Keep It Fresh: A Reasonable Conversation With The Founders Of Sōlscience
How slippery basketball courts led Kent Chen and Daichi Nakagawa on the journey to become the go-to shoe care brand for sneaker connoisseurs
Ikigai is a Japanese term that loosely translates to “reason for being”. I recently had the privilege to sit down with the founders of sōlscience, a company that makes product focused around improving the experience one has with sneakers. After speaking with them it became clear to me that they represent the word Ikigai not only in their lives but also in their brand and products that they have created.
In this edition of A Reasonable Conversation, I talked to co-founders Kent Chen and Daichi Nakagawa about how and why they started sōlscience, what goes into creating a scent, and how a ride home from a high level stationery convention and a love for basketball ended up changing their lives. Without further ado….
Let’s start this conversation off with the obvious: Who are the people behind sōlscience? From both an individual standpoint and as a collective.
Daichi: Kent, how about you start first.
Kent: My name is Kent. One half of sōlscience. Daichi is probably the better half. Born in New Jersey and lived in L.A. most of my life. I’m really into street culture and that in turn is what got me into sneakers. A lot of my influences come from that really. Ever since I’ve been on the Internet, I’ve always been fascinated with what I consider to be the creators of that world. Huge fan of Hip-Hop and surfing as well too when I get a chance. I mean we’re both “older.” I’m not embarrassed to say we’re in our forties. As far as Daichi and I connecting for sōlscience, we’ve been friends for the longest. I moved to Japan for a little bit and came back to the country and we reconnected and decided to do something together.
Daichi: For me, my thing has always been basketball since I was in the first or second grade. I was born and raised in southern California. I did the BMX and skateboarding for a bit as a kid but I always came back to basketball. Which is fitting because the first product that we originally had for the company was an indoor traction product. That’s how the company originally started and then Kent’s love of street culture ended up leading us to an opportunity to pitch our company and product to a group that included Jeff Staple.
Before we get into how you guys found yourselves sitting in a room pitching your product and vision to Jeff Staple, you guys are both Asian-American, correct?
Daichi: Yea man, I’m 100% Japanese. I was born here in the U.S. but both of my parents are Japanese.
Kent: Yea I’m half Japanese and half Taiwanese but yea basically Asian-American.
Not to stereotype but with you guys being “older”, what was it like growing up with Asian parents? Was there the pressure to follow the stereotypical doctor expectations or were your parents open and accepting?
Kent: It’s probably different for the two of us. For me, you hear that stereotypical story where it’s like my parents want me to be a doctor or a lawyer. For me specifically, that was never the case. I have unorthodox parents, that would be the best way to describe it. My dad is a political revolutionist. My mom came to America from Asia because she didn’t like how it was really very strict. To her being in the U.S. meant you could be who you wanted to be. They’re great parents. There was never any pressure at all from them, which is great. It’s just always been do what you want to do to be happy.
Daichi: For me both of my parents were from Japan so they didn’t quite understand the American culture. They didn’t really say anything as long as I was doing well in school. They didn’t really push me to become a lawyer or doctor. It was just focus on school and do well with that. That was the only pressure.
I ask that question about you guys’ parents and the relationship with them because I wanted to see how it has affected you and shaped you to this point in life and how it factors into sōlscience.
Kent: It’s interesting that you mention that. It is a symbiotic relationship of sorts. I like that underdog story. That story of taking over and influencing the world. For example, Hip-Hop wasn’t always mainstream. Now it’s considered the dominant culture.
Working our way back to being in a room with Jeff Staple, you mentioned that a traction enhancement product was the original product for the company. I’m guessing that that product also factored into the name of the company?
Daichi: Sneakers, soles, and the science behind it. The goal is developing products based around sneakers and that’s how the name came about.
Kent: We just changed the sole portion of the name to avoid being pigeonholed. It can also mean the heart and soul behind it.
There’s a great founder’s story on the sōlscience website about everything that went into getting the shoe traction product created. What lead to wanting to create a product for shoe traction?
Daichi: For me growing up, every basketball gym we would go to the courts were in bad condition. No matter what trick we tried nothing would last longer than a couple of possessions. I just became tired of it one day and decided to do something about it. That’s where the whole idea came from.
How did the conversation of you trying to sell Kent on your idea for this product go?
Kent: I’ve personally always wanted to work with Daichi. Anybody can make a brand or company. You can create a t-shirt brand today as long as you have dope designs but there’s so many of those. The reason why we created this company is we wanted to create products that have a utilitarian value. Daichi has some incredible ideas that I believe in, so he didn’t really have to convince me. If the product idea resonated with me then let’s do it. The shoe traction was a fucking dope idea.
With the traction, I haven’t played basketball since high school, to be honest with you but I know that problem exists and I trust Daichi and his experiences. I believe in creating products that make life easier and bit more convenient. Things like that come more naturally to Daichi and we decided to create a company with that mind state around products that we know.
It’s making your life easier. Making sure that everything has a purpose and isn’t just created just to do it.
Kent: Exactly, that’s how ANTIDŌT came about. You get a pair of shoes off of Ebay and you don’t wanna wear them until they’re fresh but there’s no go-to product to use. That’s how ANTIDŌT came about.
I can relate to the product because until the Jason Markks and Creps started making better versions of the sneaker balls, all you had were the cheap, generic, car freshener-smelling sneaker balls.
Daichi: Exactly man. I went through the same thing. I tried Febreeze and everything. Also, there’s the fact that I just didn’t like the scents. Like lavender? Come on. I just didn’t feel that. We had the access and opportunity to create a more unique and fun product for a niche market. Jeff Staple also recommended that we work on and launch ANTIDŌT first.
Back to the original pitch, the product being pitched was the traction. What all went into designing and creating that product?
Daichi: That one has gone through so many changes. I mean, but we’re pretty close now though. We’re hoping to launch it really soon. People like Nightwing have already tested it for us and he’s pretty much happy with it. A few other people as well have tested and are satisfied with it.
Is it replacement traction? Additional traction? How long have you guys been working on it?
Daichi: The best way to describe it is as traction reset. It’ll reset the traction to almost like new condition. It’s trying to make sure you keep that comfortable feel with your shoe while being able to keep optimum traction. It’s been about a six-year process just testing and using it myself. Making sure this part is convenient or that part has a purpose. We’re wanting to minimize all of the little things even down to the way you pack it up or take it with you.
Everything has to be convenient enough so that people will continue to use it. A product can work well but if it’s inconvenient to use, you’ll probably just use it once or twice and then just forget about it. We try to look at all the different angles.
That makes sense because in the founder’s story it mentions chemical engineers and electrical engineers and I’m thinking to myself “All of this for ANTIDŌT? Something isn’t adding up”
Daichi: Yea all of those things were for the traction product. The engineers weren’t for ANTIDŌT. ANTIDŌT was actually on a separate list we had for future products and Jeff suggested we do ANTIDŌT first because of the minimal costs associated with it.
There’s a bit in the founder’s story about how you guys had drinks at the bar after the pitch. You weren’t quite feeling happy, you felt that it went well, but like you were missing something. What was that like having just pitched essentially your creative child and not getting the reception you were expecting or wanted?
Kent: There’s this ad agency based out of Long Beach called interTrend and it’s an agency that’s focused on Asian Americans. The owner of this agency has a lot of interests in the arts, youth culture, and creative culture and she decided to create Imprint Venture Lab, and Jeff serves on the panel for that company.
With Imprint Lab, they had a contest basically saying, hey any creative entrepreneurs we want to help support your dreams and goals. They were welcoming pitches basically. Around the same time as that was announced and going on, Daichi and I decided to work together.
We decided let’s just give it a shot. We submitted to them and we made the first cut and then we went and met with them in person. That’s the first time that Daichi and I went to meet with that panel. That was what you were mentioning about the drinks we had. We weren’t sure what they thought and there was like four people or five people on the panel. Jeff, obviously being who he is, was interested because of the nature of our business and our idea. There was someone else on there as well too, who sort of was interested. But a couple of others were like, “Well, you know, we usually work with, or invest with companies who already have some traction.”
We were still a napkin idea company, where it’s like we don’t have a company but we have an idea. We felt really good about our presentation. We thought we’d nailed it, but I guess the impression we got from them was more of a “we’ll wait and see about it.”
So that’s why we kind of felt like, well, we’re not sure how we feel about this whole thing. We felt like we did our best, but we didn’t feel like we got the feedback that we were hoping for. After a couple of months, they replied back to us.
Daichi: The said they wanted to see us make our first prototype, how we work with each other, and then come back with our prototype. That’s where we found an engineer and made the drawings and made the prototype. That’s where the whole research and development process began. All just so that we could get to pitch to and meet with them again. We were able to have a working prototype in front of them when we met with them again. They said they would like to work with us. Then came the conversations about moving forward and which product would we go with first. Like we mentioned earlier that product was ANTIDŌT and here we are three years later.
Seems like it was a very trying time. I get a sense that there was a moment that you kind of just stepped away from it for a bit and did some soul searching.
Kent: I think we were both naive. We’re kind of like, man, if they say yes we’re going to get like a million bucks and we’re just going to go quit our day jobs. We didn’t have any experience with these types of groups and we just knew what we read about. We honestly thought we were going to get like funding and this whole like this network of resources and we’ll just be on our way or whatever.
However, as time went on it was kind of like, well we’re not sure. It kind of made us feel like we went back to square one in a sense. It put us in check. You know, these things don’t happen overnight. What was interesting was when we met with them, Jeff had asked us “What do you guys want to do? Like, do you guys want to be just the “brains behind this” and kind of maybe like pitch these ideas to other companies and maybe work in that fashion? Or do you want to kind of like making it on your own and do everything on your own?”
We weren’t sure. They both sounded appealing. Just depended specifically on the situation. So we didn’t know. So we ultimately said let’s just try to create a brand first. That’s what sort of set us on that path of creating this company known as sōlscience, which has all of these other products and ideas already in the pipeline. Then we just found ourselves in this rabbit hole of working on ANTIDŌT over our other products and ideas. It’s been a really good experience in the sense of just learning what works and what doesn’t work throughout this whole process of trying to get the word out there about something we believe in.
Looking at the Instagram page for ANTIDŌT, there’s very little focus or mention of you two as being the ones behind the company. Is it by choice that you guys aren’t more front and center or is the branding of the company just a natural extension of your personalities?
Kent: For me, I think we struggle with that part. I’m glad you asked this question. It’s kind of like, back in the day, it was do you want it to be a brand? Now it’s the brand is a person. Jeff Staple is Staple. Bobby Hundreds is The Hundreds. So we definitely see the value in being out there because then it becomes more of the “I know who is behind this brand and I’m going to support this brand. I resonate with him or her.” In all honesty at the same time, not to put it on the whole cultural thing, but as an Asian-American or Japanese, I’m speaking on behalf of both of us, it’s a very quiet culture.
I don’t think neither of us are really like that dynamic. You know what I mean? If one of us were “Oh, you’re just made to be in front of a camera.” Or like if people just resonated to one of our personalities or something like that then we’d probably be doing more. Neither of us really care about the spotlight personally. I think there’s a lot of value in anonymity, you know? It’s kind of just by default. It’s who we are.
Daichi: It has a lot to do with the Japanese culture for me personally. Compared to the other Asians, the Japanese are quieter. Like Hiroshi and Nigo, they’re all so quiet and let their art and products be out there and speak for them. It has to do with our Japanese background and the belief of working hard and letting the product do its thing versus us coming out and saying we’re the people behind it. We tried to at one point but, like Kent said, it’s not our comfort area and we rather stay true to who and how we are as people.
Funny thing is we haven’t done much press. I don’t know if this is our first interview or the second one. For us, if we ever have an opportunity to talk with people, we’re not going to shy away from it. We know that there’s this balance involved in putting ourselves and the brand out there but not going too much beyond your own comfort zone.
Kent: Instead of trying to sell, sell, sell we have more of the attitude of “if you build it, they will come.” We believe that if we just create relationships with the right people and you know that’s hard in this day and age where it’s easy cause you can just DM anyone, but everyone is doing it and most have ulterior motives. We definitely try to create real relationships with people and not meet this guy to get this from him, you know. So yeah, it’s definitely sort of walking that fine line.
With ANTIDOT, the first three scents were Future Fresh, Cool Watermelon, and Astro Punch. How much actually goes into the process of creating a scent from start to finished product?
Daichi: The main goal is to create a scent that smells good and is safe. The whole process takes anywhere from six months to a year. We have to make sure that it doesn’t go sour at all. Some scents would go bad 30, 40 days in during the testing stage. We also make sure that all of the sprays are clear so that they don’t stain the inside of your shoes. We design the bottle labels in-house. It’s a detailed process but a worthwhile one. The most recent collab we did, TracyDesu’s SUPringo scent, took us a whole year. We started talking with her in December of 2017 and it launched in December 2018.
Before we get into how you guys decide on who you want to do a collab with, have there ever been any scents that you thought were going to be great smelling but just didn’t work out?
Daichi: There’s plenty of ones that failed. It’s crazy the amount of failed scents. There’s been easily over a hundred different scents that we’ve tested and we have about a little over a dozen available for purchase right now. So it’s been a good bit that’s failed. We tried to do a mocha scent to have ready when the Mocha III’s dropped last year. The scent just wasn’t all the way to our liking and we couldn’t get the color right.
How do you decide who you want to work on a scent with? Is there a deciding factor in wanting to work with someone?
Kent: We’re a new brand so we initially just wanted to build relationships with people. For example, with Jumpman Bostic we met him at SneakerCon and started talking and building a relationship. From there we asked him if he wanted to work together. The same with Under The Palms basically. It comes down to if things just feel right with that person. Of course, we have certain criteria from a business standpoint but the main factor and thing is just working with people have a respect for and relationship with. One day, we noticed that we had worked with three men on products and only had two women collabs so we knew our next one had to be with a woman.
You have done six collaborations so far. What goes into the process of working with someone on a collab?
Daichi: The first thing we do is just sit down and have a conversation with that person and figure out what scents they like and what they’re into. After that, we make a few prototypes and send it out to the person. Let them pick and choose which scent they like the most and we go from there. We fine tune the scent until we get their stamp of approval and from there Kent goes to work on the bottle design based upon that person’s story.
There seems to be this theme with you guys that no matter what you do, it has to feel right to you and be relatable to who you are as people. Seeing how you guys make a sneaker spray it’s safe to say that you’re into shoes to some degree. What are your favorite shoes?
Daichi: I don’t know about favorites but there’s definitely memorable ones for me. I had the OG Reebok Pumps. The real heavy ones with Byron Scott and everybody in the commercial. I suffered my first real bad ankle sprain in those. I couldn’t play for a year due to it. The second ones for me would definitely be the first pair of Jordans that I had which were the black/infrared [Air Jordan] 6’s. The ones that just retroed. I wore those shoes to the ground. The third one for me would probably be the Foamposites. I remember driving out to Vegas for Sole Collector’s Penny Posite event and not winning the six pack that they had in the wooden crate but I did get the DB 4’s while I was out there.
Kent: I like that we’re so different because unlike Daichi, I buy sneakers on sale all the time. I can’t buy expensive hype and collab shoes. I like them but I can’t do it. I’m happy buying general releases. I’m more of a silhouette type of person whereas Daichi is more tech-driven. He was talking to me the other day about the [Air Max] 270s and the difference between the Force and Max versions. It’s just something about a nice silhouette and it being aesthetically pleasing. I love Jordan 1s along with Vans, especially the Skate-Hi. I also collect New Balance as well, the 997s and 998s. I just can’t pay full price for shoes. I don’t know why either. I’m just weird like that.
Daichi: We both bought the Union Jordan 1’s and turned around and sold them to put back into the business. Can’t believe they’re going for a grand now.
Kent: The worst decision I’ve made recently [laughs]
I appreciate you guys taking the time out to sit down with me and have A Reasonable Conversation.
Daichi: We appreciate it, man. We really do.
Kent: Thank you for the opportunity.
Jacob DeLawrence is a wizard with words. Follow him on Twitter, @_jdela.
