In our final installment of our three part interview with Rick Williams & Roland Coit of Burn Rubber, the two talk about how they turned Burn Rubber into what seems like an overnight celebrity! They also talk about what’s next for the shop.

WHUTUPDOE!: Everyone is very aware of where Burn Rubber came from, to the superstar status you guys have it now. What was that process?

Rick- The way I look at it is like this: With everything that we do, you have not

‘cause you ask not, man. You just can’t be scared to ask and that’s the way I see it. When we first got here we were talking about getting a New Era account. We talked to the guy and we just kept talking to him. [Then] we got the Dilla watch. No one’s think about doing stuff like that and that’s what sets me and Ro apart from everybody. ‘Cause that’s how we think. We don’t wanna do things like everybody else. So we’re in Michigan and we feel like why aren’t we getting the same recognition as Undefeated and DQM is getting? Why aren’t we being looked at as one of the premier sneaker boutiques? We selling the same product. So, we kinda take it upon ourselves to give the Midwest love. People only talk about [sneaker boutiques] in L.A. and New York so we just felt like, we’re doing things on the same level. We’re confident that what we have is our brand and our brand is something that’s important. So that’s why we are able to talk to New Era, Toy Watch, Leroy Jenkins, 10 Deep and these other companies that we do collaborations with.

And, Ro was born a superstar. *laughs*

Ro- It’s about a lot of people try to jump to levels like, “I’m starting a clothing line now. I just did my first drawing yesterday and it’s like 10 times better than 10 Deep clothes,” and it’s like a lot more that goes into that. “How you get yo New Era account?” And I’m like, “Dog, you gotta crawl before you walk.” You can’t just call New Era like you wanna hat! They gonna look at you like you stupid. It’s a process. You gotta do certain things on your own to make people want to do business with you. Like I said, everything we gon’ do, we gon’ do it. If we say we want a t-shirt and we want it to be pink and green and yellow and everybody like, “That’s the worst colors in the world, why would you do it?” I’ll say, “Rick, you cool with doing the t-shirt pink, green and yellow? He’ll say, “Let’s do it!” And then when it come out and sell, people are like, “I told ya’ll should have did it in pink, green and yellow.” And I’m like, “Man, y’all was the FIRST ones to tell us we shouldn’t have did it.” But the thing is, once you believe in something [do it]. Even if we wouldn’t have sold one shirt, I would have been straight with it.

Rick - We got this. You didn’t put no money up. We the ones who gotta eat that, so it’s all good. I feel like we grew into that too ’cause at first we was listening to people. We still listen to people. You told us something, we’ll listen. But we’ve taken people’s advice; some of our boys and then we sitting on something and we’d get that bad taste in our mouth like, “We didn’t even want that joint.” That’s why now it’s like me and Ro are in this together and we’re the ones who are gonna have to fight to get out of that hole that we dig. So now it’s like if he not feeling it and I’m not feeling it then it’s a wrap.

Ro- It’s a process, man. You gotta crawl before you can walk. You gotta do good business. You gotta treat people with respect. You gotta be your own person. You gotta bring something to the table. That’s the majority of it. We go out to Vegas and we talk to a million people. Dudes from Leaders are like, “Those are some fly dudes. They name buzzing”. First thing they say like, “Yo, we both [from the] Midwest, we can both make stuff pop, let’s do something together,” and it builds from there. It was relationships and stuff like that. Some people just are gonna come in the game and do this and just be like bam. But that’s like one in a million.

They appointed us to be a trend setter. – Rick Williams

WHUTUPDOE!: So what’s next for Burn Rubber?

Rick- We’re really focusing on our private label stuff. We’re trying to develop the quality and the uniqueness of the Burn Rubber clothing line – the house brand. And then we definitely got other collaborations coming up. We just trying to keep things fresh, keep things moving.

Ro- And keep trying to stay one step ahead of everybody else. And the crazy thing is that we don’t even really have to try. We’re constantly calling each other like, “I think we should do this to the store.” Or I think we should do this. Or what do you think we should think about this. And that’s the problem, a lot of people are going to wait ‘til they see a skateboard in our store then they’ll say, “Oh we should put skateboards in our store.” Or, they got G shocks over at Burn Rubber [we should get some, too]. Our thing is that we bout to get some G shocks. I don’t care if y’all don’t like them.

Rick- Our thing is that I like G-Shocks and we had G-Shocks when we were younger; let’s do some G-Shocks. And now they’re crack.

Ro- There wasn’t nobody thinking about G-Shocks. Nobody. Ain’t nobody thinking about a good amount of certain stuff we got. A lot of people weren’t even thinking about G -Shocks but Rick had a couple and I always asked him like, “That’s cold, where did you get that yellow G-Shock from?” And at this point we had never really did accessories. The only accessories we had was hats.

Rick- We didn’t meet nobody for this either. We just started looking. I like called four people in corporate over at Casio.

Ro- Yup, and two days later we had some G-Shocks. And the day after that they was all gone.

Rick- How Ro just explained about how the G-Shocks came about is the same way the New Era’s came about and. It’s the same way. I remember it was a time like I’m done thinking. We were like, “Man, I think people will like this.” And we do that to a certain extent. But for the most part, if we don’t like it then we are not going to bring it in here because Burn Rubber is an extension of Rick and Ro. So if it’s not fresh to us, it’s not going to be hot.

Ro- People hit us up like, “Man, I know y’all getting that such and such shirt.” And I be like aight, I really don’t like it. It’s some stuff we brought in here that we particularly didn’t like that we knew would sale, like a couple of these fusions. But for the most part we see something on the line sheet and we would see something about it, or like whatever would have something on it. One clothing line, Mishka, a lot of they stuff to me was alright. I thought it was dope. I thought it was kinda weird in a sense. So Rick started paying attention and he was like, “What’s that upside down cross mean?” I’m like, “I don’t know [but] it’s a dope shirt!” And he be like, “What does that shirt with the skulls and such and such oozing out of it and this going on?” And I’m like man I don’t know. It’s a dope shirt and I think it will sale. And he be like, “Why is this inverted and why is that a five star? I don’t think we should mess with it no more.” And after that I was like, “Aight cool, we just won’t.” Then people would come in and be like man I know y’all got that Mishka shirt. So in a sense, not on some ego [stuff], well it’s not really ego but the position that we in as far as a retailer… in a sense you decide what your customer is gonna like.

Customer in the store – Kinda like a trendsetter.

Ro – Yeah!

Rick- They appointed up to be a trend setter. We put ourselves in business, but it’s the things people like what we are doing and people would come to us and ask us, “What do you think would look good with this?” I’ll let you come in here and pick out whatever you want as long as you got the bread.

Ro- We kinda like in that position like not on ego stuff, but we’re kinda like… basically if it’s a clothing line that [let’s say] if 10 Deep has a shirt on their line piece that we don’t order or that none of the stores that have 10 Deep don’t order, you’ll never know that shirt ever came out. So you won’t know if it’s hot or dope you know what I’m saying? Like, if one store in LA gets it [but] you never see it on the internet, how you even know about it?

Rick- I feel like if I don’t have to talk myself out of getting it, well it might not have been that dope. ‘Cause there is stuff that will come and we will get into this point like I got to have that. But it’s times like we out there and have to check ourselves. It’s stuff that if I don’t have that feeling about the garment then it’s like, “Ok, that might not be that fresh and we might not need to waste our money.” We kinda put ourselves in the mind set of the way we used to be when we were just shopping. Like, when you come in, you gotta be like that shirt is fresh. I gotta have that.

WHUTUPDOE!: It’s been a great interview, guys. You have any last words you want the readers to know?

Ro- Really, just shout out [to] everything Michigan. I’m not even gonna say Detroit. Of course Detroit is the focal point but we shout out everything Michigan – from Detroit to the whole Metropolitan area. And of course people not from around her [might] feel different, but [we have] the best everything. It’s no music like Detroit music. Man its fashion, [it’s] everything! So, shout out to the Black Milk’s, the Guilty’s, the One Be Lo’s, the Octane and Illite’s. You know what I’m saying, man? And to anyone out here that’s doing anything positive.

Rick- I just want to say thank you to all the people that do support the store and what we do. This is how we eat. This is how our family eats. It’s so important. We just really appreciate the love and support that people show us on a day to day basis throughout these couple years since we had the store. I just think it’s a good look and we just gonna try to keep making people proud and happy with what we doing.

Part 1 of the Rick Williams & Roland Coit interview.

Part 2 of the Rick Williams & Roland Coit interview.