Different Paths One Family
Source: Different Paths One Family
In 2016 I did an interview with Dallas Stokes as he began a push to bring And1 back to prominence. It was a short lived collab, with Dallas facing considerable push back for trying to recapture the roots of the brand that fascinated basketball fans at the start of the millennium. What looked to be a promising return, the brand was sponsoring a Memphis based prep school and Dallas had implemented a new mixtape series based on music in various parts of the country, was bogged down in politics and lack of foresight. Dallas’ goal was to ramp up coverage of the OGs associated with the brand. I haven’t covered And1 since then. A few weeks ago, I watched the 30 for 30 on ESPN:
Everything I hated but grew to love about And1 was rekindled. Seeing the Mixtape Tour stars provided a window into an era that has become enmeshed with the modern NBA. The Mixtape Tour wouldn’t really work today because the lessons learned have spawned entire businesses built on highlights of basketball players. When the pros are pulling up from the logo during NBA games, streetball and fundamentally sound hoops are on the same side of one coin. After watching the 30 for 30 I began browsing YouTube and discovered the team at And1 implemented what Dallas hoped to reignite. I’m not sure if Sequential Brand Groups still operates And1, and I’m not sure if Dallas is back with the team, but it certainly seems that way. I hadn’t seen any of the content before I decided to search, but as soon as I stopped on the first video of AO, I watched the entire 9-minute segment in the series named Different Paths One Family.
And1 has launched a podcast (Mixtape Tour Series) and the short film series on the old crew. The views are solid, but astronomical. This isn’t surprising. And1 has been through a lot of iterations. Once the original brand was sold, the brand was taken down market. It became an off-price retail item. When a brand makes the decision to do this, building it back up to a place where the sneaker community would even consider wearing the brand is a difficult prospect. In the AO Episode above he talks about the brand’s decision to give Kevin Garnett a 3-million-dollar deal and he only stayed with the company less than a year. AO laments that had And1 stayed true and delivered a Hot Sauce signature sneaker the brand could have continued to grow organically with the Tour and maybe things would have been different.
Nothing is certain in any industry, so And1’s decline may have happened any way with the change in ownership, but it’s very interesting to see the amount of content being delivered by the team right now. Basketball sneakers are no longer the primary option for kids today. The game of basketball is a much different thing now. The heritage of And1 resonates, but without a casual line of sneakers to pull from, the brand, in the U.S., will find it difficult to catch fire. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity. The international market is still enamored with the stars from that era. Basketball in the international space is where it was when sneaker culture began to take shape here in the 90s. Will the heritage play generate interest for And1? The few NBA stars they have signed aren’t even listed on the site. The landing page for the DP1F show is great, but without a section collecting the information in blog/long content format on the site, search isn’t being generated via a static site. The IG has considerable engagement, but the brand doesn’t even carry the Trash Talk or Player tees on the site. There isn’t any apparel there. I discovered And1 because of 30 for 30. I run a sneaker site and I haven’t written a word about Norman Powell’s player exclusive kicks with the brand. Would I have even thought of running this post if it weren’t for Set Free Richardson’s documentary? Would you even know about DP1F if I didn’t just write about it? There are holes in the process, but I like what’s happening. I hope they have thread and a needle.
