Today the Curry 4 was slated to drop in a bigger way than the two previous limited releases. Now, I don’t know if it’s strategy or if the issue with shipping, but it’s rare for the type of promotion that happened for this October 27th drop to only have a release of the kid’s shoes. On the UA site the shoes for men say “SOLD OUT” but other sites don’t have any broken sizes. Is something afoot?
Here is an update from Matt Townsend of Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-27/under-armour-s-signature-shoe-is-delayed-dealing-fresh-setback
I did some field research over the weekend. Was at a Foot Locker and the store manager mentioned they received the men’s shoe and then sent them all back because they were defective. Pretty unfortunate but just as I was speaking to the manager a kid was cashing out a pair. The manager didn’t mention what the problem was but my guess from seeing some of the unboxing vids on youtube is the glue was bleeding out a bit too much between the midsole and the synthetic upper. Anyway, just another instance of the brand tripping over itself. Townsend said the risk is consumers will move on to other things, but the flip side is that the company needs to get execution right, and product quality is important to retain customers. As an investor, I’m hopeful that the schedule hasn’t slipped for future colour ways and that storytelling continues along with the releases because it is a nicely designed product.
Nice follow up!!!!! I didn’t even think to go to my local stores to see if they were there. When I was reselling I would have had access to the shoes and I could have gotten some insight from a DM. I’ve heard a few other people say that it was a defect. This doesn’t make sense. I’ve owned two sneaker companies and I ran them by myself. I had to do all QA and boxing… how does a 5 billion dollar a year company import thousands of sneakers and not catch this issue prior to landing the sneakers? I have to think that something is more afoot. Then again this happened with mold on Jordans before.