Source: The KAWHI Signature Shoe Revealed
All-Star Weekend is the biggest sneaker moment of the year. The NBA takes over a city and activations from brands are at the forefront of all discussion on websites and even people who aren’t interested in sneaker ‘culture’ become aware of the shoes that the NBA athletes are wearing. Any brand actively creating sneakers for basketball makes this the moment that they release the dopest pair of kicks that will give them headlines in a market that is inundated with a stream of content every minute of the day. Which is what makes All-Star Weekend a conundrum. Over the last ten years the Slam Dunk Contest, Three Point Shootout and the Game itself has taken a hit. Along with the diminishing viewership of both the NCAA and the NBA has come diminishing interest in the signature sneakers of the NBA’s greatest stars.
Even with the decrease in viewership and the slowdown in sales both Puma and New Balance made a conscious decision to reenter the basketball sneaker arena. The reasons for this are not obvious for those of us in the U.S.
Basketball is the fastest growing sport in the world; specifically in the Chinese market where the opportunity for growth is extremely important to sneaker companies. There lies an issue with this as well. The Chinese have their own brands, but the influence and marketing prowess of the American brands dominates the Chinese companies. To offset the growth of American sneaker companies in China, those companies are signing NBA players to contracts. They don’t release any shoes in the U.S. but the hope is that their own countrymen will take to their brands: Anta, Peak, 361 and Li Ning.
When New Balance reentered the arena they did so with limited drops of the OMN1S basketball sneaker. They signed Kawhi, added a straight to the league player in Darius Bazley and recently added Dejounte Murray. Neither Darius or Dejounte is going to drive interest in New Balance in the U.S. They might deliver some interest abroad, but it’s Kawhi who is the centerpiece of the basketball strategy for New Balance. This only makes sense… he is the greatest player in the world at this moment. His addition of the first Kobe Bryant MVP Award in the 2020 All Star Game only solidifies how important Kawhi is to basketball. Which leads us back to the original question: Is Kawhi’s Signature Shoe a Significant Moment in Sneaker History?
The answer is a resounding yes.
New Balance is creating a more competitive environment in the sneaker industry. Here on this site I have made it a point to establish why Signature sneakers are important, although sales are not as big as they were. A signature sneaker is a gateway to branding. There are countless sneakers to wear. Both kids and adults are influenced by fame and the perception of fame. If an athlete represents a certain brand, even if that athlete only wears basketball shoes the connection to the brand functions as a type of synecdoche. The athlete is the brand and the brand is the athlete. Any person who wants to identify with the athlete can wear any product from the brand to gain a sense of self-worth and value. This value can not be measured in a quantitative manner. There isn’t any way to prove that an athlete’s fame drives engagement.
We can play around with a simple extrapolation of Brand + Athletes = Value based on the annual income of the brand. Looking only at brands with NBA athletes (leaving out Chinese brands, these are rough estimates).
Nike is a 40 billion dollar company
adidas is a 22 billion dollar company
Under Armour is 5 billion dollar company
Puma is a 5 billion dollar company
New Balance is private, but researched numbers are around 5 billion a year
Let’s assign a value to brands of 10 pts. Let’s assign a value to athletes based on Twitter social media followers (for speed, I’m writing this in real time):
20 pts for athletes with over 30 million followers
10 pts for athletes over 20 million followers
5 pts for athletes over 10 million followers
1 pt for athletes over 5 million followers
Signature Athletes (keeping this simple)
Puma does not have a signature athlete.
New Balance has Kawhi at 421,000 but he doesn’t utilize social media. His last Twitter post was 2015. Total: 421K
Under Armour has Steph Curry and Joel Embiid (who has a signature releasing this fall). Steph Curry has 14 million Twitter followers and Joel has 1.7 million. Total: 15 million
adidas has Derrick Rose, James Harden, Damian Lillard. D Rose 2.6 million, Harden 6.6 million and Lillard has 1.9 million. Total: 11.1 million
Nike has LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Paul George, Kyrie Irving, Giannis Antetokounmpo (Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony are Jordan Brand). LeBron 45.2 million, Kevin Durant has 18.1 million, PG is at 2.2 million, Kyrie has 4.2 million, Giannis 962,000, and Russell Westbrook has 6.3 million. I’ll stop there because I don’t have to attempt to do the math and it becomes apparent that the amount of marketing spend as it relates to the NBA athletes is in proportion to the value of the company.
Notice I said in proportion. You can not prove that the amount of money spent on NBA players contributes to sales. What you can do is show that ad spend and endorsements are directly proportional to brand value. My numbers above are arbitrary and the goal was to establish that the reach of an NBA athlete is important as the branding of a company improves when athletes are actively engaging their followers. Nike’s value is increased by the amount of money they spend to acquire the best athletes. Their signature athletes contribute a considerable amount of advertising to their brands.
New Balance hasn’t been playing the game very long and they chose an athlete who isn’t really going to add to the brand’s marketing strategy via his own social channels, but Kawhi is such an amazing athlete that his presence as a New Balance athlete creates a problem for Nike and the other brands. They can not tout that they have the greatest active player in the NBA on their rosters. New Balance has the reigning Finals MVP and the MVP of the All-Star game. This gives New Balance something that is extremely important when you consider less than a three years ago they were the brand associated with a very problematic group of Americans. More important the Kawhi forces other brands to improve the options they are making for fans. A healthy sneaker market doesn’t consist of Nike and Jordan Brand. A healthy sneaker market consists of multiple sportswear brands creating beautiful, functional footwear that can be promoted. The signature athlete allows a brand to tell a story.
New Balance can only do so much with the 80 dollar 574. Kids don’t immediately seek out the 574, but right now a kid or an old person can wear a 574 and if someone breaks out the “What are those?” (I don’t think anybody says this anymore, but you get my point) the person rocking any pair of New Balance can say, “The brand worn by the greatest NBA player and MVP of the All-Star game.” While I can’t prove that sales have increased for New Balance, having the greatest player in the game is a game changer.