STUSSY VS SUPREME THE ORIGINAL VS THE SUCCESSOR

# STUSSY VS SUPREME: THE ORIGINAL VS THE SUCCESSOR 14 oz Japanese selvedge denim. No wash. Single-needle construction. Flat felled seams. The first logo defining the Stüssy brand started in the early 1980s, when Shawn Stüssy scrawled his surname on handcrafted boards with a simple broad-tipped marker, selling T-shirts for the first time at a trade show where he sold a thousand shirts. Ten years later, the man selling those same shirts would partner with the brand's founder. In 1991, Shawn Stüssy and James Jebbia, then-owner of Union and future founder of streetwear label Supreme, opened Stüssy's first flagship store in New York. Three years after that, Jebbia would leave to create what became streetwear's most recognizable logo. ## THE FOUNDING PHILOSOPHIES Stüssy emerged from necessity. Shawn Stüssy scrawled his surname on handcrafted boards with a simple broad-tipped marker, then used the logo on T-shirts, shorts and caps that he sold out of his car around Laguna Beach, California. Stüssy was founded in the early 1980s by Shawn Stussy, originally emerging from his work shaping and selling surfboards marked with his distinctive signature logo. The signature came from his uncle, abstract painter Jan Frederick Stüssy. This was street commerce before it had a name. Supreme's origin story follows a different arc. The first store was opened in a former office space on Lafayette Street in Lower Manhattan in April 1994. James Jebbia moved from England to New York and helped run Union NYC before moving on to Stüssy, while still working at Stüssy, Jebbia opened the first Supreme store. Where Stüssy was accidental, Supreme was calculated. During the formation of the brand, Jebbia was inspired by a book on Barbara Kruger's artwork, which influenced the design of Supreme's red box logo with a white Futura Heavy Oblique font. The difference: Stüssy was a craftsman's mark that became a brand. Supreme was a retail concept that needed a logo. ## BUSINESS MODEL BREAKDOWN By 1990, the business was generating $17 million in annual turnover. By 2014, Stüssy, still independently owned and operated by the Sinatra family, had grown into a global streetwear brand with annual revenues of $50 million. In 1996, Stussy resigned as president and Sinatra bought his share of the company holdings, with the Sinatra family still owning the brand in 2017. Supreme chose a different path. In November 2020, VF Corporation announced that they agreed to buy Supreme in an all-cash deal for $2.1 billion. VF Corporation bought out all outside investors, as well as founder James Jebbia. In 2024, Supreme was sold to the eyewear company and Ray-Ban owner, EssilorLuxottica, in July 2024 for $1.5 billion. Stüssy's revenue model remains family-controlled and steady. Stussy's top competitors are Supreme, SHEIN and Essential and they have annual revenue of $122M and 428 employees. Stussy generated revenue of US$148m on its biggest online store stussy.com in 2024. Supreme achieved a 42x revenue multiple through scarcity and hype. ## THE DROP STRATEGY REVOLUTION Supreme releases two collections each year. Instead of offering the entire line at once, the brand releases small groups of products online and in-store from the current season's collection every Thursday. Supreme invented this retail model known as "drops", which is now widely used in the industry. Stüssy pioneered limited production, but Supreme weaponized it. Instead of releasing their new collections all at once, Supreme releases a small number of items at a time, usually somewhere between five and fifteen. The "drop," as they call it, occurs online at 11 A.M. local time in America, the UK, and Japan, typically selling out in minutes. While many people believe this strategy is about building hype, the truth is that short runs of product were actually born out of not wanting to saddle their business with excess inventory. The original scarcity came from small-batch production. The successor turned scarcity into a marketing weapon. ## CULTURAL POSITIONING Stüssy created streetwear by accident. The early success of the brand has been attributed to its popularity in the hip hop and skateboarding/surfer scenes. The brand was also embraced by the punk and other subcultures. Stussy adeptly bridged the gap between surf, skate, and hip-hop cultures, helping to create a unified streetwear aesthetic. This cross-pollination of subcultures fostered a sense of community and shared identity among diverse groups, paving the way for the global streetwear movement. Supreme inherited these cultures and elevated them to luxury status. The company focuses on streetwear, skateboarding, and hip-hop fashion trends. Supreme has been described as one of the most influential streetwear brands globally. From this point of limited edition drops, stylistic innovation, and significant celebrity/influencer co-signs Supreme emerged as a definitive name within streetwear and, by extension, street culture. ## COLLABORATION STRATEGIES Stüssy's collaborations emerged organically. The 30th anniversary collection of Stüssy featured limited-edition collaborative T-shirts with Supreme, Bounty Hunter, NEIGHBORHOOD, The HideOut, and PAM – which connected the dots of some of the OG labels of those past 30 years. The brand worked with Nike on the first Dunk that landed with an ostrich and snakeskin swoosh which James Jebbia first suggested and blew peoples minds. The Dunk was a forgotten shoe of the past, it really wasn't trending again and this project put life back into it. Around 3,000-5,000 pairs were made and they sold out in two days around the world at just Stüssy stores with no internet sales. Supreme turned collaborations into cultural events. Supreme frequently works with visual artists (among them Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Damien Hirst, John Baldessari, Nan Goldin, and Robert Longo), and musicians (including Public Enemy, Black Sabbath, Slayer, Three 6 Mafia, Aphex Twin, and Mobb Deep among others, and brands who have had an impact on youth culture. Supreme has also worked with Disney, Major League Baseball, Johnson & Johnson, General Mills, and many other major American brands. ## THE SUCCESSION MOMENT Through this success, Jebbia befriended the brand's founder, Shawn Stussy, and they decided to open a Stussy-branded store on Prince Street in 1991. The store saw its own share of success, but soon after its opening, Shawn became disillusioned with the direction of his brand, resigned, and decided to sell his shares in the company. With the future of Stussy unclear, James Jebbia decided to break out on his own once again. The student became the master through better execution, not innovation. As you'll likely know, he would later go on to found Supreme, streetwear's eminent household name. And just as Stüssy had done before, sampling, ripping and re-appropriating became key components of the Supreme creative vocabulary. The former's infamous interlocking Ss, a humorous ape of Chanel, would foreshadow the latter's cease-and-desist Louis Vuitton rip skate decks. Looking back, it was oddly prescient, given that both would work with top-tier conglomerate fashion houses years down the line. ## THE VERDICT Stüssy remains the architect. "Without Shawn, there would be no streetwear", says Ross Wilson, an acclaimed streetwear collector who sold a 1,000+ piece Supreme archive in 2018. "Shawn Stüssy is the reason I became immersed in this culture in the first place." And it doesn't seem like Stüssy's contemporary relevance is in decline — if anything, the opposite is true. Supreme is the empire. Where Stüssy created the language, Supreme built the platform. The massive success of the collaboration, which contributed a 23% growth in profit for Louis Vuitton in the first half of 2017, and the launch of Supreme's first European store in London showed the high fashion world that the streetwear brand with its humble beginnings a force to be reckoned with. In 2017, Supreme announced that they were going to collaborate with Louis Vuitton, then under the helm of Kim Jones. The massive success of the collaboration. The original taught us that streetwear could exist. The successor proved it could dominate. Both approaches have merit. Both brands remain essential. The question isn't which one won. It's which model survives the next decade of consolidation.