Tom, Shanghai

We spoke to Tom, ex Nike IM and owner of streetwear store ACU in Shanghai about youth culture in China, music, money and where the culture in Shanghai is heading. Tom AKA ‘SneakerChef’ has been with Edison Chen since the pair were young, owning the first Tier 0 store in China [which later became Edison’s ‘Juice’.] Ex-Nike IM, Tom has his own streetwear brand and store, ACU - a key account for adidas.

Okay, let’s start with how you’d sum up sneaker culture, youth culture, and streetwear in China at the moment… 

Sneaker Culture is pretty much global now, in a way, because of the internet linking the whole globe together. Everyone is just about making money. Youth Culture itself is all about making money and the kids hoping that when they wake up that they don’t have to work their ass off; that hopefully the money all just comes to their phones. It’s all about digital currency, WeChat pay and those platforms. Sneaker culture is a kind of digital currency, and it is a social currency too, of course. 

That’s a great way to put it, sneakers as social currency …

Right. People will buy the shoes just for the likes. “Oh I have the shoe, I got it early or on the day of the launch,” and then they just sell it. Before, it would be people getting two pairs and thinking “I can sell one pair and make some money, and I get this other pair for free with some extra cash.” That mentality is kind of gone here, already.

So, the kids aren’t even buying a pair to save for themselves anymore, they’re just selling straight on?

There are still kids buying shoes for themselves, but the mainstream people are definitely straight-up selling. They check the price first before buying it online on different platforms, or even in-store when it comes to something like Bearbricks. It’s the same to me for re-sellers and seeing them say “Oh, the price is cheaper than us on this re-seller app.” I’m like “We’re retail, so if you want to buy from us we have a contract with MediCom.” We know the price will come up once the re-seller runs out, and they’ll come back to buy it from us anyways. 

And where are the kids reselling, these days?

There’s actually this new ecommerce and social media platform - and you should tell adidas this – called XiaoHongShu, or ‘The Little Red Book.’ It’s new and it’s powerful and it’s really fake. 

Let’s go back to this thing about kids in China today waking up and wanting to make money … The generation before them, their parents worked hard to make money, right? Do you think this new generation has kind of shunned that work ethic?

I think we have to go back through history for a bit. The previous generation had to work hard. It was the time of the cultural revolution in China; when the first business people from overseas would come to Hong Kong or mainland China and the Chinese would get a little bit of info from them about what’s cool or what’s trending elsewhere, but they themselves couldn’t get to it. Then everything really opened around 2000. That’s when the Internet became more of a normal thing, which meant that Chinese people really got to see everything. And now, because they themselves couldn’t have any of these luxuries when they were young, they want their own children to have what they couldn’t. They spoil their kids, and even more so because up until recently they could only have one child. 

And how are these kids - who now have access to all of this global information - how are they dressing? What is ‘streetwear’ in terms of an aesthetic?

When we were kids, we were street kids of street culture, but street culture as a trend is different. Street culture is popular now because it’s the trend. I see the whole trend in the fashion business as a circle, because it keeps coming back round. You see the kids now in bell-bottoms and Doc Marten’s. I bought my first pair of Doc Marten’s at Shelby in Piccadilly Circus way back, because they didn’t sell them in Hong Kong. But these kids are not picking a whole outfit; they’re picking bits and pieces of the 80’s and bits and pieces of the 90’s and putting it all together. 

It sounds similar to current trends in the UK… What can you see in the culture that’s exciting to you?

From a Chinese perspective, I think music is getting into a pretty cool place right now, precisely because of this whole ‘street culture’ being a trend. We see hip hop becoming very popular. Kids might not know what they’re talking about because they don’t know English, but there are huge Chinese rappers that are blowing up, and a popular TV show is just rap battles. A lot of kids are using that platform to get famous. “China’s got Hip Hop,” that’s what they call it. China’s streetwear brands also came together and did a TV show last year. It was an America’s Next Top Model kind of thing where each street label owner follows one or two of these celebrities around. To me, all these reality shows are fake anyways, but they’re relatively new to China, so people think it’s real and that it’s bridging that gap between real life people and people on TV. 

Is there anything else that’s exciting you about the music?

I see some things going back into the underground. It’s that human instinct of, “I don’t want to be the same as you.” I would say that this third generation in China is coming up with a whole trend of street stuff. When I came in to the scene, it was all the 70s kids and some of the 80s kids. The 90s kids now are already getting a little into their 30s, and these are the ones that are starting to understand about buying quality stuff and not just big logos. The 2000’s kids are getting a little older now and are filtering out all the bullshit. When I was a kid, I went to Japan and I bought everything because I wanted to try everything out, then I grew up and was like “Oh, this one is the shit, they make good shit.” You filter out all the bullshit you bought back in the day and know that you want this now. 

Do you think this will continue to change, with the younger Chinese generation?

Yes. I see things going back into the underground now, where everyone will look different and will learn how to dress, because they don’t really know how to dress now. That’s why KOLs are so popular; because people don’t know how to dress and they want a mirror image. They can turn on their phone and go to Instagram and dress exactly like this person or that person. They’re learning from free information. They realise. “I don’t want to dress like that person.” They’ll pick things that they learned about how they fit in different styles. 

And what’s next do you think, in music in China?

Big DJs. We’ve had rappers, we’ve had street dance, next it will be the DJ.

Nice. You mentioned fashion but, is fashion and streetwear still intrinsically linked, or is it pulling apart a bit?

Chinese people are really scared, because they used to be poor. Everyone used to be poor in China, so they’re scared for people to think they’re poor, so they like to buy all the luxury brands and throw it on themselves and walk out on the street and tell people they’re rich when maybe they aren’t. Chinese people are trying to follow what America did; of putting it all on a credit card.. That’s what all the young people are doing right now; getting all the credit cards they can apply for and buy all the name brands and sneakers and making some money. 

What else is unique to China, do you think?

Young people in China don’t really do the house party thing, because they live with their parents and can’t buy a house and they can’t rent a nice place and brag about their place yet so they just brag about how they look and maybe their car. There’s also a rental car business here, of supercars. A lot of people will try to get a Ferrari for the weekend and try to get girls. In clubs, you can even do things like rent expensive champagne - like Ace of Spades - to put on your table. I don’t drink, but in our era, Cristal was the shit and now it’s Ace of Spades.

It’s similar in Korea and Japan too, in that people live with their parents until they marry, and so ‘home’ is off limits, and instead wealth is always something that is flaunted outside, with experiences, clothes, cars. It’s conspicuous consumption, basically, the act of looking like you’re richer than you are…

In a way I see it as China’s version of “Ghetto Fabulous;” they always want to get out of the ghetto and get rich. That’s how I see it in China. Those LV bags with the monogram, they’re selling like hotcakes in China. In France and Italy no one is buying that shit.

Here, there’s a lot of mimicry. People don’t want to feel like they’re outdated, so they need to update what they have all the time. China is a sponge; they just absorb everything. And Shanghai is sort of the international capital now globally. That’s what adidas should really understand about Shanghai; it’s really the capital of China, not Beijing. Everyone in China wants to come here. In one of my specs for Portland before, the topic sentence was “Shanghai is not China.”

What do you wish would fade out of the culture in China?

I really want to see Key Opinion Leaders leave streetwear culture. What happened to the label owner, the guy who really runs the brand, and the store? I keep telling all the media people here to stop using all these fucking models. Use the people of this industry. Use the people of this community. For all my photoshoots I do here I use my store staff and I use my friends. With Supreme, that’s how they made it famous - because they used all their street crews, and the people who take their photos are straight up street kids.  I really want the media people to actually work within the industry and help each other out. Because what happened to that? What happened to the street? Don’t tell people you’re street culture if you’re not street. 

And how do you think adidas is working with culture in China right now?

I don’t really think adidas is connecting with Chinese culture at all right now. They had one connection with the NMD, but that was it. They just went nuts and oversaturated it. They succeeded because Nike wasn’t fast enough with the sock dart. That’s how Nike fucked up.

Is there anything adidas is good at?

There’s nothing adidas is really good at in China. 

Why?

I think a lot of it is that adidas is just lazy. They’re not part of the community and it seems like they have no idea what’s going on. They’re just there for the paycheck. They don’t connect with the right people because they’re in the industry and not in the community. 

So what do you think adidas can be bringing to the culture?

We established something on the Nikelab second floor that’s called the On Air Studio. We would hold workshops and stuff and it was really cool. adidas doesn’t tap into the youth creative community and have them do what we did back in the day with the Nike Airmax campaign, where they take a kid and make his dream shoe come true. They don’t do that. And then the thing with Air Jordan where a kid could draw a Jordan and they would make it alive for them once a year … adidas could be doing stuff like that, adidas don’t do enough. What happened to finding creative kids in design schools? They’re all about money. Adidas in the industry in China specifically are just there for the consumers. They’re just about making money and tapping into the mainstream.

I love that formula.

Also, don’t forget about youth culture. There are talents in the youth. What big brands will do is they’ll look at that one person who doesn’t have one million followers and think he’s not great at what he does. Again, that’s a KOL thing. You can buy fans and you can buy comments; you can’t buy talent.

And what about Nike? How are they connecting to and driving culture in China?

Nike is driving culture in China through Edison Chen. Even though he’s my homie, I have to tell the truth. Me and him were pioneers, even though he’s a celebrity and everyone follows him. If you think about it, adidas China does not have someone here to do something like that for them. They don’t. Nobody.

Is there a contract between Nike and Edison?

There is a contract between Nike and Edison. I would say it’s a yearly thing, but now he’s a global contract so I don’t know anymore. He’s supposed to do 5 or 6 shoes a year, that’s what the Nike contract is always like. 

Anything you wanna reiterate before we wrap up?

I want to reiterate that KOLs and celebrities are a fuck up. Use the people of the industry. And finally, don’t forget your fucking classics! Don’t forget what superstar 25 did really well. I bought almost every pair. I have the Jay Z, I have the Run DMC … any colour was awesome, you know!