Author: djfrosty

The numbers are in on the first edition of ComplexCon Las Vegas, the festival dedicated to convergence culture that debuted in its new home in November 2024. Sixty thousand attendees visited the shoppable exhibition featuring music, fashion, art, food, innovation and sports collaborations. Over two days, sales totaled more than $20 million, marking record numbers for the event, which began in 2016 in Long Beach, Calif.
By all accounts, Las Vegas and ComplexCon are a perfect match. The 300-plus brands have an entire cityscape to activate collaborations, exclusive drops and live performances. 

By day, the hypebeasts dropped their paychecks on Takashi Murakami Ohana Hatake Full-Boom Slides, the Pac Sun x Yohji Yamamoto Wildside capsule, King Ice Pokémon-embellished jewels and Travis Scott’s Nike Zoom Field Jaxx. They snapped pics with Dan Life’s MVMT x Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 limited-edition timepiece and the ESPN SportsCenter Top 10 Chain. Cannabis brand STIIIZY popped up with a replica weed cultivation experience, and Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop poured out their new distilled gin, Still G.I.N.

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Outside the exhibition, Gunna performed at Drai’s wearing Adidas Originals Adizero Aruku sneakers; Juice WRLD’s team held a final album listening party and celebration for the late rapper’s Fortnite Battle Royale, Chapter 2 Remix appearance at Zouk nightclub; and Jordan Brand created the Cactus Jack Outpost, an immersive experience that brought Scott’s utopian vision to life and showcased his journey in creating the CJ1 T-Rexx shoe.

Neil Wright, senior vp of experiential events at ComplexCon, attributes the success of the first Vegas outing to the expanded music component, including CactusCon, with the participation of Scott as artistic director.

“Music — even though it’s always been a pillar of ComplexCon, it has never been more prominent, with Travis having his influence over the entire show,” Wright says. “[In the past], we’ve had Pharrell, from a cultural perspective, help with the curatorial aspects, but the look, feel, and identity of each year, we’ve always tapped a fine artist. Having Travis put his arms and his creative vision around it with his team was a major co-sign to get the music industry involved.” 

Scott unveiled over 35 exclusive collaborations and installations with influential designers, artists, and brands in the CactusCon bazaar. In the Cactus Colosseum by Nike, he pushed soccer, sneakers, and community, celebrating the Nike Zoom Field Jaxx launch with the Secreto Maximus Tournament, a high-stakes private soccer match at the Cactus Colosseum featuring top athletes and showcasing a trophy case of his Nike collaborations. He closed the two-day festival with a performance on ComplexCon’s Main Stage, bringing out WWE’s “Triple H” as a surprise appearance to present him with the WWE Hardcore Championship belt. Amplifying his presence to a new demographic, he announced a Jan. 6 appearance on the first RAW on Netflix.

Scott will use this “takeover” formula when he plays Coachella in April with a Cactus Jack desert domination, sharing his universe with the festival audience in the desert. 

Another major boon for ComplexCon Las Vegas was Nike’s investment in music collaborations and product innovation. In addition to Scott, the sneaker giant partnered with Lil Yachty and the Concrete Boys on the Nike Us Force 1. Nike also debuted the Air Max 1000, a new 3D-printed silhouette manufactured with Zellerfeld that reimagines the Air Max 1.

“From a strictly square footage perspective, this was Nike’s biggest impact on ComplexCon. They’ve done so many things over the years that were cool at the moment but aged even better. In 2017, there was a fireside chat with Kendrick Lamar and Kobe Bryant, and they also brought Virgil Abloh to debut his collection that year.” 

Dc2trill, Draft Day, Lil Yachty, and Camo! attend ComplexCon 2024 on November 17, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Sara Jaye/Getty Images for Complex

It wasn’t that long ago—back in 2016—that Wright remembers when ComplexCon was just a concept deck that he and founders Aaron Levant and Marc Ecko were pitching Nike.

“It’s a trade show. No, it’s not a trade show. It’s a music festival. No, it’s not a music festival,” he recalls. “It was difficult to convey what we were trying to build in year one.” 

Year eight signified the complete vision, activated. The exhibition featured Capitol, Interscope and Def Jam booths peddling ephemera such as Ice Spice Chia Pets, vintage Tupac T-shirts and vinyl records. A Rick Owens-designed Cactus Jack recording studio was also on display.

“You don’t want the same type of artist merch that you can get anywhere. Rather than partnering on a sneaker drop, many of our brands collaborate with recording artists such as Ed Hardy and Ken Carson, as well as Siobhan Bell and B.B. Simon,” Wright says. “Music collaborations have become just as important.”

L.A.-based high-tech footwear brand FCTRY LAb debuted at ComplexCon with their viral Duck Boots in black and yellow created in collaboration with rapper NLE Choppa. 

FCTRY LAb co-founder and creative director Omar Bailey, the former Head of the Yeezy-Adidas Innovation Lab, started the company two years ago (funded by a diverse group of venture capital firms, professional athletes and angel investors). 

Bailey aims to help rappers, actors, athletes, influencers or public figures design, develop and manufacture their own footwear outside the frame of major brands like Nike or Adidas. “There is a huge opportunity for artists who may not be on the big brands’ radar, who have, who have the reach, the ability and the desire to want to launch their own shoes,” he says. “We also want to create radical and interesting concepts and designs in a space that’s been quite boring for the last 10 years.”

DJ EFN, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg speak onstage during ComplexCon 2024 on November 16, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Bryan Steffy/Getty Images for Complex

According to FCTRY LAb, the formula works. The Yellow Boot was a significant unpaid, organic social media moment for the sneaker industry, accumulating 308 million views and 17 million+ instances of direct consumer engagement. 

From the disruptors to the mainstream, brands such as WWE, which collaborated with Loiter; Tide, which sponsored ThriftCon; and Chips Ahoy, which partnered with Big Sean, all flocked to participate. At that convergence, things get even more interesting for Wright, with ComplexCon acting like an internal agency to help them fit in. “We work very closely with a lot of the bigger, non endemic partners to make sure that when they do show up, they’re showing up in a credible and an authentic way,” he says. “They put effort into actually speaking the language of our audience.” 

Collaborating with WWE was a dream for fashion house Loiter, created by Isaac Metekingi. With a design ethos rooted in hip-hop and electronic music subcultures, Loiter, the in-house brand for Culture Kings, was inspired by the grunge-inspired graphics of WWE superstars, including Duane “The Rock” Johnson, The Undertaker, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and “The Big Red Monster” Kane. Its booth featured the “Raw is War” entrance for photo ops.

“They were a little bit skeptical when we presented the idea—they had all their modern wrestlers. And I was like, I’m gonna go way back, and after a while, they saw the vision,” Metekingi says. “For a relatively unknown brand, we had an unbelievable presence.”

ComplexCon aims to have an even bigger year in 2025, with artist Daniel Arsham serving as the global artistic director. The event will travel to Hong Kong from March 21-23, 2025 and return to Las Vegas on Oct. 25-26, 2025.