MEET OUR TEAM

OUR ABILITY TO COLLABORATE IS OUR SUPERPOWER, & kindness is a core value of our customer service.

With over 100 collective years in the footwear industry … get to know us, and why we’re both uniquely & ideally suited to bring your vision to life.

BOB GOVAN
Partner

merchandizing, marketing, storytelling, line planning, influencer collabs, retail collabs, & resident sneakerhead / consumer guru

  • My 1st LOVE was 80’s street culture (basketball, rap, and fashion):

    • Big East Basketball

    • Tiny Archibald

    • "Break Dance - Electric Boogie"

    My team position is the 1:

    • Guiding the Vision

    • Driving and Assisting

    • Championing the little guys

    We strive for 1 LOVE in the footwear industry:

    • diversity

    • equity

    • inclusion

    We will L.O.V.E. your brand:

    • Listen

    • Observe

    • Value

    • Elevate

  • 1) Seeing my very first project on the walls of Foot Locker, Finish Line, Footaction and Champs in the mall of the city I grew up in.

    2) Seeing someone in Berne, Switzerland wearing one of my first projects.

    3) My very first Celtics game was a gift for my 9th birthday.  It was Polaroid night and I took a photo with M.L. Carr before the game.  He went on to win a couple championships and he was the first NBA player to endorse New Balance.  After his basketball career, he served as a board adviser for the brand.  Forty years later I was resurrecting New Balance basketball after a 30 year hiatus.  What an honor and full circle moment it was reuniting with M.L.  He paved the way for me and many others to have an opportunity in the footwear industry.

    4) Spending time with Congressman John Lewis while directing Timberland’s boot business.  He taught me how to be a good troublemaker.

    5) Hiring, mentoring, and watching young people grow while adding value and diversity to the footwear industry.

IAN BURGESS
Partner

design, technical product specialist, partner building, development, holistic strategist, innovation guru

  • Favorite Cars:  pre-catalytic

    Obsession:  How things mechanical work

    Digital or analog:  analog

    Disposition:  Stubbornly optimistic, collaborative

    Skill:  Able to blend business needs into innovative and aesthetically pleasing products.  

    • Story telling solutions that are meaningful to the consumer and are key in product success

    • Able to summarize the room in a few sentences

    • Problem solver/fixer

    • Detail focused

    • “Function can drive aesthetics….and aesthetics can drive the product”

    Where can I be found on a Saturday afternoon:  In the garage or workshop “building a better mousetrap”

  • 1) Being one of a handful of footwear designers that were able to work and live in Asia at a dedicated development center as a design director for Reebok.  

    It allowed me to work with a team of super dedicated people in Asia, to see just where and how challenges in product execution were and was able to help solve them in a way that the product team in HQ would never “see” any changes….they just saw the fruition of their product vision…we worked on Reebok, RLX, Polo Sport, Blue Diamond and some advanced concepts.


    2) Working for the leading SCUBA Diving manufacturer of the time on the best gear in the industry.  To be given autonomy of my projects, work with engineering hand in hand, meet with suppliers and get quotations, work with the assembly line (made in USA) and help solve QC challenges before they became an issue.

    Another benefit was being able to dive with Jacques and Jean Michel Cousteau!

    3) Leading the design team for Reebok’s RBK team where we created amazing product for Iverson, ATR (above the rim), OTC (off the clock), shoes for Jay Z, 50 Cent and ltd editions for the Billionaires Boys Club & ICECREAM for Pharrell Williams.  It was a concept ahead of it’s time and it’s success as a business unit eventually led to all of Reebok becoming “RBK”

    4) Helping to start a design consultancy in SoCal where I go to work on an amazing variety of products from a large client base.  The workload was intense, but you learned how to be efficient in thought, time use and still maintain top level output at all times.  I had an amazing mentor and you never know exactly what you would be doing from one day, week, or month to the next…but it was an amazing learning experience.

    5) Creating the Adidas “Super Modified” in 1995….a skate shoe built from the foundation of the shell toe.  Talking to kids at the Burnside Bridge, the Hunting Beach High skate park and examining countless used skate shoes helped me to create a shoe with “rubber armored” three stripes on the forefoot to protect against impact and abrasion while doing stunts, a shell toe for abrasion against the pavement plus a suede upper for comfort and longevity and a double tongue….I was told by my developer, of the time, that it has been inducted into the adidas Original’s Hall of fame and is still being made in limited numbers (a Korn edition in 2023)

JESSICA COLALUCA
Partner

design, color, trend, consumer psychography, brand building, former-infliuencer-turned-strategist, endlessly curious

  • Diagnosis: Otaku

    Favorite Anime: Jujutsu Kaisen

    Favorite Character: Nanami

    Favorite game: Genshin Impact

    Main: Kinich

    Main Team: Nilou/Baizhu/Furina/Nahida (superbloom)

    Bias: G-Dragon

    Stan: Ateez, Mamamoo, Stray Kids, Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Beyonce, & Chappell Roan

    Doggos: Honey & Shuga (yes … named after that Suga, but with Japanese spelling)

    Favorite People: My husband of forever & our incredible son

  • 1) Identifying the opportunity + designing Reebok’s 1st yoga shoe

    2) Growing Timberland’s Women’s Streetwear (“Boot”) division from a $23M take-down business to over $100M+ with the launch of the Lady Premium (still in production) and Lady Field Boot collections

    3) Designing the Reebok Lumina while studying at the Korean Development Center (we used to fax tech packs back then :)

    4) Launching my consultancy in 2009, and working over 15 years with incredible clients, traveling the world, while giving talks at conferences such as MAGIC and Printsource New York

    5) Creating Design Seeds … a color & inspiration site which received 2 million pageviews / month for over a decade, while building a following of over 1.5 million across social

JESSICA YI-CHEN
Partner

materials, sourcing, development, manufacturing, innovation, commercialization, factory partnerships, global footwear guru

  • Goal:  Minimalist and efficiency

    Obsession:  Cleanliness

    Identifies as: “a foodie”

    Disposition:  Very detail focused, collaborative and responsible …. reasonable too!

    Skill:  Multi-faceted developer with a keen sense of aesthetics to support the design/product team, detailed and able to keep the team on track.  Collaborative team member with the best interests in both product and brand in mind at all times.  Knows both sides of the table having worked both brand and factory roles….

    Super Power:  has a vast collection of contacts throughout the globe with many, many skillsets to draw from as needed

    Pet Peeve:  inconsiderate people

  • 1) Being put in charge of the Under Armor factory development team for the Ching Luh Group in Fuzhou.  This included development, sample room, costing, and commercialization.  I had to build the team, establish the process and develop the first line of footwear for the factory to include product visits to the UA HQ in Maryland.

    2) Working for Reebok in the WKO Factory and NRT as the brand LO representative.  I was able to build positive working relationships with both Korea and Taiwan owned factory ownership and staff.  I still keep in touch with some of them to this day.

    3) Receiving the “Reebok Product Performance Award” for 2003.  It was quite an honor to be one of the few selected out of the 1000’s of Reebok employees who made an impact to the business.

    4) Working at Reebok’s premiere development center in Taiwan.  This is where I was able to work on some of the top models for Reebok from the still successful Classics line to products like Iverson, ATR, OTC, Polo Sport, RLX, etc. Some really exciting and innovative times

    5) Taking a job with Puma as my first step into the athletic shoe business.  This is where I learned about lasts, shell drawings, MOQ’s, pattern efficiency, tooling blueprints and the dreaded costing negotiations!

  • Columbia University - New York, New York

    College for Creative Studies - Detroit, MI

    Art Center College - Pasadena, California

    New Mexico State University - Las Cruces, New Mexico

  • Allen Iverson

    Yao Ming

    Baron Davis

    Steve Francis

    Jason Richardson

    Kenyon Martin

    Dwyane Wade

    Kawhi Leonard

    Dejounte Murray

    Kobe Bryant

    Lebron James

    Elton Brand

    Shaun Livingston

    Jaylen Brown

    Darius Bazley

    Shaq

    Edgerrin James

    Jevon Kearse

    Joey Galloway

    Santana Moss

    Steve Smith Sr 

    Julius Erving (Dr. J)

    Bill Russell

    ML Carr

    Jay Z

    Alicia Keys

    Missy Eliott

    50 Cent

    Pharrell

    Wiz Khalifa

    Wu Tang Clan

    Run DMC

    Atsuko Tanaka

    Stevie Williams (DGK)

  • Kawhi Leonard

  • Allen Iverson

  • Alicia Keys

  • Jay-Z

  • Pharrell & Nigo

  • Missy Elliott

  • 50 Cent/G-Unit

  • Shaq

  • Timberland

    Reebok

    Adidas

    New Balance

    Sebago

    KEEN Footwear

    Converse

    Champion

    Asics

    Nike

    NBA

    NFL

    MLB

    Disney

    Mattel

    Marvel

    Lands’ End

    Titleist

    Luenthai

    Huge Corp.

    Urban Outfitters

    Hi-Tec

    Avia

    Jambu

    Victoria’s Secret

    PINK

    New York & Co.

    akesso

    Kinetix

    Archroma Color Management

    FolkArt

    Johnson Controls

    Mack Truck

    Volvo Truck

    Ford Motor Company

    DC Comics

    International Automotive Design, West Coast

    U.S. Divers (Division of Aqualung)

    Survair

    Oceanic

    Ancra International

    Ray Ban/Bausch & Lomb

    Mattel

    Strottman Group Int’l (Lil’ Ceasar’s, Wendy’s)

    Pachmayr

    SureFire

    Snugtop Corp.

    Hershey

    Jolly Rancher

    McDonald’s All American Games