We were lucky to catch up with Khullen Watson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Khullen , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?
In my experience, family and friends have always been my first supporters. I think I am very lucky in that sense. Having people that truly know you, and are willing to help, sacrifice, and give time money and effort towards your vision is amazing. I try to make sure I’ve given more financially than what I’d be willing/comfortable asking of family or friends. I generally have a great idea in mind for ROI timelines and thankfully have been able to deliver within certain time frames. As I attempt to build bigger businesses, I am finding that searching for capital around me from friends and family is a bit harder….coming from a working class family background money to invest is not always readily available. Even though that is true, my family remains to be my top source and resource for any business I’ve started. Currently my shoe company is taking investors of up to $10k, although my family and close friends do not have it to give, they help with research, organization, and buying plane tickets, etc. for me to travel and get the things I need.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’ve always been an artist. As a kid I’d draw cartoon characters, Spider-Man, X-men, etc. but I would change their shoes as I drew them. For some reason I’ve always thought those characters needed cooler shoes, like the ones I wanted…Nike, Jordan’s, adidas etc. As I got older, the cartoon characters and superheroes became athletes…or another realistic version of superheroes. I would design shoes for them as well. One of my dreams was to design at nike, jordan brand or Reebok. As I got older and played many sports I’d always think about what shoes or cleats I wanted and how to make them stand out more.
My family could not afford to send me to design school, but thankfully I landed a job in X-ray (with training and school that I paid for) right out of high school. I was able to learn the human anatomy and especially back, and lower extremities really well…which in turn would later help me to design shoes better.
In 2017, I learned about Pensole! A school for footwear and apparel design based out of Portland. I submitted for a class and was picked to design a shoe for a cook crew in a near by hotel in Portland. It was an intense week of design learning fundamentals, color and material design, and we had to pitch to the company and a host of other people. It was nerve-racking to say the least. But it also marked the beginning of the type of work that was fulfilling for me. Although the hospital helped me learn about how to help people once they were sick or injured, my goal was to affect them positively before they got there. So my art and ability to design to empower, inspire, or genuinely help others became my North Star.
Coincidentally I started a tshirt screenprint and design company during my time at the hospital as an outlet for my creativity.
Later in 2017, I picked up and moved to Beaverton Oregon to pursue a job in footwear design. I sold my screenprint equipment and was able to find housing with a friend whom worked for Jordan brand.
After touring nike WHQ with my friend, I was hooked. I got a glimpse of design happening at Jordan brand and was able to sit in on a briefing. I knew instantly that this was what I wanted to do! I had no hard design skills in my background besides that week long class at Pensole. So I knew this would take some time. My first year in Beaverton…I took whatever job I could find for income as I studied and sharpened my design skills and ability to problem solve for consumers. I worked at Walmart, then landed a job working in the kitchen (transporting and washing dishes at JBS (the cafeteria behind the Jordan building at nike). It was a bit of an ego hit, but I knew my overall goal was to serve. Service starts where intention to help is. Whether designing shoes, apparel, or actual kitchen service in my case, I knew I could serve at all levels. Because I worked in this cafeteria, I was able to meet all of the designers, athletes, and mentors that I could ever ask for. All of them poured willingly into my wheel house of understanding, experience, and expertise. I couldn’t have asked for better preparation. Fast forward, my first job at nike was designing t-shirts internally for employees. My second job was digital creation which allowed me to work closely with footwear and apparel teams on nike skateboarding and ACG (all conditions gear). I did a gang of jobs in between those times but each one taught me how to serve athletes and people better. Towards the end of my nike career, I was asked to produce color, material, and graphic work for a few shoe models…one of which was to be featured in the Olympics! Although that project did not come out it gave me the drive and belief that I could create footwear for top athletes and people of all walks of life.
I started my own shoe company Khullen Arman Footwear shortly after in 2024. I am currently working to release my first model in December of this year!
Have you ever had to pivot?
In 2016, I was working on finishing a business administration degree, and was in year 2 of a successful t-shirt screen-printing endeavor. I enjoyed coming up with original t-shirt designs and began growing the areas and towns that I serviced. By year 3 in 2017, I felt that I had accomplished most of the things that I had set out to do in that space and was looking for the next challenge. While at a Friday night football game in east Texas, I noticed someone wearing my designs from head to toe…(which is always a compliment and an amazing feeling), as I looked at their decision of footwear, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could dress someone head to toe and my company release a shoe that complimented the gear we made! As a kid I drew shoe all the time. It was something I knew I wanted to do at a young age, but I did not know how to accomplish it as an adult.
Fast forward, 2016 I’m sitting in Bible study as my group was talking about our dreams and what big thing we wanted to do or accomplish. I said I wanted to be a shoe designer and maybe work for nike one day! I had no clue how this was going to happen or IF it could happen, but I knew I wanted to try. During that same Bible study, my friend Alana told me about a “shoe design school” that her friend went to and that afterwards, he landed a position with nike!! That was all I needed to hear! The school’s name: PENSOLE. I got home that night and researched the school, founder (Dr. D’wayne Edwards), and some of the alumni (including Alana’s friend that attended), and I applied immediately to their next class!! Classes there are held sporadically throughout the year and they hand pick each potential design student for each class. They partner with all large scale footwear brands and you get direct access to companies like nike adidas puma etc. I submitted to two different classes and was picked both times!! One of the classes was out of the country and I could not afford to go, but in the summer of 2017 the next class was in Portland at the actual school downtown. I secured my ticket with help from my family, I put out a tee around that time to make money and cover some of my travel costs, then made the flight to Portland for the week long class. It was amazing! They taught principles of footwear design, color, material, brand marketing tips, and they really work on building you up individually. You are the most important design that you’ll ever work on and you are your own personal brand. I learned soooo much. From being scared to pivot and try something new to me, but something that I knew…even as a kid that I absolutely wanted to do…to nervously pitching my design in front of 100 people including the company that wanted to work with the winning design was amazing, nerve-racking, and life changing. I was in a room full of people that saw things like I did. And did something about it. It was hard to pivot and ask those around me to invest in the pivot after having had them go on my t-shirt company journey..but my family and friends got on board and really blew wind in my sails as made the shift to becoming a footwear designer. When I said I wanted to design shoes and be able to dress clients head to toe, I had no clue what type of journey I was in for. By 2017, on Christmas Eve…I shut down my t-shirt shop, sold some equipment, and made the move to Portland to pursue footwear design full time! I haven’t looked back since.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Resilience. After making the move to Portland (because there are several footwear companies there: Keen, Columbia, Adidas, Nike, etc.) my thought was that it would be easier to learn about and get into the industry by moving to where it is happening, like if you want to be in fashion move to LA/NY, actor/actress…move to Hollywood! Well for shoes, it’s Portland /Boston. I don’t like cold weather, so Portland was the easier decision and since I’d been to a shoe design class there, it wasn’t hard to decide and fathom a move. While in the Pensole class I met a guy who was friends with a 3D designer from Jordan Brand. He told me the guy was looking to rent out rooms in his home. I took the info down not knowing if I’d actually use it, but months later, I actually did. Nike shyts down for the holidays towards the end of the year, but as soon as they reopened my friend was back at work. I had taken a job at Walmart just to have an income in this new place. After a couple of months…my friend/landlord invited me to take a tour of nike campus with him. It was amazing to say the least. I had never seen anything like it. The buildings, the monuments…all an ode to athletes and some the best story telling efforts I’ve seen. Every detail is though of there. I couldn’t help but think that I was getting a small glimpse of what my future could be/become there. Prior to moving, I had read the book: “Shoe Dog” by Nike’s cofounder Phil Knight, and had also watched Abstract on Netflix featuring Tinker Hatfield (the most famous footwear designer in the world and designer of most of Michael Jordan’s most famous/coveted basketball shoes) which in my opinion those two things in tandem daily for months helped me think and manifest being in that place on that campus at that time. One scene on Abstract shows Tinker walking into the front gates of Nike and from there in the Jordan building…which eventually became my walk in route each morning! Fast forward to a conversation that I had with my friend/landlord…after the tour he asked me why I moved all the way from Texas to work at Walmart!? I told him it was just income while I learned about the industry…of which he asked me in the two months I’d been there, “ how much have you learned?” I told him not much lol. So then he said, why not try to land a job on nike campus doing anything…and then atleast that way I’d be directly around shoes being designed and amongst people that could help me train and learn what I need to learn to become what I wanted to become. It never donned on me prior to that, that I could do that. I applied for a job in the cafeteria the next week and was hired immediately. I started within days of being hired. I had no clue what cafeteria I’d be working in. As it turns out, I was picked for JBS cafeteria right behind the Jordan building! While I was excited to be employed, be on nike campus, meet new people from designers to athletes etc. I realized that I had gone from a successful business owner and designer in Texas with an apartment and two cars…to renting a room, working as a dishwasher and day stocker, with no vehicle….it seemed so dismal. I didn’t know what type of path I was on, or if it would pay off! I just had faith, curiosity, drive, and resilience. By the 3rd week working that job, I had started setting up meetings with designers, shoe developers, athletes, nike marketing team members, etc. and learning as much as possible. Everyone was willing to pour into me! I had never experienced anything like it. They wanted to see me succeed as a designer even though my current position said the opposite: I began customizing my own shoes. to stand out, and to make t-shirts with my resume and sketches on them to market myself as a designer. I also found out that nike doesn’t make nonslip shoes so a lot of campus workers couldn’t wear the brand to/for work because you had to have nonslip shoes to work in kitchen areas. After finding this out, I went and bought some non slip material in Portland, cut it to my shoe size and glued it on a pair of Air Jordan 1’s. This single act got me multiple meetings with Nike/jordan brand footwear designers and developers bc of my ability to problem solve and “just make what I saw, happen”. I worked that job for a year without any real opportunities or roles being offered to me. It took a lot to stay humble and just serve at that level. Through prayer I was shown that everything we do as people is in service to someone else. That first year taught me how to humbly serve at all levels, how to market myself amongst, thousands of other people, and that he who has tenacity/resilience to learn…can really learn anything and that applying what you learn immediately pays dividends eventually.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Khullen_Arman_Footwear
- Facebook: Khullen Watson
- Linkedin: Khullen Watson
- Youtube: Khullen Watson will be back up soon
