Source: Love at First Step: Introducing the Curry Flow Go
I struggled with the title of this post. For Black people at sports brands, being celebrated can isolate them. To stand out can lead to targeting and mistreatment. It’s the unfortunate circumstance of Black people working in industries controlled by White people. This post isn’t going to be about race, it’s going to be about the Curry Flow Go, but one of the designers of the shoe happens to be Ed Wallace a Black designer at UA. I don’t know Ed and I’m writing this post because from the business aspect, this is an extremely important moment for Under Armour. It just so happens to be a Black designer is an active participant in the creation of a new division of footwear for a Black athlete at a company that has had its share of issues with culture.
Enough of that, let’s get to why this is important. The Curry line is Under Armour’s shining star in their footwear division. While, HOVR Running products have begun to gain steam and Project Rock inspires interest, UA is Curry and that synecdoche is understood. As Curry goes, Under Armour grows… and man, Curry is going. The NBA Champion is off to a blazing hot start in this 2021 season leading the Warriors to the best record in the NBA after a couple of horrible seasons and talk about his career being on the decline. Under Armour recognizes this and they are going to retro the shoe that started it all, the Curry 1. At the same time, Under Armour has taken Curry Brand into Jordan territory in more than just the creating of the Curry Brand. This new shoe, the Curry Flow Go, is Curry’s TRunner. The TRunner was the first shoe that allowed Jordan Brand to recognize the power of Jordan’s brand to sell more than just his signature basketball retro sneakers. With the introduction of a training shoe for Jordan, a more cost effective option to represent the Jumpman was born and has led to an abundance of takedown models of Jordan inspired footwear for the last 20 years.
Until now, Curry has only had the SC30 and other Curry basketball models. There wasn’t a training model associated with Steph Curry. He was more recognized for his golf line, but that’s a niche area and doesn’t really hit as big a demographic for Under Armour. Training like Curry, however, is another step for the longterm prospects of Curry’s sneaker legacy and it’s taking place in at a time where Curry doesn’t appear to be winding down, but leveling up his hoops career. The Jordan TRunner was born in 1998. Jordan was on the downside of his Hall of Fame career. Retro hadn’t been coined and in a year MJ would be playing for the Wizards. The Curry Flow Go is being introduced when Curry has just had games of back to back 9 threes made. The Flow Go is arriving just as people are marveling at the amount of running Curry is doing to drive opponents mad.
What makes the roll out of the Curry Flow Go important, although the 150 dollar pricepoint isn’t where this shoe should be, is the understanding that Curry is transcending his sport. Just when it seemed that injuries were taking away a player that changed the game, Curry rebuilt his body. The skinny three point assassin, now has shoulders and biceps and is carrying the extra muscle on a frame that is perfectly suited to see Curry play well into his late thirties; an amazing thing for a player, who when he was signed to Nike, stayed injured constantly. The shoe already has broken sizes in the colorway shown, which is a good sign:
Curry Flow Go in Black/Halo Grey
Kudos to Under Armour and the design team. I really hope that my bringing up the designer doesn’t cause any problems, but this is an important moment and could be the connective tissue that opens the eyes of young Black athletes and sneaker fans who consider Under Armour just another good old boy shoe company. I’d love to see a discussion with the team behind this project and a video series discussing the fact that, “The three-time NBA champion and two-time league MVP logs more than 2.5 miles per game—nearly eight marathons per season—and that’s just during the regular season. Add up all of the miles from in-season training, practice, the postseason, and offseason workouts, and the total distance becomes impossible to calculate.” That’s a commercial right there.