Thievery Corp : Clarks "Originals" Jacked Everything From Me. Open Letter.

Dear Clarks,

The levels of irony in having the word "Originals" in your fucking name. That should be a pretty good pace car for this letter. None of this is going to be nice. Here's why. Because you know what the fuck you did. Your egregiousness in the way you went about it is fully reflective of where your brand is right now. If you need a reminder of where you are right now, click here. 

Say hello to Lion Rock Capital for me, the Chinese investment company that had to save your ass from the total irrelevancy that all your KITH collabs can't. You rely on Ronnie Fieg the way Barcelona relied on Messi, or Cleveland relied on LeBron. Shit gets exhausting carrying a franchise. Ronnie's your bail out merchant and he doesn't even work for Clarks.

I was more than happy to work with you. I was a fan of Clarks, I sought to work together, and always fucking loved the Wallabee. That had more to do with hiphop, and the Wallabee's place in rap's culture than your actual shoes though, if I'm honest. As a New England kid, I was rooting for Boston-based Clarks. As it turned out, there's nothing to root for.

You're an aging, borderline irrelevant brand who grasps at straws and steals work from young, hungry creatives (TRUST I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE BUT I HAVE A BIGGER PLATFORM AND ROLODEX SO ILL SPEAK FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T) - you disconnected, washed up culture vultures. 

Not only did you shamelessly rip off all my work, but you did a piss poor job at impersonating my work. I would NEVER put out this level of garbage. I am still trying to figure out if an intern did this on Canva, or a primate did this after you dosed it with fentanyl and shared a Fivver link with said zooted primate. This shit is TRASH. Look at what this could have been, and look at what you did.

There are levels to this shit.

Y'all ordered Joey off Wish. 

I know you're a UK "heritage brand" so let me put this in terms that you'll understand. 

Clarks is getting relegated and this is just another reason you deserve it.

Fucking Norwich City of footwear ladies and gents. Proof is in the (blood) pudding of whatever you eat at your local. Hold this L with your Fivver level, flea market knockoff energy. 

BTW, I saved all the receipts. See below. This is an open and shut case. 

Recap:

May 15 2021: I created the ENTIRE campaign (see below) art direction, roll out strategy and brand partnership on behalf of my former ecom company. We connected.

 

Campaign pitch cover (L) Former Clarks President Bob Infantino & daughter Caitlin & corresponding text proof from late May of 2021.

 

YOUR FORMER PRESIDENT Bob Infantino & his daughter (Caitlin) LOVED this campaign, felt it would be HIGHLY beneficial to YOU. (In NO WAY are they at fault for this as they are not employees of Clarks currently, but it came in thru the highest levels of influence.) a/k/a DONT PLAY DUMB.

 

Campaign Details:

 

Then, I went deeper, and identified & obtained strategic partners & collaborators for the endeavor who believed in this vision, which had zero to do with you and everything to do with what they were shown & told on our end. 

You then received this, a full deck with instructions of how this would work, and what it would look like.

 

Also, this overview, which lead to the hour and a half Zoom meeting with your team's top members from both Boston and the UK.

 

 

Then, I sent you an even deeper deck on how I would position and structure the roll out and the art direction, tone and voice and segmentation to audience.

Here are just some of the pieces from that. I know for a goddamn fact you not only saw it, but handed it off to your weakest intern to play around with on MS Paint by the looks of the final product.

 

Does this look familiar, Clarks?

 

 

 

Then you went dark. Really, you went to work. You had what you needed.

This is what you did. This was your "Clarks Originals."

 

 This is so fucking blatant. You even stole the "fit grid" style Griffin O'Rourke and I created. 

 

Listen, I'm not a child. I'm not naive. I know there's nothing new under the sun, but I also know when someone directly fucking plays me. It took me a really long time to know my self worth because of massive, culture vulture corporations like you who do this exact shit to people exactly like me.

There are many of us. I just decided Im gunna flame you because I fucking can. Because this was so clear and egregious. This is not even the 20th time this has happened to me, but honestly, I just woke up today and swiped right on violence.

What the fuck are you frauds gunna do anyway? Go huddle up and talk about how you plan to ignore this? You should huddle up and talk about how to become culturally relevant without using KITH like Wall Street used Tim Geithner. 

Your brand is ass and balls and sometimes, just sometimes, it's fun to kick a loser in the dick when he's down. 

I love seeing mid-table, C list versions of my work at malls too. Great job at the SoNo Collection in CT right outside of NYC. I bet the "Icons Reimagined" really connected. If you wanted the PSD files you could have just texted or e-mailed me, which seemed to work just fine until you got everything you wanted. 

 

 

Now go report to your Chinese daddy on Q4, its almost time to decide which brick and mortars you'll be closing next. SoNo Collection had 2 people in it, myself and the girl, feeling like we were in Stranger Thing's "Upside Down" world, just staring at terrible versions of all of MY work.

The SoNo Collection Clark's store, featuring all C list, mid-table intern versions of my above work dumbed all the way down for a crowd of zero, even though it was the holiday shopping season right outside of NYC.

 

Allow me to assist Clarks again, close your SoNo Collection store, it's a morgue. I honestly can't believe you did this shit so egregiously. I'm not even mad, after seeing what and how you did what you did, I just wanna flame you and keep it moving.

Play on says the ref.