"Footwear is not an easy industry to break into: It takes five years, minimum, to get your line taken seriously, and that's on top of the years of apprenticeship that go into learning how to make shoes in the first place. Also, success is about a lot more than just coming up with great designs-although if you don't have that, and an idea of a niche that's not being catered to, you're lost because you're going head-to-head with people at Nike and Reebok who have decades of experience. Rich's graff background gave us that edge.

"You have to learn about the actual process by which the factories make shoes. And these are complicated and expensive things to learn. We were fortunate to start our careers as designers at Vans, because working at one of the big footwear companies is really the only way to pick this stuff up.

"Basically, if you want in this game, just get your foot in the door, and be prepared for a long haul."Home // STYLE // HOW TO // Making Footwear