When you have the physique of an NFL running back, especially Andre Williams, you need jeans that fit your mold. The former New York Giants running back and I recently caught up to talk about his new denim line.
I still remember when Williams was drafted. His family invited me over for their draft party, but he unfortunately wasn't taken night two. The next day, my family and I were out at Best Buy buying something for our house. As a Giants fan, I wanted to see who they were about to take in the fourth round. I kid you not — when the Giants were up, the power went out. By the time it came back on, I saw that my friend had been taken by my favorite team.
This was a match made in heaven. He took me to some training camps and games, which gave me experiences I'll never forget. As a teenager, attending NFL games with a player's family is as cool as it can get. Williams spent his first few years with the Giants before joining the Chargers.
We hadn't spoken much over the past few years. But that changed when a few months ago, I was walking around the mall with my friend. That's when I saw a familiar logo, that being Williams' denim brad, AW Selvedge. Upon seeing my face, the former Giant had a look of confusion that quickly turned to a happy surprise as he recognized me. We caught up for a bit, and I wanted to know more about the jeans.
But in addition to his jeans, Williams looked back at his NFL. He had a stellar rookie season and has some fond memories of trucking safeties. He also spoke about his stint in the XFL, and why he wishes Vince McMahon didn't own it while he was playing there.
Former New York Giants running back Andre Williams interview
ClutchPoints: We've known each other for a very long time — what was it like when you saw me this summer?
Andre Williams: Yeah, man [smiles]. Look, I've been an adult for a long time, you know? But you just become an adult not too long ago. And when I first met you, you were a young boy.
So, it's just interesting to watch time pass and see people develop and just see where everybody's path is leading them to when, 10 years ago, I was playing professional football with the New York Giants and now I'm trying to launch a denim line for an athletic fit with this fabric that is coming out of Japan. Things are interesting how they progress.
CP: You've been out of the NFL for a few years now, but what's something that fans don't know about that life?
AW: I mean, it's an everyday job. It's crazy because the season is so short compared to what the preparation is. So we've got a 17-game season — it was 16 when I was playing — but it's really eight to nine months of football.
It's not always on-field tackling and throwing and catching and running, but it is d**n-near a year-long experience and people don't understand that. They just they just think about fantasy points and whatnot [laughs].
CP: You've been going into different business ventures and stuff since then — what has that journey looked like for you personally?
AW: I started this apparel line while I was playing football, actually.
We come to the offseason after my rookie year, and I had a good rookie season [smiles], really good, but now it was time to just sit back for a little bit and see what else was out there.
I was in New York — New York, it's not like Cleveland. You're exposed to everything and anything that you want to be exposed to. There's always somebody to meet and something to do. And I was trying to figure out exactly what I was supposed to do because I used to be a big gamer, and now I'm like, “All right, I can't sit here and play PlayStation all day. I got cash in my pocket. I'm right next to New York City. There's something that I'm supposed to be doing positively and constructively with my time.”
So I had a marketing agent that introduced me to one of his friends. His friend's name was Eamon, and Eamon was starting a shoe company, and I didn't know anything about shoes. I didn't know anything about apparel at the time, let alone high-end [apparel], but I was interested.
I did build a fragrance lab in my townhouse at the time, cause I was just trying to figure out what to do with my time. I was interested in chemistry and mixing and building and tinkering. And so when I had the opportunity to go sit down with Eamon, I took it.
Eamon said to me, “Hey man, you're a running back in the NFL. How would you like to create your own signature shoe?”
And that in and of itself made sense. I'm running back [and] to make my own shoe would be cool. And so I said, “Yeah, sounds cool. How do we do it?”
And he said, “I've got this factory out in Spain where they're cranking out Balenciaga Arenas and I'm making my own shoe over there. It's called OneGround. I could extend my creative faculties to you and you could make something. I have a designer that used to work for Nike. You sit down and talk with him and you guys ideate and you create something.”
And yeah, that's how we would do it. I sat down with this designer and I created the Running Man shoe. And so that was my first foray into the fashion world and it started leading me places that I didn't expect.
He took me to a couple trade shows. I started meeting some small brands, I met some big brands. I met, I forget his name at this current moment, but he owned Jean Shop NYC. So that was another selvedge denim brand out in the city. And this same guy now, he is a part owner [of] a small mill in Louisiana, I believe, called Vidalia Mills, where they're making selvedge denim.
They don't really make it here in the States anymore, but they do have a small production left over from Cone [Denim] Mills in North Carolina. It's a very small world and I started meeting some people that started opening my eyes to some things and I met a brand developer, and he saw my shoe and my ambition and he was impressed and he asked me why I made the shoe. And so I said, “Because it was cool.”
And he's like, “Yeah, it's cool, but how are you going to sell it?”
I said, “I didn't get that far yet. I'm just making cool [smiles].”
We ended up having this three-hour conversation where he just blew my mind because all the information that he was giving me for free, I had paid for it over the course of six to eight months making the Running Man shoe. And so that night I could not sleep.I just was thinking. I'm like, “All right, instead of making something cool, what would be marketable? What does the market need?” And I thought about myself and I said, “I can't wear jeans because nobody is making an athletic fit. There's nothing for somebody with a normal size waist, but above-average dimensions below the waist.”
When I brought this to my developer, I call him Roy, he's like, “You know, that is a niche that you could really fit into and grow out of — especially you being a professional athlete.”
So we did a little market research with Ernst and Young and we gave them the parameters and they're like, “Honestly 6% of the population is athletically-built. That equates to something like 500 million people around the world. So you definitely have a market for the product.”
And that was the impetus that I took to say, “All right, this is worth going ahead and throwing some real money at.”
So I took my signing bonus [and] I ended up using the whole thing. Initially, I used about half of it to create my first denim line. And that was the start. I wasn't able to do a ton in the beginning because I was still playing ball, but in 2019, I met Sharifa Murdock, she's co-owner [of] one of the major trade shows called Liberty Fairs, and she saw my product and honestly, it my first time being in a trade show. She gave me a pass and she let me in for free that first time. And it was an amazing experience. I got to show in New York, I got to show my product in Vegas.
You're sitting in this room with some of the biggest brains in the world, you know, uh, Prps was over there, Levi's was over there — there's so many names that I can't remember off the top of my head right now. And this particular trade show is more so for a premium product in terms of apparel, but they also had some other things, consumable items, candles and things like that.
As far as the trade show goes, I learned what the trade show actually is. It's when you present your product, you set it up in a nice way, buyers come through and check it out. And they're trying to pick up new stuff for the next season offering of whatever stores that they represent. And so that a was very cool, eye-opening experience at the time.
This was 2019 — things were kind of just beginning to go the way that they're going now with retail in general. And so one of the things that Sharifa had told me was, “Man, the volume of buyers in these shows is very low compared to what it was in the past.” So we knew that something was going on. We didn't know it was going to be coronavirus, but that's what ended up happening.
I did pick up one account, which was Dutil And they have their denim boutique in Canada. They have three stores in Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary. And so it was a consignment order and it was about $15,000 worth of product. That was due to hit shelves in March of 2020. And it was actually March 11, I believe, when the NBA shut down and the whole world shut down. And that killed my deal and it killed any prospect of me thinking that it would be okay to try and go ahead and find distribution through retailers.
So I decided to open up my own store and I switched up my strategy completely from there.
CP: I know that it somehow led you all the way back to Lehigh Valley, where you are a high school football legend. So how did you end up back here?
AW: Yeah. So honestly, Andrew, it's a really deep and kind of crazy story. I'm writing a book about it, honestly, have my whole path from football back to the Lehigh Valley [smiles] — I'm on Chapter 52, so I need to wrap it up pretty soon, but it's crazy, man.
I ended up back in Lehigh Valley because of a combination of things. I was living in Jersey back to 2019, [and] I had just finished a crazy divorce. And so this divorce was not good, man. It was the spiteful sort. And so I was pretty crispy at the time.
I had to sell my townhouse in Secaucus. And so I sold the townhouse. And this was the middle of the pandemic. I was actually in Houston, I was playing football in the XFL, the newly revamped XFL, but this was the year before The Rock bought it and Vince McMahon owned it.
Honestly, I wish, Dwayne [Johnson] would have bought it the first time. It would have been a better experience, but it was still great football and they have a great concept, but when coronavirus broke out, it shut the league down. And so I was out of a job again and I also didn't have any prospect of my denim selling at all in [a] store because the whole world was shut down. Everything was shut down. So it was time to go back home, it was time to sell my crib.
And so I just ended up going back to Pennsylvania because my dad was out there. I called him up. I'm like, “Dad, man, what's going on? Are you all right, man?” I was like telling him my situation like, “Yo, I'm going to come out there for a little while.”
And he was like, “Yeah, you come out here, man. But don't give me that coronavirus! I don't want to get sick.” And I was like, “Dad, we just spent the week in a hotel getting over coronavirus.”
I had caught it in my home. My whole family had caught it. Actually, the way that I remember it, the week before our last game, we played the Seattle Sea Dragons. And there were rumors about how the center had caught coronavirus, and it was like a running joke at a time, like, “Oh yeah, everybody's going to get the ‘rona,” and then they brought it over here.
They flew to Houston, and it was a packed stadium and I'm sure everybody got coronavirus because I certainly had it. My wife had it. My son had it. I think it was like a Wednesday or something when everything shut down and we had to do our discharge physicals, and we're riding on the bus back to the facility, and there was one of my teammates, and [he] was so sick on the bus and everybody's just on the bus like, “Oh my gosh, he's got coronavirus.” But we all already had it, you know?
So I got over it. I came back to Jersey and it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I know that I had support out here and my dad was out here. Nobody knew what was going on for real. And it was just good to be back home around family.
CP: You mentioned how Vince McMahon owned the XFL at the time you were playing and that you wished The Rock had bought it earlier. Is there a reason why that was? Was it just the system of who the whole league worked?
AW: It's just that… [laughs] sometimes, people say things, but they don't mean what they say. Or they promise things, but they don't deliver.
Vince was one of those people.
We were promised certain things and we never saw it through. It was a situation where they promised us that the contract was going to look like that, and then it ended up looking like this, and we were already had signed the paperwork, and then they were trying to push us to do things that we [didn't want to do].
Like, I was in the NFL, man. I'm not coming out of college. They're trying to get me to sign these trading cards — I know how much the trading cards [are] worth. Why would you want me to sign a thousand for free? You're not going to give me a little bit of something? I'm not signing 'em!
So there was some tension that was going on. And ownership plays a huge role in how an organization is run, you know, owns it, how they look at things and how they behave and who they hire. People build companies and people destroy companies. That was just something that where I thought, and you never know because TV is fantasy, so who's to say that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is going to run the company better than Vince McMahon. But just from what I get from him personally, me seeing and observing the way that he holds himself and the way he talks, I don't know, I'm not in the XFL now, but I bet he's doing a better job.
CP: Getting back into your jeans, what exactly is selvedge?
AW: [smiles] That's the second-biggest question that people ask me.
Selvedge is shorthand for self-edge. And it means that the fabric was on a shuttle loom. So a shuttle loom is an old-style loom, it was really the original loom that Levi Strauss was using to make his jeans. He actually patented selvedged denim in 1873, and he was intending to make a durable workwear fabric, something that was for somebody that was digging in a mine or putting together a railroad, you know, something for hard work. And so that's what he made.
The reason that the shuttle loom is able to create this durable fabric in part is because you're using one continuous cross yarn or a weft yarn that is interweaving between these vertical warp beams. That's one reason why it is considered [a] stronger, more durable denim fabric. It's the real denim fabric, the original.
And when you look at a selvedge fabric, if you cuff the jeans [cuffs his jeans into the camera], you can see the selvage ID is exposed and that this is the end of the fabric right here. You see that those white yarns there. That is the end of the fabric. It delineates the end of the fabric with that white yarn. And so the fabric is self-sealed. It doesn't require stitching after you loom the bolt for it to be finished — it'll never unravel. It's just built differently than your regular denim fabric.
Originally, that's how all jeans were being made. But once it got popular, they ended up abandoning shuttle loom production [and] they adopted projectile loom production. And this projectile loom is this bigger loom that can spit out a fabric that's from this wall to that wall way over there as opposed to the shuttle loom, you have these small batch fabrics that are somewhere between 28 to 32 inches wide, so you can't make a ton of jeans from the bolt.
And it makes this fabric very slow compared to the projectile loom, but it makes it differently. Because [with] the projectile loom, instead of using the one continuous yarn, now, you have individual unconnected strings, and so there's a bunch of factors that go into what make one better or different than the other. But the projectile loom spits out these huge rolls of fabric, and it's for mass production. You [get] a bunch of jeans, but they don't hold together the same.
So they say that you can make great fabric on a projectile, and I'm sure that's true, but generally speaking, the folks that are putting together a bolt of selvedge denim fabric in Japan are artisans that really know how to use that machine, how to adjust it to create differences and distinctions between this fabric and that fabric, so you end up with something that is a heavier weight. You end up with something that is got a different texture. The way that it's dyed is totally different. So it'll fade more beautifully and the possibilities are endless.
CP: I know that the jeans are made for an athletic fit. You have a unique body, right? I always think of Saquon Barkley. So are fellow football players who you are designing these for?
AW: Athletes come in all shapes and sizes, you know, so there are some athletes that are very small [and] there are some athletes that are very big. So I wouldn't say that they're exclusively for a football player — and even myself, my body is unique. There [are] other folks like me, I'm sure Saquon would have the same problem, but even though I'm bowlegged, my thighs are so big that they still are always rubbing together. And it don't matter if it's selvedge or what you rub something together long enough, it's going to wear down.
So the fit is perfect, but you're never going to be able to get the exact measurements for the exact athlete because all athletes come in different sizes. That's why I carry waist size 28. I carry waist size 40. You're going to get a whole range of people from [waist sizes] 28 to 40, but if you have a waist size in between 28 and 40, what I say is that the jeans are going to make you look more athletic [smiles].
And that is because one, the nature of the fabric, the selvedge denim, which is known to contour to the human body over time. They're going to adjust to your body over time so that the fit does become better as you wear them. And then just how the jeans are constructed, the dimensions that it's cut, the way that it's sewn together, it does fit an athletic body type.
But really, if you have a waist size between 28 and 40, it's going to reward you. It's going to make you look more athletic.
CP: I'm a big jean jacket wearer. So is that something you've worked on developing? And are there any other avenues like hoodies or shirts that you want to explore?
AW: I've explored them, I just haven't produced them [smiles]. My goodness, I got a lot of good stuff. I've got jean jackets, hoodies, tees, button-downs, I got polos, all types of stuff, because there are like 157 different selvedge fabrics that I have access to. And like I said, they all have completely different properties, you know? So there's certain fabrics I have [that] I wouldn't make jeans with — [I'm] probably only gonna make a T-shirt [or] I might make a bucket hat with it. It's just because that's what the fabric is really built for [and] what it's good for.
That's my major hang up is like, “When are you gonna figure out how to market well enough to go ahead and sell out your stock?” or “When [are] you gonna stop getting played by these malls and these big box stores and go ahead and figure out how to do it yourself online?”
That's [online shopping] the future. So that's what I'm working on right now.
CP: When you say you're getting played by a mall, what do you mean by that?
AW: I was in the Promenade Shops out in the Saucon Valley first. That was my first spot.
I picked that spot up in September of 2021. They gave me a deal that I couldn't refuse, man. I was getting 1,500 square feet for $1, 500 for the first three months. The management team out there [had] this really nice lady, Melissa Napolitano, and I loved working with her and I'm sad that she's not there anymore.
They picked up this new management crew, man, and I don't speak ill of anybody because I don't want anybody to speak ill of me, but I just wasn't really respected out there. My product was not respected and my person was not respected. And I really got unfairly pushed out.
I won't repeat what was said, but I had to get out of there [laughs].
There's a reason that there's so many stores missing over there. They don't manage the place very well. So then I was holding out because I should have [gone] with Simon Group initially. They had they had offered me a spot in the Lehigh Valley Mall, but I took I took the cheap deal. I didn't take the better deal.
I should have gone with them in the beginning, but it was my first time trying to start a store [and] I just did what I felt was comfortable. And that was the wrong thing to do, but you should get with somebody that's experienced. I found a spot over there and they called me in February. And I think I took the spot over in March, and then I was there for March, April, June, and it was pretty good. It's not the busiest mall, [there's] not really premium product in the main mall. I was probably one of the most premium brands in the mall, if not the most. But either way, it was cool.
My first store compared to my second store, my second store looked 10 times better. So I was getting better at my presentation and my salesmanship and all of that stuff. So overall, the experience was better. But again, there's a clause in the lease where it's like, if you have a short-term lease and a permanent tenant comes in and they like your spot, they can just take it. It don't matter where you're at in your lease.
And so three months in, the management came to me and they're like, “Ah, we're real sorry to tell you this, but a permanent tenant came in, [they] like your spot, your lease [has] to be over with.”
So I was like, “Oh my goodness, this is crazy [laughs].”
You know, and you don't really get back what you put in. But that was the message for me, like, Why are you not online yet? If I would've started an online in 2021, man, where would I be right now? But ain't no time like the present. So I got up out of there, I put my stuff in storage and I was like, “Look, I [have] got to figure out how to get it online.” I heard a statistic that by 2040, something like 97% of commerce is going to take place online. I don't know how that's possible, but that's what they say.
So, I [have] got to get the trends. I got with a business accelerator group [because] I read the books and learned and researched and figured out what it takes to be successful online and realize that [it's] a whole lot of work and experimentation and it's about to be denim season. Why waste time trying to figure it out by myself when I could pay somebody to hold my hand and show me how to do it?
Building a store online, in some ways it's harder, [and] in some ways it's easier. It's just that building it is one thing, and then actually marketing and figure it out paid advertising affiliate marketing and email marketing, those three avenues [are] really how you get your thing to grow and so that's where I'm at right now. I love the thing that I built, the website, awselvedge.com, it's really cool. And I'm onto the next things — figuring out how to get traffic routed to the site so people can see what I got.
CP: I see this question go around a lot with former NFL players and current ones and I'm curious what you think. Do you think the average person can run for a yard in the NFL?
AW: [laughs] The average person, man? It depends how many chances they get.
If you were watching the game last night with the Steelers and the Raiders, I think it was the first three drives were all three-and-outs, so maybe if the drives [gave you] 10 chances instead of four, maybe they can get a yard [smiles].
Is it average people on the other side of the ball or is it real guys? Because they're really coming for you [laughs].
CP: What if we gave them your offensive line from your rookie year with the Giants?
AW: You gotta give them a different line, bro!
CP: Favorite memory from your time in the NFL?
AW: Oh man. I always think about my first 100-yard game — it was the first game that almost wasn't [smiles].
We were playing the Titans and there's so many weird things that go back into it [laughs]. When I think about it, I think about like, D**n, what if I would've ended up with the Titans and I was like pre-Derrick Henry? Man, we would've been crazy.
But we played the Titans. I think it had just rained the day before, and I'm used to wearing these Dyna-Claws on my shoes — you definitely saw my Dyna-Claws. Went out there, [and the] problem with the Dyna-Claws is they're awesome on turf, even if it's wet, but if it's grass… and it's wet, they get clogged up. So I had to wear my long cleats and automatically it's like, “D**n, I don't have my Dyna-Claws. My super suit is incomplete.” But it ended up being my first 100-yard game.
And it was crazy because we ran this [play], it was this toss sweep to the left side of the field, and I don't know if it was my gloves are wet or what, but Eli [Manning] tossed the ball back and I grabbed it, but it kind of just flew up in the air and I'm like, “Oh my gosh, I better not drop this ball.” And then I ended up catching it. And then a lane opened up and I just opened up and zoomed. It was like a 60-yard touchdown.
That opened things up for us and we just was killing it after that. That was my first 100-yard game and I followed it up with another one [against] the Rams and there was this guy, I forget what his name was, something McLeod with the Rams.
CP: Rodney McLeod?
AW: Oh my goodness, I hit Rodney so hard, man [smiles].
It was almost a touchdown. It was crazy because you know who caught me from behind on this play? Aaron Donald. How did he do that? You know, I was way down the field. It wasn't a fast guy, it was Aaron Donald. I mean, he is fast, but the guy's [a] giant — he's not supposed to do that [smiles].
CP: After that bobbled touchdown run, did Eli or the coaches ever poke fun at you for that?
AW: I don't remember. The thing is, a win is a win and a loss is a loss. But because we won, [there] wasn't [any] poking [fun], and it was my first 100-yard game, so all I got was claps on the back and everything. That game was all good.
There [were] some other games where it was like, “Oh, man, Dre,” but the game was good.
CP: Was that the same with the Rodney McLeod game? I think you guys won that game.
AW: Yeah, I mean that was, it's always cool when you get to do the [thing you're known for]. That's [trucking is] like my thing, you know, I don't know what it is. I'm not super heavy or super big, but I'm very dense. And so if I get the right speed with the right depth, oh man, there ain't no stopping me.
It wasn't the first time, so they got used to it. [But] they're waiting for it — they want to see it. If I don't do it, then they're shocked. You're not shocked when it actually happens.
My first start in the league was actually against the Eagles at their stadium. We ran this power play to right. I broke into the secondary and I forget who it was… it was Malcolm Jenkins. It was Malcolm Jenkins that ended up eating a bad one. So that was like the first time where it was like, “Oh man, Dre, he really does this. It's doesn't just happen in college. He really does this.”
That was something that I really prided myself on and that's what I worked to do was to just knock somebody on their back.
CP: When you played with him, was Eli as funny as he is now?
AW: I think that Eli is really breaking into his role as an entertainer as time moves past his time in the league. He's definitely getting more comfortable. I would say that when I played with Eli, he was always very professional, very goofy, [and] country.
It wasn't that he was intending to be funny, because I feel like if he intended to be funny, he was kind of corny, but just in his general manner, he had a funny way about him.
I did love that guy. I called him Mr. Eli because I was like 20 and this guy was like 33-34 with like four daughters or something like that. So he was very grown.
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