MY FIRST TIME ACROSS THE COUNTRY: WHAT DID I LEARN FROM COMPLEXCON 2021?
The Pike Outlets in front of Long Beach Convention Center, the home of ComplexCon 2021.
Before I get into anything, I’d just like to take the time out to thank Jae Tips for inviting me to tag along on this trip and help out with the booth. Along with Jae, I’d like to also thank Noel, Josh, Donnie, Corinna, Lyrie, Alex, Mugzy, and Marcel for busting your asses throughout the weekend. We sold a SHIT TON of product.
This past weekend, I was blessed, yes blessed, with the opportunity to work the Savior Worldwide booth at ComplexCon 2021 in Long Beach, California. ComplexCon was great. It’s always been a dream of mine to attend it. To go from wanting to attend a few years back, to then jump the gun and actually work a booth feels unfathomable. As someone who really just wants to learn as much as possible about the industry, the opportunity was too big to pass up. Until last weekend, I’ve never been across the country and or flown alone EVER.
Horrible picture I took of Cali from the plane.
I left JFK at 6:25pm and landed in LAX at around 9:30ish. Shoutout to the homie Reeks for picking me up from the airport and showing me around Long Beach for a bit. Shortly after landing my first stop was In & Out because when in Cali it’s required eating. Real quick, my thoughts on In & Out, the burger was fire and the fries are trash, sue me. After the food and some sleep, I was up at 7AM, full of adrenaline, ready to conquer the day and leave my imprint on ComplexCon and that I did!
After selling damn near almost all the product, when the day was over, the gang and I got some food and went back to our respective hotels to get ready for the next and final day of ComplexCon. After the food I got to get some free time and ride a Bird Scooter across Long Beach. It’s safe to say that I’m addicted now.
Day two was slower than the first, so I got sent on assignment to take pics of any attendees in Savior merch. This assignment gave me the opportunity to explore some of the booths in the convention center. In my opinion, the top three booths (besides ours of course) in the vicinity that I was fortunate enough to visit were
Kerwin Frost’s Kingdom: dude legitimately had an entire castle built in the middle of ComplexCon. Each room in his castle was different brand partnership or art piece but yet they still stayed on brand with Kerwin’s personality. My favorite room had to be his bedroom with the blanket with his face on it, there were so many pop culture references and art pieces everywhere that you could blink and miss something.
Hypland- They had a whole carnival outside with a Ferris wheel and games! It was really cool to see.
JFG “Boy Who is You?” - I didn’t get to see much of the discussions that JFG was holding but Joe basically held panels about streetwear and his journey to where he is now. From Fat Tiger to ComplexCon. Dude is real inspirational. He shock-dropped his 992’s and 990v3’s as well.
Kerwin’s Kingdom hours before Day 1 of ComplexCon 2021
To finally answer the question above, what I learned not only at ComplexCon 2021 but in Long Beach was:
As an intern, besides learning and gaining experience, your responsibility is to make other people’s lives easier. Going above and beyond will make you stand out but work in your means!
I need to be more outgoing. There were a ton of people that I saw but didn’t get to talk to!
Trips alone to places you’ve never been to will teach you A LOT about yourself
I have a new found love for traveling but it’s EXPENSIVE. Man I’ll be 100% honest with y’all, if it wasn’t for an Amazon return I did prior to the trip, I would’ve been in overdraft for the whole trip. Life happens!
My goal of self-discovery is FAR from over. Yes, I’m only twenty-two years old. A lot of people would say I have a lot of time ahead of me in which I agree, but self awareness is everything! There’s so much more things I don’t really know about myself that I’m still trying to figure out and this trip helped me realize that even more.
Hopefully next year I’m able to attend ComplexCon again. Man, you know I told the crew this but I was just a kid who was hoping to attend a show like this but to not only attend it but work it is a goal off of the bucket list for sure. The bar was just set even higher. Lord willingly, I’ll be back. I have bigger goals in mind for ComplexCon but I’ll let you guys ponder on that. Until next time…
