Not too long ago it might appear that Supra had just magically increased onto the shoe scene and almost single-handedly taken the shoe field by storm creating a footwear innovation in the process.
Angel started his very first company, known as TSA, with some other skaters who were mostly into generating clothing that they could put on when skating. That was 1991 and it lasted for around ten years until Angel made a decision to leave so he could do his own thing. The company he built in 2002 was KR3W, his current apparel brand that he handles along with Supra Skylow under the distribution umbrella for the two projects known extremely just and aptly as One Distribution; initially built to cut out the middleman in the European distribution process.
So what did Angel take with him from his TSA experience, well just that…’Experience’. He has defined his first project as his ‘Education’ in the business and I’ve heard other entrepreneurs/founders in street and trainer culture say similar things; such as the lead designer and co-founder of Creative Recreation, the some other hot brand in the up market sneaker niche, who commented in a latest video interview that his training ground in the footwear industry was as a snowboard boot design technician and later sneaker designer for Vans.
After all of his years of learning on the job at Team Santa Ana (TSA) he freely admits he made a million mistakes as a young, creative businessperson attempting to build his very first brand. And in fact one thing he insisted he would do when KR3W opened its doors was take all of that experience and apply it correctly so he would not make the same faults all over again.
So where did Angel get the ideas for producing the Supra Footwear company? I guess you could say that Cabada wanted to go ‘above and beyond’ (the loose translation of ‘Supra’ from Latin) what already existed in the shoe marketplace at that time when he came up with both the name and idea behind his new sneaker line. His determination was to create some kicks that would be a pleasant complement to the KR3W apparel line and he wanted to take the shoe game up a level since in his words most of sneakers were a bit ‘chunky’ for his likes.
Supra footwear has come a long way in a short time from the layouts that people at first laughed at to the models that every person is copying (and copping) these days; hoping to cash in on proven success rather than give attention to advancement like Angel, his lead designer Josh and their creative design team have chosen to do. On the eve of the introduction of the Terry Kennedy signature footwear as well as the development of the Supra Skytop and other exciting brand new design ideas in the works, Cabada is more flatter than angry that rivals both small and large are choosing to copy Supra’s signature lines. The Supra Footwear Founder expects the purchaser to have the Skate and Shoe IQ and good sense to realize the change between the imitator and the innovator.