Q) Take us back to pre Christmas 1979 and tell us the story about Stan Smiths and the popularity of the trainers back then.
A) Well obviously Stan Smiths was the first of the tennis trainers, the breakthrough from the Rom’s and the Sambas. So in 1979 it kicked in with the Stan Smith which became the first big cult.
There had been a bit of a fashion thing going on with ‘Kickers’ and a brand named ‘Kios’ which was a copy of the Stan Smith, but the Stan Smith was the real thing. Kios were £15 while the Stan Smiths were £20. I think in the Christmas of 1979 we sold something like 2000 pairs of Stan Smiths so it was the first big cult trainer in the UK.
Q) Do you think the desire for the rare trainers or rare items of sportswear was greater in Liverpool, and has always been greater in Liverpool?
A) Well I certainly think that with scousers travelling around Europe, it opened up the whole thing for getting rare trainers. It was brilliant the fact that you couldn’t get them in the UK, and because you couldn’t get them it made them more desirable. So there was a race all the time. Obviously people might go to London to get a pair of Diadora Bjorn Borgs, and people like Borg and McEnroe did set a trend for expensive tennis trainers, expensive tops and tracksuits, Fila and Sergio Tacchini etc or whatever McEnroe was wearing. But non of that expensive Italian sportswear was available in the UK so there was a race to not just go to Lilywhites but to go to the big Sports Shops in Munich, Milan, and to bring back as much expensive gear as possible, then sell it to their mates which paid for their next trip. So there was a lot of trading going on amongst the Liverpudlians with the gear that they brought back that would help to pay for the next trip. I mean how many trips did Liverpool make in that five year period from 1977-82?
I didn’t start my shop until 1982 but the whole thing, the cult was already happening. I came in on it when the UK only had forty adidas styles. I recognised that the rare ‘import’ thing was how I would get my business going. So the timing really was lucky for me.
Q) How would you have recognised that? You say you realised it was happening in Liverpool?
A) I was lucky I was in the right place at the right time, I mean I wanted to start my own business at 17, it was my father that persuaded me to go and get some experience with a big company like Peter Blacks and adidas but obviously I was running up to start my own business whenever I could, whether I was 18, 19 or 20. In fact I started Wade Smith when I was just 22 in 1982. The fact that the trainer boom was happening around me was just opportunism from my point of view. Anybody else with an entrepreneurial flair would have done the same. If you were going to start a trainers store, where else in the world would you start it other than in Liverpool?
So I packed my bags and moved to Liverpool, Angie, my wife, my girlfriend at the time moved over with me and we literally set up the backstreet shop on Slater Street. We started with £500 and lived in a bedsit for the first six months of our lives. And those fantastic trips I made with the empty suit cases to Brussels are possibly the most magic moment of all and a few of those lads in Liverpool remember the day that I met the five lads sitting on their Head bags full of gear in Ostend in November 1982. They had been out buying all the stuff in the sales in Cologne, Munich, and they had a load of gear. It is true that I bought my first twenty pair of Trimm Trabs in all those different colours from those lads in Ostend. The following day I sold every pair, putting £800 in the till on only my second Saturday. I took £141 in my first week, then took £800 on the second Saturday thanks to the five lads. I used to bump into one or two of them who kept reminding me that they started Wade Smith’s and not me so I still thank those guys.
ROBERT WADE SMITH 2009