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DESIGNER INTERVIEW SERIES: The Brothers Behind BILLYKIRK
BillyKirk has held rule in the court of authentic cool for a while now, but for anyone new to the brand the story behind their history is what confirms their status. Awesome, modern leather goods – from cuffs to bike-frame pouches to i-pod holders – are designed in classic styles, and some are even hand-crafted in the Pennsylvania Amish community.
The two brothers behind the brand, Kirk and Chris, who are some of the friendliest guys you can talk with, took the time to share a bit more about the brand, its products, and their ideologies…proving why they are a huge favorite here at Art in the Age -plus they included ROOT to celebrate their 10 year anniversary party; how can we not favor them?
How did the name Billykirk come about?
Kirk: That is the name our father would call me. My full name is William Kirkland so it is a shortened version of that.
Chris: We are originally from Memphis, TN and as you probably know there is a long standing tradition down South of melding first and middle names together. We are sort of paying homage to our roots. Also by naming our company Billykirk it will be forever linked to our father, whom we both can’t possibly speak highly enough of.
How did Billykirk get started?
Chris: We founded Billykirk Inc. in June of 1999. We knew going back to the late 80’s while growing up in Minnesota that we would someday have a company together and it would be called Billykirk. In fact, in the early 90’s I made Billykirk business cards when Kirk was in high school shortly before he went to college for clothing design.
Kirk: We had no idea what the business was going to consist of but we had the name. Finally, the seed was planted when Chris and I were at this pawn shop in Santa Monica, CA sometime in 1997 or 1998 and I noticed this 1 ¼” wide 70’s leather watch strap. I just wanted the strap but the owner was not interested in selling it without the watch. We went back a month or so later and the manager, a guy we sort of got to know, convinced the owner just to sell me the strap. I wore it regularly at a coffee shop I worked at and would get comments on it. Finally, one day I went to my brother’s real estate office and said, “Let’s make these.” He grabbed the phone book and oddly enough found a leather wholesaler 3 miles away and we set up an appointment.
Chris: It essentially started that day during the appointment with the leather wholesaler. I remember the smell of leather hitting me like a ton of bricks when we walked in. Luckily we caught the guy on a good a day because he was very patient with all of the questions we peppered him with.
Kirk: Very true. He told us what type of leather would work best, who to get hardware from, what tools and machines we needed to make them, etc.
Chris: Yea, he was very instrumental and we left the meeting feeling pretty optimistic.
Kirk: Our brains were churning after that meeting and soon designs started filling our apartment. It was a mess. We were buying skins of leather and hand cutting various things in the kitchen and living room. It was hardly an adequate design space to work in but we made do for a while.
Chris: Soon after we had been working on our first designs and a business plan, Kirk left his assistant clothing design job to focus on the new Billykirk venture. He kept his coffee shop job, however. I stayed put, leasing property since I was making more money. During that first 6 months we formulated the bases of our company. Our first collection would consist of three cuff styles in three color ways. More importantly, we conceptualized what the Billykirk brand would represent: “Utility, Quality, Function.” To this day we still use the same three colors of leather from the same tannery and those three words are still the bed rock of our company and guide us in all of our designs. Once that was sorted we got busy locating someone to make our samples. Again the yellow pages did the trick.
Kirk: Strange that we did not use the internet to locate these guys.
Chris: Yea, the phone book came in handy. I think Arnold was about the third person we met with to make our designs and knew right way once we met him that he was the guy.
Kirk: Good ol’ Arnold. He quickly became our mentor and friend. I was damn happy to be out of the apartment! So, with Arnold on board we were initially going to simply fax him the orders and pick them up at a later time. But I ended up calling him and stopping down so much that he eventually said, “Why don’t I teach you how to do this and you can have a shelf and come down daily.” The light bulb really went off then and for the next three years we hunkered down in a seedy part of DT Los Angeles and learned all we could about the leather trade from a third generation leather manufacturer
Chris: I would head down there on my day off which was Monday and Kirk was there 5 days a week. Prat, FIT, etc. could not have taught you what we were learning and it was free except for gas getting there each day. I’d say around a year later I went part time at my day job so I could get fully immersed in Leather Making 101.
Kirk: Arnold’s grandfather bought most of the machines and tools in his work shop. Back in the 40’s and up until the Vietnam War they were cranking out 1000’s of pieces for the military from belts to leather hat brims. They have been working with the US Post, Fire and Police departments, UPS, etc. for decades. He was very well versed on how to make a lot of leather accessories and we basically soaked it all in.
Chris: That one shelf, I think, became three in less than a month. Soon after we met Arnold we did our first tradeshow in Las Vegas in 1999.
Kirk: We had no idea what to expect. We shared the booth with a company I did some fit modeling for.
Chris: It was no doubt the smallest display of the entire show. However, we were able to get a number of good orders just on those three cuff styles. It was very cool to hear the positive reaction to the cuff designs and our brand.
Can you contextualize your product? (i.e.: What you wear it with. How you use it in their personal life or how you hope people are using/wearing it.)
Chris: I have been using our items daily for years and years. I have belts that have been in rotation for 8 years. If I am in jeans or work pants I usually go for one of our No. 150 Claw belts in brown or our No. 109 Skinny belts in natural. If I am in linen trousers or shorts we have a nautical webbing belt with bronze buckle that looks quite smart. If I am in formal attire our brown or black No. 117 Hidden Buckle belt gets the nod. Card cases, wallets, bags they are used daily. They sort of become an extension of ones personality. I am not a very complex guy and our product isn’t either. There are not many bells and whistles involved with our product and that is sort of how I live my life. Not a lot of clutter.
Kirk: It also gives a chance to see how they wear in and what could use improvements, etc. I stitched up a card case recently in a different tanneries leather to test it out. After a week I knew it wasn’t the leather for us.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever made?
Kirk: Not so much weird but certainly some unusual items. One that comes to mind is a hand-stitched black leather Noguchi Boomerang coffee table cover that I made for a friend of ours. His daughter was just starting to walk so he commissioned us for the job of protecting his daughter.
Chris: We also made a very a very short lived leather biker visor and recently we made some key rings to give out a family reunion in Murfreesboro, TN. Encircling the design was, “Land of the Free, Home of the Brays.”
What’s your favorite thing about working with leather and/or the manufacturing process?
Chris: I have always loved the look of aged leather. I am not talking about artificially aged leather I mean years-of-wear-aging that comes with use. We use our type of leather just for that reason – it gets better with age, takes on a very nice patina and wears in well.
Kirk: I feel the same way. Leather is a medium that takes quite a while to understand. It can be temperamental but once you know how to coax it and its limitations you can create something that, with proper care, should last 100+ years.
Chris: Since 1999 we have used the same tannery for most of the leather we buy. This has been a huge reason why we are still doing what we are doing and enjoy doing it. In other words, having a supplier we can count on has been paramount to our success.
How’d you strike up a relationship with Amish leather workers?
Chris: This topic came up one day when I was discussing our move out East with a friend from TN that I had bought some machinery and tools from. I mentioned we would need to find some manufactures to make our collection since I knew finding cheap rent like we were paying in DT Los Angeles would be very hard in NYC. We had 2000ft and 5-6 workers making our stuff. He suggested I talk to an Amish guy he dealt with. Not one to cast aside an interesting offer I agreed. He phoned ahead and told the Amish man’s neighbors (they kept a phone in their garage that the Amish man would use) that we were OK and to have the Amish man call us. That was in 2004 and 5 years later the Amish are still producing 80% of our collection.
Kirk: We still use a few of the same CA based manufacturers we used early on and the Billykirk collection continues to be made by hand in the USA.
Chris: Now that we had Amish group solidified as our manufacturers, in April of 2005, we packed up the company, Kirks home and me and my wife, Tracy and made the cross country move. Adding more fun to the equation, she was pregnant with our first. Matilda arrived in August of 2005 just a few months after we stepped foot in Jersey City.
If you have a working knowledge of his writings, what’s your take on Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction?”
We have not read that essay yet but look forward to looking into it. His ‘Aura’ and ‘mass production/consumption’ ideas are interesting at first glance though.
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Thanks again Kirk and Chris, for taking the time to share more about Billykirk! Please be on the lookout for new Billykirk items on our online store, coming soon…
For now, have a look at the following items in stock at the store & online: Tote bag, Bike frame pouch, Shoulder satchel, Double collar button belt, Steamer bag, and Utility pouch with belt loop!
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Designer Interview Series is a new Blog feature in which Art in the Age buyer Melanie reveals the person or team behind an Art in the Age curated brand…through exclusive interviews! Tune in again next week for more…
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