Good morning, family! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear! Thank you so much for rocking with me on this spectacular Monday morning. You got a bomb week ahead of you.
For all of my DMV family reading today, we’ve got some snow coming this Wednesday. Lots of it. Make sure you’re prepared!
Alright, fam. Let’s do it.
We’re almost to the finish line
(Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash)
The Elite 8 is here, but before we dive in let’s talk about our last round. Y’all showed me a lot with these picks. I can see where I was out of touch and I can see where I hit the right spots. Here are the final results.
A few thoughts.
It’s still blowing my mind how drastically I underrated the Dark Mocha AJ1. It’s not just winning — it’s blowing good shoes out of the water. People were iffy on this shoe at first because it looked like the Travis AJ1. But, honestly? That’s probably why it’s doing so well. I should’ve known that.
Still, the rest of our rankings seem to be doing well. Six of the top 10 seeded shoes of this year have made our Elite 8. That’s a big win.
Gotta say, y’all. REALLY glad y’all got the Dior 1 out of here. Y’all know the vibes, man.
There weren’t that many close matchups last week. There were some that we’re fairly close-ish — like within 20 votes or so — but we didn’t have another TurDunken vs. Fire Red 4 moment where it came down to the wire.
The biggest surprise to me was the Kobe 5 not performing as well as I thought against the Off-White 4. But I think that speaks more to how strong of a year Off-White and Virgil Abloh had, sort of quietly. We didn’t talk about Off-White that much this year.
In fact, we talked more about Virgil, himself, and his skimpy donations to bail funds. Yet, none of that has seemed to impact the public perception of his collaborations or his brands. Doesn’t necessarily mean one thing or another — just an observation.
Anyway, on to the 8.
Alright, y’all know the drill by now. Hop in to this Google Form and get your votes in for these joints. Our timeline is different this week — voting for the Elite 8 closes on Friday at 8 p.m. ET and we’ll do our Finals voting over the weekend. Pictures are included, once again, so the kicks will be fresh in your mind.
Quick thoughts on these matchups:
This is going to be a real test for the 1 seeded Mamba Week collection. It’s win over the Off-White AJ4 wasn’t convincing and it has another tough matchup coming up with the Team Color Dunks. It will be tested this week.
Quietly, Off-White AJ5 has been dominant. It won with 67% of the vote in round 1. Round 2 it got 70% of the vote. The Chunky Dunky is gonna have its work cut out for it.
The TurDunken and the Mocha AJ1 have both been on pretty incredible runs despite both being Q4 drops. We haven’t lived with them for very long, but the impact is clear for both.
Alright, fam. The Elite 8 is officially underway!
StockX’s boom continues
(Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash)
If you thought business was booming for StockX before, you haven’t seen anything yet. Just wait until we get to 2021 — they’ve got some big plans ahead.
StockX is seeking a $2.5 billion as the company prepares for a new round of funding, according to the New York Post. It already received a $1 billion valuation in June of 2019. In just about a two year span, it’s looking to double that.
You’re probably thinking, “Yo, that’s a lot of money in such a small amount of time.” And you’re probably asking yourself why they’re moving this big this quickly with all of this.
The answer is simple: They’re planning on going public in mid-2021. It’s not a secret that this has been their ultimate plan.
StockX has always made clear that the company had ambitions of going public. CEO Scott Cutler said as much in 2019 shortly after their billion dollar valuation. It was just a matter of shoring up costs and raising enough money.
It seems that with this next round of funding, they’re looking to hit that goal. And the IPO push will come with it.
This is why we’ve seen so much expansion in the marketplace over last year or so. StockX is more than just a sneaker and streetwear secondary market space now. I mean, you can sell a damn PS5 on the platform now. It’s wild. The company is expected to handle more than 7 million trades this year, per Front Office Sports. As StockX pushes to become a public company, that rolodex of goods will only expand.
And why shouldn’t it? StockX can be incredibly frustrating, but the reality is this is the way that we do commerce in the future. This is what that looks like. They’ve taken the lead in that. An IPO would keep that grip tight.
Space Hippie for Hoops
Y’all know how excited I am for Nike’s Space Hippie material to touch literally everything at Nike. So you know I was absolutely thrilled to see it on the basketball court — even if it was just in warm-ups.
Anthony Davis debuted the Nike Cosmic Unity — a Space Hippie hoops shoe — on Friday for the Lakers’ preseason opener. He didn’t play, but we got lots of looks at his kicks in this triple black colorway.
These are sick, yo. They remind me a lot of 90’s hoop shoes with that thick sole. I can’t wait to see these in different colorways — that’s when we’ll get a real sense of the shape of this thing.
On a much larger note, though, these shoes show a deeper commitment from Nike to make their sustainable material a bigger part of their business. And that’s something you always love to see.
More of this, please.
The Harden 5 is here and it’s…actually interesting
And there’s a lot of potential here! Adidas dropped this new video debuting the shoe and the new tech that comes with it — the Futurenatural sole. It’s a combination of Adidas’ lightstrike sole and its boost padding all within one unit.
Here’s a look at how it was made.
It’s an interesting kick, man. The upper is actually fused with the outsole so it’s almost like one big sock mold. This thing seems like it should perform extremely well.
Those colors are dope, too. The more I see this thing, the more I like it. I’d definitely hoop in it. We’ll see how it performs, though.
What’s droppin, bruh?
Adidas Ultra 4D — Monday, December 14
Nike LeBron 8 “Lakers” — Tuesday, December 15
Kid Cudi x Adidas Vandawam 326 — Thursday, December 17
Nike Sacai VaporWaffle — Thursday, December 17
Yeezy Boost 350 v2 “Sand Taupe” — Friday, December 18
That’s a wrap for Monday, family! Thank you so much for rocking with me today. Love y’all! Hope you have a fantastic week.
Don’t forget! Get them votes in, folks!
Until next time, y’all! Peace and love to you! Be easy. Be well. Be kind.
Signing off.
—Sykes 💯