In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Jason Daniel from LSKD, who produce high-quality functional sportswear with a street aesthetic. Based out of Logan, QLD, LSKD is now a globally recognised label and has been seen on some of the most famous athletes, adventurers and enthusiasts. This chat with Jason covers how his mum helped him bring his idea to life, how a mentor relationship changed the course of his business and their initial experiments with drone delivery.
“You can be yourself and create something and find that there’s a community of people that feel the same way“
Jason Daniel
Questions answered in this episode include…
- What advice would you give a company preparing to re-brand?
- How do you create relationships with athletes?
- How and why did you shift from wholesale to D2C?
Passion and community
“You just need to dig deep into your memory box of what you did growing up and what you were passionate about, if that’s what the brand revolves around.
If you read the Lululemon story or the Nike story, very inspirational stories. A lot of it happened authentically. Nike was a story because he loved to run and they just were runners and they wanted to make a shoe to run in.
I think that’s really inspiring that you could be yourself and create something and find that there’s a community of people that feel the same way around that. It’s not about you, it’s about the brand and what you create and that feeling you give your community is what’s special about it.”
A mentor and the catalyst for change
“I ended up getting some mentors around me from brands and ended up getting to catch up with the founder of Penny Skateboards, Ben Mackay, and I hassled him for about eight, nine months for a coffee on email and I think he just got sick of me and said, “Okay, I’ll catch up with you for a coffee finally.” That first meeting I left with a bit of a headache and was like, fuck, I’ve got to listen today. I’ve got to listen to someone. I wasn’t stubborn but I think I just, I don’t know, I was young and I went, you know, I’m going to listen. He’s built an amazing brand. It’s very inspiring. He grew up in Logan and he’s built a brand with an office in the US, they were in some of the biggest retailers all over the world. It was huge.
And I just said, you know what, I’m just going to listen to what he has to say and he was just asking me “why are you doing all this stuff?” and he just got me questioning it, and I went, “Okay, it makes sense.” From there I started making slight changes and asking questions and then just started to meet other people. I think it was about 2016, we had LSKD on some product, ’15/’16. We actually had it with the LKI logo and it almost started to become two brands. I’m like, hang on, what’s going on here? We almost have two brands, what do we do? We actually just asked our team here, there were about 12 of us then. We just asked our team, I said, “What do you like?” And they said LSKD and then we asked some athletes and ambassadors, “What do you like?” And some of our community or customers and they all said LSKD. And we’re like the LSKD logo is selling better than LKI, let’s listen to the customer and our team here and change it.”
Getting it right
“We’re just so product focused on making sure it’s perfect. We recently didn’t release any new tights for four months because we weren’t happy with it, so we literally haven’t released any new innovation that we were supposed to because we wanted to make sure it was perfect for the customer.
So we weren’t happy with the fabric, it wasn’t our buttery soft fabric and there were a couple of things we learnt there, which we fixed, but it takes time to make those changes and so we didn’t release anything for four months in that space, which is our fastest… it’s such a powerful side for our brand and community. So yeah, it was hard but at the same time for the customer it’s more important, we want to get it right. It’s not about a quick sale, it’s about getting it right for them.”
