Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20130708

Walk. So the way youre going to present yourself in a way. And also in general it elevates you so it definitely transforms the body. And it gives you the perception of the body, you know . You have you have a certain conscience of your body and i think there is nothing wrong with that. You know, sometimes people tell me i cant run in these shoes. Rose you dont want them run. You dont also why would you want to run all the time . Rose bowman and louboutin, next. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose bob bowman is here with m. L. B. Advanced media, the interactive arm of Major League Baseball. Over the last 13 years the country has grown into one of the most successful names in technology. Sports illustrated wrote that baseball has been way ahead on the tech curve because of the brilliance of bowman whose outfit is setting the Gold Standard for live sports streaming, ticketinging, merchandising and stats on the web. Last year Business Insider named the company as the eighth most valuable privately owned Technology Firm in the world. Its estimated to be worth as much as 6 billion. For all those reasons, im pleased to have bob bowman at this table for the first time. And and the fact that ive known him forever. Forever. You have more titles now, i watch you in the morning and at night. I see you more than i see my wife. Rose laughs tell me how this all started. You are a milwaukee brewer fan. Born and raised. When he brought the new team, the brewers he was a hero and you were there to cheer him on. For those of us who were teenagers and loved baseball it was a gloomy day when the braves moved away, as it can be in milwaukee when the braves move bud he worked hard behind the scenes, five years later the seattle pilots became the brewers and he was a god. Mayor or governor were too small a title for him. So god fits. If youre a teenager who loves baseball and you can go to baseball games again it really mattered. Hes had that attitude towards baseball all his life. He is a huge baseball fan and he gets it from the fans point of view which is probably why hes been a good commissioner is that hes done wefrg the team. He owned it, he ran it. Back in those days the owners parked cars, they did a lot of things. That was Small Business and now its a big, big business. But he had the vision, not me. Were just operators. In 99 he thought the internet thing was catching on and maybe we ought to centralize all the Digital Media from the teams and i think a lot of people thought, charlie, that its been about sort of making an asset and growing an asset and certainly it has done that. But if you think of it from a fans point of view, what its done is all the technology that weve bought and created and deployed and all those things, for the milwaukee fan, the person growing up in milwaukee, im getting the same High Technology High Definition great stuff that the person in new york is getting, the person in l. A. So theres been a leveling of the field for all fans. All the fans are enjoying what wed like to think is very good technology, if not the best hopefully near the best. Rose how did you get involved . They called and asked mif i wanted to be the first c. E. O. I tried act like i didnt and tried to negotiate this. Rose laughs right. And i was just not very good at it. And theres a long list of things that i havent negotiated well. Thats on it. But it was a dream job. I love baseball and i love sports and i Love Technology so it was really something i love to do and i was a fun of bud selig for a long time. Rose but you knew a lot about technology . I wouldnt theys true. I wouldnt say even today thats true. Rose you know people who do. I know people who know people right. But i was at i. T. T. And we dabbled and had done a lot with technology. Rose this is when i first met you. And the internet has been a great spot and if you think about what baseball is, its an egalitarian sport, its for everybody. We have 75 Million People going to our game. So the ability to use the internet to deploy our games and get our games out there, exciting prospect. Rose but its a game you dont think necessil perfect tech ages. Or do you . Well, we do. Because we play everyday lets say youre a yankee or mets fan living here, even though you grew up in the south, maybe youre a braves fan. Rose no, yankees. Youre a yankees fan, they play 162 times, you cant get the Yankee Stadium stadium, you cant watch them on t. V. With the great job they. Do youre too busy. Everyone, not just charlie rose but everyone is too busy. Rose realtime is not a and you have to do it realtime. The game is over, youre going to move on. So if you have five minutes and youre between meetings or waiting in an elevator or church and synagogue, picking up your kids at school, open up your mobile phone, get a score, an update, see a highlight. So its pretty well suited for this digital age and this mobile age where people have three minutes here and four minutes there. Rose the average person who is watches Major League Baseball in terms of watching through you watches for how long . It varies by device. On the phone its about 13 minutes. On the tablet about 31. And on a laptop or desktop about 33 minutes. So probably longer than you might think and probably relates or in what theyre doing rather than the device. The device dictates the time but when youre using your mobile phone, youre on the, go moving between things; even maybe moving between rooms in your house. But when youre a tablet or laptop you might be more stationary, youre at a desk and therefore you might have a little more time. So those times seem short but theyre not. Thats a long time to commit everyday for a baseball game. 30 minutes. Rose and growing trend is to mobile. Our traffic now is almost 5050. Rose 5050 . Right, on to the mobile phone. The mobile phone were still behind the times. As much as all of your friends and relatives and all your guests use mobile phones and rely on them, certainly everybody under the age of 20, were still behind the times. You go to latin america rose we who . The u. S. , because latin america, entirely mobile, asia almost entirely mobile. And thats where the world is going. Its going to be a mobile universe and these phones, whether its steve jobs or the android phones, whatever it may be, theyve changed our lives. We might discuss its made it worse when you walk down the streets of new york and people are bumping into you or when youre in the middle of a conversation and someone says thats very interesting and go right to their phone. Its the way we live. You cant turn the clock back. Rose but back to the beginning, whats the relationship between the company and Major League Baseball . The owners each own one with thirts. 3. 3 . And we report to a board of directors. It was t commissioner was genius for coming up with idea but he set it up outside of baseball. Todays Media Companies created Digital Vision but it reports up through another analog group or an older version of media. This one reported outside. The commissioner said enhanced franchise value, make money and promote the game. Do those three things. Rose what percentage is ownedby major one 1 30th. So when the dodgers were purchased bying intoen chaim, et cetera, they valued at some value and their payment back if they ever sell the team and the same thing with the yankees and mets have been in the same ownership forever. But these teams have sold in the last decade or some. They put some value on bam and their value for the franchise has been increased by some factor. Whatever it is, you read the number. You said 6 billion. Whatever the number is, they take some valuation, divide by 30 and add it to the franchise value when they buy the team. If youre a commissioner, thats something thats not trivial. Youre trying to add franchise value, get everyone to be competitive so you can make the allstar game more interesting and improve t. V. Ratings. But in the end of the day you want to get measured by what the owners have increased the value of their franchise by. Rose so your contribution is what . laughs i thought you wanted to make this a long conversation . The rose laughs what do you do . Its funny, when i talk to kids and say what do you do there . Its either a very short nothing or a very long conversation. But, you know, were now 650 people and we basically half of them are technology, almost 33 are reporters. We have the largest sports reporting staff almost anywhere in the world with the exception of espn. Certainly largest reporting baseball staff in the world. Rose whats the volume of streaming versus anybody else . Well do we think larger. Well do 20,000 live stream this is year. 5,000 in baseball. Rose 5,000 . Well do 15,000 outside of baseball, we do Live Streaming for other entities including cbs sports at time, including espn. Its a turnkey operation, we capture, encode and redistribute. And redistribution, charlie, has changed. When we started this company it was one operating system, windows, and one device, a desktop. And now when you do all the permutations and you do the devices times the operating system it is number you get was 3,500. So when we capture a stream we have to encode it and redistribute it so it looks right on 3,500 hundred devices versus one. So the game has gotten more complicated for us and our technology team, the aaforementioned group, they have to figure out ways to get it to 3,500 devices instantaneously like it used to be one device. Rose is this because you got in early and you took the risk and therefore you became the dominant factor . Theres a lot to be said to be a first mover. Not everyone has to be a first mover. We made more than our fair share of mistake for sure but we made them as you said at a time when everyone was following it n it but not closely and it was a cute thing, the internet. Now its become sort of dominant. Your shows are, as you know, restreamed everywhere in a lot of different web sites. Rose not enough. Not enough. It could always be more. We talked about that. We have more to do here. Were not leaving until we get something fun. Rose laughs but i think that we believe able to help develop things and shape things. Even the initial i. O. S. System we had a play in how videos should play on that because we were there first. But we make our share of mistakes and i think being first does help. And we were among the first, again, not thanks to anything we did but thanks to the vision of our commissioner. Rose this is what fast company said, a magazine. Bam has technologically sophisticated as any company anywhere. Baseballs digital arm has quietly proven itself to be new yorks top tech startup of the last decade. So what other live video beyond sports . Well, we do live shows for folks who we do for individuals who are trying to create their own show and they have their own channel because thats the way you know, you think of what cable is. Cable was narrow casting, doing things online is even more narrow casting and we have some people doing that. We stream for a lot of businesses who do their live events and want to reach their shareholders, their employees worldwide and they want to do it live, they stream live there. Its principally, though, live sports and it is worldwide just because somebody who wants to do it right and like you take you take a golf event, its four days and it has to be done right. Its not a baseball season where if you dont get it right on thursday youll figure it out by monday. No, this has to be right on thursday. You have four days to make it right. So i think the higher quality, the more important the content is, the more likely we are to get a call. Rose thats why i do a Television Show thats daily so i can come back tomorrow and fix what i did badly. The great thing about the internet is we make a mistake and someone pointed out we correct it. So if you want to have access to this it will cost you a hundred bucks a year . Yeah, we think for 2 4shgsz 30, which is how many regular season games there are, and you get all these realtime stats, its barely a hundred bucks a year, one of the best values you could ever find. Rose im sure it is. We need more subscribers. All kidding aside, we have an app application on the mobile phones, the app world. In fact, our fifth Year Anniversary is coming up on july 10, the iphone. July 10 the iphone will be drum roll, please only five years old. Rose thats unbelievable, isnt it . Five years old. And our app will be five years. Rose whose idea was the app, you or steve jobs . No, i wasnt steve they came up with the app store and they rose well, i know that, but for baseball to have an app, did you see the app store and say man, this is made for us . I dont think it was me per se but we have a group of people there. Weve been doing the mobile since 05 because we saw people wanting to use them. When they launched the ipad they asked our two best engineers to come out and they wouldnt allow us to tell us and then steve jobs launched the ipad and we thought really. 40 million ipads in the u. S. Alone later and we see thats a real sport. But the Android System has been a real boon for us because thats how people communicate. Rose so what about these deals, all these networks, these baseball teams have with sports networks, Regional Sports networks. Are you cannibalizing their products . Well, if youre a yankee fan we respect that. I think those walls inch by inch are coming down a little bit, but like every business, theres an economic pie here that has to be very careful with. The cable system a lot of people are taking brickbats at it. Its a good system. One bill a month, you get these channels, its easy to use. 11 00 i can watch you. If i dont like that guest i can watch watch the daily show. Its a good system. Rose most people watch both. We like both. We find one more entertaining than the other and i wont tell you which. Rose laughs so do i ones smarter than the other, too. Yeah, i think thats two pretty smart people on those two shows. We like them both and i so i think weve got to protect that system but inch by inch we need to serve the fans. Fans have come first and so fans want to watch a live baseball game. Eventually were going to have to ghetto a point where they can go to the device and watch it. Whether its their phone or tablet rose its a deal between you and the system . We have to respect everyones value and Business Model. Is that one of your strengths . Youre a great negotiator . I told you before, i you know, i think i think what weve learned in the internet space is if youre two years early it doesnt do you any good because no one will know you were there and if youre six months late youre really in trouble. So one of the advantages rose you meantiming is good . Timing is everything in the internet space. Its frustrating because its so instantaneous you get information so quickly yet the Business Model takes a while to develop. Its not year the right Business Model is, at least not to us. So i think weve had the patience to wait for the right deal and we tone content, right . Its owned by baseball and so were not leasing it and so were not in the a rush to do do a bad deal. So i think weve tried to avoid some deals that dont make sense and waiting for the right moment and the right kind of deal. It will happen. Weve done a we think weve done a good job getting content to fans and we could do a better job. Rose the advantage i had is the sophistication of my set. Thats what really did it for me. Right. Rose look at this. Right, the tables, what, rose 21 years old. And the curtains are the same age. We bought them second hand. On t. V. This table looks pretty darn good so all the people watching, theyll tell you, the table looks 21 years old. Its a fine table. Look, no devices on it. Oh, theyre over there, hidden. Rose so where are you taking this . I think we dont know. Its a little bit proactive and reactive and were pretty paranoid. We get everyday and look at other sites to see whos doing but what but if i had to put my finger on whats going to happen next and lets use the baseball game as an example right now people will use a physical ticket. They might print it at home on a piece of paper that they bought on line, but some people, roughly 6 of our fans, got in with something on their phone. They have to show the phone, it scans the bar code, just like you do at starbucks or a grocery store, you scan a bar code and go. The day will come and i dont mean five years, i mean maybe in five months and certainly by next year where charlie rose is going to go to the yankee game and if your phone is on your person which it almost invariably is were going to know youre there, youll be checked in, no turnstile, no nothing. Youll walk in, well read you, send you a note on your phone to remind you where your seats are, send you whatever information the yankees might want to tell you, youll be all checked in. And technology will be more pervasive but it will get to a point where you dont think of it as technology anymore. Its sort of a way of life. Its not rose is this why you bought www. Tickets. Com . Well, ticketing is mothers milk of baseball. Our fans love going throughtothe games. Once you walk through Yankee Stadium you know youre a different kind of baseball fan. Rose and you can sit there and watch it at the game if you want to see a replay. You know stream willing deliver you things you might not get being in the stadium . Well, we have to in our mind, charlie, the Stadium Technology as advanced as a couch so we are spending along with our partners at tmobile, at t and verizon hundreds and hundreds of millions to wire the stadiums so we have a good signal there so if you see a bangbang play and want to see it again on your phone you can because we think you can do on that on your couch. Rose is this what youre seeing on the big stadium is it content youre creating or simply content happening in the stadium . Repurposing. Repurposing you might see it from a different angle. Rose ah. You go to a baseball game and ive gone to hundreds if not thousands in the last few years theres nothing to replace it. Its ballet. Its just great. The best athletes in the world, in my opinion, playing this great game. But you miss things. Youre 150 feet away. Rose the best athletes in the world . I think so. Rose do you really. I really do. Rose more so than basketball . I think. So longest careers, Baseball Players. I think if youre a great athlete, if you had to pick a sport youd pick baseball. You have to longest careers, best conditions. I think so. Rose no, i think thats a debatable point. No question its a debatable point. I mean, youre going to compare lebron james against journeyman second baseman you might have me there. But in balance over time rose who measures up to lebron james in athleticism. In baseball . Rose yes well, ill take this guy in l. A. Right now getting seven hits every. Jimmy davis in baltimore who homers every time he had three homers in the locker room. The guys hitting the ball out of the park everywhere. Hes got 31 home runs thats a lot of that doesnt even compare to last year. Theres a lot of players. You would expect know think Baseball Players are the best player. The point is that you have a game, you dont see everything. You dont see the pitch. Think of all that. So if you want to see that pitch hung on the corn did it catch a piece of the plate or not you can go to your phone and see it. You can do that at home while the baseball stadium affords you opportunities you cant get anywhere. I think we have to have the technology. Rose here is my i had this wild idea. Oh, great. A new business . Rose laughs this is to help you oh, well, let me grab my wallet and ill go. Rose laughs we need to put a little go camera on every players helmet. And so after the pitch we can watch from the pitchers head the pitch as it goes right to the or we can see it from the catcher weve done a capture cam before but ill tell you what well do with the allstar game. Rose so im not so stupid after all nobody said that. Nobody. Maybe some folks backstage. Rose the people who work with me everyday. But if you this years allstar game, july 16 at city field, great ball yard. They have a lot of fun. There but were going to offer on the webb site, were going to have radar so we can measure the movement of everybody, all the players in the stadium. So when the ball is hit we can look at the Center Fielder and watch how quick his jump is, what his direction is rose i love that. What his direction to the ball is and how fast he gets there. So if he does the two legs of the triangle versus a hypotenuse it will take him longer. If he does the 48 versus 46 it will take him longer. If it takes him threetenths of a second to get a jump versus twotenths it will take him longer. Well measure all. That and these defense, not really stat bus information, every manager knows it, every g. M. Knows in the their gut. Were going to start giving the fan an opportunity to tack about it, too. That will create a lot of rose activity here . Well show it to them and say it was a bad jump, he ran the wrong way. Some of these catches as my brother used to tell me when i would do something in sports making the easy look impossible. Some of these jumps are a little slow. They here when they show it if theyd just moved sooner. And conversely some of these catchs are truly phenomenal. Where they get a jump and a shoestring catch. So i think giving that to the fans, well see if it works. But your idea of letting the fan know where the pla the player is doing, we agree. Theres nine of them out there. Rose my theory is the more you know about something the more interesting it is. And if you understand the brazilians of what that outfielder has done and what k appreciate it then you enjoy the game more. I think thats right. We did this with pitching where we did three things matter in pitch speed, location and the break. And if everyone looks like thats what matters but as you know break and location matter just as much. Its really hard to hit a ball that moves six inches in the last four feet. Rose laughs yes. Its really hard to do that. We go back to your best athletes again. Rose exact lift handeye coordination tse essential as ted williams would say. And its impossible to tell which way the ball where l break. So i think those three thing things and fans get to talk about it, we think hopefully these defensive stats will be just as useful to fans. Rose whats surprising about this conversation is that there was a time when you were treasurer of the state of michigan. Many people thought you were like what were you, 27 . Something like that. Something like that. Rose so then everybody thought you were going to be governor of michigan and then go on to be president of the united states. That was what they thought. All right. Okay. Thank god i got derailed. Rose laughs you got out of politics and so then have you given up the idea of politics . Were all in politics at some level and i must say i work through five great people. If i two write a booshgs i would write a book about five people. Ive had five great bosses in my life. And there are few sadly, all kidding aside, there are very few americans who can say they worked for five people who were smarter than they were, helped them a lot and been friends since theyve moved on to other jobs and the governor that i worked for, jim blanchard, is such a person, as is bud selig today. Rose who are the other three three . Roger altman. Bob downey, goldman sachs. And then randy cox, c. E. O. Rose so this whole accumulation of experience prepares you do what . In my mothers eyes damn little. Rose laughs shi keeps saying this is all nice, bob, what about a career . Rose your wife says why cant you be on t. V. Like charlie sfloz all sorts of cheap shots from all over the place. You know, as you can fully appreciate given the interest that you have and why youre such a good interviewer, you are interested in what people say and what theyve done. Like youve been very lucky, done a lot of different things, probably not good at anything but enjoyed everything along the way. Rose thank you. Thank you, enjoyed it. Rose Christian Louboutin is here. He is one of the biggest names fashion and footwear. His red lacquer soles have become iconic. His designs can be elegant, flirty, often outlandish. In recent years hes also expanded into mens shoes. I am pleased to have him here at this table for the first time. Welcome. When did you fall in love with the idea of creating shoes . It comes back to a long, long time now. I was in my early teens. I was probably between 12 to 13 and but i didnt really fall in love with shoes properly. I fell in love with show girls. With musical girls and i was born in paris and raised there and i had discovered with my best friend from school that you could go to theaters and if you dont have a ticket at the intermission people go out and then come back and you never have your ticket which is requested. So i would sneak in with my friend and so out of place, a lot of shows but my favorite things were always to see musicals. To see the show girls. So i sort of first fell in love with the universe of stage and show show girls in general and to me they were like birds, exotic birds. Those women are exotic birds so i just thought what can i do for the exotic birds which they dont have yet. A bird has feathers, i didnt think to add feathers. I wanted to do shoes for these girls. Rose so you began how . I started when i was 17 working in the cabaret and so i learned a lot there. I did not design shoes because its a long process and an expensive process. I worked as an intern for a few months then worked for different companies. Rose doing what . Learning my learning what i have to learn how to construct the shoe. From the design its becoming a third dimension so all the process of how it goes to become a three dimension drawing. Rose idea of the red souls came in a flash. Yeah. It came in i started my own company with my name at the end of 1991 and someone was sketching, i was always sketching before and, you know, when youre designed thats very important, when you sketch and have the real thing it often has a lot of differences and differences is that, you know, in the drawing you can completely leave your imagination being completely with no limits. The it becomes a shoe or dress or whatever. It shrinks to some possible lines and you ask any designer youre very happy when your primary drawing looks as good as possible to the reality. And they were full of color. I was thinking of andy warhol, pop art in general an day warhol and so i sketch and when when i did the first shoe, i looked at it and the drawing it looked like my drawing but my drawing looked better. So i sort of the shoe like this, i suddenly had this big black mark which was not on my drawing and i thought it doesnt exist in my drawing, maybe its a matter of that. And i had the girl that i was trying on my shoes a size seven just trying those shoes, she was painting her nails so i grabbed her nail polish so we had a bit of a fight because she did not finish. I said dont worry, ill get you another one. I painted it and poof, just like a revelation it was exactly like my drawing. So i thought okay, its really nice and it gives great definition to the line of the heel so i said okay, im going to have now im going color the soles. At the beginning i thought different colors and then i sort of stick to red. Rose did it catch on instantly. So sort of quite quickly, yes. Because it was defining for you. It became a trademark . First of all, before becoming a trademark it was a sign of recognition but also its very its a very flirtatious thing and i remember the first year this woman coming and she said my god your shoes are like hoovers. Theyre trapped. And she was very, very happy about that. And this woman also came to me and said you have to do my wedding shoes and she insisted. And i had three weeks and i said i cant, its too short notice. She said im getting married because of you. And she explained that she crossed the eyes of a man in the street and he came back in front of her and he said do you know you have red soles and she pretended she didnt know and they started to see each other and eventually they were getting married and she says that her husband to be was so shy that they were always laughing by the fact that if she didnt have those red sole he is would have never approached her because he would not not known what to say. But its a green light. Rose do you think shoes Say Something about women . The shoes that they choose . Well, i do think that shoes speak for the woman who wear them. Heel the limit i would say is that the woman has to like shoes. I cant give a part of the character of a woman, imagine a part of the character of a woman through her shoes but he still has to like shoes. If shes really not into shoes at all then its complicated for me. Rose dont most women like shoes . Yeah, a lot. A lot. Rose and you also tell me psychology. I mean, this is a shoe. This is a shoe, this is a shoe. They all have one common thing, very high heels and very what do you call that . Thin heels . A stiletto. Rose stiletto. Theyre high. Sometimes not so comfortable. Yes . Yes. Rose you dont care if its not comfortable . Well, its not my priority, i would say. I do care, but just like as a doctor i dont get my my doctor has to have their secrets so i just dont want to design to look comfortable. Thats very different. If you take a shoe rose even if its comfortable you dont want it to look comfortable . Exactly. It needs to look comfortable because suffer to look beautiful doesnt work. One doesnt have to suffer to look beautiful. But it shouldnt look comfort. If you think of something comfort if you think of a shoe looking comfortable what are you going to think of. Rose this says, what . Sexy, elegant, sassy, confident. Playful. If dangerous, maybe . Sometimes . laughs rose there is a psychology behind all of this. The choice of shoes, the way you design shoes, your sense of what shoes can do. I mean, you think that the body begins from the shusz up. Yes. Rose and they said it up. Yes. And well definitely shoe is a very important element for women. First of all it really accentuates and its very it changes a body language. The way a shoe is going to be viewed, the way youre going to walk. So the way youre going to present yourself. Also in general it elevates you so it definitely transforms the body and it gives you the perception of the body. You have a certain conscience of your body and i think there is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes people tell me i cant run in these shoes and you dont want them to run. Also, why would you want to run all the time . If you run through life you end up seeing nothing anding somewhere no contact. This one woman time came to me and thanked me because she looked at her street, the building in her street in paris in a different and she said now my pace has been slower and i actually have underty think there is nothing wrong with slowing sometimes the pace of your walk. Rose indeed. You will see things around you. Do all shoes have a red sole . All shoes have a red sole. Yes. Thats my trademark. You stick with what got you there. Exactly. Rose dance with who you came with. What material is this . This is leather. Painted leather or lacquered sole, painted leather. Rose shoes are made in milano . Made in italy. All my shoes are made in italy. Theres one thing about shoes and one thing about people working, workers, artisans have according to the country, artisans have a hand and italians have a very feminine hand. It doesnt mean that italians are feminine, it means that their hands are feminine so that the attention to the details, yeah, the attention to the detail of the italian artisans is very feminine. Rose you see in the tailoring, too. Absolutely. Rose very much so. Which is not the case for the french artisan. They are much more heavy french are very good for, like, making men cease shoes, heavier shoes, different construction but for my type of shoes definitely it had to be italy. Rose were you lead to mens shoes because men said make shoes for people like me because i admire your shoes and i want the same thing for my shoes . No. You know what happened exactly. A few years ago i had a phone call of a young pop star, european pop star called mika, i knew of his music. I didnt know him and he asked me to do shoes for his tour and i said why me who is designing for women . He said every time i see a girl with your shoes they get so excited. Me on tour, i need the same thing. I need to be surrounded by things which are cheering me up and lifting me up. So i think, well, fair enough. And funny enough, i thought after so i did the shoes for his tour but funny enough i started to do mens shoes just as i wanted to do womens shoes meaning for people doing performers. And its not by accident that i started to do shoes for men starting by one performer. Rose and how are they different from other mens shoes. Well, ive been myself ive been thinking for the longest time that men have a different relationship with their shoes and i think these have completely changed and elevated not for everyone necessarily but for a lot of men. Men like to i saw that every man wanted to have shoes for four years, you know . Five pairs or wear the same but you have a huge amount of men who like shoes like women. Meaning they want to be able to change it, they want to have a new one, they want to get excited. They are fed up. They want to switch to another one. The same way. This type of excitement that brings shoes that brings which is brought to women. So, yes, a lot of men are like that. And even if you look now on red carpets you may have a classical black suit for a man and white shirt and something here. A bow tie. But less and less it goes to shoes now. Rose there it is. In other words, shoes is the kind of distinguishing things from a dark suit with an open white shirt. You look down and there is something different. Exactly. Rose in a sense it replaces what ties used to be. Exactly. Ties or bow ties, yes. Rose now, when heres what the new yorker magazine did, a famous 2011 profile of you. The red souls offer the pleasure of secret knowledge to the wearer and that of serendipity to their beholder. Like louis xiii, they promise the world of glamour. You must love this. I do rose theyre also a marketing gimmick that renders an otherwise indistinguishable product instant, recognizable. Thats true, too. Are we making too much about this . Well, im going to tell you one thing, the i dont think so. Im very happy about that. And also also there is one thing im doing a lot of personal appearances in america and i rose meaning that at stores or media or im signing shoes, i need the customers. Rose and what do they tell you . Thats why, you know, its i dont think its too much because i see that my customers a lot of customers are they tell me about what has been the affect with their shoes. Their favorite shoes. What it brought to them. And how they met this person and you know, how it connected. Its very much of a tool of communication strangely enough. Rose its a definition. Its a definition of a part of your character. It is a definition and also women buy their shoes to please themselves first and after its also something that they share. Its i do like to do these because i get to meet a lot of people who are telling my work is to design the shoes and to do them as much as i can really beautiful for people and then after its their story. Rose okay, i want to see a series of shoes that you have designed. What i know im looking at is a napa fuchsia satin platform. I know that because i can read. laughs the next one . Thats called clovis. Rose but it doesnt have the stiletto heel, does it . No, im doing flat shoes, medium shoes. Rose really. Are they as sexy . I think of this long slim pair of jeans and these Long Stiletto you know, Something Like this. You know . A combination of long leanness as well as sort of being propelled forward. And this is not that, though. Thats something very different. No. No. Ive been doing a lot im still doing a lot of different type of shoes. These shoes have been done a while ago. I think this is in 94 95. Rose really a while ago. Its inclusion of i saw a woman walking on a i thought a woman walking on a bed of flowers. It should have been roses but this is high hydrangeas. Rose look at these patent leather pumps. What do you think about that . Thats my idea about recycling. I had this long conversation about recycling and ecology in a way. So i said im doing myself recycling and this is the shoe which is coming from recycling meaning its olds can, those guinness cans, black and gold and so its covering here so its a whole recycling thing. I have different type of cans. Rose thats what a painter would do. Do you think of yourself as a kind of artist . My father was a cabinet maker. Rose i know. And so i if i im a craftman. Im an artisan. Im a luxury artist. Rose okay. The next one . Thats a shoe that i designed for the cabaret, a burlesque artist. And its beautiful on. Most shoes need to have its always better on. Rose laughs yes, it is. I can tell you. The next slide . This is the shoe ive been talking to you before. This is the shoe i did the red soul for that shoe. So it was an outline and funny enough, you know, i never worked documents and its all in my memory. So when i designed that shoe i put up that andy warhol painting called flowers but i didnt look at it. I just thought of what i was thinking and then i drew that shoe. And when i finished that shoe and i was happy with that one and i added the red sole i looked at the painting and, you know, its the war hole has four petals and no outline, but im still happy because i think its too much of a photocopy so for me its better to have it coming from my memory and then digest it and do whatever. Rose exactly. The and the next one is a satin sandal. Rose this is very much like for a bird of paradise. An exotic bird. Rose what do you call it . Plumette. A girly feather. Rose a girly feather. Next slide . Thats a boot, as you see, a flat boot which rose do you like boots . I love boots. Rose you do . There are very few styles of shoe that i dont like. I would say just one i dont like. Rose what is that . Its clogs. Rose clogs . Clogs. Because, you know, i think the language of shoes theres something which is very important to, its the sound, you know, so its a musical. I love dance and the music of the heel is very important so when i hear for instance, you know, you were saying the shoes are coming because you heard rose yes, yes, yes. This is the sound when i hear clogs i dont expect a woman. Im expecting, like, a donkey . Rose i got you. I got you. Sure. Who sells your shoes . Well, i have myself my company has we have like 75 stores. Rose mostly in europe . We have europe, asia, america. Rose brazil . Brazil, yes. Rose what about other stores . Do they sell them . After that i have department stores. Barneys, zachs. Rose so going in there and buy sures for absolutely you can buy a big part of the collection in different stores. Rose do you have a store in new york . I have three stores in new york. Rose three stores in new york. I have three stores in new york. And i have one in saks and then i have two in las vegas. I have 14 stores in america. Rose what about china . I have three stores in china. Im opening two others at the end of this year. Rose do you design a Different Group of shoes for the china it that correct. No, im designing a very vast collection, its over 150 styles at the beginning so i always love to travel and the funny part is when i see my collection it keeps on it reminds know keep on traveling. I look at it and i say this is going to be very nice for indians, sandal is really sort of in the gold colors, et cetera. So i sort of make the collection traveling according to the different types but i do not think, okay, this im going to design for china, im going to design for america. No. Its a process thats coming after. Rose why do you work so hard. I always like to work and i just dont think i really work that hard because when you do something that you absolutely. Rose its not work. Its not work. And ive been really, really fortunate to find what i wanted to do as work very very young. I love shoes for since my childhood. Since my teenage years. Its a great thing. I never had this thing where you just, you know, go through life and you dont know what you want to do. Ive been really, really happy to be able to live my passion. Rose heres why ive said that. In i guess outside of milano where the factory is your apartment is on top of the factory. Yes. Rose so you can be there because you love the idea of spending a lot of your time thinking about the business, creating the shoes, expanding the empire. Yes . Well, if i have an apartment in on the top of the factory its because its its easier you know . You dont have to take a car, you dont to go all the way to milan. I spend my whole day in the factory outside milano and in the evening, you know, im just above it and i keep on being in shoes with all the drawing, the corrections, the new samples, et cetera. So i like to be concentrated so i dont want to have a nice sfpl place in milan and etc. And you think you have a friend, youre gossiping, this type of thing. Id rather stay where my concentration is in the factory. Rose but your happiest days are when youre thinking about designing shoes. Designing them, thinking of them, correcting them and seeing them be worn. Rose and do you think theres a constant evolution in how we think about especially womens shoes . Sffrjts you know, theres definitely an evolution. You know, a very simple evolution. When i first started 20 years ago i was doing those heels like three inches and people were looking at them, oh, my god, its so high and now it looks like a kitten heel oar a midheel. So for instance in the evolution of heel, in the evolution of shoe the height has completely changed. 20 years after when i look at what is considered high its double now. And so things have changed, yes. But its also very much according to modern life, you know . When you walk its one thing, when you live in the country its one thing. But when you have a car where you dont really necessarily think of walking so much, things are different. Rose suppose i started a shoe company tomorrow. Ive been inspired by you. Im going start a shoe company. Womens shoes and i know what i think is sexy. And so im going to create a shoe that i think is sexy and its going to have a stiletto heel. I also want red soles. And im going to have the best red soles i know how to make. Do i owe you anything for you that . You dont owe me anything for that but i will tell you you have a lot of creativity, you decide to do your thing. Think of something else. A red sole is a trademark. Im not the person to explain to you what is a trademark, you may find someone better than me for that. But to not go there and rose laughs and i will tell you, i would encourage you to, you know, to think in a creative way and to not to try to go on knocking off other people. I would say dont look at my shoes. Think of yourself, think of what you love and out of that put all this in your design. Rose and bring all of your Life Experiences into that in terms of what you like, the way you like color, the paintings you have seen, art that appeals to you. Whatever is beautiful to you, find a way to translate that. Exactly. I would tell you youve been meeting a lot of people, having wonderful experiences, traveling a lot, put all of this in your memory. Put all of this visually, take your pen and start drawing and you do not need to look at what other people are thinking is good or bad. Rose , what whats your goal . Where are you going . Today im going to toronto. Rose i know theres an exhibition in toronto. But where do you want to be in ten years . I probably want to be in ten years where i dont know where i will be but thats what brings a lot of soul to my story. I never decided i never started with a straight goal thinking thats what i want to do, thats what i want to be. Ive been, you know, leading my professional life of taking care of adventures that were offered to me, listening to people having conversation, what happens to your life and getting led by that. Not thinking okay, ten years i want 5 stores, five years i want this, i want that. I just let it as my shoes its the pace is different my pace is according to what happens to me so in ten years i dont know what will happen to me. Just what i want for me is ive been for 21 years free and i sort of think of myself as a free spirit and in my design its been very important so what i just hope for me is to remain free. Rose can you imagine doing fashion . Can you imagine designing clothes . No. Professionally if there is one thing that i know for sure is that i do not want to design clothes. You know, im not someone, i have never been someone who thought what could i do to be in the fashion industry . The fashion industry has never been the goal for me. I wanted to design shoes and i wanted to design shoes for show girls. I ended up in the fashion industry but that is not a thing i would consider apart from my shoes. I was proposed to do clothes design i would absolutely say no its only because my name rings a bell in the fashion industry but im not you know, id rather keep id rather keep on being concentrated on what i love to do and what i know i do at my best and that would definitely not be clothing. Rose but here we have been for 30 minutes talking in an interesting way about what you do and it happens to meet here. Its the idea for me of a great story is a great story and what happens is that there is a person thats involved the, your ideas that are involved, there is someone who creates something and someone else wants something and whatever the connect is between the two of them, the creator and the recipient, you know, is a kind of magical thing because its all about ideas. Its all about what has shaped you. Its all about your sense of yourself. Its all about the sense of yourself that you want to project. All of that is part of the mix. Uhhuh. Rose right . Yes, absolutely. You know, there was this young boy who came with his mother and his mother said he wanted to meet you. I said you want to design shoes when you will be a bigger boy . I said so why . He said because youre a role model for me. I said why . He said well you wanted to do one thing and you just did it and this is why. I dont want to do clothes, i dont want do shoes, but i want to see someone who out of nothing has decided to do what he wanted and did it. And i thought it was the nicest compliment. Rose it is, indeed. He was 15. Rose thank you, christian, great to see you again. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org announcer the following kqed production was produced in High Definition. Must have soup. The pancake is to die for [ laughter ] it was a gut bomb, but i liked it. In private moments about the food i had. I didnt like it. You didnt like it . Oh, okay. Dining here makes me feel rich. And what about dessert . Pecan pie . Sweetpotato pie