"On the Rise": A Look at Small Businesses
Aired January 1, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again and happy holidays.This year as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight and 100 years since Henry Ford had a better idea about building cars we were struck by how cool it must have been to be present at the creation.By all accounts the Henry Ford's and the Orville Wright's and the George Eastman's of the time had an enthusiasm for what they were doing that was infectious to the point of contagion. They were young men in a hurry and that is rarely a dull thing to watch.Lately on the program we've been profiling budding entrepreneurs, young men and young women in a hurry or, as we've been calling them, "On the Rise." Are they the Ford's of our future or the Edison's or the Warren Buffet's?Do they share the same enthusiasm and drive and imagination? You bet they do. And do their adventures make for great stories? We think so but they're the real sales people here and we put them all together tonight for an hour to make the case. We hope you'll enjoy it, first though a quick look at the day's news.
(NEWSBREAK)
BROWN: We call these segments "On the Rise" and mostly we mean that in a figurative sense, companies that are up and coming, doing something new and interesting.But we begin tonight with a company that's on the rise in the literal sense as well. It's called Slingshot Kite boarding and it's getting people to rise far above the water or the snow in a new sport for the intrepid among us.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)UNIDENTIFIED
MALE: It's so much fun, so much lift.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The kites are absolutely insane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kite boarding is pretty innovative. It's such a diverse sport.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These need to be in the water and in the snow.
JOHN DOYLE, BOARD DESIGNER: Slingshot is a company that produces kite boards, accessories, kites, kite boards and everything to do with kiting.
TONY LOGOSZ, CHIEF DESIGNER, CO-FOUNDER: First you wear a harness around your waist. The kite generates so much power that you can't hold onto all that power without actually being attached to it. You have your board and you have your control bar which steers the kite. It goes from your bar or lines up to your kite and you have your kite in the sky and the kite is big. The average kite is 13 to 15 meters. That's pretty much kite boarding in a nutshell.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Going to launch me?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which one (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Way out there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Slingshot is four bros that came together.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We started this company because we love the sport and we thought we could build a better product than anyone else out there.
DOYLE: We had four in-house R&D people. It's a team effort on designing. Tony, he does all the kites.It's going to have the good bottom in the new graphics.And I do a lot of the foot strapping pads and handles and the fins. When I get ideas I draw the templates and shape them out of foam. Things are constantly being invented and upgraded and evolving. Then I get bored.
JEFF LOGOSZ: We started this business in the bedroom in my house for the first two months because we didn't have an office space available. Chris, I know you're going to Fiji on Friday.
C. LOGOSZ: We're taking four of the top team guys and finishing up on the video and the rest of the photos.
J. LOGOSZ: Part of our strategy was because we're the new kids on the block was to be first in our own backyard. We consider our own backyard the U.S.
CHRIS WYMAN: At first it was, okay, can we establish a brand? Can we make a brand work, have this different image and this quality product that's like no one else out there?
J. LOGOSZ: We started out at 300 percent growth and then we went down to 200 percent growth a year and this year it's finally getting nice because we're down into double digit growth which is 50 percent growth and that's where it's getting more manageable. We all went through that athletic stage and now that we're getting older this is a great venue to give opportunity back to kids and through the sport especially too.
WYMAN: We've had the entire team in town and we're shooting off of the next year's 2004 product. Everybody that I bring on the team is the new upcoming most bad-ass kid in the future. They've got a little attitude about themselves. They've got a good look and they have their own riding style.
DOYLE: It's fun being at the beginning level of a sport. That way you can evolve with it. Here you've got something brand new that's just in constant evolution.WYMAN: I'm sure the next mission statement is, okay, how much money can we make doing this but we still got to have fun. The bottom line is we got to have fun while we're doing it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead on this special "On the Rise" edition of NEWSNIGHT he's got an outlaw's name but a business that's making money the old-fashioned way. You'll meet Jesse James and his motorcycles.And, a drink with a kick and the energetic young man who invented it.From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: So what's in a name? Ask the guy who's turning out the kind of motorcycles that every James Dean wannabe in Hollywood seems to want these days who brings a sort of Wild West spirit to it all, something he just may have gotten from a renegade ancestor who shares his name.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JESSE JAMES: My name is Jesse James. This is West Coast Choppers. I build motorcycles. I kind of build them, every one of them like I'm building it for myself. It's hard for me to let them go which means that I'm pouring a lot into it, you know. I'm doing everything just the way I like it and I guess, you know, people think that's cool.We make our own chassis, tanks, fenders, front end, exhaust, wheels, you know, everything but the motor and transmission we make right in this shop here. This is where I work up here. This is like kind of where I do my thing. This is like a blank sheet of canvass where I start.I used to be a bodyguard. You know one day I came home and said, you know what, I really want to do something I love and I never thought this would ever pay my bills. I rented a little corner of a friend of mine's shop, which was about half the size of a garage and I remember like two days after I was there two of my friends came in, Jim and Fast Eddy and I remember exactly what they said. He'll be out of business in a month.My first clients were a lot of just friends and acquaintances until like people I've never met or seen face-to-face would like send me a check. I did a bike for Shaq, Keanu Reeves, Goldberg, Tony Martin from the Falcons and then just a bunch of other people with lots of money.Kid Rock and I have actually went back and forth for about a year and we've never really hooked up until finally he came down to see the shop when someone that walks in here never been here and doesn't really know what to expect it's like Willy Wonka and the motorcycle factory.
KID ROCK: Every time you see a bad ass chopper pull up, everyone's going is that a Jesse James? Is that a Jesse James? His name is getting out there. It's all over man. He's like a mini rock star at this point.
JAMES: I get like 20 people a day come in and asking how much it is to build them a bike. I'd say they average between $3,000 if I really like you to like $125,000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can buy a brand new Harley for $16,000. That's a down payment on one of these.
JAMES: Bill Harley and Willie Davidson aren't actually out there making the gas tanks for their bikes or they're not actually out there bending pipes and designing wheels and stuff like that. It's just a name, you know.If someone walks in that door with $100,000 tomorrow and wants a Jesse James bike, Jesse James is actually going to be making it. It takes a few weeks but that's so fulfilling and then what even takes it a step further is when you could jump on it and I'm going down the freeway and I feel the acceleration and the way the bike works and then I can look down and see my reflection in something that I made. How many people can say that?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Okay, as brand names go it isn't exactly Coke or Pepsi, not yet at least but ask the young makers of this new soft drink and they'll tell you the troops in Kuwait asked for it before heading into Iraq. It's got a ton of caffeine so it's making a splash with another group of young people who also need to stay wide awake but for admittedly less weighty reasons. And, yes, the name's a little strange but it has moxie.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, I'm Hobie Buford (ph) and these are the headquarters for Bawls Guarana.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bawls Guarana, may I help you?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The product is basically a high caffeine soft drink. There are no vitamins or minerals. It won't make you healthy. It will just keep you up, up, up, up. The name Bawls stands for Brazilian American Wildlife Society. Guarana only grows on shore vines so (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Rain Forest you can't get Guarana.The Guarana berry is very similar to the coffee bean. It contains a lot of caffeine. That's what we make the soft drink with. It contains about triple the caffeine of Coca Cola.And this is my office here. When I started this company I was 23 years old. I did the concept as independent study my senior year at Cornell University and after that I had to get a job so I put the business plans sort of in action.The most challenging part of -- really the whole thing of course is getting the financing. I went to the banks just about getting a loan. They said maybe he's selling more Bawls than -- he's making more money off Bawls than he is off (UNINTELLIGIBLE).We've actually been pretty lucky. We've either doubled sales or more every year since we started. Luckily we found a very strong niche within the computer gaming industry. You're talking about a market that's generated more sales than movies last year so it's really a great market to be a part of. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Manhattan and what we have here tonight is a LAN party.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In order to play the games for so long they need to stay up. They need to stay awake. Bawls allows them to do that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How many is that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four Bawls I had tonight. That doesn't sound right but that's a lot of caffeine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're now distributing in 31 states. Our facilities are in Newark, New Jersey, St. Louis, Missouri and Los Angeles, California.We're here at our bottling facility here in Hillside, New Jersey where we bottle all our Bawls Guarana. We'll produce just over a half million cases this year. The bottles are coming from Germany. The caps come from Ecuador and the guarana comes from Brazil.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't expect to get any shut eye. In fact, don't even expect to blink. A special non-slip bottle for when your hands start shaking. I can't tell you the number of people who said this will never work and that you're wasting your time so I think that's really just something you really have to believe in yourself.
UNIDENTIFIED
FEMALE: I love Bawls. I really do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT "On the Rise" we'll bring in some music and the young woman who gives new meaning to the term one man, make that one woman band.And then a young man who's making his mark in music that his parents or grandparents might find appealing.From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The young woman you're about to meet was pulling in a comfortable income engineering software for a big computer company, top of the world at a young age only that's not what she wanted. What she wanted was to make music and now she does. We caught up with her as she was beginning her tour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VIENNA TENG: My name is Vienna Teng. I'm a singer, a songwriter and pianist hoping to go all over the country in the next few months in support of my debut CD which is called Waking Hour.I started singing before I could talk and so I have these like nonsensical syllables in the songs I was singing but like I would be dead on in terms of the pitch.A lot of the venues I'm playing right now are small clubs or coffee houses. Vienna was the name that I came up with when I was a kid. I really liked the name of the city and I also knew that there was a thriving music scene there especially in the classical period.When the CD came out I just felt like it would be a nice gesture to that 12-year-old me that I was keeping that name.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You were great on Letterman.
TENG: Oh, thank you.
DAVID LETTERMAN: I've heard the entire CD. There's not a dud on this.
TENG: Being on Letterman it was sort of surreal. Here I am running, you know, working out of my kitchen and suddenly being thrust into, you know, this nice hotel in New York and taking the limo to the studio and all that. It was sort of a Cinderella story.
LETTERMAN: Vienna Teng everybody.
TENG: I spend a lot of the time during the day at home. I'm my own booking agent for the most part, answering e-mail, making phone calls. It's not my favorite part of the job. The biography, a couple of press quotes, the cool thing about this age of computer development is that I can basically run my whole operation out of my kitchen. I'm just paying my dues for now.In the middle I do find a bit of time to do some writing at my piano and work on some new songs. The music is all in my head. Something is going on there. I moved onto one of the busiest streets in San Francisco (UNINTELLIGIBLE).When I first moved here I didn't really have -- I didn't have a piano yet. I had developed also trying to play the guitar and I can't really play guitar. So, I was being lazy and trying to think of all the one finger chords. You know sliding my finger. There is a guitar song but I'm going to spare you and play it on the piano.I wanted to write my own songs and so you kind of have to surround yourself with all sorts of other things. I used to be a software engineer until recently, majored in computer science. I think that if I had studied music all the time I would probably write a lot less.If I put my own CD in the player and was really impressed or moved by my own music I think that would be success.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Since we first reported this story, Vienna Teng has hired a management team so she no longer has to book her own gigs. It's a start.Moving on think of this segment as musical medley, here now the voice of a new generation one that also brings alive the memory of an old generation and what a voice it is. We take you to the fabulous Plaza Hotel where the show is about to start.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen the world famous Oak Room is proud to present
(UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a jazz piano player and singer. I started playing when I was three, playing the piano when I was three and some of my biggest influences when I was about five years old were boogie-woogie piano players like Jerry Lee Lewis that kind of style.Around like 12 or 13 I started playing clubs here in the city. It was cool. I mean I wasn't even allowed -- technically allowed to set foot in the place, you know, because I wasn't legal and I don't think I -- I'm still not. Most of the time I don't get nervous, you know, and I just kind of think about the music and as soon as I hit the piano I'm in another world and the audience becomes a separate thing.As much as I want to communicate with them and I talk to them and try and interact...The word is the.Before I went in to record the CD I met with Phil Ramon (ph) a number of times. We both decided that, you know, it had to be -- no matter what it was it had to be honest and it had to be musically representative of where I am right now at 19.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most important thing is the genuineness. He's totally what you see is what you get.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I started writing when I was nine and then one day I just asked my mother if she would write lyrics. Since then we've been writing music together. I wrote the music and she'd write the lyrics.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In this past year he started to write the lyrics himself which was very exciting for him because he never thought he would do the lyrics. He was always musical starting that I noticed was age three.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm just practicing up for the Metronome. I have a certain tempo right like this. It's like playing with a band.We're in my room now at home in Manhattan where I grew up. Ella Fitzgerald and Count Bassie, a lot of Nat King Cole, this is all Sinatra, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Don't show the Cliff Notes, some family friends, Sammy Davis, Jr. This was one with me and Tony Bennett and me and Jennifer Love Hewitt. That, never mind. My father he was a very important person to me. When he first passed away I remember I wrote songs right after and, you know, I guess it was kind of an outlet for me. He's a big part of who I am. Anything I do he's kind of a part of.I think, you know, to a certain extent you're a product of your influences and then there's the other half of it that you know you try and say something new, be innovative. That's what jazz to me means.My focus is to just play for people who want to listen whether they're young, whether they're old. I'd love to have everybody as an audience. Hopefully, one day maybe I will.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, "On the Rise" turns to food and beverage, first a man who likes chocolate. I mean he really likes chocolate.And then the bakery that will bake to order so that you don't have to.Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Some people want to be the next Bill Gates or the next Warren Buffett. The man you're about to meet wants something simpler, something sweeter. He wants to be the next Willie Wonka.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD MUSINSKY, RICARD CHOCOLAT: You guys want some chocolate?Hello. My name is Richard Musinsky (ph), owner, executive chef, pastry chef of Ricard Chocolat. I do a whole different slew of gourmet, high-end, 100 percent organic products. I started my business in '99, so coming up, maybe, like, three or four years now. I don't have anyone in this with me, so I'm led up to creating everything, from the packaging to the ganache flavors to the marketing to the PR, cold calling, whatever it is.This is Richard from Ricard Chocolat calling.I'm not here to just have another product that is there for people to indulge in. Americans, they haven't really got a great education when it comes to chocolate. To give you a little bit of an idea of what I do, the espresso-infused 72 percent dark chocolate- covered popcorn -- smells delicious. Dinner for tomorrow night. I do personalized silk screening on the chocolates. We're going to take and dip the Manhattan mix to basically represent the typical hard -- working Manhattan person.Just chow them down.The majority of the ingredients I try my hardest to get at the green market at Union Square.Hello. How are you?It's nice to be able to talk to somebody that's actually growing some of your products. Here you go. I'm going to show you some stuff that I'll probably get kicked out of, like, the Chocolate of the Month Club or something for showing you. Basically, what I'm making here -- this is a ganache that you would be familiar to the soft centers and the little chocolates.I can't believe that I make a living by doing this. It's like living the Willie Wonka dream.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's chocolate.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's chocolate?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's chocolate.
MUSINSKY: One of my dreams in life is to open up a shop that was themed kind of the same way as "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," and you could actually have, like theater, enrolled into the shop, where you could have, like, little Oompa-Oompas (ph) running around. It's kind of the whole theory behind, you know, like, the staying like a child.I always told myself that I never wanted to have to put a tie on and have to go sit behind a cubicle every day from 9:00 to 5:00 because I would just go crazy.This is the order that goes to the Mercer Hotel. These are all -- they use these boxes for their VIP suites.Your autograph hunter. That's for you. Thank you very much.It's difficult to find a passion in life. But if you find it, I think it's definitely something to hold onto, and I think it makes sense to give up whatever you have to give up to be successful with that passion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Our "On the Rise" series has covered many businesses with unique subjects, but rarely has this title seemed so perfect. Meet the deers at the Dancing Deer Bakery in Boston, who take their treats very seriously and whose products are literally on the rise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRISH CARTER, DANCING DEER BAKING COMPANY: Dancing Deer Baking Company, incorporated in 1994. We're a baking company here in Boston, Massachusetts. And we make fresh from scratch, all-natural, really great quality cakes and cookies.We bake to order. Your order comes in, we're going to bake it for you. Up until 2:00 o'clock today, we don't really know what's shipping out the door tomorrow. I'm Trish Carter. And I'm the president and chief executive officer and chief floor sweeper. We started the baking company because we saw an opportunity to make higher-quality food to go with the gourmet coffee trend. This molasses-clove cookie is what we came out with, and we thought it would be, you know, a two-month thing, and it made our company. We've developed a whole line of cookies around it. We've won all sorts of awards, both -- you know, sort of the food industry Oscars. Every day, I would say sort of three quarters of production is devoted to this line of cookies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty ounces of cookies, twenty cookies, individually wrapped chocolate chip.
CARTER: Anyone can make a great cookie. Have a taste. The rest of it is pulling together a team of people that like what they're doing and being able to run the business.This is a different recipe. This is a recipe with raisin (UNINTELLIGIBLE)It's one thing to make a cookie, it's another thing to put them out 52 weeks a year and have them get to the customers in great shape and beautifully packaged.I'm really not happy with that one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that we go back to the chocolate chip cookie shortbread, and we look at size.
CARTER: Can I show you the rest of the bakery and what we do here? This is actually a very small batch for us. It's about 100 cakes. It's blueberry sour cream nut. It's handmade. You know, it's a lot of trouble. It's not the most efficient way to produce it, but it makes the most beautiful cake.We make money. We're growing at a pretty rapid clip. We grew 33 percent this year over last year, and we're shooting for 50 percent this coming year. We think we can be in the $20 million to $50 million range in a two to five-year time range. And we want to do that without compromising anything about who we are. If it stops being fun, we'll get out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, on to fashion that's "On the Rise." First, to shoes that aren't just fashionable but comfortable. Imagine that. And then to an "On the Rise" success story, Triple Five Soul. A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Something I'm blissfully unaware of, the price of being a dedicated follower of fashion. For millions of women, the bill comes due in sore feet crammed into shoes that look good but feel distinctly otherwise, which makes this a good time to tell you about an orthopedic surgeon with a radical idea. This doctor decided that shoes should -- get this -- be comfortable and fashionable at the same time. Now, that's news.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. TARYN ROSE, TARYN ROSE SHOES: ... are shaped like a woman's foot.I'm Dr. Taryn Rose. I'm an orthopedic surgeon who turned into a shoe designer. I make shoes for all different aspects of a woman's life. The philosophy behind a company is I want to be well dressed with a sense of well-being. And a lot of what that includes is comfort while looking great. A lot of people think comfort's not sexy, but I feel that when you're able to be yourself, that's when you're at your sexiest.That's where all of the finishing occurs. All of our manufacturing and design is done in Italy.That's cute.I go there three to four times a year to supervise the design part. I can wear this when I tango. As a young woman who was a resident in orthopedic surgery, I wanted to look fashionable, but I also had to work on my feet 12 to 14 hours a day. So it was really important for me to look good and to feel good at the same time. And when I started shopping for shoes, it was really difficult to find both together. So I decided that I would research the industry, and I ended up starting the business in 1998. The shoes are technically very difficult to put together because there's a full arch support in the footwear. There's a lining called coron (ph), which is a cushioning material that doesn't collapse over time. So all of those factors add to the cost of the shoes, but the consumers are getting more for their money.This is my New York walking shoe.We have three flagship stores in the U.S. -- New York, Beverly Hills and San Jose, California. What I found in meeting the customers in our own retail stores and in our accounts, as they try on the shoes, so often there's that moment where they go, Oh! Oh, my God! Or Wow! And I call it the Taryn Rose moment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, wow! These are wonderful! Oh, those are fabulous!
ROSE: The shoes range from $280 on up to $500 to $800 for a boot.This is our headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. I'm more familiar with the Beverly Hills flow. When I first started the company, I worked out of my house. And we started with $70,000 of initial sales, and five years later, we're up to $16 million, hopefully, $18 million this year.There's certainly some very difficult moments in an entrepreneur's life. You start to question what you've done. But as you get over each hurdle, you get stronger from it. As we say in surgery, that which doesn't kill you will make you stronger. And it's really true, being an entrepreneur.In the end, I fear regret more than I fear failure, so I keep moving forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Fair to say the designing woman you're about to meet is no longer "On the Rise." She's risen big-time since we first met her. Her fashions are now in fashion from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, where Carmella Elke (ph) and Triple Five Soul first got started.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARMELLA ELKE, TRIPLE FIVE SOUL: I started when I was 19. It basically evolved from nothing. I mean, literally nothing. I lived in my store. I had a sewing machine, which was just my art and my livelihood, and I opened the doors to friends. You know, I was making clothes for friends. And I think I remember the first time one of my friends said, Oh, my God, I saw it on someone we don't know. That was such a big thing to, like, see it on someone we didn't know.I realized, Wow, this is a business. You know, I had people waiting for me to sew up stuff, putting it in a box and then taking it overseas to Japan or picking it up for their store over here in Soho, you know? So I was, like, I guess this is a business now. I got to get it together.It's really, like, this universal global streetwear lifestyle. I think when you come in here, it kind of has an art gallery sensibility. It's got what's happening in New York City. It's just really interactive. You can come in, you can see who's deejaying. You can hear the new music that's being played or out there or just on release. You can see the artwork that's being displayed. It just paints a picture of the lifestyle.It's mainstream, but it's still really underground. It's, like, I think we're getting more mainstream only because we're getting out in more stores. We've expanded into Europe. We're really popular in Japan. We have three stores in Japan, and we have a store in Hong Kong.Triple Five Williamsburg.People are amazed by our offices. They're just, like, Wow. The office is really different from the store, but at the same time, there's still that sense of openness. We wanted a space that was open so, like, designers are next to production people, next to salespeople, so everyone kind of understands the language at the company. I think that's what really works well for us, the fact that everyone's involved with everything.I have a really good crew of people and a lot of great managers. I'm not sitting there all night, literally, like, making it happen. I'm confident that they can handle it.I think it's such a cute design that we don't even need the back.It's a lifestyle brand. It's not just hip-hop. The definition of streetwear is basically clothing that has, like, function and utility that you can rock all day long and into the night and feel comfortable and relaxed. I think that's what Triple Five Soul is, if that's an answer.Music is really important. I think music and fashion definitely go hand in hand.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the posse from Stone's Throw Records. We're starting to do a lot of stuff for Stone's Throw, in terms of marketing and promotion. We kind of have, like, these relationships where we flow (ph) people gear.What's everybody wear, double-Xs?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We give them the music, they give us the clothes. It's a good relationship.
ELKE: We're keeping our eye on certain up-and-coming artists. But we just approach them and they're, like, really psyched to work with us.I'm a deejay, aspiring deejay. Now I'm just looking into other creative projects, like I'm deejaying. I'd love to get some Triple Five Soul sounds going on and Triple Five Soul homewear or -- and then me, personally, I'm working on outside creative projects just for myself because it's, like, about that renaissance time of creating again and not trying to get too business-minded all the time or I'll go crazy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT and "On the Rise," high technology "On the Rise" with the I-Pod (ph) deejays.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Finally from us tonight: The kind of guys who back in my high school -- and maybe yours, too -- back in those days might have been running the AV cart. Now they're pretty cool. The difference? Forty years ago we had Bell and Howells. Forty years later, they have I-Pods.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW: Normally deejays (UNINTELLIGIBLE) vinyl or CDs, and we use I-Pods.
ANDREW: Which are MP3 players. They're very small, the size of a deck of cards.
ANDREW: Hi, I'm Andrew.
ANDREW: And I'm Andrew.
ANDREW: And we're Andrew Andrew. That's the name of our company.
ANDREW: It's cued up now, so when you're ready, press play.
ANDREW: I-Party is a chance for anyone who comes to the club or the lounge to become a deejay.
ANDREW: Ready, one...
ANDREW: Basically, you take a number. And then when we call your number on the red sign above the bar, you come up and we let you deejay.
ANDREW: I'll do it.
ANDREW: That's your cue...
ANDREW: At I-party, we don't play the music, you play the music.ANDREW: So whenever you're ready, press play and move that over.
ANDREW: Andrew Andrew publishes a weekly playlist, so you can, like, look over and decide what songs you want to play. It changes, you know, weekly. We'll take some off and we'll add some new songs.
ANDREW: Do you have any questions?
ANDREW: There's different types of people that go to I-party. There's a lot of music heads, people that really know music. And then there's also some people that are very tech-savvy and that are more into the technological aspect of it.
ANDREW: Have you used an I-Pod before?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, a little bit. Not that much.ANDREW: Oh, good. You look like you're kind of a tech-savvy gal.
ANDREW: There's people that come in that have no idea what MP3s are and they have no idea how to deejay. And we catch them off guard. And they're usually the best people to deejay, deejay or, you know, as some people like to say, MP3-jay.
ANDREW: The true beauty of using I-Pods is to deejays -- imagine wanting to deejay and taking all of this with you in a car...
ANDREW: In a cab, in New York City in a cab. When we deejay with I-Pods, all we have to take is this.
ANDREW: A lot of people do get the impression that what we do is a lot easier than deejaying. It's actually a lot more intense than deejaying because we have to teach someone new every seven minutes how to deejay.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Seven minutes.
ANDREW: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Roughly, how many songs is that?
ANDREW: One way to tell that they're having a good time is that they'll start, like, crowding around the deejay. Like, they'll actually be in a line. They can't wait to get on. Dancing. Dancing is a good sign. They stop deejaying, their seven minutes is up, and they immediately go back for another number. And when they get really drunk, that's always a good sign, too.
ANDREW: We're having a party. We're down here generating interest in I-party tonight. We have a weekly party in New York that we've been doing for about a year.
ANDREW: We see I-party possibly going to other cities.
ANDREW: You come in, you get a drink, you take a number.
ANDREW: Today is the first day that we're going to try and do it here in Miami.
ANDREW: The I-Pods have about a thousand songs on them, and what happens is, you deejay.
ANDREW: We have a big red timer.
ANDREW: It's crazy. It's like a game show.
ANDREW: It's kind of like karaoke.
ANDREW: It's a branding thing. We -- for, like, three years, we've dressed -- we've matched every day for three years.
ANDREW: A hundred years from now, if there are still clubs, if there are still deejays, they will be using MP3s. They will not be using vinyl turntables.
ANDREW: Unless it's MP5s.
ANDREW: MP6.
ANDREW: MP11.
ANDREW: MP208.
ANDREW: I think it's doing really well. It seems like the right people are here. I mean...
ANDREW: Yes, I think it's going pretty well.(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And that's it for this "On the Rise" edition of NEWSNIGHT. We hope you enjoyed the program and are having a wonderful holiday. We'll see you soon. Good night from all of us here at NEWSNIGHT.
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Aired January 1, 2004 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again and happy holidays.This year as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight and 100 years since Henry Ford had a better idea about building cars we were struck by how cool it must have been to be present at the creation.By all accounts the Henry Ford's and the Orville Wright's and the George Eastman's of the time had an enthusiasm for what they were doing that was infectious to the point of contagion. They were young men in a hurry and that is rarely a dull thing to watch.Lately on the program we've been profiling budding entrepreneurs, young men and young women in a hurry or, as we've been calling them, "On the Rise." Are they the Ford's of our future or the Edison's or the Warren Buffet's?Do they share the same enthusiasm and drive and imagination? You bet they do. And do their adventures make for great stories? We think so but they're the real sales people here and we put them all together tonight for an hour to make the case. We hope you'll enjoy it, first though a quick look at the day's news.
(NEWSBREAK)
BROWN: We call these segments "On the Rise" and mostly we mean that in a figurative sense, companies that are up and coming, doing something new and interesting.But we begin tonight with a company that's on the rise in the literal sense as well. It's called Slingshot Kite boarding and it's getting people to rise far above the water or the snow in a new sport for the intrepid among us.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)UNIDENTIFIED
MALE: It's so much fun, so much lift.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The kites are absolutely insane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kite boarding is pretty innovative. It's such a diverse sport.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These need to be in the water and in the snow.
JOHN DOYLE, BOARD DESIGNER: Slingshot is a company that produces kite boards, accessories, kites, kite boards and everything to do with kiting.
TONY LOGOSZ, CHIEF DESIGNER, CO-FOUNDER: First you wear a harness around your waist. The kite generates so much power that you can't hold onto all that power without actually being attached to it. You have your board and you have your control bar which steers the kite. It goes from your bar or lines up to your kite and you have your kite in the sky and the kite is big. The average kite is 13 to 15 meters. That's pretty much kite boarding in a nutshell.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Going to launch me?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which one (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Way out there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Slingshot is four bros that came together.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We started this company because we love the sport and we thought we could build a better product than anyone else out there.
DOYLE: We had four in-house R&D people. It's a team effort on designing. Tony, he does all the kites.It's going to have the good bottom in the new graphics.And I do a lot of the foot strapping pads and handles and the fins. When I get ideas I draw the templates and shape them out of foam. Things are constantly being invented and upgraded and evolving. Then I get bored.
JEFF LOGOSZ: We started this business in the bedroom in my house for the first two months because we didn't have an office space available. Chris, I know you're going to Fiji on Friday.
C. LOGOSZ: We're taking four of the top team guys and finishing up on the video and the rest of the photos.
J. LOGOSZ: Part of our strategy was because we're the new kids on the block was to be first in our own backyard. We consider our own backyard the U.S.
CHRIS WYMAN: At first it was, okay, can we establish a brand? Can we make a brand work, have this different image and this quality product that's like no one else out there?
J. LOGOSZ: We started out at 300 percent growth and then we went down to 200 percent growth a year and this year it's finally getting nice because we're down into double digit growth which is 50 percent growth and that's where it's getting more manageable. We all went through that athletic stage and now that we're getting older this is a great venue to give opportunity back to kids and through the sport especially too.
WYMAN: We've had the entire team in town and we're shooting off of the next year's 2004 product. Everybody that I bring on the team is the new upcoming most bad-ass kid in the future. They've got a little attitude about themselves. They've got a good look and they have their own riding style.
DOYLE: It's fun being at the beginning level of a sport. That way you can evolve with it. Here you've got something brand new that's just in constant evolution.WYMAN: I'm sure the next mission statement is, okay, how much money can we make doing this but we still got to have fun. The bottom line is we got to have fun while we're doing it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead on this special "On the Rise" edition of NEWSNIGHT he's got an outlaw's name but a business that's making money the old-fashioned way. You'll meet Jesse James and his motorcycles.And, a drink with a kick and the energetic young man who invented it.From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: So what's in a name? Ask the guy who's turning out the kind of motorcycles that every James Dean wannabe in Hollywood seems to want these days who brings a sort of Wild West spirit to it all, something he just may have gotten from a renegade ancestor who shares his name.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JESSE JAMES: My name is Jesse James. This is West Coast Choppers. I build motorcycles. I kind of build them, every one of them like I'm building it for myself. It's hard for me to let them go which means that I'm pouring a lot into it, you know. I'm doing everything just the way I like it and I guess, you know, people think that's cool.We make our own chassis, tanks, fenders, front end, exhaust, wheels, you know, everything but the motor and transmission we make right in this shop here. This is where I work up here. This is like kind of where I do my thing. This is like a blank sheet of canvass where I start.I used to be a bodyguard. You know one day I came home and said, you know what, I really want to do something I love and I never thought this would ever pay my bills. I rented a little corner of a friend of mine's shop, which was about half the size of a garage and I remember like two days after I was there two of my friends came in, Jim and Fast Eddy and I remember exactly what they said. He'll be out of business in a month.My first clients were a lot of just friends and acquaintances until like people I've never met or seen face-to-face would like send me a check. I did a bike for Shaq, Keanu Reeves, Goldberg, Tony Martin from the Falcons and then just a bunch of other people with lots of money.Kid Rock and I have actually went back and forth for about a year and we've never really hooked up until finally he came down to see the shop when someone that walks in here never been here and doesn't really know what to expect it's like Willy Wonka and the motorcycle factory.
KID ROCK: Every time you see a bad ass chopper pull up, everyone's going is that a Jesse James? Is that a Jesse James? His name is getting out there. It's all over man. He's like a mini rock star at this point.
JAMES: I get like 20 people a day come in and asking how much it is to build them a bike. I'd say they average between $3,000 if I really like you to like $125,000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can buy a brand new Harley for $16,000. That's a down payment on one of these.
JAMES: Bill Harley and Willie Davidson aren't actually out there making the gas tanks for their bikes or they're not actually out there bending pipes and designing wheels and stuff like that. It's just a name, you know.If someone walks in that door with $100,000 tomorrow and wants a Jesse James bike, Jesse James is actually going to be making it. It takes a few weeks but that's so fulfilling and then what even takes it a step further is when you could jump on it and I'm going down the freeway and I feel the acceleration and the way the bike works and then I can look down and see my reflection in something that I made. How many people can say that?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Okay, as brand names go it isn't exactly Coke or Pepsi, not yet at least but ask the young makers of this new soft drink and they'll tell you the troops in Kuwait asked for it before heading into Iraq. It's got a ton of caffeine so it's making a splash with another group of young people who also need to stay wide awake but for admittedly less weighty reasons. And, yes, the name's a little strange but it has moxie.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, I'm Hobie Buford (ph) and these are the headquarters for Bawls Guarana.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bawls Guarana, may I help you?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The product is basically a high caffeine soft drink. There are no vitamins or minerals. It won't make you healthy. It will just keep you up, up, up, up. The name Bawls stands for Brazilian American Wildlife Society. Guarana only grows on shore vines so (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Rain Forest you can't get Guarana.The Guarana berry is very similar to the coffee bean. It contains a lot of caffeine. That's what we make the soft drink with. It contains about triple the caffeine of Coca Cola.And this is my office here. When I started this company I was 23 years old. I did the concept as independent study my senior year at Cornell University and after that I had to get a job so I put the business plans sort of in action.The most challenging part of -- really the whole thing of course is getting the financing. I went to the banks just about getting a loan. They said maybe he's selling more Bawls than -- he's making more money off Bawls than he is off (UNINTELLIGIBLE).We've actually been pretty lucky. We've either doubled sales or more every year since we started. Luckily we found a very strong niche within the computer gaming industry. You're talking about a market that's generated more sales than movies last year so it's really a great market to be a part of. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Manhattan and what we have here tonight is a LAN party.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In order to play the games for so long they need to stay up. They need to stay awake. Bawls allows them to do that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How many is that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four Bawls I had tonight. That doesn't sound right but that's a lot of caffeine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're now distributing in 31 states. Our facilities are in Newark, New Jersey, St. Louis, Missouri and Los Angeles, California.We're here at our bottling facility here in Hillside, New Jersey where we bottle all our Bawls Guarana. We'll produce just over a half million cases this year. The bottles are coming from Germany. The caps come from Ecuador and the guarana comes from Brazil.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't expect to get any shut eye. In fact, don't even expect to blink. A special non-slip bottle for when your hands start shaking. I can't tell you the number of people who said this will never work and that you're wasting your time so I think that's really just something you really have to believe in yourself.
UNIDENTIFIED
FEMALE: I love Bawls. I really do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up on NEWSNIGHT "On the Rise" we'll bring in some music and the young woman who gives new meaning to the term one man, make that one woman band.And then a young man who's making his mark in music that his parents or grandparents might find appealing.From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: The young woman you're about to meet was pulling in a comfortable income engineering software for a big computer company, top of the world at a young age only that's not what she wanted. What she wanted was to make music and now she does. We caught up with her as she was beginning her tour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VIENNA TENG: My name is Vienna Teng. I'm a singer, a songwriter and pianist hoping to go all over the country in the next few months in support of my debut CD which is called Waking Hour.I started singing before I could talk and so I have these like nonsensical syllables in the songs I was singing but like I would be dead on in terms of the pitch.A lot of the venues I'm playing right now are small clubs or coffee houses. Vienna was the name that I came up with when I was a kid. I really liked the name of the city and I also knew that there was a thriving music scene there especially in the classical period.When the CD came out I just felt like it would be a nice gesture to that 12-year-old me that I was keeping that name.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You were great on Letterman.
TENG: Oh, thank you.
DAVID LETTERMAN: I've heard the entire CD. There's not a dud on this.
TENG: Being on Letterman it was sort of surreal. Here I am running, you know, working out of my kitchen and suddenly being thrust into, you know, this nice hotel in New York and taking the limo to the studio and all that. It was sort of a Cinderella story.
LETTERMAN: Vienna Teng everybody.
TENG: I spend a lot of the time during the day at home. I'm my own booking agent for the most part, answering e-mail, making phone calls. It's not my favorite part of the job. The biography, a couple of press quotes, the cool thing about this age of computer development is that I can basically run my whole operation out of my kitchen. I'm just paying my dues for now.In the middle I do find a bit of time to do some writing at my piano and work on some new songs. The music is all in my head. Something is going on there. I moved onto one of the busiest streets in San Francisco (UNINTELLIGIBLE).When I first moved here I didn't really have -- I didn't have a piano yet. I had developed also trying to play the guitar and I can't really play guitar. So, I was being lazy and trying to think of all the one finger chords. You know sliding my finger. There is a guitar song but I'm going to spare you and play it on the piano.I wanted to write my own songs and so you kind of have to surround yourself with all sorts of other things. I used to be a software engineer until recently, majored in computer science. I think that if I had studied music all the time I would probably write a lot less.If I put my own CD in the player and was really impressed or moved by my own music I think that would be success.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Since we first reported this story, Vienna Teng has hired a management team so she no longer has to book her own gigs. It's a start.Moving on think of this segment as musical medley, here now the voice of a new generation one that also brings alive the memory of an old generation and what a voice it is. We take you to the fabulous Plaza Hotel where the show is about to start.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen the world famous Oak Room is proud to present
(UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a jazz piano player and singer. I started playing when I was three, playing the piano when I was three and some of my biggest influences when I was about five years old were boogie-woogie piano players like Jerry Lee Lewis that kind of style.Around like 12 or 13 I started playing clubs here in the city. It was cool. I mean I wasn't even allowed -- technically allowed to set foot in the place, you know, because I wasn't legal and I don't think I -- I'm still not. Most of the time I don't get nervous, you know, and I just kind of think about the music and as soon as I hit the piano I'm in another world and the audience becomes a separate thing.As much as I want to communicate with them and I talk to them and try and interact...The word is the.Before I went in to record the CD I met with Phil Ramon (ph) a number of times. We both decided that, you know, it had to be -- no matter what it was it had to be honest and it had to be musically representative of where I am right now at 19.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most important thing is the genuineness. He's totally what you see is what you get.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I started writing when I was nine and then one day I just asked my mother if she would write lyrics. Since then we've been writing music together. I wrote the music and she'd write the lyrics.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In this past year he started to write the lyrics himself which was very exciting for him because he never thought he would do the lyrics. He was always musical starting that I noticed was age three.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm just practicing up for the Metronome. I have a certain tempo right like this. It's like playing with a band.We're in my room now at home in Manhattan where I grew up. Ella Fitzgerald and Count Bassie, a lot of Nat King Cole, this is all Sinatra, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Don't show the Cliff Notes, some family friends, Sammy Davis, Jr. This was one with me and Tony Bennett and me and Jennifer Love Hewitt. That, never mind. My father he was a very important person to me. When he first passed away I remember I wrote songs right after and, you know, I guess it was kind of an outlet for me. He's a big part of who I am. Anything I do he's kind of a part of.I think, you know, to a certain extent you're a product of your influences and then there's the other half of it that you know you try and say something new, be innovative. That's what jazz to me means.My focus is to just play for people who want to listen whether they're young, whether they're old. I'd love to have everybody as an audience. Hopefully, one day maybe I will.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, "On the Rise" turns to food and beverage, first a man who likes chocolate. I mean he really likes chocolate.And then the bakery that will bake to order so that you don't have to.Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Some people want to be the next Bill Gates or the next Warren Buffett. The man you're about to meet wants something simpler, something sweeter. He wants to be the next Willie Wonka.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD MUSINSKY, RICARD CHOCOLAT: You guys want some chocolate?Hello. My name is Richard Musinsky (ph), owner, executive chef, pastry chef of Ricard Chocolat. I do a whole different slew of gourmet, high-end, 100 percent organic products. I started my business in '99, so coming up, maybe, like, three or four years now. I don't have anyone in this with me, so I'm led up to creating everything, from the packaging to the ganache flavors to the marketing to the PR, cold calling, whatever it is.This is Richard from Ricard Chocolat calling.I'm not here to just have another product that is there for people to indulge in. Americans, they haven't really got a great education when it comes to chocolate. To give you a little bit of an idea of what I do, the espresso-infused 72 percent dark chocolate- covered popcorn -- smells delicious. Dinner for tomorrow night. I do personalized silk screening on the chocolates. We're going to take and dip the Manhattan mix to basically represent the typical hard -- working Manhattan person.Just chow them down.The majority of the ingredients I try my hardest to get at the green market at Union Square.Hello. How are you?It's nice to be able to talk to somebody that's actually growing some of your products. Here you go. I'm going to show you some stuff that I'll probably get kicked out of, like, the Chocolate of the Month Club or something for showing you. Basically, what I'm making here -- this is a ganache that you would be familiar to the soft centers and the little chocolates.I can't believe that I make a living by doing this. It's like living the Willie Wonka dream.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's chocolate.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's chocolate?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's chocolate.
MUSINSKY: One of my dreams in life is to open up a shop that was themed kind of the same way as "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," and you could actually have, like theater, enrolled into the shop, where you could have, like, little Oompa-Oompas (ph) running around. It's kind of the whole theory behind, you know, like, the staying like a child.I always told myself that I never wanted to have to put a tie on and have to go sit behind a cubicle every day from 9:00 to 5:00 because I would just go crazy.This is the order that goes to the Mercer Hotel. These are all -- they use these boxes for their VIP suites.Your autograph hunter. That's for you. Thank you very much.It's difficult to find a passion in life. But if you find it, I think it's definitely something to hold onto, and I think it makes sense to give up whatever you have to give up to be successful with that passion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Our "On the Rise" series has covered many businesses with unique subjects, but rarely has this title seemed so perfect. Meet the deers at the Dancing Deer Bakery in Boston, who take their treats very seriously and whose products are literally on the rise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRISH CARTER, DANCING DEER BAKING COMPANY: Dancing Deer Baking Company, incorporated in 1994. We're a baking company here in Boston, Massachusetts. And we make fresh from scratch, all-natural, really great quality cakes and cookies.We bake to order. Your order comes in, we're going to bake it for you. Up until 2:00 o'clock today, we don't really know what's shipping out the door tomorrow. I'm Trish Carter. And I'm the president and chief executive officer and chief floor sweeper. We started the baking company because we saw an opportunity to make higher-quality food to go with the gourmet coffee trend. This molasses-clove cookie is what we came out with, and we thought it would be, you know, a two-month thing, and it made our company. We've developed a whole line of cookies around it. We've won all sorts of awards, both -- you know, sort of the food industry Oscars. Every day, I would say sort of three quarters of production is devoted to this line of cookies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty ounces of cookies, twenty cookies, individually wrapped chocolate chip.
CARTER: Anyone can make a great cookie. Have a taste. The rest of it is pulling together a team of people that like what they're doing and being able to run the business.This is a different recipe. This is a recipe with raisin (UNINTELLIGIBLE)It's one thing to make a cookie, it's another thing to put them out 52 weeks a year and have them get to the customers in great shape and beautifully packaged.I'm really not happy with that one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that we go back to the chocolate chip cookie shortbread, and we look at size.
CARTER: Can I show you the rest of the bakery and what we do here? This is actually a very small batch for us. It's about 100 cakes. It's blueberry sour cream nut. It's handmade. You know, it's a lot of trouble. It's not the most efficient way to produce it, but it makes the most beautiful cake.We make money. We're growing at a pretty rapid clip. We grew 33 percent this year over last year, and we're shooting for 50 percent this coming year. We think we can be in the $20 million to $50 million range in a two to five-year time range. And we want to do that without compromising anything about who we are. If it stops being fun, we'll get out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, on to fashion that's "On the Rise." First, to shoes that aren't just fashionable but comfortable. Imagine that. And then to an "On the Rise" success story, Triple Five Soul. A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Something I'm blissfully unaware of, the price of being a dedicated follower of fashion. For millions of women, the bill comes due in sore feet crammed into shoes that look good but feel distinctly otherwise, which makes this a good time to tell you about an orthopedic surgeon with a radical idea. This doctor decided that shoes should -- get this -- be comfortable and fashionable at the same time. Now, that's news.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. TARYN ROSE, TARYN ROSE SHOES: ... are shaped like a woman's foot.I'm Dr. Taryn Rose. I'm an orthopedic surgeon who turned into a shoe designer. I make shoes for all different aspects of a woman's life. The philosophy behind a company is I want to be well dressed with a sense of well-being. And a lot of what that includes is comfort while looking great. A lot of people think comfort's not sexy, but I feel that when you're able to be yourself, that's when you're at your sexiest.That's where all of the finishing occurs. All of our manufacturing and design is done in Italy.That's cute.I go there three to four times a year to supervise the design part. I can wear this when I tango. As a young woman who was a resident in orthopedic surgery, I wanted to look fashionable, but I also had to work on my feet 12 to 14 hours a day. So it was really important for me to look good and to feel good at the same time. And when I started shopping for shoes, it was really difficult to find both together. So I decided that I would research the industry, and I ended up starting the business in 1998. The shoes are technically very difficult to put together because there's a full arch support in the footwear. There's a lining called coron (ph), which is a cushioning material that doesn't collapse over time. So all of those factors add to the cost of the shoes, but the consumers are getting more for their money.This is my New York walking shoe.We have three flagship stores in the U.S. -- New York, Beverly Hills and San Jose, California. What I found in meeting the customers in our own retail stores and in our accounts, as they try on the shoes, so often there's that moment where they go, Oh! Oh, my God! Or Wow! And I call it the Taryn Rose moment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, wow! These are wonderful! Oh, those are fabulous!
ROSE: The shoes range from $280 on up to $500 to $800 for a boot.This is our headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. I'm more familiar with the Beverly Hills flow. When I first started the company, I worked out of my house. And we started with $70,000 of initial sales, and five years later, we're up to $16 million, hopefully, $18 million this year.There's certainly some very difficult moments in an entrepreneur's life. You start to question what you've done. But as you get over each hurdle, you get stronger from it. As we say in surgery, that which doesn't kill you will make you stronger. And it's really true, being an entrepreneur.In the end, I fear regret more than I fear failure, so I keep moving forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Fair to say the designing woman you're about to meet is no longer "On the Rise." She's risen big-time since we first met her. Her fashions are now in fashion from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, where Carmella Elke (ph) and Triple Five Soul first got started.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARMELLA ELKE, TRIPLE FIVE SOUL: I started when I was 19. It basically evolved from nothing. I mean, literally nothing. I lived in my store. I had a sewing machine, which was just my art and my livelihood, and I opened the doors to friends. You know, I was making clothes for friends. And I think I remember the first time one of my friends said, Oh, my God, I saw it on someone we don't know. That was such a big thing to, like, see it on someone we didn't know.I realized, Wow, this is a business. You know, I had people waiting for me to sew up stuff, putting it in a box and then taking it overseas to Japan or picking it up for their store over here in Soho, you know? So I was, like, I guess this is a business now. I got to get it together.It's really, like, this universal global streetwear lifestyle. I think when you come in here, it kind of has an art gallery sensibility. It's got what's happening in New York City. It's just really interactive. You can come in, you can see who's deejaying. You can hear the new music that's being played or out there or just on release. You can see the artwork that's being displayed. It just paints a picture of the lifestyle.It's mainstream, but it's still really underground. It's, like, I think we're getting more mainstream only because we're getting out in more stores. We've expanded into Europe. We're really popular in Japan. We have three stores in Japan, and we have a store in Hong Kong.Triple Five Williamsburg.People are amazed by our offices. They're just, like, Wow. The office is really different from the store, but at the same time, there's still that sense of openness. We wanted a space that was open so, like, designers are next to production people, next to salespeople, so everyone kind of understands the language at the company. I think that's what really works well for us, the fact that everyone's involved with everything.I have a really good crew of people and a lot of great managers. I'm not sitting there all night, literally, like, making it happen. I'm confident that they can handle it.I think it's such a cute design that we don't even need the back.It's a lifestyle brand. It's not just hip-hop. The definition of streetwear is basically clothing that has, like, function and utility that you can rock all day long and into the night and feel comfortable and relaxed. I think that's what Triple Five Soul is, if that's an answer.Music is really important. I think music and fashion definitely go hand in hand.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the posse from Stone's Throw Records. We're starting to do a lot of stuff for Stone's Throw, in terms of marketing and promotion. We kind of have, like, these relationships where we flow (ph) people gear.What's everybody wear, double-Xs?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We give them the music, they give us the clothes. It's a good relationship.
ELKE: We're keeping our eye on certain up-and-coming artists. But we just approach them and they're, like, really psyched to work with us.I'm a deejay, aspiring deejay. Now I'm just looking into other creative projects, like I'm deejaying. I'd love to get some Triple Five Soul sounds going on and Triple Five Soul homewear or -- and then me, personally, I'm working on outside creative projects just for myself because it's, like, about that renaissance time of creating again and not trying to get too business-minded all the time or I'll go crazy.
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BROWN: Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT and "On the Rise," high technology "On the Rise" with the I-Pod (ph) deejays.
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BROWN: Finally from us tonight: The kind of guys who back in my high school -- and maybe yours, too -- back in those days might have been running the AV cart. Now they're pretty cool. The difference? Forty years ago we had Bell and Howells. Forty years later, they have I-Pods.
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ANDREW: Normally deejays (UNINTELLIGIBLE) vinyl or CDs, and we use I-Pods.
ANDREW: Which are MP3 players. They're very small, the size of a deck of cards.
ANDREW: Hi, I'm Andrew.
ANDREW: And I'm Andrew.
ANDREW: And we're Andrew Andrew. That's the name of our company.
ANDREW: It's cued up now, so when you're ready, press play.
ANDREW: I-Party is a chance for anyone who comes to the club or the lounge to become a deejay.
ANDREW: Ready, one...
ANDREW: Basically, you take a number. And then when we call your number on the red sign above the bar, you come up and we let you deejay.
ANDREW: I'll do it.
ANDREW: That's your cue...
ANDREW: At I-party, we don't play the music, you play the music.ANDREW: So whenever you're ready, press play and move that over.
ANDREW: Andrew Andrew publishes a weekly playlist, so you can, like, look over and decide what songs you want to play. It changes, you know, weekly. We'll take some off and we'll add some new songs.
ANDREW: Do you have any questions?
ANDREW: There's different types of people that go to I-party. There's a lot of music heads, people that really know music. And then there's also some people that are very tech-savvy and that are more into the technological aspect of it.
ANDREW: Have you used an I-Pod before?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, a little bit. Not that much.ANDREW: Oh, good. You look like you're kind of a tech-savvy gal.
ANDREW: There's people that come in that have no idea what MP3s are and they have no idea how to deejay. And we catch them off guard. And they're usually the best people to deejay, deejay or, you know, as some people like to say, MP3-jay.
ANDREW: The true beauty of using I-Pods is to deejays -- imagine wanting to deejay and taking all of this with you in a car...
ANDREW: In a cab, in New York City in a cab. When we deejay with I-Pods, all we have to take is this.
ANDREW: A lot of people do get the impression that what we do is a lot easier than deejaying. It's actually a lot more intense than deejaying because we have to teach someone new every seven minutes how to deejay.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Seven minutes.
ANDREW: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Roughly, how many songs is that?
ANDREW: One way to tell that they're having a good time is that they'll start, like, crowding around the deejay. Like, they'll actually be in a line. They can't wait to get on. Dancing. Dancing is a good sign. They stop deejaying, their seven minutes is up, and they immediately go back for another number. And when they get really drunk, that's always a good sign, too.
ANDREW: We're having a party. We're down here generating interest in I-party tonight. We have a weekly party in New York that we've been doing for about a year.
ANDREW: We see I-party possibly going to other cities.
ANDREW: You come in, you get a drink, you take a number.
ANDREW: Today is the first day that we're going to try and do it here in Miami.
ANDREW: The I-Pods have about a thousand songs on them, and what happens is, you deejay.
ANDREW: We have a big red timer.
ANDREW: It's crazy. It's like a game show.
ANDREW: It's kind of like karaoke.
ANDREW: It's a branding thing. We -- for, like, three years, we've dressed -- we've matched every day for three years.
ANDREW: A hundred years from now, if there are still clubs, if there are still deejays, they will be using MP3s. They will not be using vinyl turntables.
ANDREW: Unless it's MP5s.
ANDREW: MP6.
ANDREW: MP11.
ANDREW: MP208.
ANDREW: I think it's doing really well. It seems like the right people are here. I mean...
ANDREW: Yes, I think it's going pretty well.(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And that's it for this "On the Rise" edition of NEWSNIGHT. We hope you enjoyed the program and are having a wonderful holiday. We'll see you soon. Good night from all of us here at NEWSNIGHT.
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