Adidas aims to sell more than a half-billion per year by 2020. At the heart of that effort is a decades-old shoe named after a retired tennis player who hasn’t won a major singles tournament since 1980.
Source: Adidas Wants to Copy the Stan Smith Success Story
Richard Weiss released this source post on Bloomberg to analyze how a marketing strategy was one of the primary reasons for the interest in the Stan Smith during this current adidas resurgence.
As the brand attempts to gain ground on Nike it’s calling upon a rich heritage of sports and pop culture to establish the level of cool needed to push adidas from a bargain bin brand back into the realm of relevance and growth.
In the article adidas is stated as having removed Stan Smith tennis shoes from the market to give the appearance of scarcity. This is listed as the primary reason for the resurgence along with the move of placing the shoes on the feet of influencers and major fashion icons.
I’m interested in this story because it brings to the forefront the importance of a solid marketing strategy in delivering footwear to a larger market. There has been a redundant argument happening in the sneakerworld as to the importance of endorsers and whether they make a difference when a shoe is not released in large numbers. The question is, if the shoe wasn’t selling prior to removing the shoe from the market, and now the shoe is selling due to influencers, the product never “really” changed. The only thing that changed the perception of both the brand and the shoe is the addition of influencers to the mix which leads us back to … Kanye. Missing from the article’s list of influencers is the GQ Photo Shoot where Kanye wore the Stan Smith in the layout. That magazine was one of GQ’s best selling copies and was shared by Kim K to her followers. This article provides a clear look into how brands can only attain a certain level when the product and the marketing works to generate interest.
This article on Bloomberg explains how the product and the marketing worked to reinvigorate the Stan Smith model. Use the source link to read and check out the infographic.
