This holiday season, Jordan Brand continues to celebrate the 20-year-anniversary of the XIII and explores new colorways, materials and make-ups of the Air Jordan I, VI and XII.
Source: Jordan Brand Unveils Select Retro Styles for The Holiday Season
As you know the Should You Buy To Flip? Series has been on extended vacay. Flipping isn’t a recreational sport anymore. The everyday person isn’t jumping in and copping just to flip anymore. The only people still actively pursuing resell value in kicks is the person willing to put the money into buying extremely limited kicks. GR Flipping is dead unless you have a NES hookup or a FTL discount. Even then the resale value on most Jordan Brand releases is minimal and you only profit on quantity. The reason for the death of flipping has been beat to death and for most sneaker lovers the death of flipping has been a good thing. People can walk into a store and buy kicks after the day of release. The problem is the death of flipping equated to a slow down across the board. When Jordan Brand is easily accessible it creates balance. Balance isn’t a good thing for the third party/resell market. That balance affects other brands. adidas appears to have all of the momentum but the Jordan Brand slow down created an overstock of adidas products and now adidas has slowed down because they were “hot” until they had to fill the front of the store at retail.
In other words, I haven’t had to do a SYBTF? and that’s good for collector’s, but bad for third party and retail. Get it?
I am predicting a shift in the market with Jordan Brand’s collection of Fall/Winter drops. Beginning this month Nike Inc. has successfully completed the integration of their Consumer Direct Offense, or DTC approach. When this started a few years back I said that it would shape the market and change the way things worked because the brand had to overproduce to fill the abundance of store outlets they had created. Nike Inc. has added over 300 store locations since 2014! The overproduction helped to push SNKRS and Nike.com. Now that those streams have been established, the brand does not have to produce footwear for retail and for Nike outlets.
Did you catch that?
In order to successfully implement the DTC strategy Nike had to purposefully overproduce and during this process they allowed RTVs in abundance. Now that many of the small channels, which made up a considerable amount of Futures, are no longer around the brand can re-establish what made it great: limited drops, dope ass marketing and exceptional colorways.
This Fall and Winter will see the return of flipping GRs and the Retro 1 Flyknit will begin the return to getting above retail for a general release. Let’s break down each shoe. Here are my predictions:
Air Jordan 1 Retro Flyknit Royal
The Banned Flyknit popped momentarily but has settled down. The Flyknit didn’t really do that shoe justice however. The red looked pink on the Wings logo and it just wasn’t as clean. This version however will be more limited. The royal is perfectly color matched. The shoe is already selling above retail on eBay. What will be the average resell price on this model? Between 209.99 and 229.99.
Air Jordan XII Bordeaux
The Retro 12 is one of the few Retros that has maintained its resell value. The Bordeaux colorway is usually reserved for the 7, but recently it’s landed on the Decon 2 (Nice resell value initially but dropped once the second round of Decon 2s released) and on the PSNY 12 (obviously resell value). The addition of the white to a shoe that killed via PSNY, even if it is a bigger release will carry a resell at 229.99 to 249.99. This shoe should pop.
Air Jordan 12 Retro Dark Grey
Once again the 12 comes into play and a grey suede 12 with gold eyelets… butter. This is the smoothest release of the holiday season and will resonated with old and young heads. While there is a series of wheat dropping from JB this shoe like the Retro 5 Suede in both blue and red, will move people to cop. The neutral colorway is a perfect match for a multitude of styling options and it gives the GR population another chance at a shoe that looks very similar to the PSNY series. That’s all good. I am calling this as a solid resell shoe at 229.99 to 249.99. I have a feeling people won’t be able to wait to cop. Nike is done playing with its cash cow.
Air Jordan 13 Altitude
I have a feeling people will sleep on this shoe. If it’s readily available it will be the one shoe in this fall pack that won’t pop. Actually this shoe and the next 3 will not pop.
Golden Harvest and Elemental Gold
The Air Jordan I, VI and XIII, is a case of going to the well too much. The Air Force 1 Wheat was probably the best selling Air Force 1 I’ve ever got a hold of. As a GR it was everywhere and because there were so many available in Memphis and the shoe was released in the Employee Store, they were on shelves so I could basically list, sell and ship. In 2015 that shoe carried my online resell through the winter. The shoe’s success carried over into 2016 and when you can find it, it was still good money. Even today in 2017 when I find a pair and buy them I can still get 180 a pair for that shoe… on a good day. Unfortunately there haven’t been many good days lately and the Griffey Max Wheat and Air Max 95 Wheat basically choked the life out of the Timberland replacement look. In other words as dope as these three drops are from Jordan Brand I think it’s a bit of overkill. The Retro 13 and the Retro 1 will have a pop in resell. The 1 because it is priced right to pop and the 13 because the gum outsole is clean asf, but the 6… that white reminds me too much of the Griffey.
Overall, 3 out of 7 drops popping isn’t exactly something to scream about. Unless Jordan Brand keeps the numbers down on these they will not be worth grabbing. I just have a feeling that Jordan/Nike is completely aware of how they’ve treated the brand and they are ready to get back to what works. These colorways scream that the brand is listening and I might be wrong about the last three but JB hasn’t given me much to be excited about. I really do think that is about to change.