Is K-Swiss Making an Authentic Pivot or Using the Black Community? “Dreamers and Doers” a Short Film by Baron Davis

I’ve kept a screenshot of a comment made to me by the President of K-Swiss for a year. His comment happened on a discussion of a Black History Month Campaign by New Balance. The president of K-Swiss felt compelled to compare my site and my work to another sneaker industry analyst. That sneaker industry analyst happens to be an older, more established White male working with an infrastructure that grants him access to purchased Point of Sales data. I work from my own data, which has enabled me to correctly predict Nike’s Consumer Direct Offense and a number of other big moments in the sneaker industry. I say all of this because seeing K-Swiss’ new direction which features the work of Black creatives, and performance, makes me wonder how authentic this shift is if their president was willing to publicly attack me on LinkedIn?

When he left the comment below, I’m certain his comment arrived because a lot of my analysis of what K-Swiss was doing in marketing at that time was not very favorable. I thought they were under-utilizing their history by relying on collaborative efforts that celebrated “person over the brand” I had even written a series of post on the brand and what I thought could be a resurgence:

K-Swiss Invested In An Influencer When The Product Was Enough | Marketing – ARCH-USA

Here are two critical points, in 2018 when the analyst this president trusted said performance was soft and slow, I wrote this post:

Why People Should Stop Saying Performance Is ‘Soft or Slow’

In that post I gave a detailed explanation of the shift in performance. I also created a marketing tool that was rooted in the need for heritage and authenticity while educating. It seems K-Swiss has pivoted towards everything I said three years ago.

Today, I discovered K-Swiss’ new angle. The angle shows up on their site as well. I have a number of articles here on the site and you can see a trend for the brand from the last few years. At that time, I looked at the product being created and how the brand was merchandised and found that K-Swiss looked like a company attempting to find an angle. My biggest commentary was that their strategy was not authentic and it failed to capitalize on heritage. Now the company is obviously shifting gears. Take a moment to search their site and there isn’t any mention of Gary Vee. Search results yield broken links. The company’s new strategy uses performance and tennis (the company’s roots) as the lead. The company has also shifted their work with influencers to continue a process they started last year when the company was taken over by XTEP.

In the picture above, you can see YG as a spokeperson for K-Swiss in their new Compton Country Club. The marketing side of me wants to scream, YG really doesn’t want to see all of those Cs in the name of this promotion, or a blue background, but I’ll leave that alone. What I will say is that this campaign, combined with this documentary shot by Baron Davis’ SLIC Films, feels authentic. I want to celebrate this shift because it does have the potential to move K-Swiss towards a community that actually rocked with the brand in the past. Unfortunately, my immediate thought is, wow, K-Swiss’ president attacked a Black man in a public post on a Black History Month Collection, but now he is partnering with Black people to place the brand back into the streetwear, Hip-Hop and fashion space after dabbling with Gary Vee for the last three years. That was my initial thought. I want to shoot holes in this strategy, but the documentary is very good. It even speaks to my own outreach to K-Swiss in 2004 when they launched the Roundball. When I moved to Memphis to launch the Center Court Basketball recruitment website, K-Swiss was the only brand that responded to a call for outfitting local Memphis teams (shout out J Much). The result was my alma mater wore the shoes for a while and I rebranded my site with K-Swiss logos. Another local team bought the Roundball sneaker and played in those. K-Swiss pulled the plug on basketball not much longer after they introduced the Roundball.

A film by Baron Davis. Dreamers and Doers. The Story of K-Swiss in LA.

Source: DreamersandDoers

Is K-Swiss making an authentic pivot?

Barney Waters no longer follows me on any social platforms. He never apologized for the back and forth that took place, and I don’t expect him to do so. What I do realize is something that consistently takes place in the sneaker industry. When brands run into headwinds and difficult moments, they attempt to tap into the Black dollar.

For instance, New Balance was the brand of the alt right and Tiki Torch White men. Their president flew the Trump administration’s VP in on private jets and gave him personal tours while supporting the extremely divisive administration. New Balance has since signed Coco Gauf, Kawhi Leonard, Trayvon Brommel, Sydney McLaughlin and an array of Black talent. They’ve collaborated with streetwear brands and they’ve changed their position in the industry.

Last year at the height of protests about the treatment of Black people, K-Swiss announced a strategy that saw the brand move away from entrepreneurship and Gary Vee. They connected with community grassroots programs and announced that they had an under-representation of Blacks in their company. Now they are working with a rapper, and basketball players as well as one of the most respected fashion labels in the country in Bricks & Wood. This feels very familiar. Nike dropped commercials to support Colin Kaepernick when they were being placed under scrutiny for their treatment of women athletes. The scrutiny died and they were celebrated for being woke. Am I being petty because the brand’s president was so damn tone deaf? I don’t think so. BUT, I also don’t want to disrupt any opportunities about to come the way of African-Americans via K-Swiss. I will leave this post with this comment, I like what you’re doing here, but I’m watching to see if you’ll stay consistent. I said I wouldn’t write about the brand anymore on this site, and I haven’t until now. If you are going to dig in and be about the business of Black folks, I expect to see more work being done across the country. I expect to see Black-owned brands collabing and working with the brand. I expect to hear about hires of Black consultants, photographers and models. I expect to read about sponsorships. Don’t try to pimp the Black dollar, or you better believe, I will write as much as I can to expose the lack of real support.

Do this right.