![]() ![]() His father gave Gary an ad budget as well as “enormous freedom,” says Vaynerchuk. Most wine shops didn’t yet know what the Web was for, much less sell their wares online. I can just build this.” Three years later in 1997, while still in college, Vaynerchuk launched, which was one of the first wine e-commerce businesses. It was 1994 and he was a freshman in college. “I know exactly when I found out about the Internet,” he says. It was an all-purpose, everyday liquor shop, like any other, but it would serve as the blank canvas for a grand experiment that would become Vaynerchuk’s talent: harnessing the Internet to build a brand. Raised in Edison, New Jersey, he moved back home in 1998, after college at Mount Ida in Newton, Mass., to work at his father’s liquor store in nearby Springfield, which bore the unsexy name Shoppers Discount Liquors. The story is well known to those who have followed his rise: Born in Belarus, he came to the U.S. Gary Vaynerchuk was an entrepreneur well before Twitter came along. And if the quick growth of his latest venture is any indication, the joke may be on everyone else. ![]() And yet most of the insulting tweets you find about Vaynerchuk also begrudgingly give him credit, like in 2012: you’re still annoying… and obnoxious… but you’re right,” or the same year: “this bloke is a bit annoying to listen to, but he does have valid points on social media.” Those who complain about him tend to overlook the fact that he is already in his third-maybe fourth-successful act in business. When he discusses his detractors, Vaynerchuk can sound like Rodney Dangerfield bemoaning the lack of respect. But when someone says to me, ‘You’ve only achieved this because you’re big on social media,’ I say, ‘want to see my calendar?’” “People think I’m a hack, simply because a lot of people that were early to social media really were hacks,” he told Fortune, sitting in the casino at the Borgata Atlantic City on the second night of pageant preliminaries in September. (A sample exhortation from a video commanding people to subscribe to his YouTube channel: “Fucking follow me, right now.”)Ī common line of criticism against Vaynerchuk is that he is a snake-oil salesman, one of a growing number of Internet celebrity marketers who make their money telling eager beaver entrepreneurs that they, too, can get rich and famous by self-marketing on social media. That fame happened by design and by years of meticulous planning-and it has drawn vocal critics for a style that is loud, bombastic and blatantly self-promotional. But he is largely unknown to the American television-viewing public. Vaynerchuk has created two successful companies he is a bestselling author he can command six-figure fees for speaking engagements and he has 1.1 million Twitter followers. It was a perfect (and perfectly predictable) joke at his own expense. ![]() When ABC’s host Chris Harrison (of Bachelor fame) introduced him-“an entrepreneur, author, and social media master”-Vaynerchuk held up his phone and mimed the act of taking a selfie. The shoes arrive in a custom box with a mirrored interior to reflect the shoes' “positivity and optimism” messaging.And then there was Gary Vaynerchuk. The shoes are constructed atop a modern cupsole with an amply padded interior for comfort on the go. Previous designs utilized subtlety and nuance to promote Vaynerchuk’s tenaciously unique approach to business and life the Gary Vee 004 turns it up to full volume to showcase the collaboration’s mantra “Make positivity and optimism louder.” Available in a low top and a mid-top, the shoes boast premium full grain leather uppers featuring a bold “positivity and optimism” graphic print that is visible from nearly every angle. K-Swiss has once again teamed up with venerated go-getter and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk for a limited edition duo of sneakers. ![]()
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