursery rhyme level like pre K level. Okay. Hey, way back. Yes.
Nick (:All right. All right.
Jacques (:no, mean like kids.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Further back. Children. Back as children. Not, guess, yeah, I should have phrased that the right way. But, you know, just a little, just a little, a little spice to it. A little spice to it. A little spice to it.
Nick (:Further, further back.
Erik Valdez (:back into the late 1900s when we were born as the youth like to say nowadays.
Jacques (:Yeah, I would say something about I would say something about them kids, but this is a family show. What up everyone? Thank you all for tuning in to the next episode of cars and kicks. We've got a great episode for you guys today. I am jock slayed I am one third of this triumph from it triumph for it triumph it triceratops try. tried it tried it of this trio
Nick (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:You
Erik Valdez (:TRI - TRIO?
Erik Valdez (:Hahaha
Jacques (:I'm one third of what you see or what you're listening to right now. I'm Jacques Slade, but of course I have my buddy Eric here. He is the car guy and I'll let him give you the full intro.
Erik Valdez (:What up everybody? Yeah, if we're the Triceratops, like, can I be like the left horn? I don't really want to be up at the front. I don't need to be the, like the main one, but can I be like the left horn? Cause that's like the driver's side of things in the United States. Anyway. Yeah. What up guys? I'm Eric Valdez. I am the resident car guru, I guess part of this cars and kicks collab here. And we got my man Nick right here in the middle. Who's the, he's the main horn of the Triceratops here.
Nick (:Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Jacques (:Hahaha!
Jacques (:I love it, I love it.
Jacques (:Yes, the main horn of the Triceratops, 100%, 100%.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:Man my name is Nick Engvall. I yeah the main horn of the triceratops or the the best slash worst of both worlds when it comes to cars and kicks so All of the above but yeah glad to glad to be back again for another show guys looking forward to it
Erik Valdez (:Hmm
Jacques (:Hahaha!
Erik Valdez (:man.
Jacques (:I bet you guys didn't think we would start this episode doing nursery rhymes and talking about dinosaurs. You're welcome is how I'm going to say that.
Erik Valdez (:My my six year old is gonna love this episode. Yes.
Jacques (:So I know we're to get into the show, but I do want to share some grievances to the car world. And I don't know if this is a mass thing to the car world or just my experience. So recently I went to San Diego and I drove my Tesla and we were down to like 15%.
And I was like, okay, I'll just park at the hotel and I'll just go charge in the morning. But when I get back to my car, it won't start. apparently, and this is not something that I think is widely publicized, electric cars have a 12 volt battery as well, like a normal car. Now this is not something that most people with electric cars, I think they know. I don't think most people know that. So I had to essentially get a jump.
Erik Valdez (:Yes.
Jacques (:But because the battery was so dead, a jump didn't even work. So I had to go buy another battery, which by the way was like $260 for the battery. and then everything worked fine. Now my grievances, 12 volt batteries. Okay. I get it. They die. I've had normal cars and my battery has died before. So I understand that part of it, but this is an electric car and it has stuff called software.
Erik Valdez (:Mm -hmm.
Erik Valdez (:-huh.
Jacques (:so I should get some sort of warning, letting me know that my battery, my 12 volt battery, like, yo bro, the 12 volt battery ain't gonna make it no more. You got to get it replaced right away. Nothing, nothing at all. Now don't know if this is just a Tesla thing cause he worried about other things. And so he ain't, he's not worried about 12 volt batteries or if this is just a common thing that happens to people with electric cars that the battery is going to die. But
I was just imagining if I wasn't in like a metropolitan area and if I had said driven out into the woods or something like that to go camping and then your battery dies, like you're really in a terrible position and it's just not it's not part of your thought process. And my thought is like, I'll just plug it up and it'll charge. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because the charger doesn't charge the battery.
Erik Valdez (:Mm -hmm.
Erik Valdez (:curious... no it does not. but I'm curious here because there most EVs have some sort of redundant feature that allows the you know high voltage battery pack to kind of recharge the 12 volt if it dips below a certain amount or you should have gotten a warning for sure but how old is your Tesla?
Nick (:Yeah.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Jacques (:21.
Erik Valdez (:Okay, so what's Tesla's warranty on the non, the big battery packs like 10 years, 100 and something thousand miles, but are you're out of warranty basically? Or is it?
Jacques (:I don't think so. think it's like 50 ,000 miles or something like, and I haven't, I haven't gotten there yet, but it was like, you know, this was eight o 'clock at night and you know, have to drive the next morning. I don't have time to call them for a warranty and them tell them, we'll be there 48 hours. Like I don't have time.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah, I hear you. That's a weird thing. I have not heard of that really happening too often. I would put in a ticket with Tesla and just be like, hey, this is what I had to do. This is what worked, but why did this happen? And kind of see if can get to the bottom of it. Because there shouldn't, three years on a battery is not, I mean, they should last a little bit longer than that. I've gotten eight years out of a 12 -volt battery on some of my other vehicles before, but.
I don't know if they consider that a warranty item or not, because maybe it's just wear and tear, regular maintenance, but three years, something's off there. And something would have, there had to be a drain of sorts for that 12 volt to go dead overnight. It's not like if you can't leave a light on or leave the radio on in an electric car and accidentally kill your 12 volt battery, they all have fail safes that will put the car to sleep at a certain point in time. So that's interesting. I would dig into that before you take another.
Jacques (:Yeah. Yep.
Nick (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:little trip because there might be something deeper there hmm
Jacques (:Yeah, definitely disappointing. Disappointed in you, Tesla.
Erik Valdez (:Well, Elon Musk is, you know, to your point, he's 12 volt batteries are not gonna get people to Mars. So it's not top of his concern list. So yeah. Anyway, welcome to the show, everybody. Jacques is experiencing. Yes. Yeah. I thought you were going to say that it left you stranded. So you had to use the kicks to like get to where you were going. And then it would have been like kicks saving the car dilemma scenario. Yeah. man.
Nick (:you
Jacques (:Right. True, true.
Nick (:Yeah.
Jacques (:Yes, yes, this is cards and kicks. That's what we're here about. Yeah.
Jacques (:that's
Nick (:Yeah, that's.
Jacques (:That would have been nice. That would have been nice. I'm just, I'm just.
Nick (:As it turns out, that's just the reason that Jacques didn't pick up the last pair of Jordans that dropped, right? The 250 bucks went to the battery.
Jacques (:250 bucks, that'll do it. That'll do it easy. That's two pairs of sneakers if you find them on sale. Yeah, at least I was able to get a battery, I should say that. Because even when I went to AutoZone, the guy was like, a Tesla battery? I don't even know if we have those kind of batteries for like the 12 volt battery.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
He hit the AutoZone app and it immediately said, him when he needed that battery.
Nick (:Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:There you go.
Erik Valdez (:Ha ha ha.
man.
Jacques (:Because it's shaped differently. It's a different size. Like everything is not like your normal size battery. It's like a little thinner. It's taller, a little thinner. The prongs are a little different. Yeah, it's weird.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah. Wow. Well, get it figured out before it leaves you stranded again.
Jacques (:Yeah, yeah, don't don't don't love that don't love that
Erik Valdez (:man, well today I think we're gonna talk a bit not about the grievances and issues so much as well. Maybe there's some grievances involved here, but there's been a lot of news over the last week or so in both automotive and sneaker spaces. so we wanted to kind of bring you guys up to speed, so to speak, on some of the happenings in both worlds there. So Nick, have, you've been keeping track of a couple things, some breaking news of sorts. I guess it's not breaking because we're not live, but.
Jacques (:Hahaha
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:What have you seen over the last week or so that kind of piqued your curiosity?
Nick (:I mean, I can't think of anything but what Jacques mentioned in the pre -show now, like Bloomberg calling out, John Donahoe for, you know, lead Nike down the wrong path. And, you know, I, I can't not, know, like this is, I love this stuff. Nike is the leader. They're the top dog. They have to be the best. And if they're not the best, then I think the whole industry suffers. And I think, you know, we've seen that over the last two to three years, to be honest, like there's been a downfall for, you know,
Erik Valdez (:Nick went there.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:There's been a lot of opportunities created for the smaller brands, but you know, when they're like the North star of the industry, it's tough. And I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, obviously, but, you know, John Donahoe comes from, you know, eBay, the resell market side of things. I, up until this point in my life would have never been one of those people where, where that said,
You should hire somebody from within that's worked for the company forever. Cause I'm not one of those people. bounce around a lot. like helping many different companies and working in different places for two or three years at a time. And, I think that Nike's current situation is, is definitely a reflection of them, not embracing kind of the lifelong. Amazing people that have, that have put in the work there to keep, to get them to the top and then to keep them at the top. So it's really interesting to think about, but,
Yeah, I don't know. Like it's, hard for me to not, it's, it's probably the biggest kind of. Call out in sneakers that we've had in a long time. You know, we'll see it from the complexes or the sneaker news and those kinds of outlets, but to have somebody like Bloomberg come out and say it, it obviously has reached, you know, the investor side, the business side, it's, it's bigger than, the sneaker head community at this point that, and a lot of people are, are, you know, concerned with it, right? Whether you're.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:An investor in the company, like a lot of sneaker heads are maybe on a small amount, or if you're just a passionate for sneakers kind of person, you know, it's, definitely being talked about enough that I think we're, on the verge of seeing some, some action from it at some point.
Erik Valdez (:Hmm
Erik Valdez (:Yeah. How do you get the call tomorrow, Nick? They want to shake things up and you are now coming in there and you're going to run Nike. How do you fix it?
Nick (:man, I mean, first I get an NDA in place so I can actually get paid for this next series of sentences that I'm about to spew, but for the sake of our audience, for the sake of our audience, yeah.
Erik Valdez (:Well, we gotta call up our homie at Sneaker Legal and make sure that you're covered.
Jacques (:Yeah, yeah.
Nick (:Right? Yeah. No, I think, I think that, you know, they've, they've lost kind of the, the direction that, that got them and, really led them ahead of everybody and kept them ahead of everybody. Right? Like the business is built on performance oriented footwear, you know, over the past, say 10 to 12 years, you've seen a shift from that being the forefront of everything, you know,
of like, just go back to like:They relied heavily on the, the, you know, the, Virgil Ablows, the Travis Scott's, the Kanye West to create the energy where I think that is just a, know, like when you define a guiding principle for your business or for anything you do, you know, you stick through it through the ups and downs in my opinion, and they never had any downs. And yet once they shifted and saw more money coming in,
You know, not to say that they didn't have some downs, but like the trajectory for Nike has been a pretty steady upward climb for the last 45 years or whatever it's been. and I think that they fundamentally moved away from that. And by, stepping away from it a little bit with like a Virgil Abloh who they absolutely should have, I'm not questioning that decision because it was hugely successful. gave, it gave them both just, you know, a chance to define what sneaker culture is and
And he was an incredible human being on top of it. But when you look at that and you say, this is how it worked for the past three or four years, and then you lose him and you're still looking at like, who's the collaborator we put in his place. I think you're focused on the wrong part of the business because if you had, if you, if you were focusing on the, the, know, improving, you know, sneakers or footwear performance wise by the most incremental amounts.
Nick (:At least that is still something to, like be passed around throughout the divisions to sportswear, to running, to basketball, et cetera. And that to me is Nike's bread and butter as how they distributed that technology, technology and its advancements. And I think that they have to get back to that. think the collaborations will always be a part of it. It's a hugely important piece of the business, but at the end of the day, it, you still have to have the one North star and you know, kind of the, the guiding lights that follow, guess is the best way to put it.
Erik Valdez (:Mm
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:So that, that would be my, my first kind of direction. And I think the secondary thing on that would be, you know, really like looking at like how they've kind of cleaned house. They laid off so many people and their business has been built on letting people go and bringing people back and letting people go and bringing people back. You know, have a half a dozen friends that have been laid off multiple times from Nike and then rehired. And I might not personally agree with that, but.
I do think that at some point you have to look at the, the tenure of the people that you have, you know, you have to have some guidance because if you cut out all of the people that are, you know, that have already gone down the wrong path, came back and made it right. Then the next generation doesn't have the opportunity to learn from those people because once you take out that, you know, mid to senior level group of people.
Then the higher up executives and VPs don't have time to give guidance to the entry level or like, you know, fresh out of college kind of people. And I know that like businesses really struggle with this and it's, it's a, it's a true challenge for everybody, but with Nike, so much of why Nike works is the culture, you know, being up there in Portland and walking around campus and just feeling the energy. It just needs to have that.
Erik Valdez (:All right.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:coaching system that sports comes with. And I think that's what they always had. And that's what they always did better than everybody else. And they kind of moved away from that in the last year and a half. So those are the two, biggest things I would change. but.
Jacques (:I feel like this is a gripe that you guys could probably switch over to the car world as well. I'm sure there's new CEOs come in and it doesn't always amount to like a better position for the car company. Are there any like examples in that side that you guys can think of, Eric or Nick?
Erik Valdez (:I mean, this kind of goes back a little bit to what we were talking about on our previous pod, but at its core, yes, from a business standpoint, I understand the idea of shaking things up and bringing in an outsider to kind of try new things, so to speak, but if you lose that North Star, to use Nick's words, or use the core ethos of a company by not bringing in somebody who is passionate about what they're doing, then
I don't see it working long term. Maybe there's some fixes that can be made, some changes that can be implemented, but we were talking a bit about different people in the automotive industry at high levels or CEO levels that were true car people. And like Jim Farley and Ralph Gill and stuff like that we mentioned before, I think when you do have those people in place, it keeps people on track, so to speak. So even if you do bring in new talent, fresh talent, outsider talent,
As long as you maintain some of that, I think you can work together. But once you start just ousting people and trying something completely off the wall at the very top, it's, don't see how it really works. Because aside from the different ideas and stuff, when you start doing things like Nick is mentioning here where you're letting people go that have been there for quite a while to maybe bring in some fresh talent or maybe
you know, change their bottom line and hire somebody who is a lot less expensive, so to speak, to get some stuff done. Obviously, if you're having to then rehire people, you kind of, you know, either made a mistake or did something that didn't quite work. And then if you're letting them go again, you know, that cycle, it starts to make the people, the talented people and the passionate people go like, why am I investing my time into this company that doesn't really care to have me around? If I'm that disposable,
Why don't I go look elsewhere? And I feel like that is the beginning of the end when stuff like that starts to happen, the cleaning house, so to speak. In the automotive space, it's happened time and time again. I can't think of a particular name off the top of my head, but you've had people come in and really shake things up for the better, but they were always car people in some way, or form. When you've had outsiders come in, it doesn't really...
Nick (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:doesn't really work, you know what mean? So I think at its core, regardless of what industry it is, sneakers, cars, anything else, if you don't have somebody who understands not just the audience, but understands the core values of whatever company they're going to be leading, it's going to fall apart at some point. That's my take on it.
Nick (:Yeah, I think I was just going to say, think, I think this is a talking point that kind of bubbles up anytime. Like somebody who's really passionate about something works for a company and they lose kind of that manager or, you know, director or whatever that really is like passionate about the thing, right? Whether it's cars or kicks or, you I don't know, farms, like it doesn't really matter, right?
Jacques (:So we I'll say we go ahead Nick
Nick (:But once you take away that touch point of the people that are in touch every day and kind of guiding the next generation of people, we see it with like in the design world a lot cars kicks, you know, like I've talked about my brother's work in the cycling world. Once those like people that have already experienced a couple of decades of designing move on to other companies or, or retire or laid off or whatever the people that are.
Like new and excited to design don't have someone that they can directly bounce their ideas off of and get feedback. And I think that's ultimately like, you know, a really difficult thing for those types of people. And when you're talking about sneakers and cars, that is one of the most important things. And I think a good example that, that comes to mind, we mentioned him in a previous episode, but Lee Iacocca, right? With, with Chrysler, you know, he's an incredible. Like leader in the sense that he's going to come in.
And, you know, like if you use the K car example, they sold countless K cars, a terrible car for most by most standards, anybody that's a car person probably looks at it and goes, well, this is cheap and it's terrible, it worked. They sold a lot. They saved the company. And from a dollars and a pen on paper perspective, it had to be done. But I think the problem is a lot of businesses don't realize that once you get to that point, you miss you made a misstep prior to that point.
im around going into the like:Challenger charger era like he is not the right person to lead the company in that sense because He even if he was a car guy He didn't feel like it from the consumers perspective and I think there's a lot of truth to the there's a lot of Like value and needing the authenticity from the leadership when a company is driven by like a very passionate industry
Erik Valdez (:Yeah, I think that brings up an interesting point too in that, you know, just qualities of good leaders. I think if you've got somebody, whether they're, you know, there are people that know everything about the car industry, so to speak, or, you know, they're eccentric creators, they're good designers, they're, you know, this and that, but they may know nothing about the business side of things. And like, Henrik Fisker comes to mind, you know, really great, talented designer. He's now failed.
twice basically at running a company. And so I don't know anything about him and I'm not, don't mean to call him out exactly, it just popped into my head, but you know, when you have a leader that is passionate about something, sometimes you do need to be, I think arguably the biggest thing is being a great listener and being able to listen to those people that the employees below you that have been there for a long period of time that can say, hey, I see what you're doing here, but we need to implement this, this and this.
And I think oftentimes CEOs get brought in and they have a certain agenda and then they also in the back of their mind feel like, everything's riding on my shoulders. If I don't turn this around, then I'm going to be looked at as a failure and they have their own legacy slash ego to contend with. And I think that more times than none, that's probably what causes the downfall of things is people aren't willing to, they're so quick to just.
cut their losses and reshape things that they're not open to hearing what the people that have been there a long time have to say and figuring out how to implement that along with their new strategies. So I don't know, think that's a bigger topic and can, you know, that goes beyond cars and kicks, but I think that is a very, you know, kind of an interesting point to what makes a good leader or doesn't, you know?
Jacques (:Yeah, it's I mean, for me, yeah, it's not an easy job at all. And I guess for me, it's thinking about, know, it's a at the end of the day, it's a business, the car business, the sneaker business, and you need a CEO that's smart, but also understands the culture. And I think that's really what this article is saying. I haven't had a chance to read it either. But I mean, even just a byline is instead of transforming the sneaker giant into a high tech powerhouse, John Donahoe pissed off partners and disappointed fans. So
Nick (:And it's not an easy job.
Jacques (:It doesn't, interestingly, doesn't say anything about stockholders or the board or anything like that, because I think they're all happy, or at least they were before the stock kind of tanked this last couple of months. So they imagine it seems like those people are happy, but the consumers, the ones that are buying issues are the ones that aren't following the lead, so to speak, that John's put out there. we could talk about, we could go into that.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Jacques (:for this whole episode. So I don't want to continue to drag down John.
Erik Valdez (:Right. I. One of the things that I think, you know, Nick, just so candidly brought up right before you start talking, Jacques, is that it is not an easy job, right? We're not sitting here trying to say we have all the answers when you do it. And kind of case in point to some other big news this week is Hoonigan filing for bankruptcy. You know, that that's a massive shakeup in the automotive world. And a lot of people are asking why, how, how do you acquire one point two billion dollars worth of
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:debt and bury yourself and you know, lot of finger pointing happens. Everybody seems to have their opinion as to why that happens and how they got there, et cetera. But you know, it all goes back to being at the top of something really, really big or just creating something that grows to that level is not easy to sustain. And I think, you know, obviously the unfortunate loss of Kim Block
was the beginning of the end for that in certain ways. He made that what it was and people looked forward to anything that they put out from a visual standpoint on their YouTube videos, all the different vehicles that they created, the different, there was all of that part of it too, but they grew that into a brand from starting with just Ken literally jumping into Subaru with his DC shoes and like,
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:Willing it around a vacant airport way back in the day into a full -blown multimedia production company, etc Where again, I'm not an expert here, but where I think it started to go wrong without his kind of guidance and leadership You know, maybe it maybe there's some other things along the way but your For lack of a better term your everybody's left scrambling, you know and trying to figure out Okay, what do we do and certain decisions were made? I think a lot of it also
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:people are saying this is not a Hunnigan bankruptcy, it's a WillPros bankruptcy and blah, blah, blah. And look, there were some, some decisions made in like the big boom of the pandemic era where acquisition after acquisition was made to try and grow this into something even bigger than it was. And again, we could sit here and say, well, that was, that was a greedy, aggressive approach that I'm not going to chime in on how I think it should have been or shouldn't have been done. All I know is that
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:It is this this really highlights how complicated big, you know, big industries, big companies get as they tend as they grow. And I mean, I don't know what the answer to that is. They're hoping to restructure and looking for more funding to restructure. But that's just, you know, when you're when you're one point two billion in debt and you're asking for something like seven hundred million to restructure.
It's a hard ask, you know? It's like, how do you pull yourself out of that by taking on more debt, so to speak? you know, that one shook things up this past week for sure. And it's kind of sad, you know? I think another part of that too is you, and it goes back to kind of what I was saying with Nike, and once you've got people that have been there a while,
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:You know, they get let go and then come back, get let go. I'm not saying that necessarily happened per se, but on the media standpoint or from the media standpoint, like you've had a lot of people over the years that were contributors, right? And then they got to a point where they grew an audience themselves and decided, well, you know, I don't really need this vehicle anymore. So I'm going to go off and do my own thing. Well, once you lose Ken and you lose some of the other people involved in the creative element of it and they go off and do their own thing.
Jacques (:Mmm. Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:The wheels start to come off, literally and figuratively. I would not want to be involved in trying to figure out how to dig out of this one myself, that's for sure.
Jacques (:So as someone that was only familiar with, I mean, not me, I'm saying like the audience, what if that only knew Ken Block for like the videos, what was the Hoonigan business?
Erik Valdez (:Mm -hmm.
Erik Valdez (:I mean, it initially started as kind of, correct me if I'm wrong here, Nick, but it was kind of like, I guess for lack of a better term, a rich guy's passion project. know, Ken had built an empire with DC Shoes and he was hugely into motorsports and decided he wanted to fund his passion there. And it hit, you know, that first Gymkhana video that they made was such a massive success that
it a light bulb went off or a million light bulbs went off and they saw the potential to grow it into something bigger than just a YouTube video. You know they had at one point five six million subscribers. don't even know if that's accurate might be more than that but their subscribers on YouTube were huge. The viewership was huge. With that comes partnerships with you know with that comes opportunities to acquire other businesses etc. And some of that was done while Ken was still here. It's not you know and it was done with
good intentions and everything and it just, you know, it's hard when you start with something as little as a passion project about doing cool shit in cars and then try to grow it into something beyond that. And they were successful at growing it for quite a long time, but you know, once it gets so big, it's hard to keep all of that together when you've got people like, not yourself, Jacques, but other people out there,
Wondering what exactly it is that they do when you start asking that question. You kind of have a problem, you know
Nick (:And I think the, the, thing about Ken Block and DC shoes, like people don't realize how successful DC shoes was because now it's not as, as big of a brand, but you know, it was arguably one of the biggest footwear brands, you know, late nineties, early two thousands. And to my knowledge, a hundred percent independently owned, you know, it Ken Block and a couple of other people that started it. And you know, you have to.
Erik Valdez (:huge.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Jacques (:Hello.
Nick (:imagine that they made a boatload of money before they eventually sold to, one of these other conglomerates that comes in and acquires these kinds of brands. But, you know, I think, I think, you know, I kind of have this theory that, you know, you can kind of, you can kind of learn everything you need to know about life from, from like hopping on a skateboard and going and meeting people at the skate park or around the city on a skateboard. I think, you know, skateboarding.
drove DC shoes, right? But it led to partnerships, know, like Monster Energy hopped on, you know, early, early on with, with DC shoes, you know, the, car brands came for Jim Kana, but like the number of brands that hopped on to sponsor those videos alone that evolved into much bigger partnerships. It's like during that rise of Jim Kana, Ken Block and Travis Pastrana were also dominating X games, which was a new thing for, for ESPN. So
You got to see all these crazy things that were happening, all elevating the Hoonigan brand. You know, that probably wasn't even thought of as a brand originally. It was probably just them, like most people, like throwing around a term, we're just out Hoonin' again. And like next thing you know, it's like, okay, it's on the cars. Now you see it. Now people are buying the stickers and the shirts and you've got co -branded, you know, merch and all that stuff. And I think...
Jacques (:Yeah.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Jacques (:That's cool.
Nick (:This is just one of those things that you run into. I, the reason why I bring up skateboarding just because it's such a huge part of, of his legacy, but it's also one of those things where skateboarding and I may, may come across a little bit as the, the, antagonist to Eric's comments about not speaking on, on, know, these acquisitions and stuff, but skateboarding is, a very like. Independent.
thing, right? If, if you're a company like DC shoes, now you probably struggle to get your shoes on the best skaters. You probably even struggle to get it, get your shoes into independent skate shops. And unlike the sneaker world that we think of with, you know, Jordans and Nikes and Adidas and all these other brands. Skateboarding is still really independently driven. You know, it's, it's a, it's a very powerful group of.
Erik Valdez (:Mm
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:hundreds of store owners, thousands of store owners, know, hundreds or thousands of skaters that only support their local spots or support skater owned businesses. And, it's really inspiring, you know, for me, cause it's, it, you strive to build something on your own. And I think skateboarding is kind of like the most entrepreneurial sport you can get involved in. And I think that the downside to it is that if you ever want to walk away from something, you know,
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:Ken Block and, and Hoonigan, you know, or, you know, look at that. Wheel pros acquired, the throttle YouTube channel, which is a huge business. You know, it's, it's a, it's an online store and a bunch of guys that make cool YouTube content, build cars, and they acquired. I don't know, 15 to 20 different wheel manufacturers over the past, like five or six years that they really went hard into this whole industry. And, you know, I saw somebody post this a while back and
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Jacques (:you
Nick (:I may have the same feelings or I may not, but like there's a photo that went around of, you know, a higher up, for the company that ended up acquiring all these companies that wheel pros is the company, right? And they're kind of like a B2B business behind the scenes, but then they changed the name to Hoonigan because it's a cooler name. Right. And then this thing kind of went viral within some of the car community forums and discords and stuff where.
Erik Valdez (:Sure.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:There's there's a picture of of Hoonigan. I'm using air quotes for those not watching I forget what the guy's title was but VP of marketing or whatever and he's in a shirt and tie That's not Hoonigan like that is the opposite of what the culture stands for that's that's where I go back to like skateboarding right like me as as Nick Inga my fundamental goal in life is to be able to wear a Giants hat and a hoodie and shorts 24 -7 with a pair of sneakers if
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:The job doesn't allow me to do that. You know, I've worked for companies that didn't allow me to do that. And for some points in your life, you're willing to exchange that freedom for a little bit more money. You know, like you get into, I got into sales with AT &T made crazy money. Like for a 21 year old, like I should have not have had that kind of money. Like I don't know what I did with it all. And that's exactly why I shouldn't have had that kind of money make doing sales, but like fundamentally, like I understand where a lot of these brands come from.
But the end for all of those brands, whether they want it to be or not is selling out. And I don't say that in a bad way because I hope that every skateboarder or entrepreneur or anybody that starts a business of any kind gets to the point where they can say enough is enough. I've made my money and I've had my fun. want to go live a different part portion of my life. And I think that's okay. It's really hard to ever evolve past that moment.
as a brand when you lose the kind of culture that comes with it. I think, you know, these are two very parallel things in my mind, Hoonigan and Nike with John Donahoe, John Donahoe and Nike. And I have nothing against John Donahoe. He obviously did amazing things with eBay before. And we all benefited from it as consumers. Like people don't know, like people that are looking at Nike and pointing the finger at him, it's like, yeah, but like
Erik Valdez (:Mm -hmm.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:Look at all the shoes that we acquired from eBay doing what they did and putting together eBay sneakers and putting together events like they used to do eBay lives and you could go meet people that were selling. mean, they used to do crazy stuff. Not to say that he was responsible for all of that, but like the value is measured in different ways in different places. And I think after us, an acquisition happens, the people internally to Eric's point, the people that are there that have been building this and maybe built a little bit of a following on their own.
You know, they just look at it and go, well, why am I doing this for somebody that's in an office across the country or around the world wearing a shirt and tie and, and live in, live in life luxuriously when I'm still like doing this thing that I love because I love it, you know, and it's, it's still a grind, right? Like Jacques knows, like making videos all the time is, a grind, you know? So like, you could, you can kind of imagine that a lot of these companies that come in and acquire these brands, they don't really, they don't really like.
Show the teams and the people that make it all happen enough love. And we're seeing that with, with on the other side of the car world with the donut media guys, know, like pretty much everybody, but the, the, think, no, Noah is the last of the original. Kind of seven or eight faces that we all know still there. And, know, I don't know any of those guys personally, but I would bet that, you know, he's probably disappointed because like some of his closest friends are no longer working with him, you know, like.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:part of what makes those things exciting is like us doing this podcast, getting to learn from each other and having these conversations gets me excited about it. And I can't envision like five to 10 years down the road where it's like, okay, I don't know, maybe there's more kids involved and like we're looking at like other things in life. And it's like, well, what would we do if we stepped away from it? That's a really like probably one of the toughest decisions anybody.
that find success is ever going to have to deal with in life. So,
Erik Valdez (:So you're saying right now that you're committed to us. Nick, we're not gonna grow this and you're not gonna just like jump ship and be like, you know what, I'm way too cool for Eric and Jacques. I'm gonna go do my own thing. Like, man, I'm touched.
Jacques (:Yeah, yeah.
Jacques (:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've got it.
Nick (:I mean, I'm, I'm already excited, you know, like w we already know we're going to get Jacques out on track at some point. And this is going to, I mean, Jacques and I have known each other for a really long time. Well, we've already, we've already committed to it. We just haven't committed to it, committed to it, you know? and now Jacques and I's friendship is just going to go to the next level, right? Like he's never had to be in a car with me or you and like fear for his life. Right. So now like,
Erik Valdez (:that's breaking news. Yep. We have. Right, right.
Jacques (:Yeah. Yeah.
Jacques (:Yep.
Nick (:He'll really know how good of friends we are.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah, and we're not gonna spill the tea just yet, but there's some facts into that. We got some things in the works, so getting Jacques on the track is gonna happen sooner than later, y 'all. Stay tuned.
Jacques (:Yeah, as you can see, these guys are super excited about it. I'm genuinely excited too. I'm excited to see how it goes. But let's keep the show moving. I got some interesting news that I kind of wanted to see in the sneaker world. I wanted to see if this kind of happens in, well, I know it happens in the car world, but I want to know how big of a deal it is. So Soul Retriever, the folks at Soul Retriever, they're reporting that Trey Young.
Erik Valdez (:Hahaha
Jacques (:is gonna have his last signature shoe. So the Trey Young four. So obviously he's still playing in the league, he's still a player, but they're gonna stop making his signature shoe. I know there are, I guess there are signature cars, there's like signature editions, I guess, of cars. But those don't, do those typically last more than one season?
Erik Valdez (:Not really, no. mean, looking back in history, the collaborations with athletes or people of influence throughout the years in sneakers makes a lot of sense, and it has worked time and time again, and I think it'll continue to work. There have been collaborations, some interesting ones throughout the years in the automotive space. I think of Funkmaster Flex and the Ford Flex.
It wouldn't be a successful collaboration, you know, by a lot of metrics, but that happens. You've had, you you had people like, not a direct collab with Dre himself, but I guess it would have been. He came on and did like the Beats by Dre audio systems with, was that Chrysler products, I think at one point? And so, you know, those collaborations kind of...
Nick (:Yeah, I think so.
Jacques (:Hmm.
Erik Valdez (:come and go rather quickly in the automotive space. I guess Virgil was working with Maybach and a couple of other things when he was around.
Jacques (:yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick (:Yeah, there's I think there's 200 of those that actually are in existence. I think they actually produce those, right? Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
I think they did, yeah. So all that is to say that they happen, but they don't, there's not a Beats by Dre Series 4 audio system or Series 5. The collabs don't seem to last as long as they do in the Snaker space. And I don't really know why that is. I guess it's just because typically Snakers get a redesign or a refresh.
What's the cycle every 18 to 24 months more or less or is it?
Jacques (:Yeah, yeah, that's seemingly, yeah. 12 to 18 months.
Erik Valdez (:And in the automotive space, okay, so it's much more rapid than it is in the automotive space. mean, there's a lot more expense involved in creating automobiles, the tooling, cetera. So you have to, the life cycle of a design on a car is about eight years more or less. They'll have refreshes and facelifts, et cetera, but you don't see a complete redesign for a long time because of the expense involved, you know? So maybe that's part of it.
Nick (:Yeah.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Jacques (:Yeah. See, when I think about car collabs, sorry, I was gonna when I think about car collabs, maybe I'm totally off base here, I think about like the Eddie Bauer blazer.
Nick (:I think,
Erik Valdez (:No, that's huge. That might have been one of the biggest collabs ever, come to think of it.
Nick (:The Gucci Fiat, I just saw one over the weekend. The Nautica. There's surprisingly more than I think we think of off the top of our head. Bucket list for me is a Senna Ducati 916.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah, the Gucci Fiat, yep, that exists. Nautica and Mercury with the villager and that, yeah, back in the day. Yeah. yeah, it's...
Jacques (:wow.
Jacques (:wow, I didn't know about that one, the Nautica Villager.
Erik Valdez (:Mm -hmm.
Nick (:Santa also had a, there's a Santa, NSX. there's also a Jordan Jordan's, like Jordan formula one Jordan Mugen, civic hatchback that was limited to like 15 or 20. but I think, you know, like, I think you actually kind of nailed it with the timing, right? Like sneakers, we can, you know, Trey young can, can they can knock out, you know,
four signature shoes in five years. And, you know, that's a solid run for any signature athlete at this point, but with cars, there is so much more of a lift, you know, and, and they don't change the body styles enough to really, you know, warrant like going into the new style. Like if, if you have a, you know, if there's a cars and kicks, you know, nine 11, it's only going to last as long as the body style lasts.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:9 -eleven is a bad example, I guess, but like, you know what I mean? Like the, the, the, the cars usually change every four or five years is what I'm trying to get at where like, you might have a couple of years of a collaborative, you know, effort there on the, on the successful end. do have an Eddie Bauer edition Explorer where it's like, you know, they made the same, they made explorers for like, I don't know, 600 years or something, right? Like it was the exact same vehicle forever. So
Erik Valdez (:Right.
Jacques (:Hahaha
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Jacques (:That's what it felt like. That's what it felt like for sure.
Erik Valdez (:You know what though, that's an interesting conversation because I think one of the examples, think CINO was involved in the development of the NSX, but I think the one you were talking about was the Zanardi edition NSX, which they made Alex Zanardi collaborated with Acura and they did 10 total, 10 of these Zanardi edition NSXs, I believe it was. And that next point,
Nick (:yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right.
Erik Valdez (:The car didn't necessarily change too much aesthetically. It had a different set of wheels that looked different. Maybe the roof was all black. I don't remember the aesthetic changes, but there's a little more horsepower, a little lighter weight, things like that. going back to kind of an interesting point is that you're not going to sell hundreds of thousands of those like you will a Trey Young sneaker or a LeBron James sneaker or a Kobe sneaker or anything like that.
Going back to talking about like Eddie Bauer, that right there in and of itself is a very, I'd love to go down a rabbit hole of that because when you think about the two biggest collabs that are popping into my head now are Eddie Bauer and Ford and King Ranch and Ford. So like King Ranch is, it may still be, is one of the largest like cattle ranches in Texas, right? Somehow, somewhere along the way somebody said, you know what?
We need to collaborate with them and build a really nice, luxurious pickup truck. And I'll be damned, I'll be damned if it hasn't gone gangbusters. Like Ford still does King Ranch versions of trucks. And it's just for whatever reason that has continued. And the Eddie Bauer collaboration went beyond the Explorers. They had the Expeditions and it just, it set a standard in that era of luxury. So I think
Jacques (:Luxurious.
Erik Valdez (:I think those types of collabs can work. If it's an individual, maybe not as much, but if it's a brand, mean, Eddie Bauer is a name, but it was a brand. If it's a brand that collabs with a car company and it symbolizes something or it creates a status symbol or something like that, then I think it can be super successful. That Eddie Bauer story, I'm gonna go down a rabbit hole later today because that was hugely successful. And back when we were growing up, if you had an Eddie Bauer,
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:anything, explore, expedition, you were ballin'. Like that was like, okay, yeah.
Jacques (:Yeah, yeah, you're a big time. We should do a do a history, a history of Eddie Bauer. And I just realized I said Eddie Bauer blazer instead of Eddie Bauer explorer. you guys
Nick (:Yeah.
Nick (:You know?
Erik Valdez (:We should.
Nick (:Yeah.
Nick (:So
Erik Valdez (:He was just, you're just doing that to see if people are gonna call you on it or not. I know you know what you're talking about.
Jacques (:Audient, audience come in for me.
Nick (:Yeah, you're just you're just making sure yeah So I that actually brings up another thing that I think is is related to this that I don't really know the numbers on this but You know Ronnie Fiegg with kith did a BMW a few years back future did a BMW a few years back I think that those were production vehicles. I think they did a small number, you know, like I can't imagine anybody doing more than you know 50 tops at this point
Jacques (:yeah, yeah, yeah.
Erik Valdez (:Mm
Nick (:But that does seem to be kind of like an anomaly in a sense that they gave those guys the opportunity to do a lot more than what we would see from, know, Eddie Bauer was kind of the first, I think that was like, okay, you know, stitched logos in the seats kind of thing. you know, to Eric's point, Zenardi, Alex Zenardi NSX was, you know, literally like,
Stickers decals and wheels and I think there was a different shift knob in it or something right like it's very minimal but Doing a show like this and knowing how nerdy we can get about things Those are the things that make so much sense to do in the moment because years down the road. It's a talking point Porches we talk about all the time They are like the that community is like the king of nerds I want to be a part of it one day but like they know
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:Details that most car fanatics don't know about their own, you know kind of passion and I'm that I know that kind of stuff about about Hondas but it's It's that kind of stuff also in sneakers, you know, like it's it's being able to look at an air max and say Well, the bubbles used to be better and bigger During these years or the shape of the tow box was better for the air max one during this era The shape of the Air Force one was off during this era. Like those are all the things that I think
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Nick (:whether you come to this show from the car side or the kick side. It's so similar. The more we talk about this stuff, the more I'm just like, man, like, it's just a different vehicle, like, but it's all the same stuff.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah, it really is, man. Details matter. That's always super true. Yeah, one other quick thing I wanted to bring up, kind of a higher, cooler bit of news since we've been talking about kind of sad, depressing news in the automotive and sticker space. So we just had our buddy Peter Cheney on the show a couple episodes ago. And he's, for those of y 'all that haven't listened, you should go back and listen to it. Huge car guy.
Jacques (:Yeah, all the details matter.
Jacques (:Hahaha
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:sneaker guy has worked with Hyundai and Genesis in a variety of capacities. He heads up their creative and social media, et cetera. Now, he was able to tell us a few things that we weren't able to necessarily announce at the time. But one of those tidbits of information has come out this week. And that is that Genesis, the luxury brand of Hyundai, has committed to join WEC, Wack the World Endurance Challenge, and go racing at the 24 hours of Le Mans, which is awesome.
Nick (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:I think. Interesting, but kind of makes sense that they went with Genesis versus Hyundai to enter that space. But considering kind of, I guess, the status that comes with racing at Le Mans and World Endurance Challenge, you you're up against Ferrari and Porsche and Toyota is an anomaly because Toyota is just a massive company, but it is higher in brand. So to see Hyundai make a commitment like that, we've been...
singing Hyundai's praises a handful of times on this show and for good reason and to see them now step up and commit to actually going racing at a very high level is extremely exciting to me.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Jacques (:Yeah, no, that's super cool. I think I'm gonna actually tune in this time.
Nick (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:You're gonna have to. go, I will have Nick work his magic on at some point and throw up the rendering that I believe Car and Driver put up of this Genesis hypercar concept. It's insane. It's stuff, it's the stuff that you draw as a kid. It gets me super excited. And also, it's just, to see another
Nick (:Yeah.
Nick (:Yeah, it's cool. Yep.
Jacques (:Hahaha
Erik Valdez (:entry come into the motorsports space is really exciting. This day and age is interesting for motorsport as a whole. It's viewership is down almost across the board. know, people don't quite have the same attachment to racing as they did perhaps back in the day. Maybe because cars have gotten the departure from road car to race car is so much larger than it used to be. That could be part of it, but
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:I don't think it's dead by any means. When you start hearing about these types of announcements and like Audi getting back into Formula One and the murmurings of Cadillac getting into Formula One, which may or may not ever happen, but all of these different things where people are committing, companies are committing to going racing, I think it's exciting. And I think a big part of that is, kind like in the sneaker world, you don't sell LeBron's and Kobe's back in the day and still,
if you don't attach that to a successful athlete. And the motorsport world is kind of like the athletic world in the car space. Yes, you can align yourself with certain drivers, et cetera, but if you're selling a sneaker, it's gotta perform on the foot of an athlete. If you're trying to sell a car and it doesn't perform well on track, there's going to be a stigma attached to that. seeing...
these kind of this investment into with these companies jumping into these high level motorsport programs and with the goal of being successful, not just to win trophies, et cetera, but because it does still translate to sells on, you know, the whole old adage was race on Sunday sell on Monday. And it still translates. It's still, I still believe in that. Yeah.
Jacques (:I love that. I love that.
Nick (:So that that kind of like as we're looking at wrapping up here that that kind of leads me to ask like is this same? Does the same theory apply to to sneakers, right? Like this is what we're saying This is what I'm saying that that Nike needs to get back to And I think that you know that that race on Sunday sell on Monday thing like goes all the way back to like the Hudson Hornet, right? I'm pretty sure that was the first company you guys Listeners can correct me if I'm wrong, but like, you know, you've watched cars, you know, you know
Erik Valdez (:Yeah, I remember the Hudson Hornet.
Nick (:Doc Hudson, right? Like that's the car that started that whole saying. And, you know, every brand on the planet, you know, Mazda used to be the lead sponsor, title sponsor of Laguna Seca. And they had that in the walkways at the track for years. And it, to me, it, really is like a powerful mantra for, for car brands. But I think one Hyundai doesn't have the nostalgia to lean on the way that someone like Honda or Toyota.
Erik Valdez (:Yup.
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:right.
Nick (:does. So they're at a disadvantage in that sense. But I think the other way to become like, you know, to get over that, you know, disadvantage is to go out and win on the track. And I wonder if that's the same for for sneakers, you know, we're kind of at this point where there isn't a clear winner on court or on the track for sneakers. And I would say that it's it's more open for opportunity than it ever has been in my career in my lifetime.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:which is really exciting if you think about it. It's like, who's gonna take the lead? We're all looking and watching.
Jacques (:Yeah.
Erik Valdez (:100%.
Jacques (:Yeah, I mean, we just got we just had the Olympics and I feel like every for all the past Olympics, there was something that came out of Nike that had us talking. And we don't have that this time around, which is maybe which may be telling of the state of the industry. But let us know. Let us know. Those are in the comments. Let us know.
Nick (:Yeah.
Jacques (:What do you think is going on in the sneaker industry? What do you think about the Bloomberg article? What do you think about Hoonigan and them going, are filing for bankruptcy and how can they fix things? Let us know. And if we miss the collab, that's what I really want to see. I want to see the notes on the collabs. If there's collabs in the car space that we missed outside of the Eddie Bauer, we'd love to hear.
Nick (:Ha ha ha!
Erik Valdez (:Yeah.
Jacques (:what you guys have. As always, thanks for watching the Cars and Kicks podcast. I am Jacques Sage. You can find us all over the place. You can find me at Cousteau, but more importantly, the show. Thank you guys for subscribing on all of the places. You can watch us on your TVs. You can watch us on your phones. If you have an iPod, still, you can listen there. I'm just giving you options.
Erik Valdez (:We're gonna start releasing episodes on vinyl and cassette soon. know, fully analog. No, but yeah, I'm gonna steal a page out of Nick's book here and just kind of, not just remind you guys to like and subscribe and all that, but say thank you for those of you that have been rating us and subscribing to all of our channels and leaving comments and
Jacques (:I'm fine.
That is funny.
Erik Valdez (:We see you. Some of y 'all that have been listening since day one, it doesn't go unrecognized. We really appreciate that and we appreciate you sharing that with all your friends. We're growing. It's exciting and we're only going up from here. So I just want to take a little moment to thank you guys for that.
Nick (:Yeah, absolutely. Second, second that for sure. and, and definitely, you know, looking forward to connecting with more of you, I think has been the most beautiful thing about this is we we've just gotten so many people that either came from, from one part or casually or in both parts that are coming out and saying, like, I love that you guys combine these two things. And honestly, like, we just love that you guys all listen and watch because it justifies us doing it. You know, it's like, validates us in a lot of ways that we
Jacques (:Yeah.
Nick (:We're hoping that we were right on, but, we got some really cool stuff planned too. So we're excited to keep the show going and we appreciate y 'all.
Erik Valdez (:Absolutely. Thank you all for tuning in. See you next time.
Nick (:Peace.
Jacques (:Hey!
