Nike and Fear of God elevate basketball staples to American icons in this new Holiday 2020 collection.
Source: Nike Fear of God Holiday 2020 Collection
This collection sold out immediately. The only item left is the only item to release on 11-20-2020, which is the black warm up top. Why would I label a product that sold out immediately inconsistent? The Fear of God Moc sneaker is still available in the Nike Clearance Store. There isn’t any resale value in the three colors. Unlike the Air Fear of God 1 and FOG Raid, the demand isn’t there long after the release. The immediate question is why?
Collaborative efforts happen inside of small rooms. They don’t filter out into the mainstream until someone catches wind that a pair of shoes or clothes is reselling for a crazy amount of money. The small drops of clothing function as rain in the desert. It satiates the fashion palette delivering a momentary picture of cool to be aspired towards by cool seekers. What happens when a product fails to deliver on the promise of “cool”?
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For Nike, it means very little. Nike collaborates to maintain. adidas collaborates to retain. Every other brand collaborates to gain.
- Nike doesn’t need the collab. They simply want to limit anyone else from possibly getting an edge.
- adidas hopes to retain (definition: keep in one’s memory). adidas has to remain on the mind of cool. Unlike Nike, it’s not muscle memory that drives engagement with cool for adidas. It’s the scream of marketing shouting, “Hey, we’re here also.”
- Every other brand, New Balance and No Vacancy, Puma and Rihanna, Under Armour and A$AP Rocky, is looking to pick up ground and become relevant to cool. It works for NB. It worked for Puma, but not so much for Under Armour.
The question is why didn’t it work for UA? Easy answer… the shoe was wack, but the irony is without a collab at all, only an emphasis on the design team, UA released a shoe this fall named the Fat Tire and it sold out. It was, and continues to be, buzzworthy. There is the answer. UA built a solid product, told a story about the design team and landed squarely in the oasis of cool.
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For smaller companies, the risk is greater and the rewards are not as straightforward. We Are Underdogs, a small ‘bespoke’ brand based in Portugal, has gone all in on small orders, limited runs in collaboration with YouTubers and influencers. They are attempting to pass go and jump directly to cool. There is an inherent problem with this as the collaborative efforts shine a light on the influencers vs the brand. The end result becomes that WAU as a brand lives to gain and will not move into retain or maintain because the people being driven to the brand’s site are arriving in support of the influencer, not the brand.
This can be seen in the current Nightwing collaboration for the brand where the color associated with the Weartester’s YouTuber is sold out, but two other colors don’t have broken sizes.
https://weareunderdogs.com/collections/nw1
The Fear of God is undoubtedly a small collection that doesn’t resonate outside of cool culture and it really shouldn’t be compared to the Puma x Rihanna campaign (as that collab changed the trajectory of the brand). The FOG collab is a direct comparison to the Daniel Patrick x adidas collab; which after a year is still being advertised on Facebook. There is one thing anyone looking to do a collab should ask, “what has been done by the brand, to build the brand and connect to the audience?” If the brand doesn’t do this, what will happen is the attempt to connect over and over again by chasing cool; as opposed to building great product and figuring out how to move from gain, to retain, and then to maintain, as Under Armour has done once with the Fat Tire. The question is, will Under Armour learn? New Balance for two years now has produced an exciting new product (the 247 first and then the 327). They have led with product vs collabs (although they’ve had their fair share of collabs) and this has given them a passport to the desert.
Product is the key.