SL: The idea of living a life on the road is a good place to start. We’ve just featured Freeman Transport, so travel is on the mind. I was thinking about them, and how travel breeds design challenges.

Horn: Yeah, definitely. I can talk hours on that, because it is unfortunately my life. Part of the premise for Vael was literally that I’d been taking on so much freelance work for a bunch of my clients and it became obvious that it didn’t make sense to have an apartment anymore. For almost two years, I lived on the road. And, it’s not as hardcore as it sounds. I put everything in storage. Hung out with my parents a bit on the East Coast. Spent a lot of time in China. A lot of time in Japan. Most of this was just business travel, and if you have enough going on, you can just link together your schedule so that you can go, “Well, I have to be here now, and there then, and I have a friend here,” and you can just put it together so you are constantly living out of a bag. It was interesting, because it definitely changes your perception, not having a home base, on the objects you can carry (clothing, shoes, personal items). I’d come back from a trip and get to my apartment and go, “Ah, this is my home.” There’s my shit, my bed, my central location. Without having a central location, at first it kind of freaks you out and I don’t recommend it for everyone, but after a while it becomes incredibly liberating, because you just kind of go with it. Finally, when I got all my stuff out of my apartment I just felt like, wow, this is so much superfluous crap. It’s not necessary and, to tell you the truth, it doesn’t feel like my home anymore. It makes travel a lot easier, because when you’re traveling on a three week trip to Vietnam and China, you just want to get back. It kind of ruins the trip a little bit. When you don’t have anywhere to go home, you can enjoy it a little bit more. It changes your views on where you are and why you are there, and how much you enjoy it.

Just from some of those basic observations, that is kind of where Vael came about. Are you familiar with Medium, our old brand?

SL: Yes, a bit.

Horn: That was kind of built around creative people. Not necessarily the best idea for a footwear and accessory brand, but not a terrible idea. It seems that for me, the only way to create product is to do it out of something I know intimately. I’ve never been good at making women's shoes, or a number of things like that. It’s hard for me to work on things I don’t really get. I think that is the case for many people. Musicians don’t write music they wouldn’t listen to, or don’t like. They can, but something is always not great about it. If you get too foreign it is tough to do. For these, both Medium and Vael, these are things I understand intimately. Medium was kind of the creative community. We were trying to work on shoes and accessories for graphic designers, architects, people that were involved in making stuff. It is a broad subcategory, but it was definitely interesting. And it resonated with people resonated. We had some interesting co-branded things, that weren’t normal but spoke to the same person. We did a co-branded product with Adobe systems, the software all these people use. We did work with Dwell Magazine, a publication many of these people have seen and that people in the subcategory use. We also did work with House Industries. We tried to do things that linked with this creative subculture we were in and that we thought other people would appreciate.

When it came to Vael, we thought, well the creative idea was interesting, but what other things are affecting me? That looks at the way I view stuff, the stuff I have. I’m a product guy, so it had to be stuff-based. I wasn’t going to write any software. Given the skill set I have, and the factories I knew, for this lifestyle... if you really look at the travel genre of clothing and bags and accessories, most of the companies out there, they don’t do a very good job of addressing who we are. Yourself, or me, or our peers. There’s the Swiss Army stuff and some bags that are alright. There’s the total outdoorsy thing.

SL: Yes, the vacation clothing, rather than travel clothing.

Horn: Yeah, there’s technical outdoorsy hiking shit. Some high-end stuff, like some Prada bags. But, there is nothing that is really built for people, I guess a lot of business people have a Tumi bag, and you could roll into a meeting with that, but then you look like a business dork. So, it was really hard, even these brands describing themselves as “for the traveler,” like Swiss Army and Tumi, or Patagonia, it was like, “Um, ok, who am I going to buy a bag from? Gravis? Perhaps not.”

So when you are really looking at travel, you are looking at a few things. Versatility, obviously, because when you carry stuff, you don’t want to carry seven pairs of shoes. You can carry maybe two, and those have to do a bunch of different things. You are probably going to be working out. You are probably going to be going out to dinner and looking good. You want something comfortable. You want them to do a number of things. So, we were thinking perhaps we can make a shoe that you can work out in, but still look cool when you go out to a bar, and not like you are in some Nike Shox. Those are great for running, but don’t look great in a bar. Or vice versa, a pair of Prada shoes look great in a bar, but you are not going to run in them too well. Even the Nike Sportswear stuff, looking like a hybrid, but I don’t know if you are going to be running in them. On the other end, how can we make shoes that looks great at night, whether you are in Europe at dinner or in New York with some guys, and doesn’t make you look out of place? But, you’ll be walking in them all day. These are obvious things, and many companies have thought about them to some point. It is always important to make comfortable shoes. In this situation, where you’re thinking one pair, or two pairs of shoes, they have to work in all these different circumstances. A lot of shoes that I have, that are beautiful shoes, I love them, they look great. If you put me in them to walk around all day and do store check, they suck. They are leather-soled shoes and they are not really comfortable. And, the shoes that are comfortable, you look like an idiot in. There has got to be some middle ground there.