Andrea Chang | (TNS) Los Angeles Times
As LeBron James closed in on the NBA’s all-time scoring record last year, Nike wanted a pair of one-of-a-kind sneakers made to commemorate the achievement.
The high-profile job didn’t go to an in-house designer. Instead, Nike tapped Dominic Ciambrone.
From his manufacturing studio in South Los Angeles, Ciambrone, also known as the Shoe Surgeon, reconstructed a pair of Nike LeBron 20 sneakers using white crocodile leather and gleaming gold flourishes. Across the translucent blue outsoles, Ciambrone scrawled 38,388 — the number of points James scored to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s long-held record — and added other career milestones in shimmery lettering on the sides. Crocodile-patterned gold foil was sewn over Nike’s iconic swoosh, the tail floating off each shoe like a tiny wing.
Named “The Moment” and valued at more than $100,000, the bespoke sneakers were gifted to James the night he made history.
Such glamorous projects are routine now for Ciambrone, who has fused the worlds of streetwear and ultra-luxury with his 1-of-1 designs, becoming one of the most sought-after sneaker customizers among celebrities, companies and collectors. Commissions for his work start at $7,500.
But the mutually beneficial bond he forged over the years with Nike — which paid Ciambrone to handcraft sneakers for several sponsored athletes and hired him to teach a customization workship in 2017 — has soured. In July, the sportswear giant sued Ciambrone and his L.A. company, Surgeon Worldwide, accusing him of counterfeiting, mass customization and trademark infringement.
In a statement to The Times, Nike said it “valued our relationship with the Shoe Surgeon” and did not have “any issues” with Ciambrone’s one-off designs using Nike sneakers as a canvas. But it accused the cobbler of taking things too far by scaling up his operations in ways that, according to the lawsuit, “are illegal, deceive consumers and create confusion in the marketplace.” Nike said it tried to work things out for two years with Ciambrone before filing suit to protect the integrity of its brand; it is seeking $60 million.
Ciambrone, who is founder and creative director of Surgeon Worldwide, said he had been unaware that there was a problem. He insists what he makes is art and poses no threat to Nike.
“Blindsided,” Ciambrone, 38, said over lunch a few weeks after Nike filed the lawsuit. He said he wants to find an “amicable” resolution and hopes they can collaborate again.
“I don’t want to fire back shots,” he said. “I don’t want to go to war.”
The case highlights the thorny terrain creative entrepreneurs must navigate as they build brands that lean on the intellectual property of other companies — and the lengths corporate behemoths like Nike will go to protect their turf.
“It’s a hard thing for artists, particularly, to understand: What is creative license, and don’t I have the right to use whatever I want in the expression of art?” said Preetha Chakrabarti, a trademark lawyer. “Well, actually, when it comes to trademark law, not so much.”
In a 63-page complaint, Nike said the defendants were “brazenly conducting and enriching themselves as if they have the unfettered right to use Nike’s trademarks” and outlined what it described as an “illicit ‘Nike’ empire.”
Illicit or not might fall to a jury to decide. But privately held Surgeon Worldwide has undoubtedly grown into a conglomeration of businesses born out of the success of Ciambrone’s made-to-order footwear. He declined to discuss financial figures because of the pending litigation.
Ciambrone has been customizing shoes since he was a kid growing up in Santa Rosa, Calif., at first coloring in his Dada Supremes with an orange Sharpie and later airbrushing his Nike Air Force 1s with paint he bought at a fabric and crafts store. Today he counts Justin Bieber, Drake, Odell Beckham Jr., Jake Paul and Lil Jon among his clients.
For the Super Bowl in February, Ciambrone made Usher chrome sneakers that he wore onstage during the halftime show. Shaquille O’Neal has a size 22 Ciambrone-designed “Sneak’er” — so named because each Reebok sole is outfitted with a secret chamber that can hide a can of Pepsi Mini.
Wealthy collectors around the world mail their rare sneakers to Ciambrone and pay him to embellish them with exotic animal skins and furs, precious gemstones and 24-karat gold, and materials cut from Louis Vuitton handbags and family heirlooms. The upper part of a Nike might be redone in Gucci monogram fabric, or an Adidas cleat Frankensteined onto a Balenciaga sole. A custom order usually takes about six weeks to complete.
“If it’s not an entertainer, it’s an older executive that loves luxury and has access to everything and anything and is usually reaching out to us because they want something that no one else has,” said Isaac Muwaswes, executive vice president and head of brand at Surgeon Worldwide, as he made his way past rows of industrial sewing machines and rolls of fabric stacked to the ceiling during a tour of the company’s headquarters in May.
With about 80 employees, Surgeon Worldwide now spans two 20,000-square-foot buildings near USC: a manufacturing studio on Main Street, and an experiential space half a mile away on Hill Street that is home to a customization academy; a star-studded recreational basketball and indoor soccer league; a cafe, bar and lounge; and luminous walls of ornately modified Nike sneakers.
Recognizing the weight of sneaker culture, corporations of all kinds — automakers, fashion houses, alcohol companies and snack food brands — regularly reach out to Ciambrone when they want to hype a new product.
To launch its Fully Loaded Waffles in May, Eggo announced that it had teamed up with “sneakerhead legend” Ciambrone to create Fully Loaded Kicks, a limited-edition line of sneakers featuring waffle-grid soles and a drippy syrup effect that were sold in three online drops.
Then there’s SRGN Academy, which hosts customization classes in person and online. Ciambrone has developed some of the multi-day workshops, which cost participants $3,000 to $5,000, specifically around Nike products. At one held on Melrose Avenue in 2018, for example, sneaker enthusiasts learned how to deconstruct and reconstruct a pair of Air Jordan 1s that they took home at the end.
The academy has taught more than 10,000 people around the world, and “hundreds, maybe, have went on to start their own businesses,” Muwaswes said, calling it an “ecosystem for entrepreneurs.”
Nike blasted SRGN Academy in its lawsuit, calling it “a course in ‘Nike Counterfeiting 101.’”
“Defendants even teach the public how to create brand-new fake ‘Nike’-branded shoes from scratch down to cutting and sewing fake ‘Swooshes,’” the lawsuit said. “Customers are encouraged to use their newly honed counterfeiting skills to venture into their own illicit businesses manufacturing and selling fake ‘Nike’ shoes.”
Ciambrone vehemently denies those allegations and said he started the academy to pass along his customization knowledge to others, likening it to how Tesla has applied an open-source philosophy to its patents. He sees what he does as a creative service, with the results easy to distinguish from Nike’s originals.
“It doesn’t cause confusion — people know the difference,” he said. If anything, “I believe I’ve brought a lot of value to Nike.”
Customizing a brand-name item for personal use is one thing, but selling it in large quantities — and teaching others how to do the same — is where companies draw the line, Chakrabarti said.
“Nike at some point has to make sure that they’re policing their brand,” said the attorney, who specializes in intellectual property litigation for the fashion and retail industries. “When you have trademark rights, your rights are only as good as your enforcement of them and protection of them.”
Surgeon Worldwide is also fighting a lawsuit brought in June by French luxury house Goyard, which alleged trademark infringement and false designation of origin.
For now, Ciambrone has stopped taking custom orders that request Nikes to be used as the base shoe, and has halted production on an over-the-top bespoke pair of Nikes that he’d planned to price at $4 million. “They were going to be gold-and-diamonded out,” he said.
Next month, he plans to launch his own collection of high-end clothing, accessories and shoes, including his first original sneaker. The line, he said, is not being released in response to Nike’s lawsuit and has been something he’s dreamed of doing since high school.
“I was very shy and quiet growing up, so fashion and art became a way of expressing myself,” he said during an interview in May, his office cluttered with inspiration boards and samples of his upcoming Ciambrone collection: oversized pullover hoodies, a pair of $20,000 python-skin trousers with matching fringe from hip to ankle, a burnt orange puffer overcoat that he wore courtside at a recent Lakers game.
“I loved dressing differently,” he said. “Like one day, I would look like Justin Timberlake; the next day, I’d look like a ballplayer.”
He relished the reaction he got when he showed up at the mall in the latest Nikes but realized ubiquity made a product less desirable.
“Most of my friends all had the same Jordans that I had, so we always had to check in, like, ‘Yo, you wearing those Jordans tomorrow or am I?’” Ciambrone said. “And it just wasn’t as cool anymore.”
When he airbrushed a pair of Nikes for the first time, adding a spotted camouflage pattern to the all-white shoes, it transformed them into something attention-grabbing and singular. “At that time it clicked instantly, like, ‘Yo, I need to just make this stuff.’”
The paint quickly peeled off, so he washed the shoes and redid them in a different colorway. Then his friends wanted their sneakers done, too. He began making T-shirts, working on a sewing machine his grandmother bought him, and customized both his senior prom tuxedo and Nike sneakers so they would match.
After high school, Ciambrone honed his craft by visiting leather and laser engraving shops during a stint living in Charlotte, N.C. After returning home to Sonoma County, he apprenticed with a custom boot maker and worked at a shoe repair shop, where he sharpened his painting, dyeing and hand-sewing skills.
He was 23 and making custom sneakers out of his garage in Santa Rosa when he landed his first famous customer: rapper will.i.am, for whom he fashioned a pair for the MTV VMAs. That connection led to Ciambrone being introduced to Justin Bieber’s stylist, and soon he was making shoes for the pop singer’s world tour.
The publicity from his celebrity clients and showcasing his work on Instagram caused business to boom. He moved to L.A. a decade ago.
“I’m not a shoemaker — I’m an artist that can do anything,” he said in May, a touch of swagger in his voice. “Clothing, my original brand, music, food. I’m just a creative, a tastemaker. There’s no limits. Shoes just happened to be that good base.”
Although private commissions and brand partnerships are the core of the business, Surgeon Worldwide sells some ready-to-ship product to the public online.
Its website currently shows a handful of customized New Balance sneakers and Birkenstock clogs, including a$2,500 pair“fully wrapped in luxury red exotics all on top of a matching red outsole” — but nothing built on top of a Nike. There’s also a line of T-shirts emblazoned with Ciambrone’s mantra in all caps: Never Stop Creating.
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