The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 135 — When flexing too hard goes wrong

Of course we're talking about the Heberts. You already know.

Mar 5, 2021

What’s good, family. Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear on this glorious Friday morning. I hope your week has been fantastic.

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Let’s jump in.

No Flex Zone

(Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash)

The Joe and Ann Hebert situation officially boiled over on Monday. The result: Ann Hebert is out at Nike North America after resigning from her post.

This was the only result that made sense in this situation. There was no reasonable way for Hebert to keep her job. Not only was Joe’s reseller business too close, but she was complicit despite the obvious conflict of interest.

Now, it’s time for damage control. People are understandably upset about this — and it’s not just the consumer, it’s even employees at Nike.

Posts from Nike employees on an anonymous message board via The Layoff are going up with all sorts of complaints about the situation.
It’s clear Ann and Joe Hebert were playing by a different set of rules than everyone else and were allowed to profit off of it.

They have a right to be upset. Nike knew about this. It just got too loud so she had to go.

But there are so many questions left that have no answers.

How long has this been a thing? Why was this allowed? Who allowed this to continue and why weren’t there statements condemning this sort of thing after the fact?

Nike has to come down strong on this. Everyone should be playing by the same rules. As unfair as the sneaker game already is, folks like the Hebert’s make it worse on everyone. They need to make it clear that this is not something that will be tolerated.

Because right now? People are being left to wonder if there are any more Joe West Coast’s out there. Are there any more executive’s kids that are gaming the system in this way.

It feels like the answer right now is “maybe.” It might even be “probably.” Anything outside of “no” is a huge issue. And that’s what Nike needs to take care of.

By the way, it’s not lost on me that all of this is because Joe Hebert wanted to flex in a Bloomberg mag cover story. Mans better not say a word at Thanksgiving.

All-Star weekend doesn’t feel like All-Star weekend

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

NBA All-Star weekend is normally one of the sneaker industry's bigger tentpole events. Last year, we got lots of goodies. Just go down the list: We got the Yeezy Quantum, AJ1 New Beginnings Pack, Off-White AJ5 and the JoeFreshGoods 992. Lots of heat.

This year it'll be quiet. The huge sneaker activations we see year after year are coming few and far between this season.

The pandemic is why.

This year’s All-Star weekend is cramped into Sunday. The NBA will host the 3-point contest, slam dunk contest and the game all on March 7.
There also won’t be any NBA sanctioned events surrounding the weekend because of COVID-19. That includes all of the sneaker events the NBA normally works in concert with brands for.

Instead of huge, hyped collaborations for All-Star weekend, we’re getting regular sneaker packs from Nike. They’re releasing the “Play for the Future” pack featuring all five of their signature athletes.

Jarrel @_JarrelHarris

First look at the Nike signature “Play For The Future” pack AKA All-Star pack.

Outside of that, there’s not much coming. Other brands have been quiet for the weekend this year.

It stinks. This is normally the time every brand debuts a new, hyped silhouette or hits us with some new sort of technology. Everyone is trying to grab headlines. Because of COVID-19, it’s crickets.

Man. End this ASAP. Please.

Don’t trip on the Supreme Drop

There were lots of y’all who didn’t get the Supreme Dunks yesterday. And that’s unfortunate because they’re pretty good!

Don’t fret, though. If this drop was any indication, there might be a lot more coming from Supreme. And it looks like there was plenty of inventory to go around on this thing.

StockX was broken for a quite a bit after the drop because resellers who scooped flooded the platform with a bunch of inventory.
Because of that, there was a massive dip in price on the resale market with pairs dropping from slightly over $1,200 on March 3 to less than $850 on drop day.

Yes, that’s still a pretty penny on the resale market. And I’m absolutely not telling you to spend that bread on these joints.

But what I am saying is that if future drops are like this you might actually have a better chance of copping before the bots get through. And there will almost certainly be future drops — maybe not Dunks, but there’s something coming.

VF Corp gotta make that bread, after all.