Zele Community Table: Tom Hayles, Owner Of "ZG"

November 1st, 2007 at 06:32pm Zele Community Table 117

Zele Community Table
October 30, 2007

Tom Hayles
Owner
ZG Brand

Michael Conniff: Where did the whole ZG thing get started?

Tom Hayles: There is a NASA patent called Zero Gravity and they have some technology or chemicals. It exists in that context. Z in the Germanic language can mean all sorts of things. ZG is also a bike components company, the lightest brakes you can make.

MC: So it came from NASA?

TH: I don’t know. Years ago, in the Sixties, I believe the UN came up with this idea of identifier countries, that cars and vehicles could be identified. The phenomena is ovals with letters of messages that got going. How did Aspen get the ZG designation for license plates: different counties have different designations in Colorado. The Front Range has higher letters. Aspen happened to get this combination. There may be some sort of formula. But it just happened.

MC: ZG was by accident?

TH: With cars years ago it meant Pitkin County.

MC: What’s the lowest ZG license plate you’ve seen?

TH:  I’ve seen ZG 2. You can tell when cars are really old. But now there are ZG designer plates. ZG is not issued any more. My first was ZG or ZP I don’t even remember. That was back in 1979-1980. It was phased out I’m thinking late 1980s.

MC: What about the ZG brand?

TH: I was living in Switzerland, cycling for the winters. It’s interesting that if you look at history, promoting  things, altitude in certain things can make a place special, people included. You look at the things that make a place unique. The language, the food, like Tuscany, any place in Austria. The collective thing defines what people are coming for.
 
MC: What does that have to do with ZG?

TH: Years ago, I’d travel a lot and people would ask me where I was from and I didn’t want to say Aspen.

MC: Why not?

TH: First impressions are important—it’s a different world, you live a different life. A connotation of Aspen is people have an easy life and you’re not involved in the real world. In the scheme of life, we’re all here for a certain reason. I live up in the mountains

MC: Why did you come to Aspen?

TH: I followed my sister out here, she runs Main Street Repographics. Back in high school, when I was 14, I saw an article about Aspen in National Geographic. My sister was here and I wanted to see what it was all about. Now you’re in Colorado you want to ski. First time I came here, I’d never been here before—I came here with a couple of suitcases. You come in and you look up and you say: “Ohmigod.” Like any place, you start doing things. Later on, my business was art framing and picture framing. I always found iconic things interesting, how you say things without saying things. Subtle things. I thought it was pretty interesting that ZG represented the place where we live. You weren’t tied to the normal life others might be. I was looking for a way to be distinctive or different. I find it really hard to plaster something on me to say “Aspen.” I still feel it’s a little bit of a bull’s-eye. ZG is a way of saying “Aspen, this is where I’m from, this is my designator, yet it doesn’t say Aspen.” Things you can do with it are very interesting. I designed it to be very simple, very plain, a lot of elements of some of the other elements of Aspen. Herbert Bayer and the divine elements. Something fairly unique about it but that people could still recognize.

MC: Do you own it?

TH: It’s a registered trademark for the basic design element. It’s something I own and I’m the steward of it. I designed it originally for cycling. Now I’m trying to make it more visible. I have this concept of where it one day could be. More representational of a way of living and a lifestyle. So many different ways it could go I keep going back and forth. Very representational.

MC: What does the ZG brand stand for?

TH: Dionysius, he’d say I’m a citizen of the world. I think it’s very worldly. People that have traveled, are not just in one place, been different places, a little bit expansive, represents the sophistication, the adventure, the curiosity of people who have shaped Aspen—a melting pot of a lot of interesting people. I also spent two years in Woodside, California, and it has a lot of the same problems Aspen’s being experiencing. It’s a very nice, pristine setting, but you go over the hill six miles and you’re in Palo Alto.

MC: What’s the reaction been to the ZG brand?

TH: ZG is very simple. People like it for what it is. Some day people in Ohio may know it just as a cool shirt. What is ZG? It’s my brand. It’s clothing for my friends. Your intimate circle.

MC: I know there’s a hat and you’re wearing the vest.

TH: There are vests, shirts, there’s a bike clothing kit. Now we’re having another design for next year. Someone in Minnesota is riding the bike and they see the ZG outfit, they stop you and say: “Hey, you’re from Aspen.” In Europe somebody saw it as a unique identifier. It’s going to attract this traveled crowd—Santa Monica you’re going to see it, too. ZG really stands for—each person wears it for a reason and it’s significant to them. It really represents fun and adventure. Like a pirate flag. It’s very distinctive.

MC: In a nutshell, what does the brand stand for?

TH: I tell them it’s my brand and that it’s clothing for our friends. People can define it for themselves. In Aspen, it’s Aspen. Outside of Aspen it means you’re part of Aspen. I don’t know the story of Izod. Ralph Lauren started making neckties. But it’s fun. I’m reading about these people I’m studying them. In Aspen you go through difficulties. I’m not making a living at it. It was really about having fun and doing something unique. In time, who knows, some people say I don’t want that because everyone’s wearing it. Other people always want something that is one-of-a-kind.

MC: That would be a nice problem to have. Where can people get it now?

TH: ZG7908.com. It’s about what’s really unique about Aspen. For one thing, the altitude is unique.

MC: But there are other places with high altitudes.

TH: It’s the thing other places have, but look at what goes on here, good and bad. Aspen’s certainly changed—good, bad, ugly.

MC: How so?

TH: It used to be like what it was when you’re younger. Now I need longer arms to read. Everyone’s changing. The only thing that’s changed is I think, the camaraderie has changed because of the dynamics. People are working downvalley. In the old days, the work day was over and everyone lived within two miles of Aspen and it was recess. Now people go away. The energy is not so concentrated. You see it in restaurants that were local restaurants. The population base is changed. It’s an inevitable part of change.

MC: You lived in California for a while. You left Aspen.

TH: I moved out to California, Woodside, five years ago.

MC: Why?

TH: For love. I came back because even when I was out there I believed in what I was doing. I really like what I’m doing. It’s fun. With ZG, at some point it makes sense to be in Aspen. I think right now as it develops this is where I should spend most of my time. We have a little bit of a following in California—in the East Bay, the South Bay. Going across the Golden Gate Bridge, someone I knew from Colorado has seen me in ZG.

MC: What’s next for ZG?

TH: How do you start anything? How do you produce anything? More clothes? Another bike? I’d like to have ZG produce something of more significance other than something you put on and wear. A lot of companies do this. Would I like to have something I really believe in? Yes. Part of that money goes to something besides producing a product.

MC: Social responsibility?

TH: It would be nice to produce something that has more positive effect than negative effect. Maybe you never can. Maybe what you produce is adding to the pressures and the difficulties we’re facing. Would it be a think tank? I don’t know.

MC: What would the ZG think tank sponsor?

TH: This whole thought that there’s no borders. The unique things we do that make us fun. To be able to bring people together, playing together, working together. Certainly not fighting. The think tank would be about—again, this is hard, how do you have no judgment of anything? To be able to somehow—my friend in California has daughters are 14 and 15 and they say: “Dad, your generation has really fucked things up.” We live in communities where we don’t have much mixing. Kids hanging out in California, it’s an eclectic group with no barriers. Barriers are starting to evolve. “ZG is my flag, my philosophy, even though I’m American or Ukranian or Lebanese.” On a deep level people want the same thing. They want peace. Is it pie in the sky? Maybe. But it helps people experience different ways of living and their reality.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, Colorado, Travel, Business, The West, Aspen Life Post, United Post