SI-18 and SI-2018 pictured Source: Si-2018 Collection
It’s well documented on this site how excited I was when I saw the K-Swiss Gen K Knit early last year:
At a moment when every brand was delivering a knit shoe and adidas was winning with the NMD K-Swiss was working on the Gen K and at first glance the shoe appeared to capture both youth and thirty to forty somethings with a shoe that was performance based, but casual with serious style. Something funny happened along the way during the year though. The brand aligned itself with entrepreneurship and Gary Vee and as I tracked the shoe throughout the year I found that there wasn’t any merchandising or marketing of the product taking place. The influencer became the beacon which never truly inspires a connection to the product. I wrote about that here:
K-Swiss Invested In An Influencer When The Product Was Enough | Marketing
I continued to watch K-Swiss and one of the most painful things I witnessed was a local store discount the Gen K to 29.97 buy one get one for a 1 and not a single pair sold. I was about to buy them all, but even I hesitated because I had a chance to buy about 60 pair of Air Jordan 1 Decon at 39.99 which sold at 69.99 to 89.99. Because K-Swiss had failed to build a true campaign around the product and focused on influencers like Gary Vee and Anwar Carrots (who also had a Puma line, smh), by the end of last year into this year the Gen K appeared to me to be a failure.
Which really sucked. (Notice this sentence is by itself?)
It sucked because the shoe was dope, priced right, but it was left on an island to fend for itself. If I was the designer I would have been mad asf. This post isn’t about last year, it’s about this year and a new drop from K-Swiss. I didn’t even know about this. I check websites daily and because Nike and adidas tend to dominate the sneaker landscape I forget to check other brands sometimes. I traveled to another city yesterday to pick up some kicks for the online shop and while in a store I ran across a new K-Swiss.
This was not as simple as it sounds. When I enter a store as a buyer for my shop I walk every inch of the store. I wasn’t in analysis mode for writing an article on the site, but the small defacto triggers for writing analysis is imbedded in my core. I began at one end of the sneaker wall, apparel was placed in the middle of the store. At the front of the store was Nike (replacing adidas) and Nike dominated the entire wall. In a small section above adidas at the back of the wall before the backpack and accessories section (and after the Vans section… yep adidas is behind Vans) were the shoes in the picture above and below.
I took a long look at the kicks and then I realized it was a K-Swiss. I asked the store manager had she sold a pair. She responded, “not a single one”. I then asked when it dropped. She explained they had them for a couple of weeks. My first thought was that it looked like a Clearweather Cloudstryk design. Then I realized that it was modern update to a classic tennis shoe. The most important thing to note was that I said, “These are actually dope.” K-Swiss had once again nailed a design. In my opinion they were two for two on new designs in one year. The problem is just like the K-Swiss Icon Knit there wasn’t a bit of marketing/merchandising around. We are in the heart of the 90s lovefest in footwear and here K-Swiss has an amazing opportunity to launch the old school tennis outfit that everyone wore in the early 90s with a shoe that has both chunky elements and performance elements in a package that looks dope. Instead the shoe is sitting on the wall alone with any explanation of what or who it is and although it standsout… it’s lost in a sea of sales tags on the adidas wall.
K-Swiss has a core problem but they have some dope products. I should have written a beginning of the year prediction for them. If I had and I was shown this shoe and the models being released along with it (pics below) I would have made the statement that K-Swiss has the potential to be the Vans of this year with the right moves. While Gary Vee is very popular he is all about his brand and a step away from those type of influencers and a step towards a real plan of action would pay dividends. The brand should eat the cost of RTV and allow every store to get those shoes out of their stores where they aren’t sitting, or K-Swiss needs to sit down and create marketing materials and accessories to rock with the Gen K and their new models creating the opportunity for hookups (selling additional items with their kicks). I would have written that the brand needs to focus on maintaining their SRPs. Nothing should go on sale when it’s priced right already.
My final thoughts on K-Swiss would have been that the brand has to find a way to exist both in “Citi Trend” styled stores and in “Footaction”. This is possible although they have spent years in the discount market. A revival could happen. They have the product, but there just appears to be a disconnect somewhere in the chain and that sucks, because I really do like this SI-2018