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PASSION FOR SNEAKERS I
magine Dubai. Imagine miles of luxury shopping real estate, high-rise buildings that continue into the sky, all sprawling outwards into the endless heat trap of the Arabian Desert. Now contrast this stereotypical picture of the Emirate city with that of a frigid afternoon in the town of Cambridge, Mass. Soon, these two seemingly disparate worlds will hold one thing in common—Concepts. The wind is blustering through town on the day Vamp interviews Deon Point, general manager and buyer for Concepts, one of the true OG sneaker retail brands which, since 1996, has sat in the heart of Harvard Square in Cambridge. Once only a shop-within-a-shop at The Tannery, a Boston institution in and of itself, Concepts has recently re-branded as Concepts International with the hope of becoming a global hub for sneaker enthusiasts. Last month, the company announced the appointment of Tre Lucas as president, who plans to take Concepts “from a local retailer to a standalone global brand.” The cornerstone of this expansion will be a new flagship store in Dubai. Challenges have pushed the tentative store opening from spring to September of this year, but according to Point, Concepts is a brand that takes its time with everything it does. “Nothing we do is ever spur of the moment, it’s very much calculated, so we’ve wanted to do this for a while,” he said. “With Concepts International, we wanted to get away from just being Concepts and wanted to show people where we were expanding to.” The Dubai store will be the third Concepts flagship location, following the company’s original Boston
CONCEPTS WANTS MORE THAN BOSTON. IT WANTS THE WORLD. BY MATT VITONE
shop and its new Manhattan store, which opened last year on Hudson Street on the border of SoHo and Tribeca. Having been with the company for over a decade, Point has helped assure the rise of Concepts in a luxury footwear space that is almost entirely dominated by big players. As the market has become increasingly crowded in recent years, he’s continued to push for unique offerings and unexpected collaborations with major brands that have kept the small, independent shop one step ahead of its imitators. Part of this means taking risks. In 2008, Concepts invested over $75,000 of its own money into a bizarrely named Nike collaboration dubbed “the Blue Lobster Dunk.” That might not seem like much, but as Point puts it, Concepts at that time was still just “small fish.” “Back then neither the sneaker industry nor the collaboration market were anywhere near as big as they are today, so we would knock and knock and knock until finally someone would answer.” But the shoe was a hit, helping to lay the foundation for collaborations in both the athletic shoe market and with more unexpected brands. On the docket this year? What Point calls a “big, major” project with Adidas, as well as a new collaboration with Mephisto, an Italian maker of men’s business and comfort shoes. Not Concepts’ usual customer, but for Point, it’s all about finding connections where others fail to. “It’s definitely not what our consumer is used to, but I think we’ll be able to educate our consumer about it. It’s all made in Italy. It’s really nice stuff.”
retailers offering similar assortments has been in large part its loyalty to its Boston roots. While others were busy chasing an L.A. or New York aesthetic, Concepts was carrying Arc’teryx and Sorel on its shelves, bridging the gap between modern streetwear and a certain, very New England-centric outdoors vibe. Recalling how his bosses tried to entice Burton to sell snowboards in the shop in the early years of Concepts, Point explains, “When Burton came in, they looked around and walked out. So [my boss] chases them down the street and asks them ‘hey, where are you going?’ and they were like ‘the f**k is this? We came here to open an account and this is a shoe store!’ And so the guys who were there at the time were able to make them come to an understanding, and so we started selling snowboards. That’s where we started to bridge the gap. It was out of the ordinary for the time.” By the time Point joined Concepts full-time in 2004, he wanted to start making his own imprint on the brand. An affinity for luxury gave him the idea to bring Gucci into the store—not an easy proposition for a small shop from Cambridge. “We went to Gucci maybe two or three times and got shot down,” he said. “But then finally we came to an understanding, and that’s eventually what helped us get Lanvin, Balenciaga and Margiela. So even prior to Barneys catching onto the sneaker wave, we were literally the first store in the world to combine Nike and consortium Adidas alongside the luxury brands.” As the specialty sneaker market continued to grow, Point tried to think of ways to differentiate Concepts from its competition that was becoming increasingly familiar.
From its early days with The Tannery in the ’90s, what’s set Concepts apart from other streetwear
VAMPFOOTWEAR.COM / AUG 2016
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