Welcome to the first edition of Kingpins Quarterly. 

We hope Kingpins Quarterly will be something you like to read, visually, viscerally and intellectually (VVI). It would be dreamy for us if you love even just one thing inside each edition. 

There is an old marketing adage, that customers are not what any of us see. What we need are fans the way the New York Yankees or Manchester United have fans. Their followers love their teams; and in order to keep fans, you need to give them what they want. We are going to try to do that as best we can, trying anything and everything but always working in harmony with VVI to make you love what we do.

One of the jokes the Kingpins team holds close to our hearts (at least we find it funny) is: to work successfully at Kingpins, one of the qualities you must have is to be unafraid of being publicly humiliated. We find this funny because doing new things means a potential to win—and, of course, to fail. We have failed so many times in so many circumstances, yet each time something goes wrong, we absorb the hit and do our best to fix it for the next time. We think that’s one of our best features: the bounce back.

Years ago, one of our exhibitors had a booth in NYC at a new venue where the floor in his booth tilted about 30 degrees and he complained (rightfully) that the booth was not workable or at least deserved a discount. We had never noticed the floor before he complained because it was a huge white polished cement floor that to us looked beautiful but to him was a nightmare.  Our error was to never even consider that the floor was uneven. 

Our new publication is like that white floor. We think it’s beautiful and important. We have wanted to create a publication for years, not because we want to infringe on our media partners whom we cherish and wish to always support, but because we want to try different things from the Kingpins’ point of view and mentality that non-denim people might not feel or consider the same way we do.

Being quarterly, our writers can take the time to write longer, more in depth articles. And since we only publish four times a year, it gives you more time as well—time to read, digest and share each issue. In addition to the features, you’ll notice a section on data about our beloved jeans industry for both Europe and the U.S.A. that covers things like the price of cotton in Pakistan compared to the U.S. and which country is taking production market share. These things change, and it’s not easy to access this data. We want to be that data place you can count on.

Thank you again for reading our first edition.  See you again in January.

Best,

Andrew Olah