- [Narrator] Imagine you're a start-up CEO.
Specifically, you're this guy,
Jason Mayden.
Ex-designer for Nike and Jordan.
And now you're running a company called Super Heroic.
You specialize in footwear and apparel for kids.
You're backed by Footlocker.
You have celebrity endorsements.
- I wish I could've had some sneakers like Super Heroics.
Shoot, I might of been really somethin' else.
- [Narrator] Your company is going up and to the right.
But then, it's late 2019,
and your manufacturing partners in China
tell you about this strange virus.
This hasn't become world news yet.
You're getting this info directly from the source.
Now, you have a crystal ball into the future.
- [Male Reporter] Breaking developments
in the coronavirus pandemic.
- [Female Reporter] Stalled production lines across China.
- So these people were starting to tell me
about the fear they felt.
And that's when I knew that this is serious.
It's something that will affect the way we live,
the way we interact,
and the way we do business across borders.
It really made me think deeply very early on
about how to navigate these choppy waters.
There's only 8 people on the planet
who've ever designed a Air Jordan.
I'm the only one from Chicago
who's ever designed a Air Jordan.
Michael Jordan, to me growing up as a child in Chicago
in the late '80s and '90s,
he was larger than life.
He was noble.
He was charismatic.
He was a business person.
Every single product he put out spoke to me.
So the Jordans gave me permission to dream
using an artifact at that moment in my life.
From there, design would become my sport.
I knew that Michael had improved
his free throws and jump shots
by shooting a thousand shots per day.
So I did a thousand sketches a day.
I got my internship at Nike.
I was Nike's first black design intern.
I met Michael, and the rest was history.
- [Narrator] Jason went on to design at Nike
for 13 years.
But after becoming a father,
his thoughts drifted to how he could help the youth.
- I knew that my gifts and talents were being used
to help the world's greatest athletes,
to help improve the lives of adults.
But I started to think about elementary school children.
What if I could build stronger children
instead of fixing broken adults?
- [Narrator] To build an empowering product for kids,
Jason looked to an unconventional place, comics.
- I looked at superheroes as an archetype.
It not only gives kids the agency
to see themselves as capable and possible
but for them to be the hero of their own journey.
- [Narrator] In a study called the Batman Effect,
researchers proved
that when kids imagine themselves as superheroes,
they perform better on tests.
- And they're dressing like heroes.
And therefore they have to behave like a hero.
- And so when you get frustrated,
I just want you to ask yourself
how is Batman feeling?
- So that child was no longer their regular self.
They were their exemplar self.
They were heroes.
So they knew the standards and ethics
and values of the hero.
So they were biased toward that behavior.
They outperformed the kids in regular clothes
because they knew it was more important
for me to fulfill my duties as a hero
than it was for me to be a kid in this moment.
And so we've leveraged that
in our product.
The moment you open the box,
there's a sound.
That sound is symbolic of the transformation
from your regular self to your exemplar self.
The moment they put on a cape, they realize
I'm not little Keisha,
I'm not little Daevon.
I'm Super Daevon.
I'm Super Keisha.
And they outperform their own expectations.
So we work on footwear, apparel, content,
and we also put on physical play experiences
so the heroes can see themselves in context.
So many people in my industry believe
that the greatest thing you can do
is take an adult shoe and just shrink it,
and put it on a child.
Take an adult event and include a child.
No.
That's not good enough.
Our children deserve our best.
We focus on things like gender neutrality
because you have the retail landscape
that has a wall for girls' colors
and a wall for boys' colors.
And here we are showing up with just colors.
Building our product physically to fit
the modality of play
that both boys and girls have at that age.
'Cause when these kids discover
what they can do in the playground,
that translates into confidence in the classroom.
Confidence into the classroom translates
to people who aspire towards higher versions
of who they think they can become.
Michael Jordan was my hero.
And I love Mike.
But beat Mike.
Be better than Mike.
We need you to be better than Mike.
I think this generation has the ability
to look at themselves as their own hero.
- A short time ago, the World Health Organization
declared the outbreak
an international public health emergency.
- [Narrator] Jason learned about coronavirus
at the very time they needed to manufacture their shoes.
- When you have countries on quarantine,
that means that the actual infrastructure's on pause.
When you have infrastructural pauses
that means there's shipping delays.
When there's shipping delays,
you can't deliver your product to your vendor on time.
So now you miss the season.
Our season is back to school.
So there was no way for us
to get access to the raw materials
to make safe product on budget, on time.
- [Narrator] And if they couldn't sell product
for back to school,
they would probably have to wait another year
to make significant revenue.
- The one part about entrepreneurship
that people gloss over is that
in your early days of building your business,
at the C stage,
anyone that gives you capital is placing a bet on you.
Not your idea.
Ideas change because of market conditions.
But early on, it's a bet on you.
You being responsible.
And while most people would say,
hey, go raise another round of capital,
I didn't believe that we could return value
to our shareholders.
So we took a vote as a leadership team,
and we thought it was the honorable, ethical thing
to wind down.
Thankfully, starting this process
ahead of the rest of the country,
we were able to get everyone in a place
that they could take care of their families
and find new opportunities.
- [Narrator] By spending his investors' money responsibly,
Jason has set himself up
to easily raise capital
when he has his next big idea.
- I've never really looked backwards
'cause Michael told me
you don't get points for yesterday's game.
He would tell me about failure and achievement
and grit and character and perseverance
and doing what's right even when no one is looking.
Those are the things that I live by.
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