Richard Wharton
A Conversation with the Master of Footwear Retail
Richard Wharton is best known as the Co-founder of Office, Founder of Offspring, Poste, and Poste Mistress. He has over 40 years of experience in the footwear industry. A master of footwear retail, his varied experience stretches from luxury to high street, men's to women's, sports to dress. Founder Lewis Hull recently visited Richard at his London home to talk about and reflect on his impressive journey in the footwear industry.
Richard, you’ve lived and breathed footwear throughout your career. From Office to Offspring to Poste, you created stores in the right place at the right time. Whilst Office is a feature on most high streets now, the beginnings couldn’t be more different. How did Office come about and grow?
I started Office in 1983 in a designer market called Hyper Hyper on High Street Kensington. My boss at the time, David Casey, spoke to the owners on a Monday morning, signed the deal for the large mezzanine floor that no one wanted, and said "here's £200, go make a shop you open on Friday". Out of panic and necessity, I bought an old desk, swivel chairs, a hat stand and some filing cabinets from a couple of second hand furniture guys in Clerkenwell and with some chicken wire, some breeze blocks and a dab of paint, together with Ron the van driver and Kenny the handyman, we created the first Office store by the Thursday of that week. We didn't have a name , but I asked an art school mate of mine to paint a large sign. When he asked what the name was I just had too many options... Bill said it looks like an office, so why don't you call it that, you can always change it in a couple of weeks when you've come up with something better...we never did get around to changing it!
From there we grew to 8 shops all in London' Kings Road, Kensington, Charing Cross Rd , Portobello, Camden etc... selling mainly street fashion. But we really took off in the late 80s selling to the ravers, Timberlands, Cats, Kickers, Wallabees ... but more than that was the whole explosion of trainers... Converse, Puma, Fila , Travel Fox...
We were a shoe shop selling trainers and at that time sports brands wouldn't sell to the likes of us. So we took a trip to New York and started bringing sneakers in from the Grey Market. It wasn't an easy thing to do at that time so once we'd found different sources, worked out the shipping and the myriad of paperwork and tariffs we were in business .... and we went ballistic! We had old school classics like Adidas Superstars, Puma Clydes, Nike Cortez, as well as brands like Champion, Troop, Patrick Ewing... From that point, we started bringing in regular Nike Jordans and Air Max's, which really upset the sports brands over here in the UK.
From this golden time (1988 to 1991) we started to expand the Office facias, opening outside of London. First was Manchester then Glasgow, Leeds, Brighton, Belfast, Dublin etc... Each store was an immediate success. No one really had the mix of products that we had, a formula that still works to this day.
I remember going to Offspring in Covent Garden as a youngster. A bit like Duffer at the time, you felt you were seeing genuinely rare stuff - a feeling I’ve only had since in Japan. Who were your customers and where were you getting the stock from?
Offspring started in 1995 primarily out of total frustration with the UK sports industry who wouldn't give us an account at Office to sell Nike, Adidas, Reebok as we were a "fashion " store . So I designed a sports store, but did it my way. The curved wall was from a Clash picture single looking down the barrel of a gun , White Man in Hammersmith Palais, the colours Green and Red were from an old psychedelic album cover , and the type for the logo from a mexico 70 world cup album.
We didn't have a name, I was overthinking it as usual, but we looked at a dictionary and just down from Office was Offspring ... it was either that or OFFAL! Offspring the bastard son of Office was born. We opened up without an account with Nike, Adidas and Reebok ... and at that time I was still bringing in stock from all over the world; USA, Taiwan, Yugoslavia, France and Germany. But we didn't want the store to look like all the other sports stores at the time, so we split it into 5 areas. TRADITIONAL sports (Adidas, Puma etc), SURF N SKATE (Vans, Converse, Teva), DESIGNER (Prada Sport, Dries, Margiela), PURE FASHION (Acupuncture, Royal Elastics, Stride), OUTDOORS (Nike ACG, Garmont, Merrel, Northwave). The only criteria was that it had to look cool, but it was completely different from anything that existed.
All of this was pre social media and in some respects pre peak internet. You were shaping a retail concept - how did it change the footwear industry? How did your businesses change in tandem?
We found a snowboard sneaker on a stand at the sports show ISPO in Munich which became a huge phenomena, the NORTHWAVE Espresso. So when we opened up we actually didn't care that the likes of Nike and Adidas were not on board. Within a year we had won awards, the press loved us, and now the sports companies were taking us seriously. The punters loved it, and we had just about everybody buying from us. It was always exciting to speak to the manager Ghassan at the end of each day to see who was buying from us. Alexander McQueen, Naomi Campbell, Giorgio Armani, David Beckham, the list goes on... But more than that it was loved because it was accessible to all demographics especially women who hated buying trainers from sports shops.
The word spread that Offspring was becoming the best sports fashion store in the world and I was subsequently flown to the US to meet Paul Fireman at Reebok and Tinker Hatfield and Sandy Bodecker at Nike. From there we became a top tier account with all the sports brands. After all those years the big sports companies had finally embraced the fashion world. You wouldn't believe it now but that didn't exist before Offspring in 1995. We didn't realise at the time. but the effect that tiny store would have on the rest of the world of footwear retail would be enormous. The impact that it had on sportswear as lifestyle was colossal. You've only got to look at retail today to see the difference it had.
New Balance is ubiquitous these days - you introduced the 996 to the UK - tell us the story of how this happened…
It's fair to say that New Balance in 1996 wasn't cool, full stop. We liked the 576 Made in England, but we didn't like any of the colour ways. So I asked them to send me all the odds and ends of suede/ leathers and nubucks they had in the factory in Flimby , together with a bag of all the Ns and trims they had in stock . Quite frankly I think they thought it was a golden opportunity to get rid of some old materials, so they agreed to make up 4 colour ways They were all very limited as they only had enough material for 60-70 pairs.
These then became the basis of the relaunch of the New Balance 576. The two pairs I am selling were from this original launch. Every pair sold out in a week and there was enormous demand, including the guys from Daft Punk who had shown them to the owner of Colette in Paris, at the time the coolest store on the planet. She called me and asked if she could buy them from me. We didn't wholesale but we had already put together the next six colourways and I asked New Balance to sell some of our colours to Colette. She sold them to Anna Wintour and half the fashionistas, and it blew up worldwide. Japan was reselling them for £200, which was the beginning of the whole resell market in sneakers .
Much of the selection we have at MARRKT has been on a worldwide showcase. Tell us a bit about the tour, where they’ve been and why...
I have travelled widely since those early days looking for sneakers and work boots in the US; New York, Long Island, Boston, Vegas, Atlanta, LA, Chicago... I went everywhere buying whatever I could get my hands on but when I first went to Japan in the early 90s I was blown away with their selection especially Converse, Vans, Adidas and New Balance. I ended up buying hundreds of my own personal shoes there. Sadly many have been lost, fell to bits or ended up in a shoe factory and never returned. By far my favourite place on earth to visit and to see great stuff. However, I was a Footwear buyer and I was always in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy buying, designing and manufacturing shoes. So I have a lot of European favourites like Paraboot, Trickers, Trapper, Buttero... I am a slightly more obsessive version of Imelda Marcos.
Any grail pieces from the selection and any interesting stories about a few pairs?
My favorites are the Adidas Micropacer. One of 2000 ... Beckham was number 1 , I was number 017. The Reebok Insta Pump Fury in red, white and blue. This was the original and it was revolutionary when it launched ... the only Reebok shoe we ever had success with in Offspring. The Converse Denim & Woolrich Check, made in USA . I still don't know what the official name for these is. Pretty damn rare though. Nike Air Wovens. All very limited edition, the first ever to be launched in the UK, only 200 pairs of each colour. I saw the prototype of this in the Nike "kitchen" with Tinker Hatfield two years before...it still one of my favourite Nike designs. New Balance 576 1996 OFFSPRING colours. As I said before this relaunched New Balance as a fashionista favourite. Northwave Espresso. These red suede ones were the only sample available before the first production run. So we sent them to the Face magazine and they did a double page spread on this exact shoe, and it went ballistic from then on. The shoe that launched a thousand copies .
Shop Richard's personal collection of rare pre-owned and deadstock footwear gems...
