picture from Native Shoes who created a program called Remix to help recycle footwear
I tend to stay away from the mainstream discussions happening on sneaker sites and in sneaker media. If you’ll scroll down the homepage of this site and browse through the site, you’ll see a diverse array of stories on the sneaker industry. I don’t dive into the discussions for clicks and the like, but I’ve been reading comments all day on the “expose” of SNKRS and Nike deciding that they may be isolating the real fans of sneakers…
All of it is bullshit. Nike is full of shit. Complex is full of shit. All of this faux outrage is bullshit. This is obviously a NSFW rant taking place in this post, but it’s bullshit because as a person who has been actively engaged in the sneaker world since 2004, I don’t count my collecting of sneakers throughout my life as I wasn’t invested financially in the sneaker world my entire life. I had my own brand in 2004. I won’t get into my background. I’m going to take you to 2014 to 2016 as a point of reference. I could go all the way back to 2004 but that isn’t going to help any of you understand my irritation.
I wrote the above post in 2016. At the time this site wasn’t what it is today. I was writing for myself and still working on ARCH as a brand. I was transitioning from Amazon and dealing with the purchase of a small store chain by Jimmy Jazz which took place in 2015. I recently saw a job listing for Nike Grey Market Investigator. The irony in that job listing is that I was the grey market. I was moving close to a million dollars in sneakers in wholesale and half a million in sneaker sales on my Amazon store. I was one of the biggest people in the grey market. That market is pretty much dead now. So the irony hits me a lot different than it does most people who aren’t paying attention to every aspect. Anyway, when I wrote the article above I explained in great detail that Nike did what the fans asked them to do in 2014 and 2015. They flooded the market with more than enough product. They gave smaller shops so much product they opened up the opportunity for mom and pops to RTV for the first time. This flood of product also ended up on deep discount as retros and basketball models, which had never been given to mom and pops, flooded the market. In a matter of two years Nike and Jordan Brand went from coveted to meh.
Dudes quit buying Retros. They jumped on the Yeezy and adidas train. NMDs hit stupid resale prices along with UltraBOOSTs and analysts and websites wrote that Yeezy Jumped the Jumpman. At the same time I was explaining this wasn’t true because Nike had stopped using Futures. Go read all of those old articles. The only people reading my site at the time were C Suite people. I didn’t even participate in sneaker culture. I still don’t, but I’ve always lurked and watched and just shook my head.
Right now the entire world is chasing the trend and writing and talking about the SNKRS article on Complex, but Complex and SoleCollector currently has on their homepage about 80% Nike and Jordan Brand. Visit every sneaker themed website and the same thing is happening. Sneaker culture revolves around who pays these websites to promote their products and because these sites are old and dominate search, they continue to do what is easy when it comes to media. Here is the fact, StockX created an ease of access into resale. It removed risk. In 2004 to 2015, a reseller had to really work the angles to connect. You had to be deeply embedded in the GREY market to get tons of sneakers. There weren’t multiple bots. Technology wasn’t really in the game. It is now, which has furthered created an ease of access into resale. Sneakers were always a commodity, but the risk involved limited who could really participate. StockX and the resale apps tore down the walls and gatekeeping is over. ANYONE can resale and when you have people like Gary Vaynerchuk and others explaining how easy it is, you are going to get an influx of people who aren’t really interested in the culture.
Think about it like rap. Once you didn’t have to pay for studio time, rap became more accessible and the gatekeepers were removed. Hip-Hop is still alive, but it is more commercial than it has ever been. Sneakers and Hip-Hop are connected and accessibility has emboldened both brands and fans, but at the same time there are more new brands than there have ever been. There is good and bad from the walls falling, but all of this faux outrage over SNKRS and Nike is just tired because it complete ignores the reality of Nike and adidas or whoever the hot brand is. These are publicly held companies. They have no loyalty to the consumer. They have loyalty to their shareholders. Nike learned a painful lesson from 2014 to 2016. They gave the consumer what they wanted and hit the lowest share price since they launched. They almost collapsed and if you don’t remember they began layoffs!!!! adidas learned the same lesson. They gave the world a million Yeezys. The same MFs complaining about SNRKS, are the same MFs, who let them bitches sit on shelves and adidas had to make accounts RTV those joints. Yeezy hasn’t recovered really and adidas hasn’t recovered. They basically got rid of the entire North America C Suite in the last year.
I shouldn’t even write this post. I’m having second thoughts about hitting publish because by default I end up talking about something that feels so damn phony to me, but here is the difference between me talking about this and a lot of other people, I lost a shitload of money because of Nike’s shift. I lost my shoe company because I used resale to try and build ARCH as a footwear company. I know the deep, dark reality of what happened. I have the receipts to prove it, so that’s why I’m writing this. Nike has gotten more value from the Complex expose than dropping a new limited sneaker. The topic is trending on Twitter and it’s viral. Here are the things that have taken place this month that you won’t find on any of these sneaker sites or on any of the thought leaders in sneaker culture:
- ASICS invested in a tech startup named Bisu for affordable access to health data
- New Balance launched Stolen Stars a Global Female Running Collective
- Under Armour Sponsored a program to start High School Girls Flag Football
- adidas launched a circular economy program with ThredUp
- Vans launched the Cultivate Care Campaign
- Merrell Delivered a Collection designed by a young Black girl Jade Dixon
- Puma initiated a program to reduce the amount of cardboard they use
- Timberland is planting 50 Million trees by 2025
- Brooks Running gave 486 coaches gift boxes and letters of recognition
- Salomon opened their first automated footwear factory
That’s ten different fucking stories for anyone reading this to write about and talk about. None of it has to do with hitting on damn sneaker app for a shoe that you can resale or wear and stunt on the Gram.
