Vegas Circle

Urban Visionaries: The FEATURE Story with EJ Luera & Arjay Bouri

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Embark on an inspirational tale of ambition and fashion with EJ Luera and Arjay Bouri, the masterminds behind the streetwear phenomenon, Feature. Our candid conversation uncovers the roots of their 20-year friendship and how they've navigated the treacherous waters of the fashion industry from the recession to their rise as style moguls. From sneaker boutique beginnings to luxury brand expansions, EJ and AJ unpack the strategic moves and resilience that have shaped their journey, offering a raw look into the highs and lows that come with building a brand from scratch.

As the narrative unfolds, we traverse through the complexities of retail evolution, and the duo sheds light on their savvy business maneuvers – be it braving an eight-year wait to secure top-tier accounts like Nike, or planting their flagship store in the eclectic heart of Chinatown. They generously share their wisdom on sustaining a boutique's core identity while scaling up and venturing into the luxury retail scene. Our guests don't shy away from discussing the tough battles against bots in sneaker releases, the artistry of apparel design, and the intricate balance of personal branding in retail.

Wrapping up, EJ and AJ turn the spotlight onto the vibrant city that's been their launchpad: Las Vegas. They pay homage to the local culinary delights, hint at exciting sports collaborations, and discuss the significance of community roots for a global brand like Feature. This episode is more than a peek into the fashion industry; it's an ode to the spirit of Las Vegas, the power of enduring partnerships, and the dream of leaving a global footprint that all started with two friends and a passion for streetwear. Join us for a story not just about shoes and style, but about friendship, community, and the drive to make a mark on the world.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Vegas Circle Podcast with your hosts, Paki and Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success and culture and this is our platform to showcase the people in our city who make it happen. On today's podcast, we've got a special episode. We're going to be sitting down with two visionaries who have reshaped the landscape of streetwear and luxury fashion. Welcome and guests to the circle. We have the owners of Feature Sneaker Boutique. We've got EJ Luera and AJ Borey, so welcome to the circle. Let's dive right in. Man. So Feature you guys nearly been on the scene for about 14 years, from my understanding, Opened up in Chinatown. For about 14 years, from my understanding, Opened up in Chinatown. Now you've jumped into the Wynn Hotel. But let's just talk about kind of what you were asking us earlier how did you guys connect and become partners?

Speaker 2:

First off, you know you call it a feature sneaker boutique. Okay Did.

Speaker 1:

I say it wrong.

Speaker 2:

No, no, I'm just going to let you. It's just feature right, just feature okay. And we learned really quick that that wasn't going to be enough to really drive this business and so we just became a fully functioning apparel, footwear accessories brand. So it's not featured. Sneaker boutique.

Speaker 1:

There we go. I got to correct that.

Speaker 2:

But people always say that, okay, aj and I have been friends for over 20 years. We met in college. I was on the dj scene, nightlife scene okay, um, he was a nightlife kid, and then uh, you know bartending and stuff like that, and so we crossed paths a lot in in college.

Speaker 2:

Uh, we, we got the opportunity to work together in nightlife, really solidified our friendship. Then, you know, events, you know, just took us in different places. I was still living in Reno, that's where we went to college and AJ made his way down to Vegas and you know kind of and he'll probably elaborate a little bit more on this but kind of dabbled in fashion up there. You know, was interested in retail and so, uh, with that kind of knowledge base that he had already started accumulate up there, brought it down here, saw that there was this void down here that at that time right, you're talking about like 2010, yeah, uh, where there's like and you can correct me if I'm wrong right, like a high end here and like really basic streetwear here and not much you know in between, no meat in between, Right right.

Speaker 2:

And so, you know, he came back up to Reno, was traveling, commuting back and forth, you know, coming to help me up there, and he said, man, there's a big opportunity down there, that's powerful yeah so we put our heads together and a little bit of money, and uh, and we did it in 2010, man, which was, you know, if you don't remember, that was a recession. Oh, yeah and uh, but we put our chips on the table. Man rolled the dice, that's powerful.

Speaker 1:

So were you kind of the visionary, was this kind of your your brainchild, you know, in the beginning, or yeah, I would say, features probably my little baby.

Speaker 4:

Okay, grown yeah.

Speaker 3:

Is it always been something you wanted to do? You've always been interested in like doing fashion. Same for you. Is it something?

Speaker 2:

you just kicked out how you did the fashion and Reno how you brought it down here. Cause it's a great story.

Speaker 4:

No when, I was a kid, I entrepreneurial spirit, you know from jolly ranchers, I went to other things that probably weren't so good to be. Yeah, essentially when I was in reno I was working at nightlife and there was a women's boutique. And this is way back in the day when kind of what we do now doesn't exist. So this is back when true religion and rock and republic and ed hardy and kind of the breakout into $200 men's jeans was happening, you know, kind of following in the footsteps of female fashion. And you know I had a friend that was working at a boutique in Reno and they had a back room that they were using for sale items and we were just talking and I ended up subleasing kind of the back space and doing men's apparel. They kind of operated it. I did the buying and kind of brand acquisition. When that store ended up closing down, you know, I basically kept all my wholesale accounts. I got a UPS box which, if you guys know, it kind of looks like a business address. Yeah, just told a lot of these vendors that I kind of, you know, moved to a new location and was basically buying product at wholesale and just took it to like a personal shopping level. So you know, basically what I was doing is, you know, putting together bags of of gear. You know dope clothes and someone's size. I would give it to them. They take it home, try on what they wanted, and my shtick was I got to give them 20 off retail right for, you know, the newest deliveries of product. Yeah, because I had no overhead right and so I was doing that.

Speaker 4:

Moved to vegas, I was working at nightlife. You know, at the time at some point a lot of people not everyone kind of hit a plateau with nightlife right. Either you really want to, you know, spend five nights a week drinking and partying, or, you know, you kind of grow up a bit and, you know, still do that occasionally, but you for the most part, you get kind of burnt out yeah you know late nights, you know early mornings at the office, which was definitely a shock for me, you know, when we worked in our life in Reno it was a little bit more relaxed.

Speaker 4:

Here. It's, you know, a multi-billion dollar industry, you know, and it operates as one. You're in the office, your outings you're four nights a week. I mean it's a lot of work, um, and so I kind of continued doing some of the personal shopping stuff down here and then really just got kind of burnt out and at the time it was really just undefeated.

Speaker 4:

Um was the only store in town and you know we love shoes. We would come to vegas and actually go to undefeated, so we would go stay at the hard rock and go go to rehab and do that whole thing back in the early 2000s. And you know, one of the places we would always stop was and if you didn't buy cool sneakers. And so you know, in my head I was like, oh, this is going to be easy. You know, in fashion generally, the way you used to work in contemporary is if you're, you know, two miles away from the next closest account, they just green light you as long as your store looks decent. So you know had the idea was going up to reno, kind of pitched him and a couple other buddies and you know we scrounged up some cash and kind of.

Speaker 4:

You know went down the path of ikea shelves on the wall and mirrors stuck to the wall and in our heads it was this awesome you know store, but in hindsight, compared to what we do now, it was definitely, you know, nowhere close to what I would call.

Speaker 2:

It was definitely nowhere close to what I would call an entry level.

Speaker 4:

And then obviously, two crazy things happened. One, we came to the realization that getting a Nike or a Vans or a New Balance account, they generally make you wait a couple years because of the fast turn in that industry, and so a lot of the the reps don't want to get accounts open, understanding that 95 of them shut down, and so they really try to wait till after that lull of understanding that you can actually survive, before they'll even consider opening you. So that was one challenge that we came across was just the assumption that, oh, you know, I'm gonna get a nike account, no problem. You know, it took us eight years to get a Nike account. That's wild. I didn't know that.

Speaker 3:

You said eight years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we operated without Nike or Jordan for the first eight years.

Speaker 4:

Wow. Then the second big thing was, at the time, it was just us and Undefeated. Then, lo and behold, a month before we opened, we heard Vice was opening a store at the Cosmo. He was opening with Nike because he had relationships with them. You know, and as early entrepreneurs, in our head, in my head, I was like fuck, we're dead in the water. You know, like this is it. This is going to be rough. And you know, we stuck it out and kind of grinded it out to where we are today. Now, what made you?

Speaker 4:

choose Chinatown for the location Cheap Cheap and proximity right, Because you're still close to the Strip.

Speaker 1:

I get it.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I think the intent was like okay, well, obviously we couldn't open in a casino, how do we capture some of the tourists that are coming into town? Which makes Vegas Vegas? And you can't do that in Summerlin and you can't do that necessarily in Henderson. No one's going to hop in a cab and take a 25-minute drive to go to this unknown sneaker shop. So the idea was to, you know, be central, right, chinatown's pretty central, so I think anywhere in Vegas you can kind of get there within 20 minutes. And then the second thing was being close to the Strip. And then the third thing was it was literally dirt cheap. I don't believe you. And the fourth thing was at the time there was a store called New, which was, you know, vegas' only kind of streetwear store. It was owned by a couple of DJs, cricket and Neva, and they were our neighbors for about the first three months, and then they moved up the street Did Neva just pass.

Speaker 1:

He did yeah Right. Yeah yeah, charlotte's in Neva, yeah Okay.

Speaker 4:

And so we thought that we'd be able to draft off of what they'd kind of already built in Chinatown. They were going to do the apparel and our intent was to do sneakers and, you know, maybe some accessories or a little bit of apparel that would just accessorize your sneakers. And then, literally probably three or four months after we opened, like, oh yeah, we're moving up the street, we need more space.

Speaker 3:

Well, that plan didn't work what makes something like a boutique, so you have these big, large apparel stores. Like what is the threshold between? What's the difference between the two, if I'm just a standard retail store and a boutique store?

Speaker 4:

I think it's curation right and so I think that what's happened now in the retail landscape is Neiman's, saks, nordstrom's, barney's, when it was around. They're actually chasing the brands that they wouldn't have touched 10 years ago because they weren't big enough or they didn't make sense for them.

Speaker 4:

And now, if you think about what's kind of happened in fashion, there's internet brands that go crazy. They're selling $300 t-shirts but they have X, y and Z person wearing it and all of a sudden they explode and it's created this new category. If you think about it, back in the day we saw some luxury brands gbanshi, amiri you know, back in the day you couldn't get a gbanshi account. There's three, four boutiques in the country that sold that, those caliber brands, right. But I think now you know you walk around and you see people in in nikes with prada, right, and back in the day that pure luxury customer was a pure luxury customer and the guy that was buying streetwear was buying streetwear and the guy that was buying contemporary was buying contemporary. Now it's all just kind of intertwined. You know, like I wear some luxury goods but I also wear plain feature t-shirts and you know I wear cool sneakers.

Speaker 3:

You know back in the day you didn't see people kind of mixing those things how do you kind of keep that like, um, you know that boutique feel as you continue to grow and get larger and as you start building online presence, you start, you know, seeing this explosion of you know fashion and people wearing different things like how do you still have that curation or is it less like that, more I can provide a lot of quantity for the larger portion of people that want to that appeal to. So to me it's a combination of two things right one portion of people that want to, that appeal to.

Speaker 4:

So to me, it's a combination of two things right. One, you have to be passionate about what you do, and you know myself ej like there's people in addition to that we have.

Speaker 4:

You know, we call them kids, right, but they're not kids, they're our kids, they're our kids, but you know we have people on our team that are obviously and look, I'm older, you know they may have a better pulse on some of the more up and coming stuff and we listen. I respect that. Yeah, because you got to know, you got to be able to know.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, that's just the reality as you get older, like I, like what I like. And then the second thing is you know I'm traveling the world, I'm going to Paris and Tokyo, to different markets, and you know seeing what other stores are doing and acquiring brands that way, and the Internet's a powerful thing, so you stay on top of that. So I think that's, that's the curation piece. As far as what keeps a boutique a boutique, I think, is, you know, part of it boils down to infrastructure. Right, some of the things that we did really early on because we had to is we had to build a strong backbone because we didn't have nike and jordan dollars coming in, which, for all intents and purposes, is everyone's biggest account. If you think about the sneaker industry, nike and jordan drive it body sometimes is definitely in the top three. There might be some shifts here and there, but nike and jordan are pretty much the goats, right.

Speaker 4:

And so, because we didn't have those brands, we had to, you know, fight tooth and nail to make the other brands that we had worked work. And then also, you know, we had to build a lot of infrastructure in order to make sure that we were sound to push forward. And where I'm going with. That is as we open multiple doors. One of the first things we did is create a district manager position, probably two stores before we actually needed it. And we did that because, you know, for me, when you walk into a store, you know I like to call it home base, which is Vegas for us. Well, we can control that, like we're there all the time, our team's there, our headquarters there, you can keep the pulse and really know what's going on.

Speaker 1:

But what?

Speaker 4:

happens is, if you start opening stores out of state, how do you keep that experience the same? So I want somebody that walks in feature in Chinatown to feel the same way at the Wynn, the same way at Scottsdale, the same way in Calabasas and soon the same way in La Jolla. And one of the ways you do that is by creating some infrastructure of people that are actually traveling to those stores, making sure that the smell is the same in the stores, the checkout process is the same, all those things are consistent, and then building SOPs around those things to make sure that we're ensuring that that happens. And then, secondary to that is we do quarterly audits. Our district manager does. He goes in to make sure that they're meeting all those expectations. Our GMs.

Speaker 1:

Got. It Makes sense. So you said you actually did that about two stores in advance. So did that start at the Chinatown store Once we had the Wynn store?

Speaker 4:

we created that position. We wanted somebody that would kind of oversee both of those stores, and then a super talented guy named Kevin. He's been with us since he was actually an intern, you know, he actually worked for Free.

Speaker 2:

He was the longest intern we ever had. Actually, poor Kevin, but when you talk about passion.

Speaker 4:

The guy is so passionate about this industry and fashion and sneakers that you know I mean obviously great intern that turned into a pretty high position in our company and continues to grow. So we did that at store two and now obviously we're at store four, about to open store five. He kind of oversees that piece.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's interesting, like you touched a little bit about, like online shopping, right, like everybody and their mom's trying to sell online or, you know, do that whole process. What would make you choose, like a win right, to open up a second you know store, specifically with the real estate being as high? I don't even know what you guys pay for real estate.

Speaker 1:

It's exactly what you think it is. I've heard some stories. I don't know what number it is, but what would make you choose a win to open up this high end of the area?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So I think a couple reasons when we wanted to go from a directional standpoint was really pushing the envelope and getting that luxury where world getting into the emerging designer world and the challenges that we were running into is, if you know you google map or shit in chinatown you're like I'm not gonna sell these guys 700 t-shirts this may not make sense, and so we're hitting some roadblocks.

Speaker 4:

You know when we were trying to really push forward and it wasn't necessarily. You know everything else was done right, the website was good, instagram in-house photography, like everything was done well.

Speaker 1:

But we had this hurdle.

Speaker 4:

You know, sometimes it takes one or two brands to really break that, and so when the win opportunity came up, I think there was really kind of two things. You know one when your neighbor's a 6,000 square foot Hermes, people tend to all of a sudden listen and be like, okay, you know these VPs and these higher ups at these higher end brands. They're probably staying at the Wynn, maybe Bellagio, but everyone knows the Wynn is synonymous with pure luxury right, if you look at the retail footprint.

Speaker 4:

They have every pure luxury brand there is, and if they don't have it, they're getting it right. That's in process, and so that was kind of one piece of it. And then the second piece was I think there's just a level of marketing and branding that came out of being at the win and so the intent for us was to never. Actually we were okay if that store never turned a profit.

Speaker 2:

Now wanted it to break even at minimum, we weren't in the world of like, hey, we got deep pockets and we're gonna do this for marketing.

Speaker 4:

but intent was like can we break even in this store and then reap the tertiary benefits of, you know, brand adjacency, the marketing, the branding, you know the coexistence with such a great brand being the win that? Makes sense that was kind of the intent.

Speaker 1:

I see it because, like when you corrected me in the beginning, right saying this boutique feature is a brand and it's a well-known brand and I could see that business play of opening it at the Wynn helps you to piggyback on a big market like Calabasas and obviously Scottsdale. These are all premium markets. But is that kind of the goal to open up, like you mentioned, la Jolla?

Speaker 2:

Are you trying to open in all the biggest kind of high-end markets? Is that kind of the well so? So one of the things that the win did for us right, is it put us on this like global stage. Are you getting international players in there? You're getting wealth through there, and once we proved successful there actually I don't even think we had to prove successful, it was just the noise that we made there.

Speaker 2:

You know, they have, they have that real estate convention in town, scsc, yeah, and man, we had everybody was knocking on our door because they want this concept right. The concept that AJ has built, you know, is it's in demand everywhere, and so that's when we really first noticed like, okay, we're doing something right. Number one. But number two, this win partnership really did put us on that stage. I think and you can correct me if I'm wrong or just elaborate on this but finding these little pockets of people who are looking for what we're providing, but not saturated, or sometimes not even any distribution in those places, like a calabasas, like a la jolla, right, I mean new york, la miami, like that's obvious, yeah right, go to soho, whatever it is.

Speaker 4:

If I get, I follow you yeah, I think the other way to look at it too is you know, one thing that I think that we're pretty adamant about is we want every feature to be at least 95 percent of feature right.

Speaker 4:

And when I say 95, what happens is you always run into brand conflict. And so you know, there's some japanese brands that have been working with the same two la accounts for 25 years and they've just shut down all of california. It's just, they work with those two guys, they're happy, very relationship driven, and so when I say 95, we always understand that we're not going to get every brand that we sell at every location, but we do want it to be 95. You know similar and what that means and where I'm going with that is when you sell emerging designer like tom brown and sakai, and then you sell some luxury like givanchi and am. The challenge you run into is not every market can support those price points or has a customer that's looking for that product Gotcha and so if you think about Calabasas, I mean it's Calabasas right, new Beverly Hills.

Speaker 4:

I swear it's synonymous with wealth right Kardashian country, whatever you want to call it, it's synonymous with wealth right Kardashian country, whatever you want to call it. When you think about, you know, scottsdale extremely affluent market, 8 million people. In the Phoenix metro area there's you know, a couple other sneaker shops, there's one apparel account, but there's no one that kind of has it all under one roof like us.

Speaker 4:

And if you think about La Jolla, it's one of the most, it is the most affluent market in San Diego County. Again, you have a lot of people that live in La Jolla that drive into LA, and right now a lot of them drive into LA to shop. And so really our expectation isn't that people don't go to Melrose and they don't go to La Brea, but our expectation is is like, not everyone wants to drive an hour every time they want to shop. So if you've got a cool store in your backyard in calabasas, you're going to pop in. You know you might shop there three out of five times and you know, during christmas make the big trip to rodeo and and do your thing. But the hope is, and the intent is, that we're kind of at a choke point where people can still come in and do most of their shopping with us and we can service them and then also still, you know, go do their big shopping as needed, and so that's where where the market selection comes in Kind of backtrack a little bit.

Speaker 3:

So building that partnership with the Wynn, like how does that come to fruition?

Speaker 2:

Because you know it's one thing to you know, want to go there, but also for them to want you. It's not easy. It's the craziest story.

Speaker 4:

Actually, you know, we had a lot of friends that were pretty high up in Wynn nightlife and when we expanding the retail and doing the wind plaza shops.

Speaker 4:

We reached out to a bunch of those guys and you know, at the one, I think, if you're at an executive level, everyone's tapped in with what's happening. It's a very cohesive team and they're all working towards one goal, which is providing the best luxury experience in the city, and that works with nightlife and restaurants and gaming and every aspect. And so we kept asking our friends and like're like look, you know, as Vegas generally does, they only want big outside brands right, I think it's some of our friends.

Speaker 1:

It's Natalia and Jay Sean and these guys, yeah, yeah, totally. Ron Nicoli and Jerry Garcia, you know.

Speaker 4:

And so you know what happens is. You know the conversations we were having was like they only want guys from outside, so they're going to go for the best New York sneaker concept or Boston. There's 10 or 12 guys in our space that are really kind of bigger at this point and so we kind of had written it off and at the time Scottsdale has a pretty big mall and they were remodeling and doing a luxury wing and so they invited us out, flew us out to wine us and dine us with a couple other people that they were trying to get to sign, sign leases. So we go on this trip and you know we're having some drinks and we meet a gentleman named charlie who at the time was the head of retail for a company called richmont and richmont owns I think they're cartier, you know it's, it's one of the luxury houses, gary, whatever right, and so we're just kind of bullshitting with this guy, charlie.

Speaker 4:

We kind of clicked and you know there's a bunch of other people in the group, but the three of us started talking, yeah, and you know he was just asked. He's like well, why don't you guys go to the casino? I'm like dude, we've been pounding, you know, pounding the pavement, trying to figure out this win situation and he's like, oh, my old boss and mentor is running up that whole project. He's doing all the leasing.

Speaker 1:

He's like, let me put you in.

Speaker 4:

He's like let me put you in contact with him.

Speaker 4:

And you know, you hear that stuff all the time and you know, a lot of times it doesn't happen so we get back follow up and he's like, literally puts me on text with um, the same guy who actually is our broker and, as him and charlie actually started a business together and they still do actually all of our deals um, since the win they've done every deal that we've done.

Speaker 4:

So he puts us in contact with him and he's like I'll be there there in three days. I'm out there every weekend right now, basically meeting with retailers or whatever. So I pick him up at the Wynn, take him to Chinatown, you know, I give him the tour and he's like honestly, this is exactly what. This is the concept that they're looking for. This is a concept that they want, but the general intent has been to bring outside brands in that'll drive traffic and energy. But he's like, as far as I'm concerned, you know, he's like I'm actually pissed because this was right under my nose and we never really like knew it was there right which goes to show you in business that you know.

Speaker 4:

You can think you're the you know coolest guy in town or you think that you have brand presence in town people and yeah, you you sometimes do that.

Speaker 4:

I don't think we talk about the time. I think we're at the tip of the iceberg. Even locally, there's still people that come in like I never even heard of this place. This is amazing. So anyway, so we met with him and he took it to the higher ups and, you know, a couple months later they were like you know, basically we got the approval and then the next step was really figuring out how we were going to get the $1.3 million to build that it's all union and I remember having that conversation with EJ and our other partners and I was like look Prepared to go build a Kia.

Speaker 1:

What did you say? A Kia? I was like look, they're like well, we get the money.

Speaker 4:

I was like we're going to figure it out. This is just the opportunity of opportunities.

Speaker 3:

We'll pay everyone back, or whatever.

Speaker 4:

And so that's kind of, you know, it's kind of the story. It was just, you know, kind of dumb luck that we got.

Speaker 3:

That's a lot. That's an interesting story. What's the odds of that?

Speaker 1:

How long have you guys been in that partnership at Wynn? When did you guys open it? 2018. 2018. Yeah, Wow, kits. And then it's who we?

Speaker 4:

so you guys, the pandemic the pandemic hit actually three months after we opened our store. So, we literally opened a store in November and then, I think, in March everything shut down. And I don't know if you guys recall I mean, Vegas was pining to get open and got open as soon as they can. California was the polar opposite, just without lockdowns, in LA County and you know. So we reopened for a month and shut down for four months, and reopened for two months, then shut down again.

Speaker 4:

I mean, it was a pretty wild ride and you're trying to keep staff and you know it's pretty brutal.

Speaker 3:

But with that shift though during the pandemic, you know, a lot more things happen online. You know, obviously, I think, with you being a retail store which is easily translatable online in a lot of circumstances, do you see a higher percentage of your sales being in-store versus online, or is it still?

Speaker 4:

pushing one or the other, but it's really by design, and so we launched online in 2014.

Speaker 2:

2014. Okay, so you guys are a little later, yeah, which is a little bit late. Well, so we opened in 2010. I think we knew that we were going to be online at some point, right? But I think we knew that we were going to be online at some point, right, but in 2014 is when we got serious about it, okay, and we really had like the inventory and distribution.

Speaker 4:

Well, because you got to I mean, if you think about online, you go to these smaller boutiques and they're, you know, using images from every different brand and it just doesn't look good.

Speaker 4:

And so for us, it was like you got to hire a photographer. You got to figure out how to shoot on white backdrop, you got to figure out all these different things. A it takes money and it takes time, and you know, I think 2014 is when we finally did it. Okay, and then you know, subsequently to that, you know we decided internally that at the end of the day, brick and mortar is very important to us, but let's just call it what it is. We all shop online more than brick and mortar, especially if you get comfortable with the brand, if you know your size 9 Nike, you know it's consistent. Who really wants to drive to a store or deal with that, especially if you're busy and you have jobs and families? And so we made the decision to really push online a couple years later, and so we've built a pretty significant in-house digital marketing team. There's about 10 or 12 people that just focus on digital for us, everything from SEO to paid ads, we do everything in-house, so we don't outsource anything other than some web development.

Speaker 4:

And so when the pandemic hit, we were actually built a lot differently than a lot of the boutiques. They didn't have an online presence or they had online stores. But really, if you think about online versus brick and mortar, online is a business and it's its own business and you have to treat it like a business. So a lot of my friends in this industry are hyper focused on brick and mortar and online's here and they make some money and they sell some product, but they don't treat it as a separate BDU, where they're like I got to staff it, I got to hire somebody that does content and somebody that's going to be in charge of my email campaigns, and so we did that pretty early on and during the pandemic. It really paid off because we had a strong digital presence by that point and then, on top of that, we had a digital team that was still working actively during those times. So I think everyone exploded from an online perspective during the pandemic.

Speaker 3:

But I think that we saw probably significantly more than what most boutiques in our space did. I was going to ask do you treat it independently when it comes to inventory management or do you get the inventory from your boutique stores and then post that online?

Speaker 4:

We don't, so we're omnichannel. So essentially, we do a buy and that gets divvied. We don't. We're omnichannel. Essentially, we do a buy and that gets divvied out to the stores. We have a pretty big warehouse here. That's obviously where orders get picked first Then from there there's a pecking order for the stores. There's definitely some boutiques and businesses that treat everything differently and make sure that inventory. I've always been a firm believer that sales is sales.

Speaker 2:

You got to sell it. Share inventory across everything.

Speaker 4:

It's always made the most sense for us.

Speaker 1:

I was curious about these bots with the shoe releases and all that People buying everything and you can't get the inventory. How do you guys compete with that, even though that you're I feel like you guys are a bigger brand, but how do you compete with the bots and the people that try to? How do we?

Speaker 2:

prevent the bots from attacking. How do you prevent it? It's a better question.

Speaker 4:

Correct. To be totally honest, it's pretty tough. A lot of sneaker stores in our space have switched to raffle systems. You can control it better through a raffle system, because the customer is not checking out. You end up checking out for them, got it and it's randomized. The problem with that is that those same bots can enter your raffle 3 million times.

Speaker 3:

So it's very difficult.

Speaker 4:

There's other things. You can tell if a product goes up and within 2.4 seconds every unit's eaten up and the email address, the name, is all the same other than one letter at the end, you can kind of tell them We'll actively go in and sweep those orders and cancel them. Okay, that's okay. Good stuff. Everyone does the best they can, but to be totally honest, every time Shopify or whatever comes out with some sort of bot protection they beat it.

Speaker 1:

It's just like anything.

Speaker 4:

It's just like ship credit cards. They're going to find a way to beat that too. You know like. You know just as smart as the guys trying to stop them, there's guys just as smart trying to figure out how to hack the system right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

That's interesting.

Speaker 1:

Who's actually designing, Because I love what you guys are wearing right now. I mean, you got the feature shirt, you got the you know the branding with the Golden Knights apparel that you guys are coming out with.

Speaker 4:

So I guess it's kind of two prongs. So we've got some in-house graphic designers okay, um that you know work on a lot of our graphics programs, headwear, and then we've got like a three-person team that works on, you know, the fashion industry, what you call more cut and sew pieces, so button-up sweaters, you know, things a lot of that nature.

Speaker 3:

So we've got a decent sized team that kind of focuses, um on those two product prongs and how do you feel like the comparison like do you see your personal branding like getting to, you know, elevating as you continue to get more, you know, involved in the spaces?

Speaker 2:

we're just talking about that today because we're we've gotten to that point now. We're producing so much product. I mean this isn't sound self-serving, but I mean the stuff that we're producing is so good and it can sit next to anything else and I think that people are starting to buy in and understand that. Okay, it's not just graphic tees. I can complete a whole outfit. I can make an entire wardrobe out of something, some pieces that features. Karen, I've seen your suits, man.

Speaker 1:

Those jumpsuits, man. Oh, the tracksuit. Yeah, man, I like that. That's actually what we were talking about. I was looking at that last night. I think we were a little early on the tracksuit right.

Speaker 2:

Those suits are sick man.

Speaker 1:

I'm not just saying that because you guys are sitting there, I think what happens is most stores.

Speaker 4:

The easiest thing to produce is graphic T-shirts where you can buy blanks. Get a screen printer, you put your logo on it and it's tertiary extra business and the reality, especially in Vegas or the markets we're in, I think people want to go to a store and get a piece of something that says that they went there Like.

Speaker 4:

I went to that store, especially when you talk about what we do. There's tons of states that don't have any store, like ours, right? So you have kids that are actively shopping on different websites or these boutiques that are located in more major markets, and so when they come to one of these markets, it's important for them to go and be a part of it, right.

Speaker 4:

The challenge with that is when you're known known for just making 50 graphic t-shirts, when you put out 195 pair of cargo pants people are like ah, what do they do?

Speaker 1:

is this really what?

Speaker 4:

yeah, so I think, that that takes time as well, and then again it takes, you know, a team. You know you have to heavy investment. I always joke with with kim, who does a lot of our private label. Um, you know, and it's not easy to make a t-shirt and it sounds so crazy to say, but when you talk about fabric torquing and shrinkage and all these things right, then you don't think about when you just go buy a t-shirt. But when you make a t-shirt you have to test for all that stuff, right. And so all those things become challenging and you have to have a quotequote expert on your team that really knows what they're doing, because you'll go to factories and be like, oh, just make this. And they're like, okay, we'll make that. But the stitching is a little bit different, causes issues. It shrinks three sizes when you dry it because they're not shrink testing it, they don't care, they're just trying to make it to spec, and so it surprisingly takes a lot of effort to build products.

Speaker 3:

I'm glad you're doing that because I feel like a lot of the shirts I get do not do that, and now we shrink up on me.

Speaker 1:

Turn to belly shirts and I'm good on little crop tops. Yeah, little crop tops, I mean, that's the most impressive about your guys' story is the fact that you know the clothing industry is one of the hardest industries to stay in and the food industry. You know what I mean.

Speaker 4:

It's very hard street. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3:

It's very hard life right. Thank you uh. I'm sorry say again the bars of nightlife right 100.

Speaker 4:

They say they're number one and two for propensity to fail.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so it's amazing where, where do you want to take um the feature brand too? What's, what's that kind of ultimate vision?

Speaker 2:

I mean there's people in the space. I think that we we look up to sure probably friendly competition, or it's good to have competition, or even unfriendly competition that we'd like to surpass, but I think that the goal is that feature is a household name, top of mind brand that can sit next to anywhere that's in our space.

Speaker 4:

I think a simplistic way to put it is we want to be one of the best in our space, and so when I wake up, I think that's what drives me.

Speaker 4:

There's a couple other guys in our space that make really good private label, and so we emulate to make product as good as them and create a true feature brand that's not just graphic T-shirts that can sit on its own, and we want to have the best curation of brands. When you look at our website and look at our Instagram, we want to be one of the best in our space to execute those things, and so I think that that's really what you know keeps the heart pumping.

Speaker 3:

From a business perspective, which one has better, like profit margins.

Speaker 4:

Is it you know?

Speaker 3:

manufacturing your own, or these $800?. That's all we know, always manufacturing.

Speaker 2:

Always your own, always your own, man you know, don't get it twisted.

Speaker 4:

You sell one $800 t-shirt. You got to sell 16 of ours to meet the demand.

Speaker 4:

So it's a little bit. You know it's a little bit different, but you know, I think that what's cool about building your own brand, too, is there's so many benefits, right? Yes, you know, there's generally better margins. Two, there's obviously branding that's just walking around. And then, three, it's awesome to see people actually buy stuff that you're making right, which means that they've taken some of their hard-earned dollars and they're willing to invest it with your brand and not the brand that has maybe been around for 20 years that people are going to recognize and be like oh man, that's Stussy.

Speaker 4:

that's a Givenchy tea, or that's Gallery Department. Oh, that's a Givenchy tee, or that's Gallery Department. I think that those are some of the benefits, for sure.

Speaker 2:

That's never lost on me. The first t-shirts we made were just simple branded feature tee, because we weren't selling apparel at that time and I remember people would buy them and and I felt guilty charging them right Because like a feature. Tee, I feel like you're doing me a favor and I still geek out. Man, we go to a concert, or? A concert and I see yeah, I just got goosebumps saying that because it's like it just really that's the best one in the world.

Speaker 1:

It is.

Speaker 2:

And it's never lost on me when I see someone walk by wearing a feature piece. Like it's humbling.

Speaker 1:

It makes you feel good, Sure yeah, how do you guys run your business now, because now it's exploded, are you guys still like the decision makers? Or you kind of have like you got to trust and be like, okay, you make that decision over there and I just trust you. Like how do you guys work?

Speaker 2:

that out Because it's hard, it's so hard, it's really hard. And now you know we've, I think, company wide. We're somewhere in the 150 range of employees.

Speaker 1:

You're a firefighter, every day A firefighter.

Speaker 3:

You actually hit it right on the head, man, I'm telling you firefighter every day.

Speaker 2:

All day, every day, just putting out fires. Aj has taken on the CEO role. You know he's obviously responsible for driving the brand, driving the growth. Okay, um, big decision and visionary. You know I'm I'm the operations, I'm the coo okay, so I know the operations, the stuff.

Speaker 2:

That's not sexy at all, um, yeah, but it is the infrastructure and the bones and that's kind of how we divide and conquer. Uh, we brought on c-suite, uh, marketing guy, cmo, okay, um, who comes from a background dealing in in big, big dollar, okay, companies, um, to really scale this, yeah and and and, so, little by little, you know we'll keep adding those pieces, but I'd say we're both very, um, involved in the day-to-day the business I mean all day, every day, day and night and holidays.

Speaker 4:

It does not stop. Yeah, we don't. And I mean we still invest everything back in, right. So if we're going to go hire a CMO or a VP of marketing, right, we don't have equity behind us where you're like okay, well, I've got 20 mil from these guys and I can just go do this and in some regards, people, I think there's two ways to look at that.

Speaker 4:

You know the one. One way is well, if you have a bunch of money behind you, you can accelerate your business extremely fast, see more growth potential faster. The flip side of that for me is always that you know when it's your money, you're a lot more cautious, you're a lot more calculated in the way that you move, the decisions you make, and it's almost like the slow and steady wins the race. Um, you know, I would say that I'm a pretty big proponent for that, or we are. Um it just. You know you're more calculating your decision making and you, you make the the right steps. And you know we can open one store, maybe two, a year, but that's okay.

Speaker 4:

If we had to open four or five in a year, opening one makes me pull our hair out. Five right, like it'd just be crazy. And and then to your point, when you talk about how quickly a boutique can lose its dna, it's by that rapid acceleration and growth. Because all of a sudden, your district manager's four stores and now you're 10. Well, he doesn't have the bandwidth to constantly be peeing these. And now you're 10. Well, he doesn't have the bandwidth to constantly be peeing these and making sure everything's okay. He's putting out fires. Now this agm quit, this gm's out the door, right, and so now your whole concept of making sure you have a cohesive grand experience is out the out the door, whereas you know, we do one to one a year.

Speaker 3:

We can keep that growth is kind of counterintuitive to the business model, because you have to have the unique feeling for a boutique and it's hard to do that when you're scaling so rapidly.

Speaker 1:

It just makes a lot of sense yeah, that's powerful man, well, someone that values like mentorship. Who was, you know, kind of some of your mentors to kind of help you guys coach you through this process, because 14 years is a hell of a run. But, um, who's kind of in your ear to kind of keep your head straight and kind of coach you and guide you.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting because you know, I didn't come from retail, right, I came from nightlife, but I was always an entrepreneur and so I would say, like my mentorship came from family who have been successful in business, especially my dad Okay, not in his own business, but in business relations and things like that. I have a marketing degree. I read a lot. That's kind of where I get my knowledge from, but more than anything is you just learn from the mistakes, man, because we made so many mistakes.

Speaker 2:

We still make mistakes and we still make mistakes, yeah, and so we mistakes, and we still make mistakes, yeah, uh, and so we've learned a lot from there. Um, being in like nightlife, I had mentors through those and I think a lot of those qualities you learn or those lessons you learn, even though they're not related to retail it's just about running a business or uh, or managing relationships and things like that, because that's really what's the most important.

Speaker 4:

For me family.

Speaker 4:

I think that we've done a good job at surrounding ourselves with our team, who I think that are pretty inspiring on a daily basis, and luckily, we've got some people that are smarter than us in what they do for us, and I think that that's really the intent you always you know, hear these things where your CMO should be better at marketing than you and your CEO should be better at operations than you and your district manager should be better at operating a store than you, and I think that in a lot of aspects of our business we've been able to do that and so you know we can count on our team. And then for me, I guess something that you know EJ probably doesn't interact with as much as I've got a lot of peers in the industry that some of them have been doing it longer. Some of them have different core competencies, and I think that there's a lot of you know, knowledge transfer, like we excel in structure and digital.

Speaker 1:

You know I've got some friends that excel in brick and mortar and other things, and so we're able to, you know, consult each other but not charge each other. It's good to have the relationship. You want to pick people's brain, man, for sure I get it. I get it. So, just for business advice too, I mean, with us being, you know, the foundation of being a business podcast, what would you share with somebody that maybe is thinking right now, in April, that, hey, they want to get in business for themselves? What would be one nugget that you would share for them?

Speaker 2:

That's tough, yeah, because business is not fun you know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

A lot of the times.

Speaker 2:

You know, when you talk about being an entrepreneur, I mean it's like a cliche, right? They're like, oh, you'll never work so hard to work more than 40 hours a week, or I don't know what the exact saying is right.

Speaker 1:

But you're not going to have a day off, you're not going to have an hour off, like you're always thinking.

Speaker 2:

You know, I don't even know where I was going with that, but oh, I was going to reference that. You said like you don't think that you could open a feature today, Like the way we started in 2010,. You don't think it would be, you don't think you could replicate it.

Speaker 1:

You don't think you could replicate it in this day and age.

Speaker 4:

I mean, we started feature with 75,000, and that was for inventory build out.

Speaker 1:

I was a good capital donor.

Speaker 4:

I worked a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Not for inventory.

Speaker 4:

Just to start capital. Don't start a little bit, I think, to build a feature with brands inventory. Now you'd probably be one to two million dollar range to be safe for six months of operating income.

Speaker 4:

To put it in perspective. Um, you know, I work six days a week, literally. Our business partner's wife, who still works for us uh, she's actually just transitioned to an ea role, but she took sundays for me just so I had a day off, right? Yeah? And at the time I was getting up at three in the morning trying to reach out to european brands, you know, using my mom's calling card, because she would call india, like she gave me the number you know like that's just you know the way that we grinded it out.

Speaker 4:

It's tough because I think there's so many pieces of advice you can give somebody. I think the biggest thing for me is that you really truly have to understand the amount of work that you're going to put in. That's what I think and I think that we see people all the time that you look at people that own 20 subways and you're like oh shit, dude.

Speaker 3:

That's not hard right.

Speaker 4:

You bought a subway but you're still operating that subway and you're still putting out fires because you've got 20 subways and whatever right. And so I think that the biggest thing for me is just you have to be prepared for the work, and I don't think many people are, and I think that's what really separates entrepreneurship from somebody that can plug into a company and there's nothing wrong with plugging into a company that's successful and building your career that way, like you can be, you know, vp, you can be a ceo of a company that you don't own and you know be balling out. It's just a different path and sometimes for some people it's easier to plug in and really excel and say, okay, well, these are my work parameters, but I'm gonna just kick ass and take names here versus something on the entrepreneur side where it's like that process isn't built. You're building them as you go and you're figuring things out and you're making mistakes yeah, and realizing it you know, I remember the first time we had a shoe project that it failed.

Speaker 4:

We were in new york, we did a pop-up and the shoe didn't sell the way that I expected and it was crippling. I was literally couldn't get out of bed and my girl literally was like dude, your whole team's here.

Speaker 4:

You know, basically like, get your ass up. You don't have the luxury of sulking in in bed because you're depressed about a sneaker release, got people depending on you that flew out here to do this thing with you. Basically got to sack up. And those are some of the lessons that when you think you usually is now, we make mistakes and they're just like I made a mistake.

Speaker 4:

You keep it pushing you know, I think one of the best pieces of advice my brother ever ever gave me was there's no company in the world that is an a at every aspect of their business. If you look at apple, it's marketing and maybe innovation, right, but if you compare an iPhone to a Samsung, the Samsung shit's on it. And I hate to say that because I'm an Apple guy- and. I'll tell my friends that have Samsungs like your shit sucks.

Speaker 1:

But deep down, like he came to Apple, though I was saying when I came to Apple.

Speaker 3:

But what I'm?

Speaker 4:

trying to illustrate is that they're an A in certain things and certain things are not right.

Speaker 1:

Like Tesla is an A for innovation, but it falls off all the time and like it's not necessarily made the best. But when you think about, what they built.

Speaker 4:

they transformed the electronic or electric car industry. Right yeah, it's innovation. They're an A plus at that. But when you talk about quality of vehicle, they might be, you know, b minus c plus range whereas you know there's other cars, like volvo, that are a plus it quality of vehicle. But once you understand that, you pick the areas that you want to be super proficient and be an a plus at and you can still excel and scale your business significantly. But nobody does everything perfect.

Speaker 1:

I love your transparency. How you guys are just so real with it is great, because I think it's beneficial for a lot of people that think that they could, just like you just said, open up a shoe store like it's nothing and they don't realize, like you just said, that you might need over a million dollars just for capital, just for capital to even start, you know, even open up the doors. So I appreciate y'all's honesty.

Speaker 2:

I would tell you anyone who's listening to this that might want to open a any kind of business right.

Speaker 4:

Don't say, don't do it.

Speaker 2:

Don't compete with Peachy. No, it's like we didn't know what we didn't know when we started the business, right, and so a lot of times, like you know, breaking the rules or doing things. I mean some consultants we worked with later on down the road they said that we disrupted the retail industry, right, but we didn't know that. We just didn't play by the rules because we didn't know what the rules were. That's good.

Speaker 4:

You didn't have the luxury of playing by the rules. You didn't know what the rules were.

Speaker 2:

That's good, and so actually playing by the rules, you know you, so you just had to make it work, and so it was a different perspective on retail. But we didn't know it was a different perspective, it was just our. You literally paved your future road right out of it, yeah, and and so then that would be. My advice is, like you know, if you're going into a business, you may, you don't know. What you don't know is do it your way, man, you know, and and you make it work.

Speaker 1:

Love that. Yeah, that's. That's powerful man. Transition a little bit. We always ask everybody about restaurants in vegas, man, so that's one topic for us. So give us, give us one gem of a restaurant.

Speaker 2:

I got two minutes.

Speaker 1:

You gotta tell me like the genre I mean I'm like I got a pizza spot for you.

Speaker 2:

I got a steakhouse for you.

Speaker 4:

I got my favorite sushi spot for you.

Speaker 1:

Whatever comes my way, it could be my end or a hole in the wall.

Speaker 4:

Whatever you want, pizza is good pie.

Speaker 3:

Good pie is good.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's probably the goat pizza spot for me. Thai food Lamai oh, I do love it food Lamai. Latai's good. Obviously, lotus is Lotus, but Latai's a little bit Shout out to Lotus.

Speaker 1:

We got Penny on us. We got to give her some love.

Speaker 4:

Lotus is great Italian, I think Nora's.

Speaker 2:

We like that.

Speaker 4:

Monzu Monzu's Nora's son right?

Speaker 2:

I believe so yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm so mad at myself. I have not been to Monzu. I keep hearing about Monzu Josh Molina mentioned that from Makers and Finders, so I got to check out.

Speaker 4:

Monzu 1228, they just opened on Main Street. It is amazing they make all their breads in-house. That sounds really good. 1228. Yeah, so 1228 just opened recently. I think the gentleman that owns it was really high up in the Wolfgang Puck organization for a long time Okay and wanted to do something on his own. So I'm pretty sure Wolfgang is invested in the restaurant, but it's his concept fully Awesome. But they make all artisanal breads. I mean food's epic.

Speaker 1:

Okay. I live close to downtown, so downtown's my stomping ground which is great, because there's a good resurgence of restaurants and things happening down there. Awesome man, you give us some gems, man. I'm going to check that one out. I've heard all the other ones you meant, but that one was excellent.

Speaker 4:

The best burger spot for us would be I mean, there's always Holstein's is good.

Speaker 2:

Holstein's was my favorite Holstein's is good Fuku.

Speaker 1:

Shout out to Kyler, kyler's great.

Speaker 4:

Steak.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to go berries, Berries about all our guys Yassine, Marco, Barry, we had them all.

Speaker 2:

I love them Great people. I ate there last night.

Speaker 1:

Did you Okay, love them.

Speaker 2:

Barry's is really good.

Speaker 3:

That's where the shrimp they had there I got a shrimp there.

Speaker 2:

It was like the biggest shrimp I've eaten in my entire life. I don't even know they made them that big Toffee Dangerous.

Speaker 1:

Well, good man, what do you want to leave us out on? What else do we forget that? We can leave us out on that, anything you want to share that we might have forgot to ask you. I know you said La Jolla is coming up, but anything else you want to leave us out on, or when?

Speaker 2:

is La Jolla opening.

Speaker 1:

Maybe I should ask that.

Speaker 2:

Slated for June 15th. Oh, that's coming up quick, real quick, real quick. And you know, those things don't always pan out by the date but that's the plan.

Speaker 4:

That's the plan after the delays, so I think we might be safe on that one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we already missed our launch date.

Speaker 4:

We need to target the shoot for. November last year.

Speaker 2:

Jeez, yeah, you know, I don't know. I feel like there's probably a couple things that we've left off the table. I'm not sure that you have time. We might need another podcast.

Speaker 1:

Let's do it. We need another podcast.

Speaker 2:

We talk about our homegrown roots here, that we didn't get to touch on our partnerships, that we're working on NFL and, hopefully, golden Knights.

Speaker 1:

Love that.

Speaker 2:

Things like that Local collaboration. We did a collaboration with Fuku Burger.

Speaker 3:

Oh nice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great guy and trying to get more involved in the community. Okay, I think it's really important. You know that. You know we use this term. We should own this city right and we don't mean that in any kind of an arrogant like we own this city. It's more like this is our city and we're part of it. You know and we want you know, not just for the name recognition or brand recognition, like we want people to feel like features home. You know part of home when you think about vegas and so, um, we have a lot of initiatives that that we really want to, I guess, get into or like roll out yeah yeah, because it's important, right?

Speaker 2:

yeah, you know I I have so much um love for. You know, I'm not a raider fan, right, yeah, but I'm a huge football fan and the only reason I'm not a raider fan is because I already have a team, because I grew up here without a team, right, I get it, and so my allegiance is still there, but I get it.

Speaker 2:

I am fully supportive of the raiders. Uh, I'll be supportive of the Raiders. I'll be supportive of the A's, even though I'm a Yankee fan. Yeah, I get it, but it's just. The things that are happening to this city are just there. It's just becoming such a great city. I agree, and I want people to think about feature in those terms as well, but from an authentic place, like we want to be involved. It's not lip service, like you know, something good to put on your resume.

Speaker 1:

It's like this is our town man, you know man, I'm glad you said that we were aligned on that set up and I mean I'll just tell you guys right off the bat, you got a home with us because that's why we, Chris and I, developed a bigger circle. My wife is because we wanted to give people like you guys the platform to share. But we want to get more involved in the community. That's what we've been doing a lot of these relationships.

Speaker 1:

Sure, I mean, as you know behind the scenes, you know how it is. You can just make a phone call and there's three different people you might be able to know to put on a call. So sure, um, but we do need to have you guys come back on and just kind of update us every? No, I'm serious have you guys update every year what you guys have been doing Sure.

Speaker 1:

Especially being locals. They need to be able to hear that and we need to support each other because that's how we win all together, 100%. But I appreciate you guys. What's your social handles? I know the feature handle.

Speaker 3:

Feature at feature yeah.

Speaker 1:

You guys want to share your personal.

Speaker 2:

Do you guys have personal? I can do it too. Stay with feature. I don't even have one, it's just feature, it's feature.

Speaker 3:

That's another question how do you get that handle?

Speaker 1:

That's going to be on the next podcast, 2010,. You had it for a long time.

Speaker 4:

Surprising story but there are actually brokers that deal with websites, handles all that stuff. If you want it, you can get it.

Speaker 3:

It just depends on how much you want to pay for it.

Speaker 4:

But as crazy as that is, you know and this is kind of a wild story, I think when we reached out so we were featurelvcom, which for all intents and purposes is a big no-no. You should never have your city or anything in your web address, right?

Speaker 1:

Don't start him on this Again. We didn't know what we didn't know, so we're like fuck, Make a circle, Don't even start. When you think about feature as a name.

Speaker 4:

It is the worst thing you can get. Dude it's like super ambiguous. It's a huge word. You google it. All this shit comes up like there's, you know like you're not getting that handle. So we're in future lb for years and I think we reached out at one point and I wanted a quarter million or half a million dollars for this site it's not like ufc our cmo, brian, has actually been in the digital space for a long time.

Speaker 4:

Like dude's a gangster when it comes to digital. And he was like, well, I got a guy, dude, that's what he does. And I was like, wait, what do you mean? That's what he does. And he's like, he's like aj, it's literally. This guy's job will be to reach out to that guy, because people just buy domains and they just broker the deal. And it's like, dude, it took, like you know, four months. You're just whittling, just beating them up, beating them up, you go cold. Like it's a whole process but unbeknownst to us. Like there's people that just specialize in this shit. He happened to be like one of the best but there's, like you know, 10 or 12 guys. That's all they do. Guys or gals, that's all they do is they broker?

Speaker 1:

a website, somebody layers the domains from the people that are selling them. So many smart people we found that out from one of our friends that we interviewed. We didn't even know but that that space you 100 yeah, it's websites on the on the.

Speaker 4:

So the bottom bottom line is we paid for it and the ig handle we paid for that, but not it is. If you're trying to build a long-term global brand, right Like if McDonald's was McDonald's CA, you'd be like what is this shit? Right Like from California.

Speaker 3:

But it's.

Speaker 4:

McDonald's. So you know they're global right.

Speaker 1:

That's real, that's real Sorry about Chris.

Speaker 3:

That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1:

We appreciate hanging out with y'all man you guys are doing. We'll continue to keep supporting you guys. So check us out at VegasRcom and check these guys out and support them so appreciate y'all's time, thank you, so much really good stuff.