Tommy Ogara

HS: You said you’ve worked for Dita for 8 years. How did the relationship come about, and how has your role changed over time?

Tommy: I was working on this Asanoha project for a company called Levante, who were the distributor for Dita at the time. I went to LA for these meetings along with the director of Levante. I speak Japanese and I was sitting in this meetings at some fancy restaurant. These guys were having a meeting with Jeff and John, and they had a translator kid.. Everything the director was saying, the guy was softening and was taking the edge off. As the night went on everything was turning into a lie. Finally I said, “Wait, that isn’t what he said.” I went back and said this is what he’s saying. Jeff and John kind of when, “wow, who is this guy.”

Then I started helping direct their brand, while I was creative directing this other thing. Levante had an uprising within, and then some people asked me to start another company and we took Fresh Jive and Dita. So, I did that. These other guys were jokers, not really hard workers. I did that for a year. At the time Fresh Jive was rolling, and we did big numbers. When Dog Town came out we did some big things. Brought out Tony Alva. We did a lot. Nobody was really paying attention to Dita. I had some ideas, and thought it had some longevity. I thought it would be a great brand. Nobody really wanted to do it. So I started working with Jeff and John and building Dita here to be more of a fashion brand. That was like 7 or 8 years ago.

As I worked on this side to get better materials and designs, better everything, I started working with Nobu from Hysteric doing collaborations. That’s how we started doing collaborations. Since I speak Japanese working with factory directors is no problem. There’s no middle man. Taking all the problems that make building a brand difficult and just doing it ourselves. We’re all one mind, one unit, a team.

HS: I’m interested on your thoughts on how important a collaborative piece is for the Japanese market.

Tommy: You know, ours aren’t strategically done collaborations. All the collaborations we’ve done have come over drinks, or talking over time. I’d known Nobu for a long time because we’d done some stuff together. We did some stuff with Roen, because Takahara san lived near our store and loved our stuff. We became friends just from batting ideas around.

I think that collaborations in our niche of the Japanese, or Asian, market have always happened when ideas just blossom. Like working with Neighborhood, we didn’t set out to find Shima and those guys and do something. They came and visited our store, and just talked. We were having a show, so we invited them. We’ve always like Neighborhood. Their denim and vibe on craftsmanship. Same thing with Visvim, we knew each other through mutual aquantences, and one day over drinks it just came together. It’s just very natural.

Like you pointed out, collaborations do draw attention in this market. We’d never been copied before just recently. A fake Clot X Dita Midnight Special came out. It’s just weird.