Straight from the golden age of Hip-Hop, Coogi and PUMA® team up for a one of a kind collaboration
Source: PUMA X COOGI | PUMA®
Every week there is an ongoing battle over the importance of the sneaker community to the footwear industry. I’ve said over and over that the sneaker community is not just an echo chamber and that the term sneakerhead extends outside of websites like Hypebeast and Solecollector. I’ve repeated that those people who think that the sneakerhead community is just the resale community are missing a serious market and a larger number of people.
Puma has finally begun to reach the market I thought they needed to sustain their popularity and growth.
For The First Time In A Year PUMA® Website Pushes Men’s Footwear
How did they gain their first SOLD OUT shoe in men’s via their own platform? Hip-Hop. The Coogi x Puma collab was undoubtedly one of the best marketing projects conceived. While the release was not a GR/commercial release it was important for the brand. The Trapstar drop wasn’t very good and the Puma Tsugi (A shoe I’m very excited about) isn’t really selling through. There have been limited drops from Puma before and they haven’t performed nearly as well as this release. Not even the Staple collab sold out on the site.
Interestingly enough it wasn’t a current performer or an athlete that was directly responsible for this drop flying on the site. It was an emcee who left us way too soon who popularized Coogi with verses and style that only a king could.
Notorious BIG rapped in “One More Chance” “I stay Coogi down to the socks/ rings and watch filled with rocks.” In that video and in other promo shoots Coogi stayed in rotation with BIG and became a staple in streetwear. This release from Puma captures the 90s retro trend and capitalizes on a nostalgia that is currently pushing music and fashion forward. It was a clever play by the brand who honestly wasn’t really being worn in the 90s at all. Puma was played out. The 90s were all about Timberlands and baggy jeans. This release played well with traditional sneakerheads and people who probably only buy one to two pair of kicks a year. It moved beyond the echo chamber, because as I’ve noted over and over, the people who report that the echo chamber is the sneakerhead community don’t really know kicks at all. Sneakerheads are now 40-55 year old guys who began this journey into kicks as casual shoes. It’s not the kids arguing with old analysts on Twitter. These are guys who probably don’t have a Facebook, but they still like to get fresh and there is an opportunity there for brands to nab both the young market and the older market. Puma did that and they did it well.