For the next 5 days I will be dropping a post that is anti-11. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Jordan Brand. My entire office wall is covered in Jordan Brand art shot by my daughter. The crazy thing is my favorite shoe of all time is the Ewing Rivalry by adidas. My go to shoe right now is the Merrell Gridway Canvas. The brand I have the most pairs of is Cole Haan (I gave most of my Jordans to my son because I made my own shoes) and I don’t even wear the Cole Haan’s much anymore. Between me, my son, daughter and wife, in our house we have a combined 200+ pairs of shoes and most of them are Nike. With all of that said, the shoes I wore today were from We Are Underdogs. This is not to bash Nike, but with so many options on the market, it would be a waste to give Nike even more brand recognition when a quick visit to any sneaker site looks like a subsite of the Swoosh. This week I’m following up on a previous series I did last year at this time named 7 Days No Nike. I hope it opens you up to other brands as it did last year.
Source: Custom Shoes from COMUNITYmade
At least once a month someone writes me to ask how to start their own shoe company. My response is always the same, “don’t”. It’s not that I don’t believe in the vision that people have. I’m just starting to understand how many shoes are being made. One brand makes enough shoes for the entire world to wear, but because we like our diversity and independence…
Scratch that
We don’t like our independence. This is why I’m writing this post and for the next 5 days I’m aiming to be the only sneaker based website to not write about the Air Jordan 11 Retro Bred which releases this Saturday. Nike will be making over a million pair of these shoes and every pair of them will sell between Saturday and through some time in January. That means over a million people will declare they are dope, but in fact they will be wearing the same damn shoe as over a million people. What if you could do something different though? Something unique that doesn’t require a run of manufacturing to produce a million of the same shoes shipped across international waters?
COMUNITYmade offers a way for you to utilize their system to create your own customized shoe. This isn’t an ID or Mi or ICON, it’s a shoe built from the ground up based on one of their silhouettes, but featuring all of your selections for materials, laces, color combinations, and additional features. It’s Bespoke, and most important if you wanted to make your own BRED colorway… unless someone bites your entire idea, you won’t be wearing the same s–t that every one will be stunting on Instagram in.
Today’s 5 Days No Bred is an introduction to the Bespoke process of sneaker design that I hope someone attempts and reaches out to show me the results. If you aren’t as bold to create your own shoes, but you want to possibly try a pair of COMUNITYmade shoes I wrote the company to ask for a discount code. I don’t get paid any percentage if you utilize this code. I simply wanted to give you a reason for trying something new that is much less harmful to the environment and it also supports local, American made manufacturing.
Here is the code: CB15 for 15% off. Below are the steps you have to take to make your own pair. https://www.comunitymade.com/