EVH

There are moments of certain projects that are so distinct and pivotal that you simply remember them lifelong. I believe it was in early 2008 on a “lazy” Friday afternoon. It was very quiet around the studio and we were going to close the shop a bit earlier. All of a sudden, like lightning, inspiration struck. And I’m thinking “Why does Eddie Van Halen not have his own line of merchandising? I mean, many of us fans have created our own striped sneakers over the years. There’s got to be a market if it is well designed.” I turned my iMac back on, searched for a red pair of high-top Converse sneakers online, and began to apply a rudimentary classic black-and-white striped pattern onto the two shoes. The idea was to simply get the basic concept out of my head and onto paper, well, the screen of my tired computer. Things came together very quickly and at the end of the afternoon I emailed a few Jpgs to my confidant who worked with Eddie (and by now is part owner of the brand after Ed’s passing btw). He immediately was very excited and told me that he would forward the images to Eddie over the weekend. The following Monday I got word that ‘it is a GO!’ Obviously, it wasn’t as easy as this, lots of internal deals and agreements needed to be fleshed out with a merchandising company, but the fact that the boss gave the green light was already a big +!

In the coming weeks, we started conceptualizing ideas and discussing what type of products we wanted to produce. There were obvious choices, such as t-shirts, hoodies, bandanas, and caps. And of course, the line of sneakers. Further, we added flip-flops, neckties, beanies, and a variety of other accessories. Creatively we decided to base the entire line on Eddie’s famous striped design. There are black/white/red, black/white, and yellow/black themes.

For several years to come, we helped establish Ed’s brand and it truly was a dream come true to be part of such a business from day one.