The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 130 — Frozen out

SIGHHHHH.

Feb 12, 2021

Goooood morning, family! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear. Thank you so much for rocking with your boy today.

Hopefully you had some SNKRS luck this week? I’ll be honest. I didn’t even attempt to cop much of anything. I’m saving my luck — hopefully, it works! Haha.

Y’all know the vibes. Let’s do it.

A Trophy Room full of L’s

(Photo by Josh Redd on Unsplash)

The game is broken and it needs fixing. I know I say this a lot. But all of the problems were on full display with this week’s Trophy Room drop.

This was one of the most hyped collabs of the year. And it will almost certainly go down as one of the worst sneaker drops of all-time.

It had everything from a broken raffle form to a full e-mail inbox after a poorly planned pivot to a super scarce SNKRS shock drop.

It just sucks that we continue to be subjected to this kind of madness. I mean, for all intents and purposes, this was a dusty Chicago 1 drop with just 12,000 pairs. So you expect it to be hyped and scarce and hard to get.

But at the same time, you’d at least hope that the retailer selling a shoe that literally carries its name on it would be fully prepared for release day with backup plans to their backup plans. And Trophy Room simply was not. This was completely mismanaged from the jump.

The worst part is there’s been radio silence from Trophy Room and Marcus Jordan on it. Not a single tweet or Instagram post acknowledging this mess.

This isn’t just a Trophy Room problem. Tons of brands screw up drops. It happens — especially today with the reseller game being what it is. But instead of earning goodwill with a “Yo, my bad. Here’s what happened and we’ll be better” post out, they let consumer frustrations fester.

And the thing is the post works! We’ve seen it — as recently as this week! New York based menswear brand Todd Snyder had their New Balance collab pillaged by resellers this week. And what’d they do? Apologize.

That’s a really good thing. It’s a simple thing, but it’s a thing people appreciate. It’s what will keep a brand’s reputation solid with the consumer. It gives people hope that future drops will be better and that’ll bring them back around.

I’d say let’s hope for more accountability like this from brands in 2021, but if Trophy Room’s drop is any indication? We’re not off to the greatest start.

Under Armour is on the up and up, but there’s a cost

(Photo by Taylor Siebert on Unsplash)

Under Armour had a pretty rough 2020 with dips because of COVID-19 on top of issues with the SEC and the whole UCLA fiasco.

But 2021 is starting well.

UA instituted a turnaround plan for the brand in the fourth quarter that saw it pouring more resources into its own stores and less into third party retailers, per CNBC.
As a result, the company’s fourth-quarter exceeded analyst goals at $1.4 billion. That also resulted in an 8% jump for UA shares on the market on Wednesday.

This is essentially Under Armour’s own direct-to-consumer strategy at work. They’re cutting down on their internal decision trees and the outside retailers that they work with — some of which have really struggled with the pandemic.

Basically, they’re getting consumers to come directly to them as opposed to another store. And it’s working.

But there’s a flip side to that. While this is working well for Under Armour, it’s also putting businesses they worked with at risk.

UA is breaking ties with 2,000 to 3,000 of their business partners by the end of 2022. They haven’t clarified which ones.
Typically, when big brands like Under Armour and Nike talk about cutting out certain retailers, they’re usually the small boutiques and mom and pops. They need that business.

And that’s what you hate to see.

An Adidas vs. Puma doc is coming

Man, this is going to be good. Apparently, David Beckham is dropping a three-part documentary called “World War Shoe” detailing the beef between Adidas and Puma.

This is going to be good.

Front Office Sports @FOS

David Beckham is unleashing “World War Shoe,” a three-part mini documentary detailing the Puma vs. Adidas feud. Beckham’s Studio 99 will team up with Boat Rocker Studios and Matador Content to tell the story of the Dassler Brothers.

The doc takes a deep dive into the story of the Dassler brothers who founded Adidas and Puma, respectively.

At one point, they were one company. But in 1948 they broke up behind a quarrel. One that we still don’t really know full details on to this day.
It didn’t just separate the company. It literally divided their hometown, according to the Business Insider.

It’s a wild story. And I’m really looking forward to getting some more details on this.

The Air Barry’s

Let’s just count this as Barack Obama’s unofficial officially entry into The Kicks We Wear.

One of the two special edition Barry O Hyperdunks were being sold on Sotheby’s for $25,000 — which feels ridiculously low, by the way. It was taken off of the site for whatever reason, but it’s still wild to me that they were there in the first place.