posted by admin on Aug 28
Recently it might seem that Supra had just magically exploded onto the trainer scene and almost single-handedly taken the shoe industry by storm producing a footwear revolution in the process.
Angel started out his very first company, known as TSA, with some other skaters who were generally into producing clothes that they could wear when skating. That was 1991 and it lasted for about ten years until Angel determined to leave so he could do his own thing. The company he founded in 2002 was KR3W, his present clothings brand that he copes with along with Supra Skylow under the distribution umbrella for the two projects known very merely and aptly as One Distribution; initially built to cut out the middleman in the European distribution process.
So what did Angel take with him from his TSA experience, well just that…’Experience’. He has explained his first project as his ‘Education’ in the business and I’ve heard other entrepreneurs/founders in street and sneaker culture say similar things; like the lead designer and co-founder of Creative Recreation, the various other hot brand in the up market trainer niche, who commented in a latest video interview that his training ground in the shoe industry was as a snowboard boot design technician and later footwear designer for Vans.
After all of his years of learning on the job at Team Santa Ana (TSA) he openly admits he made a million mistakes as a young, creative businessperson attempting to build his very first brand. And in fact one thing he insisted he would do when KR3W opened its doors was take all of that experience and apply it properly so he wouldn’t make the same errors all over again.
So where did Angel get the inspiration for building the Supra Footwear company? I guess you could say that Cabada wanted to go ‘above and beyond’ (the loose translation of ‘Supra’ from Latin) what already existed in the trainer marketplace at that time when he came up with both the name and concept behind his new trainer line. His inspiration was to create some kicks that would be a great complement to the KR3W garments line and he wanted to take the trainer game up a level since in his words most of shoes were a bit ‘chunky’ for his preferences.
Supra footwear has come a long way in a short time from the styles that people at first laughed at to the models that everybody is copying (and copping) these days; hoping to cash in on proven success rather than give attention to advancement like Angel, his lead designer Josh and their creative design team have chosen to do. On the eve of the launch of the Terry Kennedy signature trainer as well as the development of the Supra Skytop and other exciting brand new design concepts in the works, Cabada is more flatter than angry that competitors both small and large are choosing to copy Supra’s signature lines. The Supra Footwear Founder expects the buyer to have the Skate and Shoe IQ and good sense to realize the difference between the imitator and the innovator.
