So it looks like the Vanquish has another new fan, one whom I happen to be quite a big fan of: Mr. John Legend. He’s been touring through New Orleans, Florida and Georgia and it looks like everywhere he goes, he’s wearing JUMP!
John Legend preforms during the 2009 Essence Music Festival at the Louisiana Superdome on July 3, 2009 in New Orleans. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images). He’s wearing the Vanquish in Black Super Luxe Soft Nappa.
John Legend performs in concert at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida on July 9, 2009. (UPI Photo/Michael Bush) Photo via Newscom. He’s wearing the Vanquish in Black Silver Kid Crystal.
July 5, 2009 – Atlanta, GA – Grammy Winner John Legend performed at Chastain Park. Photo Credit: Dan Harr/AdMedia. He’s wearing the Vanquish in Grey Super Luxe Soft Nappa.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you should definitely check out my homeboy Sung’s new movie, Fast and Furious. I liked Tokyo Drift but this one was intense as hell. The opening scene was completely sick. The new release kind of takes the best from each of the other films and ties it all together. I’ve also heard that with the DVD release will be a bonus DVD that’s a short film featuring Sung, Michelle and Vin, which should be cool. Check out the trailer. Sung’s in the red truck.
It was some time last fall when I’d decided to reach out to Sung Kang, a rising actor in Hollywood, most famous for his role as Han in Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift and in Better Luck Tomorrow. It was his iconoclastic approach to portraying Asian Americans as creative, funny and desirable that led me to take a big interest in him. So when he replied to me saying that he’d seen the shoes and loved to get involved with Jump at any level, I knew we were onto something great.
We flew out to LA and had wanted to treat him to lunch at some swanky Japanese restaurant but it ended up him inviting us to his own restaurant, Saketini, in Brentwood. It was pretty immediate that we knew we were speaking with the right person to represent the brand. We shared with him our history: our beginnings in Asia, how the brand has since traveled to over 30 countries and our vision for the US market. We discussed our brand philosophy driven by family values and how we wanted to transcend the realm of mere shoes but to extend the brand to other aspects of culture and global consciousness. We left lunch feeling not only extremely satisfied and full (his food, by the way, is exquisite) but also feeling great about the partnership. It felt like he had already become one of the Jump family. We had some great ideas on the table and from there we knew it would only burgeon into something bigger.
Man, did he feed us. We must’ve gone through like 10 courses.
After our return to New York, we began brainstorming. I soon discovered that contrary to what you might think of most actors, Sung could do a lot more than just act. I suppose the fact that he owned a restaurant and built his own original menu was already a testament to that. He’d become our Hollywood ambassador, wearing our shoes in all his films including Fast and Furious 4 directed by Justin Lin, the prequel to Tokyo Drift that tells the story of Han and Dom, played by Vin Diesel also starring Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster. In Berlin, he introduced the Wachowski Brothers (Matrix) and Rain to Jump while shooting Ninja Assassin.
But one of the things that impressed me the most was that he owned a high degree of innate creativity and self-awareness of his talents and was able to tap into it to help us formulate some really great ideas; things we would’ve never come up with!
Internally, we had developed a dossier to help us categorize our wide breadth of product. We decided that in order to make this palatable and understandable both internally and for our customers, we should categorize it. We decided that the best way to do it was to create a character or a persona for each category, then write a story about each one. Here’s what one very creative weekend yielded us.
We had a great time writing these. We wanted to make each of these characters cool but hilarious at the same time. Who would you identify with?
With these characters and Sung’s talents as an actor, we now had the tools to create some really cool stuff. But what? We began throwing ideas back and forth and came up with two really good ones. The first would be a series of short films produced by Arowana Films starring Sung playing each of the characters we’d come up with. The next would involve traveling half way around the world to Taiwan to work with my old friend Jeff Wang, owner of the creative agency, Blanq to create a collection pieces that would serve as our premier brand campaign. The stage was set for a host of exciting developments. Stay tuned.
In October of 2007, we opened our first US flagship store. The opportunity had come to take over a space in SoHo on Spring St. between Broadway and Mercer. If you’re at all familiar with New York, you’ll know that this address is a prime locale. So we knew we had to do it. The question then was how to make it happen? How do you properly design this conduit to the inner sanctum of the Jump brand? We knew we wanted to position ourselves as an entry level luxury brand and that we’d want it to be like a living showroom. We wanted it to be an experimental store where we’d test the brand’s most directional product.The wheels were set in motion and we decided on our colors: gold and black.
The rest was quite organic, actually. The space has one of those ornate tin ceilings that was white and kind of dusty and lackluster but when painted gold, it revealed a latent charm that gave me the inspiration to decorate the rest of the store. I trounced around Brooklyn and Manhattan perusing each and every antique and vintage shop to find the right items to dress the space. I wanted it to feel regal and grand but with a sophisticated vintage twist. Bit by bit the pieces began to fit together until finally we had a store.
We found that the store was a great spot to hold events. We always had great turnouts.
Taiwanese TV network, ETTV, covered our opening party.
Our CEO, Harry, always knows how to make a big splash. Check out this pimped out vintage limo.
Even LXTV took notice of us and aired us on their show First Look NY. It ran on NBC and in taxi cabs all over New York.
Then one day two artists named David and Jessica Foox stopped into the store. They fell in love with the brand and wanted to get involved. It began with some hand painted shoes and evolved into a full out mural painting.
Here’s the finished work.
It incorporates the likeness of our Hollywood Brand Ambassador, Sung Kang, famous for his role as Han in Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift. We flew him in to film a series of video shorts playing on various characters that identify our brand. The films came out phenomenally as both he and the indie filmmaker, Arowana Films, are both quite talented. Watch out for the short films to be released beginning in July. More on our collaboration in the next post.
At the mural’s completion, we threw a huge bash, our biggest ever which drew a crowd of over 250 people, filling the entire store and a party bus. P.I.N.K. Vodka supplied the booze.
When the festivities concluded at the store, we were shuttled to the exclusive SoHo House for the after party.
It’s not all just fun and games though. As a participant in the SoHo Stroll on June 7th, we decided we would donate $8 from each pair of shoes sold that day to China’s Earthquake Relief Fund. When Harry learned of the event, he decided we should extend the drive to last for 8 days and that he would personally match all the funds raised. The drive is still on! Please stop by the store and make a difference! Our staff is extremely kind and will help you to some coffee or ice water for this hot weather!
