Arts Intranet

We recently interviewed Vince Lebon, founder of Rollie Nation, an Australian-based shoe company with a strong U.S. market, about why artist collaborations are a central part of building the Rollie brand and company. He also discussed how to create genuine partnerships for shared purpose.

How would you describe Rollie in 1-2 sentences?

At Rollie, we create products of wonder by working as a fun, colourful, focused, and innovative team with our core purpose to connect and create lasting memories with people. We aim to be remarkable, honest collaborators that empower and add value to people’s lives.

Describe your vision for designing a shoe brand that included artists collaborations from the very beginning. 

When I envisioned Rollie from the very beginning, I aspired to create a brand that was bigger than me, a brand for the people, and designed alongside other creatives to challenge myself and what is the norm in the industry. This allowed us to create our own unique point of view and USP (unique selling proposition). Being a creative business owner, working with other creatives, felt very natural and empowering to me and the value in doing so was immediate.

Our first collaboration came two days after launching the brand; it was with the founder of an award-winning design agency who was simply fascinated by the product and brand story. We collaborated despite not having the funds, with the common understanding to create something we were both proud of; we came runners up for Australian Print ad of the year with our first campaign. The lesson here is that there are other currencies than money.

Why was this central to your vision, and how has it set your business apart from other independent brands?

Many brands do collaborations because it is the cool thing to do right now, or to simply leverage someone else, a network, or community with little intent to add value in an equal exchange. In order to have successful collaborations you need to: 1) know who you are, so you can find and only work with like-minded, value-aligned, and complementary brands/organizations/artist/other entities; and 2) have the ability to identify and manage the collaborator’s expectations. Some artists prefer to simply license out their work, and have little expectation for how their work is used. In other cases, some artists care more about the artform, integrity, and are looking to build brand equity over commercial success; so, knowing and defining at the beginning “what is a success” for both partners is super important. It’s important to be honest with yourself and the collaborator to ensure there are no hidden agendas, and that you both understand what success (to you both) looks like. These are easily done if collaboration is at the core of the brand DNA and culture of the company.

Tell us how an artist collaboration comes to life.

The design process for each artist collaboration process is different; this is a direct relation to how we are all different as human beings. I like to start with a story that taps into an emotion or intended purpose before commencing any product design. However, you need to be empathic and accommodating to how the collaborator also works; it is not a license agreement or a commissioned piece, it is a collaboration. Use it as an opportunity to learn from a different process, explore, cultivate, and share your learnings. Contracts and documentation are very important so you have a basis to work from to manage expectations, pre and post-collection release. There will always be key milestones and deadlines but how, and how long it takes, to get there can really vary between each collaborator.

Please talk about how artist collaborations have gone beyond shoes and into your various markets, specifically the Brooklyn mural example.

We did a collaboration with James Goldcrown, the Love Wall street art muralist. We were so excited to work with James as his work is colourful and has a great message. His work can be found throughout New York, so it’s felt very honest—something that we wanted to be a part of and to tell the community of NYC and Brooklyn that we are here. We wanted the shoes to become part of the art, not just print his work on the shoes. When we choose with work with another brand or designer, we must be true to both audiences. We simply do not get a photo of the work and print on the shoe—that would be surface level design. Our goal was to understand how we could connect to his followers, our followers, and a new audience for the both of us. How do we take the shoes out from where one would expect to see shoes and merge the two worlds?

We searched Brooklyn for what we felt would be the perfect wall. We reached out to the property owner for permission to paint a mural, and they accepted with great curiosity. We then took 25 pairs of white shoes and had James Goldcrown paint a street art mural over the shoes and the wall, and the shoes were available to be purchased. It produced excellent video content, was broadcast by the news, received local support; customers were able to take a piece of the Love Wall home, and were introduced to the Rollie brand. Not only were we able to share our product, but our collaboration allowed us to highlight the artist collaboration, and show our brand as a unique player in a new community.

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To learn more about Rollie Nation’s collaborations, visit the Rollie website.