Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to another SLG meetup. Now here and there we bring some of those exciting guests that talk about something different than real estate within the luxury space which in this case is about clothing. The ultimate in luxury clothing. For that we're gonna have Christopher Kray.
He's the co-founder of the well-known brand Christopher Kray collection. Hey brother how are you? Good to see you. Come on you have to open the screen with this post like more material.
Oh my god that's more material though. The world is in a very dark place brother. We can do a lot better. No I'm so happy to have you here with us today.
I mean I gotta say don't know what to start. We said the founder of CKC and we talked about all the incredible things that you've done with the brand. However you're also a model. I mean everywhere I look.
You wearing one of those pieces looking nice. I need to know. You are far too kind bro. I am far from a model but we couldn't really find anybody else to do it.
I worked cheap and we needed a body to put the stuff on and that was the only one available so it ended up being a big thing. Yeah you're doing a good job on that as well. If you're busy for some reason that's a goal the direction that you wanted to go you can always fall back into the modeling career. Oh god well you're right you can be my agent then.
What makes up that happens? Good good good. Now listen first of all thank you for joining us and how are things in New York? I know it's quite chilly so it's a good time to be wearing those nice suits and jackets that you put together huh?
Yeah I honestly wish I could be wearing what you're wearing right now because I'm not gonna lie it's pretty cold here brother but that's that's part of living in New York. You know it's a top down and even the weather is tough here and it makes it very difficult but that being said you know it's sort of the price you pay for living here and have it be open 24 hours and have all the opportunities that are presented to you you know weather is part of the price you pay here right it's there is no perfect you know but I love it because people get to wear those pieces that you're putting together. Because here my aunt everybody goes with a t-shirt and that's it. So that is more you know it's the benefit of living in a place that has seasonal change you know you get to you get to wear a lot of different things you also get to layer up a lot of different things that you know you can't do in warmer climates because you know you'd be dying from the heat but you know here yeah it's and I generally think winter fabrics tend to be a little more lush and luxurious than you know wearing like linen all the time where you know where you're stuck in one thing where it's nice to be able to change your mind once in a while.
Christopher like how in the world like you went from I looked at the story a little bit how did you go from where you were all the way to you know being in the fire fashion week and putting your clothes to all these top celebrities so tell us a little bit about the summary of the story. Honestly it was completely by accident man I would love to tell you that this was you know all planned and then we had a business plan for this and we had it was completely haphazard and honestly sometimes that's the best way that things unfold in front of you know you can you can try to methodically plan things out and sometimes it just happens in a way that happens organically. And that's what happened to us. One of my best friends is my tailor and we've been friends for a long time and in the real estate world as you will know you become very close with your clients and you become you know very intertwined in their lives and you become intertwined and you're especially your best clients you know you get invited to all the birthday parties and you have dinner with them and you know it becomes a group.
And eventually my clients would always ask me you know oh I love your jacket or I love your shirt or I love your pant you know where where did you get that I would tell my I have a tailor who makes the majority of myself. And I would bring them to my tailor and you know they would start getting into the custom clothing sort of realm and they loved it. And so that became sort of a thing where I was styling my clients all the time I was taking them shopping or we were having stuff made and then well then actually you know this social media came along. And it was actually one of the young guys who worked for me said you know grandpa you gotta be on some kind of social media.
And I was like it's the last thing I wanted I wasn't on Facebook I wasn't on any social media any platform whatsoever. I kind of like the anonymity of not being on anything. But he was right in that if you're going to be in business in today's world it's so it's it's a necessity you know people no longer you go to a function and people no longer ask you you know for your business card they ask you for your Instagram. And so Instagram to me what I liked about it I didn't really like any of them but what I liked about Instagram was it was the most visual and sort of very sort of simplistically laid out.
What I didn't like about it though most social media. It was very much a platform of lack. I could see a lot of young people going on the platform and kind of seeing all the things that they didn't have. And so I thought it was really a kind of like a pack with myself that if I was going to do this it would be the opposite of that to try to help somebody or uplift somebody or tell them you know if this idiot can do it so can you and try to keep it as authentic as possible.
People were coming into the tailor shop with the pictures on the phone and say oh you made him think and you make me this then you know and it started to sort of grow organically that way. And then we had a shop and we had clients and we had customers and then again because of social media and social media being so global. We all of a sudden were sending things to Dubai and London and Tokyo and places I had no idea that these people were even you know who knew who we were even following us and then it just grew into you know what it is today and we are beyond fortunate and beyond you know thankful. And so I think that's what we do.
And so I think that we have a lot of different shapes from everyone else is about this unique customization within the luxury angle. And so I love what you said right from the formal to the casual for the you know like there's a lot of different things that you do. We do we try to we try to cover all bases and I think you have to do that in today's world because we work and live much differently now even then when we started the company. When we originally started it was much more suit based and you know sort of high end sort of luxury but formal.
And so we started to do that in how we go to the office and how we live. It became a much more relaxed style. So we started introducing a lot of that. And so you have to be very adaptive to you know how we live today.
But keeping it at a very high quality a lot of what I see out there whether it's doing or casual wear or whatever is it may look great. It may look great in photos on Instagram or whatever. And then you order one of these things and it shows up at your house. It's yeah it's frightening what you know what's out there.
We try to stay as high quality as we possibly can even if it's at the expense of us not making any money from it. I would rather be known as someone who delivered the highest quality than someone who had the highest profit margin because you know we gave them some like you know crappy product that and we try to maintain that you know throughout and we always will try to maintain that even honestly at our own expense. You're going to put your name on something you know you want people to feel good about it and also it honestly is the best advertising you can have you know word of mouth is an incredible time today is absolutely and they have they have you know 15 friends who are looking for the same thing that they are. What's been one of the biggest difficulties that you've had to encounter what do you learn from it.
Well I'll tell you I think in today's world. Everybody wants instant gratification you know and they want to click a button and have the thing show up to their door like Amazon in the next day. The biggest hurdles we've had is you know we make everything from scratch. So it takes about anywhere between four and six weeks for us to actually make it and then ship it.
So dealing with the headaches of the time lag and everybody is getting everything right away and that's been difficult. I would love to tell you that I spent as much time as I would like designing as I do actually on the business side but it ends up being way more on the business side than I get to do designing and just like any business whether it's real estate or you're in clothing or you know you're selling cars whatever you're doing it's problem solving that is the biggest advantage you can have in business is if you develop your skills at putting out fires at problem solving because it's generally just like life. It's not actually the problem. It's your reaction to it that determines how big that problem is going to be true.
I'm definitely to the other side of things. I love the word luxury right but it has so many different definitions so many different feelings and what is it really for you. Luxury to me I mean it's different for everybody. I think also it largely depends on where you are in your life in terms of your age and your what you've been through and your experiences but luxury to me is not about the clothes or the house or the car.
It's more about how you live rather than what you have people I think especially in today's world equate luxury with either how much you have in the bank or what kind of car you drive or what house you live in or what vacation you took. But to me it's really more about keeping a higher standard to yourself and your life rather than the material things that you own luxury to me can be as simple as a walk on a beach as it can be having a multi million dollar home. I always love to live this in a positive note so for those that are listening whether they're in the luxury space could be so bright but like clothing real estate, yacht and private whatever the case is anybody that is in that space and trying to take it to the next level they're always taking the biggest take away from successful entrepreneurs like yourself. I would say authenticity and you know I feel like a lot of people are looking for a formula to apply to make it you know whatever that is.
And I would tell them you know there is no formula the formula is you and you staying true to your vision whatever that is whether you know whatever vocation you want to go into. It's staying true to yourself and and being honest with yourself and you know as to what your skillset is what you're good at what you need to work on all of those things. I feel like if you can really be honest with yourself and be authentic to who you are no matter what you do it's it's going to work out. But that's very difficult to do when you're bombarded with whether it's you know the people in your life or what you see on social media or whatever thinking that there's something you think you should do rather than what you want to do.
If you do what you want to do in some way somehow maybe rough and it's not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination but eventually it'll work out. I love that. Well thank you so much Christopher for sharing all these things with us. The pleasure was my humbled and honored to you.
The pleasure is mine and of course I will look forward to seeing you. But it's in New York or if you'll get a bit tired of the cold you can come visit us here. I'm going to take you up on that brother because it's getting hard. It's getting hard.
All right well that's all your projects keep on cracking it and we'll speak very soon. I look forward to it. Thank you man. Bye.
Thank you everyone. Thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember embrace it's beautiful success in life.
My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.