How To Build an Uncompromising Creative Vision (Killspencer) full edit

every single morning I'd wake up orders would be coming in and it would be like Christmas every single day so cool it is a dream for many artists designers industrial designers or otherwise to have something that is your own and you get to build in control and you get to go as fast as you want or slow as you want and you get to dictate the term tell me a little bit about some of the the price you have to pay to have this Purity in Your Vision I think if you do something you love the money will come I did my first logo for a restaurant when I was like 13 years old and then building my own Factory now I'm able to do all of it the power of that is priceless you know our utility special opice backpack for example that thing is so incredible that that bag it's perfect if I was making these products in Asia and then I would be a salesperson just selling bags I don't want to do that I want to be able to make whatever I want whenever I want we've been doing this dance with my next guest for I think a number of years now where I've tried to get him to come on the podcast or something but as you're going to discover as I've learned a lot about my next guest he's a bit of a perfectionist maybe a tiny little bit of control freak but I'm so happy that we're friends and that we get to do content together his name is Spencer noosy and uh Spencer for people who don't know who you are can you just introduce yourself tell us a little bit of your backstory we'll go from there yeah uh my name is Spencer niosi I'm a designer in La born and raised here grew up in the in the San Fernando Valley and I went to uh Arts Center College of design where I studied product design and when I was there I fell in love with making things and building stuff so when I was a when I was a student I um wound up making a bag for myself and basically that kind of got me on the Journey of of constructing things that were actually real rather than building something that was like a a model or a prototype that wasn't real and um it basically turned itself into like a lifelong passion of um making things so I built a bag when I was a student and basically turned it into a brand and as soon as I graduated with school I launched a company making bags and built my own Factory and now 14 years later I'm still doing the same thing and I have my own Factory here in in Atwater Village in Los Angeles and we make the the best bags in the world 100% okay I want to get into the your brand kill Spencer and all the things that you're doing there because I believe it is a dream for many artists designers industrial designers or otherwise to have something that is your own and you get to build in control and you get to go as fast as you want or slow as you want and you get to dictate the terms but before we get there I want to go back to your past you grew up around a very creative household tell me a little bit about your parents and anything else that was kind of like creating the early formations of you as a creative human yeah so like both of my parents are designers um my dad is his name is Tom niosi you can look him up he's a kind of like a photo like lettering artist where he used to do like Photo airbrush and like very meticulous stencils and handp painted logos and Graphics he's known for doing a ton of really famous album covers back in the back in the day and um he was like a very much a master of his craft and my mom was an art director in the record business and that's where they met my mom was an art director at mot toown records and Electro records and I think she hired my dad to work on an album cover for a project and that's where they kind of met and fell in love they're still together today they're amazing they live in Bell Canyon California um and they're super supportive of me as a creative and someone who's like kind of following my passion um you know luckily they both have like a a a passion for painting and drawing and typography and design and um art shows and nature and travel and stuff so for me um I was always supported in kind of like anything that I wanted to do and as a kid I just remember being like at my dad's next to my Dad's um table where he like his draft table where he like did all of his work and I'd be sitting there like like looking up at his work and he's like don't shake don't shake the table don't shake the table and uh and then he set up like a table next to him for me to draw when he was drawing and he was just like a a teacher you know someone who both my parents are very much constantly teaching me to become like better at what I love you know and what's so cool is that you know early on um you know I was like encouraged to do like logo I did my first logo for a restaurant when I was like 13 years old wow and you know um like family friends would ask me to do logos for their businesses or you know when I was younger I was I got into music I started playing drums when I was like 11 and my first band I made the logo for you know and I made the drum head cover and painted the drum head cover and then I was in another band in high school later on and I did the album artwork and I made the posters for it and I did the the logo for the t-shirts and we made sweatshirts and my dad like helped me like in the garage like set up like a screen printing like lab I guess and we screen printed every single t-shirt that we sold and made really cool packaging of how we like wrapped the t-shirts up and taped it up and like hand sign each shirt and stuff it was it was it was so cool and you know my parents have been kind of with me lock step um you know just encouraging me to kind of go after what it is that I was passionate about you know and music was music for me was everything like I played drums every day for hours as a kid and we had a g we lived in a culdesac in Bell Canyon and um you know luckily the neighbors are kind somewhat far away so I had my drum set up in the garage and I had my friends come over a couple times a week and we would just play and just play and play and play and play music and that's kind of where I I took this like athletic approach to music and just would just persist and got really good at playing drums and music was like my thing and art was my thing and playing baseball when I was a kid was my thing and so like art music and Sport were all very important to me and I was either going to go to like music school or art school and you know like thinking about I I I took like Berkeley College of Music summer Jazz program every year I would go to clar m McKenna college and play jazz with all these amazing people from all over the world that would do this program and it was really cool to to do that and I was I was I would think that I was one of the better students there one of the better players for my age but um you know a career in music didn't seem as easy as a career in design just because I was living a career in design through my parents and seeing how they did it you know and so I decided to to go to music school I mean to go to art school instead of music school and that's where I went to CCA California College of the of arts and crafts at the time now it's called California College of the Arts and um study graphic design there and it was really cool and when I was there um I was like kind of wasn't challenged enough and you know the students were like smoking pot with the teachers and every was kind of like let's be artists and like kind of painting and everything was kind of like a little dirty from like a it wasn't like design it was more like art school you know and I remember being like I would carry this like big portfolio case with me um from the Oakland campus to the San franisco campus I have to take the BART to get there I didn't have a car and I would skateboard and I remember like having to carry this big portfolio case in a backpack and I have to get off the the BART and then skape down these like crazy Hills to get to my classes and I was like [ __ ] like I'm not that good of a skateboarder to like power slide and stop to go down so I was like I need to a break for my skateboard I was like I need to build that and so I went to the the model shop where they did welding and stuff at CCA and I was like hey I have an idea for this like break I need to build it and so the guy in the model shop was like okay let me teach you how to use the you know Band Saw and the table saw and this is how we weld something together and this is how you use metal and form metal and so I was like you know in the process of like building this like break from my skateboard and I realized I was like oh I need to get a spring that's like a heavy duty spring and i' research like where to get it I went and got the spring and then put it in the thing and then basically screwed this thing to the bottom of my skateboard and I drill the hole through the skateboard and had like a brake pedal basically so I could just step on it and it would engage like a break to to stop the wheels and when I was a student my first year of art school I basically built a a break for my skateboard so I could go straight down the hill like you know um just like bomb the hill straight down and just just put my foot on the brake and just go and it was like the coolest experience and I was like wow I really like graphic design but I think product design is like more of like my speed and then my dad was like yo you should definitely just go during the summer and go to Art Center because I think like they have a really good industrial design program and you should you know check that out and so I you know took I think it took a summer class or something like that and I was like I need to go to this school and so I transferred to Art Center and that's where everything changed for me I became like like addicted to the idea of product design and building building things and which is kind of cool because it's kind of combining science with Art and Design and problem solving and I really like kind of being challenged um by like trying to solve something that's harder harder than I just doing Graphics you know and my grandfather um so both my parents are designers and my grandfather is um a television personality by the name of Mr Wizard and I don't if you know about him but he was a really famous uh science teacher who taught um science to kids basically on Saturday morning television on NBC for like 12 or 13 years then he was on Nickelodeon for like 13 years and he's just kind of like a genius on so many levels and so growing up with him I had this like kind of Science Foundation and the science base plus the art graphic design for my parents and the music and baseball and skateboarding and snowboarding and so kind of like all of these things were kind of coming together into product as design and so when I transferred to Art Center um I kind of had all of this stuff in me that kind of fueled me uh being able to be good at product design and like push to become really good at it you know and you know it was really cool because all my history with like music allowed me to make music for films for my products and doing photo shoots I already had done with my band and making posters and Graphics I already had done and logos for stuff and so I was able to not only make the product but make the logo for the product make the packaging for the product do the photo shoot for the product make the film for the product um and then the only thing I didn't know how to do was like actually make the product you know and so you know fast forward to like launching a company and then building my own Factory now I'm able to do all of it so to have my hands on on every aspect of the design process was really really um empowering and gave me like just gave me wings you know I got a bunch of questions to ask you because I'm trying to map out the timeline and everything I do want to State something here I think your life is pretty exceptional in that you you had two creative parents who met kind of on the job your mom was the boss for a period of time and hiring your father and then a spark and and to be able to grow up in that kind of environment where your parents are kind of doing the things that are related to what you're doing is a pretty unique thing in the creative field I suppose if somebody's an engineer or lawyer there's a high probability their children are lawyers too but so many of the people who are creative today rebelled against something that their parents told them to do but here you are kind of like being exposed to it from from a little child and seeing all this stuff and being encouraged to play and pursue all these diverse interests which makes the story really complete once we get to like where you are today so I just want to acknowledge it up front was there anything uh that you can call recall from your childhood where you're like yeah that really shifted my perspective and I'll give you an example what I'm looking for here because I remember drawing all the time at home in school when I was daydreaming so whenever the class had an assignment where you could exercise some of that creativity all the kids started to notice me and I never felt special in my life but for those few moments like oh get Chris a do it he's the artist in the group I I didn't even consider myself that I'm just curious with parents in the field teaching you you have all these tools you're way more advanced than your classmates I have to imagine was there a moment in time where like dude this is pretty cool that I know how to do this I mean it's early though for me um like I grew up like BMX racing and dirt jumping and skateboarding and like rollerblading and playing roller hockey I played like every single sport you could think of and I was I was even like fishing in the pool like with the fishing rod practicing learning how to fish and just kind of like random [ __ ] you know I lived up in the in Bel Canon which is like a you know modest like equestrian Community kind of out in the middle of the mountains and I remember like um wanting to when I want when I skateboarded I wanted to be able to like OE off of like a five stair and not have the board come off my feet so I vented this thing called what I called a bind board where I took binding tape and I screwed it with like a with screws onto my my the deck of my skateboard and so like a snowboard I could slip my shoes into the deck and then I could kind of just like do grabs I can like jump off the stairs and it was like basically it was really dangerous because you know if you fell you kind of are stuck to the board but it was at that moment I think that was like seventh grade maybe my friend Mikey and I we were basically built these bind boards and we like did a photo shoot at the high school um and I was like man this is this is so cool it's like I I built my own product and then you like and then we made a a brand called de boards and I made like a design with I ate a tortilla and like folded it and bit out of it and then I unfolded and it looked like a face and that became the logo for my brand in seventh grade called de boards and so it was just so weird and so kind of like I just realized that like you know this is I like created something that I needed that didn't exist and I built it and it provided like a lot of fun for me and my friends at the time yeah and it gave us kind of like power that we didn't have because we could do stuff that we couldn't do with our skill set being in being a young kid you know what I mean so so I mean that's just one example of you know um making something and realizing like wow like this is this is a little different you know yeah hearing that story if you were born earlier and lived in Vermont you could have been Jake Burton you know what I mean like invent a whole new sport like I got to solve this problem you know yeah totally that would who knows yeah yeah my friends now they're they're like yo where's your you know you don't need live ball you don't need tennis you need what's what's Spencer ball what does that look like you know what's your own sport look like and I'm like yeah I haven't figured that out yet hearing your story about you being inventive enough to like hey there's something cool I'm going to go make it and having the tools and resources whatever it it takes me back to my own childhood where I grew up with not a lot of money and to get like an action figure for Star Wars was a big deal and I wanted like I remember when Empire Strikes Back came out uh where where I was like I want to build like a ho place I can't afford the thing so we would just take foam and just gnarl it up and try to make it look like something but I didn't know anything about sculpt sculpty or any other kind of material so it it wasn't going to go anywhere it just still looked like a chunk of white foam where I can see like in your mind that would have turned into like a real playset that kids would be like dude do you see what Spencer's doing kind of thing yeah no definitely I think sculpy I spent a lot of time you know with clay that you could put in the oven and turn into hard objects um so I I feel you like you know to be able to kind of build a little world around things that you're like passionate about is like really is really um kind of a special gift I don't think a lot of people are necessarily creative in that way you know where do you think that came from from you just the fact that you wanted to create you just it came in Came From Within well it comes from having an overactive imagination and not enough resources you got to go make the world that you you want right I remember taking a little knife and carving out pieces of bamboo trying to make like a miniature crossbow like accessory for my my action figures and it was really crude but I was like in under different circumstances I think would have gone farther than that but that's kind of where it netted out for me dude that reminds me I mean I did so many random things as a kid but one thing that I did was really kind of fun is uh like making paper airplanes you know yeah and being able to make something fly so that's that's like a cool beginning but then I was like how do I take this to the next level and so then I stapled a paper clip to the nose of the paper airplane and curled it around and took a rubber band you could basically like shoot a paper airplane and kind of see it go farther and I was like wow what what else can I do so then I would take xacto blades and and staple them to the front right so then you can shoot airplanes like into a tree and it would like stick into a tree it's kind of cool like thinking about all the stuff you did as like a little kid I guess um and how it's definitely you know there are forms of innovation in places where you might not you know think that they were there yeah pretty dangerous but pretty cool like a a dart plane there yeah no totally definitely I remember making bow and arrow when I was a kid and you know building like dirt jumps in my backyard and making skateboard decks and like basically taking them to the beach and trying to like skimboard with like a skateboard deck and try to do tricks which didn't work but like I would always have these ideas of things that I would um see working and then I'd go try to make it work um and it either didn't work or I would figure out a way to kind of like make it work if that makes sense um so like yeah just from childhood you know so many so many things um kind of like led to like a passion for you know product design and you know Innovation and craft and um the the discipline behind coming up with an idea drawing it out and then going and making it you know quick question for you while we're kind of moving through the timeline here how long did you stay at CCAC only one year yeah I did I did a year one year so you completed your freshman year and then you're like I'm out I lived in the dorms made a lot of really good friends I'm still friends with today and I just like at the end of my ex my first year I was like I need more I need something harder I need to be like pushed harder I like want to make money I want to be like challenged and like um I want to be um I don't know what the word is exactly but I want to be like you know told that I need to be better you know yeah and I needed to have like more of an influence not to say that the school is bad or anything the school's a great school but I just maybe was was in the wrong program and didn't have the right teachers to like encourage and bring the best out of me at the time you know I'm also like fresh out of high school just kind of not really fully formed yet in a lot of ways you know and so you you finish the year you do a summer program your dad encourages you go to Art Center look at the industrial design program whatever you're there in the summer and eventually you submit a portfolio get into the industrial design program right yeah okay there's a real question here I have to throw this out there I'm just curious more for my own personal curiosity than anything else uh Art Center is an expensive school to go to it's a private art school yeah and here you are going to one school switching schools was tuition ever an issue for you um fortunately no it wasn't I have uh my grandfather uh Mr Wizard you know he you know was able to put me through school oh amazing you know and and honestly like that is one of the most profound things I mean if I could give that as a gift to my grandchildren that would be a dream for me to achieve you know and but I wasn't like wasteful you know I I wanted to go to the best school in the world and I wanted to be the best in the world um and you know I went to school and I took it very seriously you know and uh you know I I graduated um I think top of my class did ninth term honors you know W I got the young innovator award I got to speak of graduation and so like all these different things kind of came from me just like being I think having like an athletic approach to work in design like I I really worked worked hard at it expand you've used that term now a couple of times and I think I know what it means but I'd rather just ask you expand on this term like you're obviously interested in sports uh if you just hang around you long enough you're like oh he's always doing something athletic physical when you say he took an athletic approach what does that mean unpack that for us it's so cool cuz like I'm at the studio that I have here I have like a recording studio we have like an indoor basketball kit we have ping pong table downstairs we have a full Factory and like a lot of people come by and come by to make music come by to play basketball come by to design stuff and build stuff and what I found is that the people who are like the most dedic at to like iteration and the most dedic dedicated to like building something and making it better and better and better like are people who are like athletes or grew up like wanting to be a pro basketball player but couldn't because they weren't like tall enough or something or they wound up getting into music because that was like where the career was but they really wanted to be a basketball player and so like for me like this with sport if you want to be good in sports like the the potential um to become a pro is like the potential is there for everyone but the actual the people who actually become Pro it's like 0 Z 1% or whatever and in order to get to the top you have to work and train um at the highest level you know and the only way to get good at something is through practice you know and for me the practice of design is very similar to the practice of cour you know if I'm playing a lot of tennis right now if I want to get good at tennis you have to hit a forehand crosscourt you know 400 times before you do a backhand crosscourt you know and you have to do 100 200 serves you know and one corner of the the box and then you have to do 200 serves in the other corner of the box and so like this kind of like repetition and kind of learning like kind of micro adjustments to obtain control comes from sport in my opinion and you come here and play basketball with me and we and we play you know first one to 10 you see real quick how those like micro adjustments work or don't work if we're betting you know or just trying to trying to win the game it's just a game but with that there's there's a lot of um there's a lot of lessons in that in itself you know I think you are the first person that I've heard describe a creative Endeavor as or Draw the parallels with that with an athletic thing so what I heard from you is athletes have to exercise a great degree of discipline they put in the Reps and what they're doing is they understand that those drills equal the skills so making those small adjustments leads to incremental Improvement but taking his totality is the stuff that makes Champions right yeah no I mean it just reminds me of like my first internship in at Art Center was with a teacher named Scott Robertson and he's uh known for you know um he has a publishing company called design city of press and he taught made all these books about learning how to draw he's a master and he would talk about it um as mileage and so if you take all your drawings if you want to become good at drawing you have to draw a lot and you have to take all of your pages full of drawings stack them side by side and the more miles you have the better you're going to be you know and so it's kind of you know it's it's this idea of just repetition and constant practice that's what it is and and I like I I love thinking about that because it's kind of like sometimes you wake up in the morning you're like you know you kind of don't have the passion or you're just kind of tired or whatever but if you approach every day from like a place of practice then it's kind of fun you know you're not taking it so seriously it's okay cool just showing up and starting and if you start drawing or you start building or you start designing the packaging that you were supposed to get done but you didn't get done in time for whatever reason it'll get done and it'll be great you have to just start you know and so many people I think are just like oh I want to do this company I want to start this business need I need your help like I'm just like just start just get get to work you know because that's that's where it all it all comes out is through the through the mileage of the time and effort it takes to make something good it's it's not easy but it takes time everything takes time you want to do it right you know absolutely um I I read somewhere and correct me if I'm wrong here that it was a trip to the American Military Museum during your art center days that inspired you to repurpose military grade materials into function stylish products which explains a lot with the buckles and the Fasteners and there's another thing which you've mentioned to me personally uh your relationship with Bobby Chang tell us a little bit more about that and how that shaped some of your thinking and your processes yeah uh well it started with the military museum and um there is a a teacher really amazing teacher he's not with us today named Norm Sherman from Art Center who was another pillar of my education which I owe a lot of you know debt to him because he made me excited to draw the way that we learned to draw with Norm was we would go to all these museums and draw all the artifacts and so by understanding what these artifacts were you draw them and you'd understand where their place was in history and there's unlimited artifacts and museums all around La we went to all of them and while I was at the American Military Museum I discovered the truck tarp that was on a Humvee and I was like oh I love that material it's so cool I want to make something out of that and so I talked to the curator of the museum this guy named Craig I was like yo where can I get one of these tarps he's like actually I have a stack of them in the back of the museum over here oh my God I was like yo can I buy one from you and I W up buying one from him or paying I think I paid him in like Jamba Juice or something I brought J juice one day I was like yo just let me get act and so I took I got this like huge tarp and I brought it to my house and I unfolded on my lawn I hosed it down and I started like cutting it up and I realized that that material would be really cool for a messenger bag or a backpack or a duffel bag and there was like so much um history in the scars that were on the material in like the RF welded pieces the buckles and the hardware you know it's has to hold a ton of snow on it has like a wind shear of like this basically indestructible material and I uh was like thinking about repurposing and sustainability at the time for a class project um and basically like was like that's it if I can make a product out of this material that's just sitting in the back of a of a um a military museum there's got to be more of that material like I have a resource that just going to waste essentially and I could turn that into a product so that became a part of like this historical Reserve like collection that I um started kill Spencer with you know and prior to actually starting the brand um one of my teachers I was like hey I really want to make a bag um do you know anyone that I could talk to to learn from he's like yes actually when I was a student at Art Center here 10 years ago I was um friends with this guy named Bobby Chang and he started the company incase and at the time when I was a student Inc case was very cool they were like kind of the hottest growing backpack bag case company they were growing with the alongside Apple so they were like one of Apple's like first brands that they blew up and so I got him on the phone I said hey Bobby I you know I'm a student I want to make a backpack I'd love to learn from you and he's like okay buy a swing machine and figure it out I'm like I'm like no I'm like I'm I'm I'm a designer like I'm not a sewer he's like you know if you if you buy a sewing machine then you'll be able to do every part of the process you'll be able to be the sample maker you'll be be able to be the pattern maker you'll be able to know where to Source the materials you you'll know how to thread the needle through the bobin you'll know how to prototype stuff and and I took Bobby's advice and I bought an industrial sewing machine it was like 1,200 bucks and I had it delivered to my house brand new and I had never sewed one stitch in my whole life and I had to open up the manual and like figure out how to thread the needle through the bobin and you know follow the instructions and then two hours later I had my first bag that I made myself in my apartment in Pasadena and I had a factory in my living room and I was like wow this is so cool um because everything that I learned up to that point was like oh yeah you have to work for Nike you have to work for Apple you know you're a designer and then you send the drawings and everything to someone else someone else makes it but like for me I was able to not only design the bag cut up the material find the material sew it together flip it inside out add my label to it and I was like I have a product here I put my MacBook Pro in my bag wore it to school everyone's like what what is that where can I get that and and then I was like wow I need to figure out how to like sell this or I need to figure out how to like you know package it in a way um that made sense for me and my personality and what I was interested in the time uh which was like I didn't like logos I didn't want any graphics on anything I wanted to be like clean and minimal but functional and like utilitarian um and that kind of started the the wheels turning to building um a brand out of like you know military grade Surplus Fabrics you know plus like patented buckles and plus military hardware and like 1,400 pound test webbing and you know just like metal Parts you know but like done in a nice way like elevated which you didn't really see that often at least I didn't see that often at the time and so that's kind of like you know for me fortunately Bobby I didn't know this at the time but Bob they were doing really well in case and I think Bobby was feeling that he you know he was feeling like like what else on they are they going to do you know they've grown a huge company making a ton of money making really good products and the fact that he saw me being passionate about the same thing that he basically did um I think he saw something in me that he saw in himself and he we would have a phone call like once a week for an hour exactly and I would just be asking him a million questions about how he built his company he built it with other people as well who I became friends with who are I'm still friends with who are awesome people and you know for me fortunately I was able to kind of like have this guy Bobby changen as my almost like my coach my design coach but he came from tennis and he worked at Nike for a while so he also had this like athletic approach to like you know kind of like tough love type of older brother like that [ __ ] sucks like this is horrible like pushing you to be better you know and I would work really hard to kind of like show him that I um that I was like doing the stuff that he was teaching me you know and after a while um I was like yo like I I really want to like learn how you guys make all your all your products and he's like okay cool come to China uh you know buy a ticket I got the rest of the trip covered for you and so I went basically on a development trip with him to China where I got to see with them making 25,000 bags a day and I got to go into seven different factories and I brought like a Laval ler microphone and the camera with me and I videotaped everything and I thought I was going to turn into a series of some sort but it was basically just like a an inspirational like research trip and you know played golf with him and I asked him the questions on the golf course he was really into golf at the time and I play I grew up playing golf too so I could we could like play it was like really cool and then we went to all these factories and I just saw the way that a large company worked you know and at the end of the at the end of like seven days um I remember like sitting like overlooking this kind of this this like Valley and I was like yo I was like I don't ever want to come back here again like I want to build my own Factory in La I want to build it with my friends in my backyard I want to be able to like ride my bike to work and and um he's like he's like okay if you set it up I'll fund you and I was like I was like what like I had never asked him for anything I never asked him for a free incase bag nothing I I just didn't even think about that and I was like I was like whoa that's so cool and so I I went back to LA with all this knowledge of like how a large scale Manufacturing Company works right with hundreds and hundreds of employees and pallets and pallets of material and just like football fields of seers basically and I came back to LA and I was like okay cool I'm going to put together a plan figure out all the machines I need figure out the cutting tables I need figure out what materials I need I wind up getting a space basically before getting a space I want up putting together a keynote presentation of like the vision and I showed it to him and he cut me a check and basically he was an angel investor um into the beginning of my company and I wound up using that money to rent a studio in Downtown LA in the arts district this is like you know 13 years ago 14 years ago now when it was cheap back then I got cutting tables I got machines I got um I got like shelving units to store all the boxes for boxing and shipping and I got parts and pieces and I launched kill Spencer I launched my own Factory and right at that same time we got like picked up in LA Times and Playboy and Men's Journal and like all of these different blogs and so we started doing like really well and I wound up paying him back in full in five months and he didn't take any equity in the company um I think I was one of the few people that paid him back for his Investments at the time and now Bobby is just my homie and I have nothing but love for that guy who saw saw something in me that I didn't even see at the time you know that's so cool may I ask what was the check amount for what did you I don't want I don't want to say I I haven't really said that publicly but it was for a lot of money I showed it to my parents and like like what the what the hell are you doing like you're never going to be able to pay that back and so you know he you know at the time I think like what his vision was he's like he's like what am I going to do buy like what what was on his mind at the time is like like if he was going to buy a Lamborghini you know and instead of buying a Lamborghini I think he was using that money to invest into different people that he believed in um but it you know it wasn't a lot of money but it wasn't a little bit of money and that that money allowed me to feel that I could I could do you know anything you know I felt I felt kind of really powerful with that and was able to just find uh an amazing Craftsman Mauricio who's our head of craft here he's the head of the factory here I've been working with him every day since day one and he's a master I was able to get him on board and we basically just hit the ground running just selling product and figuring out how to box it and ship it and figuring out how to get you know um pictures of the product online and building a website and this is like before it was easy it was like really hard to do that back in the day well that was really cool um I know you've shared that story in parts and everything before and elsewhere but I'm I'm glad just for our audience to be able to hear this and I want to get into a couple other things about what your vision is today and how it's changed over time but before we go into that how how would you describe kill Spencer as a brand for someone's like what the heck are they talking about how do you describe kill Spencer what is the Phil philosophy or ethos that's behind this brand kill Spencer's um you know we're a a leather goods brand I think kind of first and foremost um we specialize in making bags soft goods uh we make backpacks and duffel bags and briefcases and um all sorts of cases for your phone and for your computer um and kill Spencer and everything is made here inside of our Factory in Los Angeles so we make everything inhouse every single day slowly and carefully and uh we Source all of our materials locally and we get buckles from Austria and zippers from Switzerland and we get Hardware from different U military suppliers um for a lot of our d-rings and our parts and pieces and our button snaps and so we we have like a very utilitarian approach to making crafted items but our products are made slowly and carefully but it's kind of like a a minimalist utilitarian aesthetic and kill Spencer is kind of like a it's it's kind of like a place for me to create it's like my platform for any idea that I have to build and inside the factory that we have here we have like 6,500 ft we have like laser cutters and clicking machines and foil stamping machines and um we have heat presses and we have skying machines and we have sanding machines and we have you know all sorts of things here to be able to build anything um and it's you know one part research and development one part like a Fantasy Factory where we can kind of create anything we want and build it um and it's also like it's a place for creativity to be supported and to be it's like a safe haven for creativity so you know a lot of places don't necessarily have you know for me R&D is like is everything you know for me to kind of make something and explore um the building of something that I haven't made yet it's you know you never know how to do something until you do it and then once you learn how to do it once you're like oh I can make a different like and you kind of go down this like trail of uh the unknown and you're kind of figuring out what it is that you want to make you know fortunately we have a I I think we have a Mastery of how to make bags we've been doing it for 14 years we have a lot of customers and we have a lot of feedback from our customers and you know we do not want any of these bags to be returned to us so we make them to be indestructible as possible and if a zipper does break which it can we're able to come take it back take the whole bag apart put a zipper back on and ship it back out to the customer and so you know for us it's like you know this this dream facility is about being able to make ideas come to life using the limited resources that we have you know and you know kill Spencer is like this kind of NeverEnding desire to like perfect and to become masterful in whatever it is that we're doing it's like a constant one step forward uh approach to design and Manufacturing like you know we try to make the best stuff we can and then once we finish making that thing we make it better we try to make it better and fortunately we've been making stuff that's like really really good it's like some of the best quality that you can get and I watch every single video I possibly can and talk to every single person I possibly can about how to make something really good and we've learned we've learned a lot and um you know the the result is kill spener you know it's like I'll go to the nth degree ree to find figure out how to make something or to make something great like even if it kills me you know I'm going to I'm going to figure it out I would like to ask you so many questions and I'm going to go into like lightning round with you I'm going to Pepper you with a couple of questions do your best to answer them as quickly as possible because there's so many threads that you've opened up that I just I need to talk about I'm like oh gosh I'm looking at the time here probably a part two is gonna have to come okay all right so here we go there's a purity to your vision and your unwillingness to compromise that I really really admire but it comes at a cost for sure to to want to Source the very best component to design and build everything in your personal lab your your playground or your gym or your dojo is fascinating to me you you want to make sure that you can oversee every part of design conception production shipping and you're constantly iterating and to my to my broken heart you're you're a kind of anti-g Graphics logo guy but all these decisions are reflection of your world viw your philosophy there's some beautiful things about it made in La is a profound thing it costs more to make things in La you know it's it's way more expensive it's why things are made somewhere else and the volume in which you can produce is much lower those are the beautiful things but on the other side there's a dark side tell me a little bit about some of the the price you have to pay to have this Purity in Your Vision what do you think that is I think if you do something you love the money will come and if you do something right the money will come and if you compromise then why are you even doing it in the first place you know like for me to be able to come into work every day and see the process of our Factory working and to be able to in the minute in in in any any moment I could be like hey let's change this let's double Stitch this here triple stitches here let's change the way it's built like we could do that like real time you know and the power of that is priceless if I was making these products in Asia you know I'd have to make them months and months ahead of time I have to store them in a facility in bulk pre-boxed ready to ship and then I would be a salesperson just selling bags I don't want to do that I want to be able to make whatever I want whenever I want and do so with people that I've built years um of time with who know how I work and how I know how they work and we have this like we're a team and we can build anything together and so if I want to make shoes like I know that we have the ability to make shoes if I want to make furniture we can make furniture if I want to build an interior of a 964 Safari Porsche and build the steering wheel and build the seats and build the floor um floor mats we could do that and I know that we could do that right now like give me a project I could do it right now and that the power of that is is worth more than money it's not about money it's expensive to do that here unfortunately I live in LA but it's where my friends and family are I'm probably not going anywhere anytime soon but if I could do the same thing in Bali on the beach or you know in the mountains and and Snowboard every day and make stuff in the mountains and be less expensive I would love to do that too but everyone who lives here they have families so it's like I got to take care of my employees and my team and you know that is and honestly like our products are so inexpensive for what you get you know like it's you know our product should be like way more expensive than they are but because we're like almost like Factory Direct we're able to price our stuff and make it you know you get more bang for your buck by shopping with us than you do with any other company because we are directly making the product from scratch and our Factory and putting in the box and shipping it to you you know so I'm going to fill in the dots for our audience well basically Spencer from the way it sounds to me there's a long game that you're playing and you're willing to continue to play this game and I think it's a reflection of this athletic approach about constantly iterating trying to make the very best product that your hands and your creativity can make the the the price you pay is maybe profitability scale but the way you describe it it's like but then you become a salesperson distribution center and and you you want to keep your hands in it now I've been to your fa two of your factories if I can remember at least two and something I didn't understand before is when you order something from his site that's when they start making it they're not sitting on thousands of pieces ready to ship goods to you so there's a level of attention to detail so it's really interesting in this fast-paced fast fashioned world you're like slow fashion you're like slow accessory slow design because there's there's a beauty and a nobility to it that I I truly admire pivoting here I'm going to ask you another question hopefully I can get a couple more questions in here that first capsule that you launched with while still a student at art art center which is kind of Legend I mean people are talking about it so you launch this thing how many pieces were in that original capsule and how many pieces from that original capsule are you still making today uh we launched with a a Weekender bag which we still have we launched with a special ops backpack which we still have and we launched with a a track bike messenger bag which we don't have anymore but it's kind of a we have a briefcase that's kind of similar to the design without like a shoulder strap um and we launched we launched that collection in two uh materials that were historical Reserve like a coded cotton canvas like this desert sand we had a Korean War era Cod of cotton canvas we had the military truck tarp material and then we also had two um technical materials we had a white tarpine and a fire [ __ ] black nylon so we basically launched those three bags in five different materials and um and I made like really cool business cards that were like letter pressed we made a website we shot did a photo shoot with my good friend Kevin Al and my ex-girlfriend at the time help art direct it and we shot it at the military museum and we put it online and we started selling product every single day every single morning I'd wake up and see and orders would be coming in and it would be like Christmas every single day it was so cool to see it take off you know and we just hit the ground running how often are you pulling something that's in the catalog and saying I had a new idea now I'm going to change that or or does it get to a point in which you're like done move on to the next piece we're good with this we've done everything we think we can yeah like the the the most of the products on the website are as perfect as I could possibly make them and even though a lot of customers don't see that there's Minor Adjustments that happen to products over time but you know our utility special op backpack for example that thing is so incredible that that bag and I H it's perfect right now it's perfect so I don't need to do anything else to it every and a lot of other products on our website are perfect as as well and so that once I know that it's the best that it can be I kind of like move on to another product and so that's kind of my my Approach is like you know and obviously we have different iterations and versions of you know we're on our third version of our Weekender bag our Weekender 3.0 and so you know it's only a matter of time before the fourth 4.0 comes out or the utility specialized back pack 4.0 come out so it's pretty awesome okay um let's see where I want to go with this I'm I'm like my head's spinning around with questions here um let's talk about like where where is the next 10 years going to take you now I got a little preview so I don't want to spoil anything if you don't talk about it but some some interesting directions that you're going in is is can we talk about that now or is that not a time yeah we we could talk about it you know okay I'm I'm let's talk tell tell us Spill The Spill the I mean there's not not really anything to spill other than like you know for me I'm building this world around all the things that I'm interested in yeah and you know if I was just designing stuff and Outsourcing it I'd probably be way further along in my career but because I'm literally making everything myself and learning how to make it and buying specialty machines in order to figure out how to make the thing that I want to make it just takes a lot longer to do it right you know I feel like I'm 10 years behind schedule but um with that that like if I wanted to go make a pair of shoes right now I could go literally design and build a pair of shoes it would take me four or five hours or more but I have the team I have the resources I have the materials I have the the machines to be able to do to do that so I'm really interested in the idea of making shoes I'm really interested in the idea of making furniture and you know I've learned how to weld recently and being able to kind of put um things together from a 3D modeling and 3D printing perspective as well is in the is in the uh in the plans um and you know I'm I'm a I'm a passionate person who's passionate about a lot of stuff so if I'm passionate about music I'm gonna be playing music all the time if I'm passionate about tennis I'm gonna be playing tennis all the time if I'm passionate about basketball I'm gonna you know we made a our own basketball kit and we made our own Rim from scratch and we made our own Nets out of leather and we made our own backboards at a Furniture Factory close by that does amazing work and created the best packaging and our own we make basketballs from scratch inside of our our Factory nobody makes basketballs it's so hard to do it but we figured it out we make fullsize basketballs we make mini basketballs and the basketballs that I made like seven or eight years ago when we launched they're still playing we're still playing with them today and to see the leather and the way the leather wears after hits the ground thousands of times makes me even more passionate about making bags because we're using the same leather for the bags that we are for the basketballs that we're throwing on the ground and the soccer balls that we're kicking on the concrete and seeing how powerful that material is it's like Timeless and robust and like it's just if it's just awesome awesome and um yeah I couldn't be more more stoked about making shoes because I know that the leather if I make leather shoes using our you know 14 years of experience they're going to be incredible no doubt I got a little preview of it so I'm super excited about where you go with this okay two two minute question here two minutes answer in two minutes please because I do need to say something before we wrap up here which is this I'm researching a lot of fashion brands and creators uh mutual friends of ours people we admire it seems like when I go back in time they do a collaboration with a really big company and it builds their name and it injects some of this really super cool design energy into these large corporations what is your view on these kinds of collabs with the really big brands are you for it against it neutral negative what what is what's your take two minutes I love it I'm all for it that's the shortest answer you've given I don't know okay beautiful that's perfect okay and I do want to say this okay we're we're we're winding down here here I do want to say this I've been traveling a lot Spencer sends me a message say hey bro when you're back in town let's connect so I go to your office and you are the most generous like just enthusiastic guy ever you're like Chris let's do something together and and you made me this generous offer and I'm gonna take you up on it which is use the factory let's do something like let's get back into craft and what is Chris gonna make when he's not art directing like 35 people to do so for him let's see what you got old man I'm like okay okay I'm very excited about this and just even talking to today ideas are turning my head that's different than what we talked about I do want to send this message out there if you believe an americanmade Goods if you believe in quality craftsmanship leather goods that are designed really well that are going to be durable that that are fashionable in a way in in their Timeless Beauty you want to support an american guy an American Business made in Los Angeles made in America you owe it to yourself to go check out kills spencer.com he's got a bunch of really cool stuff go pick up a few things and just know this it's not going to arrive tomorrow he's gonna work on it his master Craftsman is going to work on it somebody in the factory is goingon to make this for you with love and it shows in the product Spencer was so awesome talking to you I think our next thing is a documentary film on location where we watch the creative process because you got some amazing toys it's a beautiful space thank you very much for being a guest on our show today uh thank you so much for having me I've been a fan of you for years and I cannot be more excited to have you come by and create here and inside the lab so you're your the doors open whenever you want to come by Chris thank you and I have to say this this is for real just in our conversation I literally got two new ideas that I'm going to sketch I'm going to draw I'm going to bring them back to you I'm going to show you and have you poo poo all over them and then we'll get to work but I I'm saying like this was a really inspirational conversation for me personally and I know our audience is going to get a ton of value from this thank you ah thanks for having me love you dude appreciate you and I cannot wait to create more with you my name is Spencer niosi and you are listening to the Future [Music]