“I think it goes back again to spirituality and what matters. We can’t just keep plundering and pursuing. I think everyone’s worshiping the God of consumerism and, I’m not a Communist; I’m a capitalist. I’m a transcendent capitalist. I believe that people should work. I think you find God through hard work and labor, and doing something meaningful.”
-Steven Grasse
Interview by Theo Constantinou
Instead of writing an introduction for this piece, we are posting the end of our conversation with Steven that was off record and that was still being recorded, to give you a better idea of our ethos here at Paradigm.
Theo Constantinou: We’re starting out at the same point where you were, which is that, we’re doing something that’s what we like, and what we think other people should know about; people aren’t really living the way that they should. And so, we’re kind of doing it the same way: doing what we enjoy in life. We want people to live life and enjoy it, push the envelope and scope of our daily lives, and the way we conduct ourselves in life and business. There are people who are so deprived of that, that they don’t know where to begin.
Steven Grasse: When we started out, I’d take business from anybody to survive. We can be selective now, but when we started, it was just like, ‘here’s five dollars.’ Yeah I’ll do it, no problem. A lot of the work that we used to do was very much one way; now we’re very much this other way.
Theo Constantinou: But even with that though, for myself, I’m just putting out shit that I like. If you don’t like it, fuck it. Whatever. I’m just going to interview the people who I think are cool. I’m going to get as deep as I can with them and see if I can get them to say some stuff that will make you think more than you would reading any interview, where they just ask you about favorite color and don’t really give a shit.
Steven Grasse: So what’s your vision? Where are you going to go with your business?
Theo Constantinou: It has to do with my punk-rock aesthetic; that’s how I grew up. I don’t want my content to be bombarded with advertising. So, how do I bridge a gap? I’ve always been intrigued by this; bridge a gap between the creator and the consumer, and I’m making friends with all these artists and photographers, people who want to sell their stuff and get it seen by a global audience, which I am now building through the process of interviews and stories or whatever. We’ve kind of structured this online store, of creator to consumer…and we act quote-unquote as a middle man; I’m giving you the information, and saying that if you think this is really fucking cool, go to our store and support the artist that you think is doing something amazing, and at the same time, allowing you to not only be a part of what we are doing at Paradigm, but giving back to the creative process of these brilliant individuals.
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Tell me more about your original business plan, and the simplicity of it? Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, and all that cool shit.
Well it’s funny; you were talking about what you used to do for a living. My mom would always say, ‘You’ll never get a job watching television,’ or ‘No one in the world thinks that’s funny’ and I was like, ‘I’m gonna show you wrong, prove you wrong, ‘because I always thought, why can’t I do what’s cool? I tweeted last week, it said something like, ‘I always run into people at cocktail parties who seem miserable, but they’re doing very lofty things. Or they’re lawyers, or doctors, or they’re trying to save the world in some way. And then when they ask me what I do, I’m like, I do kinda cool shit that is fun, because I feel like the best way to not be a burden to others is to do stuff that you love. You should do things that make you feel like you did in high school, when ACDC came on the radio. I have two kids and, I’m fully going to embrace anything that gets them excited.
When we started the company, I was very young; I was 23 and, I just wrote letters to people. The first letter I wrote was to MTV, and they said come up. So I went up and we worked with them for about eight years but, I just ended up writing letters to companies I thought were kind of cool, or interesting, or where I thought I could say something or do something. One of the people I went to was RJ Reynolds Tobacco, and I just said Joe Camel sucks. The CEO called me, said, ‘Boy, get on down here. What are you talking about?’ So we went down there, and we created this brand called Red Kamel. I couldn’t believe we got away with it. We had a budget of something like twenty million dollars and it was like Monopoly Money; we couldn’t find places to spend it. So, it was fun; for a while tobacco was fun: it was like being a pirate.
I started noticing all these ad agencies entering awards shows. I really didn’t care what my peers in this business thought, because they were all nerds. I was like, I don’t go to your events, I don’t like you, I’m not gonna enter your shows. Instead of spending all of our money to try and enter these awards shows, we spent our money on projects, like Bikini Bandits; which is a film series. I always thought, Hot for Teacher was the best video ever, and I wanted to make films that felt like that. So, we rounded up the girls from Delilah’s Den, gave them guns, muscle cars and malt liquor, and made movies. It went on this thing called Atom Films, which is just on the internet, and they got all this investor money; suddenly, we were flying all over the world shooting these movies. We went to Morocco and everything; it was crazy. Then, I got signed to United Talent Agency; I got wooed by every talent firm in Hollywood, having lunch…all this shit, and I’m a terrible director, but it just caught the moment.
We were gonna make a film with Canal Plus, which is from France. They fully funded all this stuff and, at the last moment, the deal fell apart. I was like, oh fuck it, I’ll make it myself. So we made a…I think it’s an awesome bad film…stars: Corey Feldman, Maynard James Keenan from Tool, Dee Dee Ramone, Jello Biafra, Gary The Retard and Hank The Dwarf. It was funny; it used to be filed at TLA under “drugs,” because it’s kinda psychedelic. Soon after that, we also created…the Bikini Bandits, used to rob a store called G*MART, which meant Gyro. So, we started a store called G*MART, and we had all these fake products in there…gmalt, gmalt liquor. And at the same time, we started Sailor Jerry. Sailor Jerry was a clothing company and, we had worked with William Grant & Sons, which makes Glenfiddich. They asked us to come up with a rum, and I said, ‘I know. Let’s call it Sailor Jerry Rum,’ because I owned the rights to Sailor Jerry and I thought that this was really clever. I’m going to get this rum to promote my clothing company. So, it was funny, and at the same time they asked us to create a gin, and that was Hendrick’s Gin. Hendrick’s is very famous now, but we didn’t own Hendricks, we did that as a work for higher; Sailor Jerry we owned. Ten years later, Sailor Jerry is the fastest growing rum in the world; far eclipsed the clothing company. They came in here one day and said, ‘You can’t own our biggest brand,’ and I was like…that’s your biggest brand? They’re said, yeah. I’m like, oh shit. So, they bought it from us, which of course changed my life, because it was worth a lot of money and I didn’t know that. Which is weird, I mean, you just start these things; you don’t know where they’re gonna go…and that one worked.
When we sold Sailor Jerry, we did two things: we changed our name to Quaker City Mercantile, and we kind of changed our business plan. The reason we changed our name was, it was our twentieth anniversary, and…it’s funny, I saw a write-up on Thomas Edison. He worked for the railroad and, he created some patent…something to do with the telegraph. He got paid fifty thousand dollars, which back then was a fortune, and he said, ‘Alright I quit. I’m starting my own company and we’re gonna just invent our own products,’ and of course he went on to do…. That’s kind of the model I had; we were gonna stop being an ad agency and start creating our own brands, because the things that we create for ourselves always work. When we work with clients, there’s so much bullshit involved; it’s never as pure. When it’s pure, it’s really quite good. So we changed the name to Quaker City Mercantile, to reflect the history of…particularly I’m intrigued by robber barrens, and the whole time period of President McKinley, and how he got assassinated by anarchists…and that led to Walter Benjamin and all that stuff…it’s that time period. So, the company Quaker City, reflects mercantilism, sort of late 1800s…and reflected the essay about Walter Benjamin. I’m in a very strange place, because, my whole life I’ve been anti Wall Street, anti public companies…we pretty much exclusively work with only private, family owned companies, but at the same time, I’m definitely a committed capitalist. I have a big issue with the government because…I agree with the Occupy Wall Street people; there’s something wrong. Don’t tax people who have money, tax people who make money doing nothing, like the hedge fund guys. All that crap, its bullshit. They’re paying fifteen percent, when people like me with a small business get taxed. Or like Comcast; sitting over there getting tax breaks by the city, where I get audited five times a year, because the city doesn’t know where else to get money. A lot of issues like that…but anyway, what was your question again?
What was the original business plan and all that cool shit?
Again, it goes back to…I always figure if I like it, there are other people that will. And if you keep it pure and, don’t think too much about what the consumer wants, but think about what would get you excited, then you’re never gonna fail. The problem is with these brands. With Hendrick’s, we’re in seventy-one countries now; with Sailor Jerry, we’re in thirty countries now, and as they grow, they get harder and harder to have a single vision; but we try. I’m a total tyrant, ask anyone at William Grant & Sons; I’ve got them all terrified, because you have to; it’s an absolute dictatorship.
In regards to the ad agency you started; this is kind of going into the transcendentalism stuff, but, ever since that, “did not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path, leave a trail” … can you talk a little bit more about the trail that you’ve left now, kind of reflecting?
I think that’s a great quote. Well, the interesting thing is that, I never look at any market research, any trends; it’s completely based on things that I personally like. I spend most of my time reading old books so, a lot of things will be an idea I might get from reading about either a person, or a certain time period, and being able to create something out of that that is relevant. People don’t like old things; when things are too authentically old, it’s boring…so we kinda riff on a vibe, but that vibe will be very unique, because it’s based on something that I discovered versus what’s trending on twitter, or what’s hot, or what the next hot trend is. So, I think a lot of young people today…one of the problems is that, I think they spend too much time looking at what others are doing. They should spend more time looking through arcane, old texts and…that’s not on the internet; not everything’s on the internet.
So, I was in New York City last week, and someone asked me if I knew anything of Art in the Age. I said, “Yeah I know a few things,’ but I was hoping you could explain in further detail, the concept behind Art in the Age.
Yeah. So, Walter Benjamin’s essay was about how the more art is repressed, the more it loses its aura. And, the riff we’ve done on that is, the more we buy cheap shit from China, the more we lose our aura. I have this theory that, things should be more expensive, and that we should spend more of our income on food and the clothing that we buy; not everything should be cheap and disposable. Not only does it destroy the essence, but it also destroys resources. So, the idea behind Art in the Age was pretty simple. We started the store, and the store’s also a gallery; it’s an event space, but we would highlight other companies and brands that had a similar philosophy, and the spirits kind of highlight that as well. You know that Root, Snap and Rhuby are not super expensive… actually, they’re like $32 a bottle, because they’re certified organic. They use wholesome ingredients, and the farmers who grow the crops get paid well. We pass along those costs to the consumer, and I think people should be happy to pay that. The margin on each bottle is actually a lot less then it is on…I make more money on a bottle of Sailor Jerry than I do on Root, even though it’s twice as expensive, because there’s only so much you can charge. It is a statement in terms of philosophy. I guess some people could say it’s elitist, but it’s not. There was a great article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times the other week, about the myth of organic food being beyond peoples’ reach; it’s not. You just have to change your mindset, and not live in the suburbs so that you don’t have to pay all that money for gas and stuff.
Soooo, so much for the old suburbs…
Yes.
It’s no excuse.
No excuse.
So, that same individual I was speaking with, mentioned to me, after he saw that I was doing an interview with you … he said, there was this famous ad that was done for Puma, of a woman giving a man a blowjob.
Didn’t do it.
My ignorance was bliss so; I was just hoping that you could clear the air.
No, that was funny. That was one of the first instances of…we don’t know where that came from. I think we tracked it down to some guy in Poland.
Pretty grimey ad.
It was awful. You know what’s funny, when we were Gyro, and we had a reputation for being, you know…people would send us the sickest stuff thinking that we would think it was funny, and I’m like, it’s not funny. There’s a difference. That was like porn. We always got criticism with Bikini Bandits, and I was like, you know, it’s a Van Halen film, it’s not supposed to be anything worse than that.
Back to that aura. I watched that talk that you gave that was on PSFK, talking about the cheap crap from China. You said something about the conventions, and people losing their personal aura…now that I’m getting back to interacting with people who believe in having a personal aura, growing their own food, or getting back to the land, or spending money on clothes that are going to last them a lifetime, if you will…why have the masses completely lost that personal aura?
That’s a good question … because they’ve been sold a bill of goods by the man? I don’t know. What’s that Dead Kennedy’s album, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death? It’s interesting, see, if the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street had a baby, it would be me. I kind of feel like personal responsibility and big government; big government’s a problem. People are expecting that everything should be given to them; things should be free and things should be easy. So, maybe it’s a mixture of the government, mass-media, and the culture of convenience. I think a lot of it goes back to, on the Occupy Wall Street side, corporations being seen as people. There was a great documentary called The Corporation that went into that detail, and, if corporations were people, they would be sociopaths, because they’re maniacal, murderous fiends that just grow and grow and grow. Just because you have the right to go to McDonalds on every street corner, isn’t right; there’s no conscious to it. I think most people take the easy path. I don’t think you get there through regulation, I think it all goes back to the transcendental thing. They saw the coming of the Industrial Age as a loss of innocence, loss of spirituality…and that’s exactly what happened. So I feel like, in some ways, the Enlightenment is to blame for what’s happening in the world, because there was a loss of spiritual connection with what’s morally right and what’s wrong. That doesn’t need to be God, but it is in some way. So, I think it’s very profound what’s going on in the world. When you lose touch with God, what else do you worship? You worship things, convenience. And I think, when you look at McMansions, it’s all about creating the illusion of the middle class; there isn’t a middle class. America’s a country of poor and rich. So we have a McMansion which creates the illusion of a middle class. You have your SUV, and you have all your products which are cheaply made, but they look like the real thing, and you’ve gone into debt to buy them…it’s a house of cards. The house of cards is evaporating and we’re going to have Night of the Living Dead soon, probably…I don’t know. That’s why I bought my fortress in New Hampshire.
I wanted you to talk a little more about your goal to revive American Transcendentalism, specifically the idea of modern existence and its probing of the essence of a life rooted into utterly chaotic insinuations of the way of the world in these times, and the invariable code of conduct, chasing meaningless ambition in life…
Didn’t I just answer that?
A little bit.
Wait, say it again.
So, this modern existence, and meaningless ambition in life …
I think it goes back again to spirituality and what matters. We can’t just keep plundering and pursuing. I think everyone’s worshiping the God of consumerism and, I’m not a Communist; I’m a capitalist. I’m a transcendent capitalist. I believe that people should work. I think you find God through hard work and labor, and doing something meaningful. What is meaningful to you? What Wall Street taught us, was shortcuts. What’s the expression? There are no shortcuts worth taking? Transcendental and beyond, for me, just basic Christian principals of hard work, and pursuing something meaningful, is where people have gotten off the track. Why does a corporation need to grow like cancer? Why can’t people be happy with smart group? Why do you need to buy the latest iPhone when your last iPhone works fine? I kind of want the new one, but I need to fight that, you know.
I noticed with young people, a lot of them are very lost. First of all, they’ve been told to go to college, by the…let’s call it the industrial academic complex, that gets them to go to college and get deeply into debt, so that the professors can get tenure and have these glittering campuses. The kids start school, get deep in debt, and they end up taking shit jobs just to pay the debt back. No one really explores anything interesting or meaningful because they don’t have the choice now: they’re zombies. I kind of feel like people should stop going to college and become apprentices, like they used to in the old days: learn a craft, learn a trade … when the shit breaks down, you still have something you can do. You know its very old school. I talk the way my dad, my grandfather, his grandfather.
It was funny you say that, because the next question is something … a conversation I’ve been having a lot with my own dad, about that very thing. He grew up without electricity, in a small village in Cyprus. He was thirteen years old before running water or electricity came into his village. And then this idea of education his parents preached … he learned all these things and all these skills, and then education was preached. When you’re a farmer like that, you see when they started to industrialize even that island. But I asked him, I said, after all these years living in America, and seeing what it is, he says, ‘If I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed right where I was, in the village, lived off my land and had the most simple, beautiful life.’ And that’s kind of great.
That’s kind of Zen. How much shit do you need? That being said, I get a thrill out of starting new things and getting them going; it’s fun. The project in New Hampshire is really exciting to me, because it’s the one we’re not selling. I want to see if I can make it work as a philosophy, as much as a commercial process. So it’s almost like our needs on crack. We’ve started with our needs, taking it to another place, because we’re gonna work closely with farmers. We’re going to grow a lot of this stuff ourselves, but for other stuff, we’ll work with local farmers and things. It’s exciting and scary.
Can you tell me more about the Sailor Jerry documentary? And more specifically, I was just over off of Girard. I walked into a tattoo shop and I saw this picture on the wall that looked like an interesting guy, and I asked them who it was, and I guess, this guy’s name is Philadelphia Eddie…and they mentioned the movie. I haven’t seen it but, any specific stories to that?
Well the movie started with the two guys I bought the estate from, Ed Hardy and Mike Malone. They were both Jerry’s protégés, and when Jerry died, he left the shop to Mike; Ed was his business partner. Ed’s still alive. Ed did his own, awful clothing line, which we had nothing to do with. I think Ed wishes he had nothing to do with. We knew that they, particularly Mike, was getting old, and, so I wanted to make sure we filmed them, did an interview with them before they died, just to get it on film. We sent Eric Weiss, our local director, out to interview them, and he came back and said, ‘You know, you can make a whole movie with this.’ I said go do it. He went around, and had to convince the old guys to talk to him on film. Because Ed did it, then the other guy said, well if Ed did it, then I’ll do it. Before you knew it, we had all of the greats talking on camera and, that was a really great document to have. We got into a lot of film festivals like, South by Southwest. And beyond it, it helped to sell rum; I think it was a great piece of film to get the story down. We’ve shown it in a lot of museums, folklore museums and things around the country. Philadelphia Eddie was one of Jerry’s contemporaries. He’s funny because he’s just like “ah, fuck Sailor Jerry.” He’s still around; his place is over in Chinatown.
So Thoreau said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Does this have any relevance in your career, and just, to other people?
I take that quote as saying: have big ideas, and figure out how to make them happen. So yeah, absolutely. I think the stuff we’ve done works because, it usually starts with a philosophy, a way of being, a way of doing things that’s very deep as opposed to just a new product. I think a lot of companies don’t understand that. It’s almost like having sex, or wooing a woman, either you just rush right in there and boom it’s done, or you can take a while and enjoy it, and I feel like “castles in the air:” big ideas. Then the firm foundation is, doing the steps you need; there’s no shortcuts, you know.
Anything else you want to add?
We have beer too, Narragansett. Which is the fastest growing beer in New England; it’s doing well.
I hear possibly something with this girl who makes ginger in Brooklyn.
Its interesting growing root across the country. In New York we’re doing really well, New Hampshire, we’re doing great. It’s interesting to go in and see who adopts it first; it does great in Brooklyn. We take it slow, talk to people one-on-one; we don’t need to rush to get there. We’re also a hit in New York with the beer. We’re all throughout New England; we’re in Philly, just moved down to North Carolina. We have a wine coming out.
Will that be your dominant business now?
Oh yeah; it’s what we do. We still have advertising clients but, we call them legacy clients; they’ve been here for years. We do a good job for them, like Ecco Shoes out of Denmark; third biggest shoe company in the world, and we’ve had them for nine years; a family company. I have to go to Denmark once in a while.
We interviewed Todd Carmichael back in July? Anything ever come up?
Not yet. We were gonna do something in the summer, but it’s hard, because I go up to New Hampshire for the summer. We were supposed to meet but we never did. He wants to do a coffee spirit and I think we could do a really nice one together. The thing with coffee is that you have to find a way to do it different, because it’s been done. So how do you do it different?
That’s a good question, because I mean, I think the coffee spirits, besides obviously your Irish coffee, are pretty bland. What liquor could you mix with it that would taste really good?
It would almost have to be on its own because it’s so strong.
I don’t even know at this point. There are legal issues with caffeine. If it’s a coffee spirit it might be okay, because it’s artisanal and, not obviously for kids, but I’m not sure how the feds would even let it get through. What’s interesting is, we’ve been doing this for so long, that we don’t have to deal with the government on stuff, and there’s a lot of that. You can’t just go out and do stuff, you’ll get in trouble. If you get in trouble once, they’ll take away your license.
