Indulge your sweet tooth with the Sweet Street Shadow 6000, a Saucony Original influenced by whimsical candy shop treats. With candy-colored leather accents, stripes details & laces inspired by black licorice, this over the top sneaker confection is worth splurging on.
Source: Shadow 6000 Sweet Street
I made a comment on LinkedIn about the fact that the Food Fight 6000 sold out for Saucony with very little work from the brand. I wrote a post about the resale value of the limited release sneaker. I also discussed how brands can be tricked into expecting a trickle down to happen with general release sneakers. The link to the original article is below:
The Unsurprising Success of the Saucony Shadow 6000 Food Fight – ARCH-USA
In one of my responses on LinkedIn, I wrote these words: well, the good thing is it sold out. The bad thing is it sold out without the best merchandising. That can give the brand the wrong idea about how well GR shoes might perform, and they might under-invest in marketing and content for less popular options.
The Sweet Street is a sneaker with a theme and concept. There wasn’t hardly any copy or marketing/online merchandising around the product. Unlike the Food Fight, there isn’t a broken size on the launch page for the shoe. My comment seems to be in play in this discussion. The success of the Food Fight should have contributed to some interest in the Sweet Street, but didn’t. It’s a similar discussion taking place on collabs and their ability to trickle down to inline general release product from every brand. I had a long drawn out discussion with an industry marketing veteran on why I thought the Jerry Lorenzo and adidas partnership didn’t make sense. I explained that Lorenzo had releases end up on deep discount with Nike. The more limited product sold through, but the more readily available items became staples at the Clearance Store. I explained that this is often the case and he agreed. It’s been a year since Lorenzo launched a capsule with Nike in November and the following month he tatooed the Three Stripes on his neck and signed with the Trefoil to head up adidas basketball. Since that time Fear of God has launched several collections, but nothing has arrived from adidas x FOG.
I don’t intend to make this about adidas, but I’m attempting to establish that name recognition doesn’t immediately build a brand’s ability to sell through. Every product launch is different. Every product requires a strategy that embraces a variety of efforts. Saucony created two unique and dope drops. One was limited and reflected a variety of limited releases in one drop. That shoe grabbed the attention of hypebeasts and fans genuinely interested and sold through. Those visitors did not return as people do with Jordan Brand week after week. They didn’t come back and buy the Sweet Street and Saucony’s lack of online merchandising and marketing has delivered a model that has one broken size (two but I have a feeling there weren’t any 14s made). On StockX the Food Fight has over 144 trades above retail at $204.00. The Sweet Street has two listings and zero pairs sold only a week apart. There is a graphic on the homepage for the shoe. The landing page lacks the attack needed to develop interest and that’s a shame. This should have been a welcomed follow up to the success of the Food Fight.