Family Ties in Detroit With HXOUSE

As the world continues to integrate new digital technologies into everyday life, community continues to be at the forefront of the conversation. Digital communication tools have made us the most connected that any generation has ever been. Similar to the ways that embodied communities must be shaped and formed, the same attention will need to be given to future and current digital communities. Without pretending to have all of the answers, HXOUSE, a Toronto-based think-center, incubator, and accelerator, has brought together a number of multi-disciplinary creatives from different cities to talk through what the future holds for digital communities.

StockX has partnered with HXOUSE to deliver keynote discussions and events at a global scale. The result is a collaborative international tour that takes HXOUSE’s unique blend of cross-disciplinary learning and makes it accessible to new markets. This year, StockX and HXOUSE will host seven events in cities across North America in preparation for another five events internationally in 2023. At each event, StockX and HXOUSE will host cultural voices from each cityto break down the creative’s unique points of view and talk about how they’re disrupting their respective industries.

Last week, StockX and HXOUSE hosted the fourth of seven collaborative events in StockX’s home city of Detroit. The event featured a panel and an NFT-based competition that brought together the city’s foremost digital creatives. The panel, which was hosted by StockX’s Chief Impact Officer Damien Hooper-Campbell, featured four of the city’s most prominent creatives, all of which already knew each other very well. Rick Williams, Bre’ann White, Tony Whlgn, and Paulina Petkoski all shared their individual stories before giving those in attendance a brief look at the powerful tight knit creative community found in Detroit. 

StockX x HXOUSE Detroit Panelist: Rick Williams

Rick Williams founded the boutique sneaker store Burn Rubber in the Detroit Metro area in 2007. Starting small, the Burn Rubber initially found larger brands to be hesitant to give them the rarest sneakers. Williams quickly broke those barriers down through his own designs in partnership with his friends at New Balance. Not long after that, Burn Rubber became one of the first sneaker boutiques to receive exclusive Tier 0 releases. Eventually, Burn Rubber would go on to officially collaborate with New Balance, giving Williams the opportunity to design his own sneaker. “I’m really just an artist that understands business,” Williams says on the panel. Through his work with Burn Rubber, Williams has become one of the, if not the, pre-eminent forces driving Detroit’s sneaker and streetwear culture. 

“Community is the cornerstone. We’re telling our authentic stories to hopefully inspire someone else to live their authentic life and tell their authentic story. That is community.” As a part of the panel, Rick Williams spoke directly to the ways that each person on the panel’s individual work ethic has made a contribution to the community they’re now a part of. “The humbleness and the humility to help someone else win, that’s how I win,” said Williams who’s worked with nearly all of the other panelists at some point in his career. “I believe that what we need to instill in our children is, ‘You’ve got to work hard for yourself,” he said, “If I put in 40 hours for a company, I’ve got to put in double that for myself.”