Q)What was your initial stock? Did you go for any specific stuff?
A) Well again I was dependant on supply of the Peter Black range when I first started. So my first sort of stock wasn’t all that great. But I knew that the rare import thing was a big opportunity. What I hadn’t realised was just how many lads in Liverpool were wearing the Trimm Trabs, the Grand Slams, and the Zeldas, you know, where the hell were they getting them from? So I had my eyes opened when I actually started working in Liverpool.
Previously I was coming over once a week with fresh stock for the Top Man shop and I’d just stay an hour or two. When I actually opened the shop for myself and spent days and days observing how many lads were actually wearing rare imports it was an eye opener for me, the extent of how many lads were going to Germany and France and getting the stock previous to me opening. So it was pretty obvious I had to go off there too. In fact a lot of the lads didn’t want to say, and nobody wanted to admit where they got their trainers from because they didn’t want other people getting them anyway. The standard answer when I asked was, “Where did you get your blue and orange Trimm Trabs from?” and they would say Brussels. “Brussels mate.”
So when I got to Brussels there was absolutely nothing there, no Trimm Trab, no Olympia S, no Grand Slam, that was just the standard answer. So it was only when I met those lads in Ostend who had been out to Germany was when I really found out that I had to go out to Germany and bring in the German range.
In actual fact, Trimm Trab had been launched in the UK in 1977. Previous to that it was called ‘Jaguar S’, and that was a total failure in the UK. That sole unit had been a disaster and that’s why adidas UK didn’t want to go back to it.
It was really typical of the Liverpudlians, it was quite an ugly shoe really but the fact that you couldn’t get it anywhere in the UK made it more desirable really. So I suppose the Trimm Trabs second time around was fortunately for me, my big hit. In fact I think 80% of my first year’s business was with that Trimm Trab Olympia S sole unit.
Q) Where did you go in Germany? You weren’t going through adidas were you?
A) No, that was the funny thing. It was a strange thing really, we weren’t allowed to go and buy adidas trainers from other distributors, so I couldn’t go to the Belgian distributor, I couldn’t go to adidas France, or adidas Germany because the rules were that the UK distributors dealt with the UK market and UK retailers. But I was in such a hurry to push the range further but the UK management wanted to do it in their own time. They wanted to have control. So I was having arguments within the UK, both at Peter Blacks and Umbro, the other Adidas distributor, who were really pissed off that I was going direct to Germany and France and that caused big arguments and a big fall out between Peter Blacks and Umbro about the whole distribution of adidas. I actually ended up falling out with my old bosses by going off and getting rare imports. I really fanned the flames of that argument and I was ‘persona non grata’ with my own employees for two or three years. In fact some of my old contemporaries couldn’t wait for me to fail really, because I was so focused on parallel importing. But the UK management weren’t quick enough to feed the UK market. They thought the bubble would burst in Liverpool and I suppose I had to go out working for myself. I had to make my business work. So it was a difficult one, falling out with your leading supplier wasn’t a good idea. adidas themselves continued to support me for the next two decades and I built a fantastic relationship with adidas through the 80s, 90’s and beyond.
The arrogance that the management of the UK had, came back to bite them when Nike and Reebok came along. But the rare import thing, I had to go to retailers in Germany, retailers in France, retailers in Austria, and do deals with them. If I was buying four hundred pairs at a time I could get a twenty per cent discount. In fact one retailer from Munich would just add ten per cent to his cost. So I was getting nearer and nearer to the cost in Germany. And the cost in Germany was actually a lot less than the cost in the UK. So I had to break a few rules of the distribution and fall out with some people but you generally do when you are building a business.
ROBERT WADE SMITH 2009