Good morning, family! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear. Thank you so much for rocking with your boy today.
It’s giveaway SZN. I’m buying a couple of you a pair of shoes when we hit 3,000 subs. Right now, we’re at about 2,600. Let your folks know, fam! Let’s get it popping.
Y’all bout ready?
The real reason Nike and Neymar Jr. split
Last year Neymar Jr. departed Nike for Puma, seemingly, out of nowhere. No public statement. No signs of a split. No expiring deal. It just…happened.
Now we know why. Nike parted ways with Neymar Jr. after he refused to cooperate in an investigation into sexual assault claims levied against him by a Nike employee, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The details:
The Wall Street Journal reports that a Nike employee told friends and coworkers about the alleged incident that occurred in 2016.
The employee first reported it in 2018. Nike hired an investigation team in 2019 after the employee decided to file a complaint.
Neymar Jr.’s team is denying the allegations and said he split with Nike for “commercial reasons.”
Nike did investigate the claim but, according to WSJ’s report, the investigation was inconclusive and there was "no single set of facts emerged that would enable us to speak substantively on the matter."
They still cut ties with the soccer star because of his refusal to investigate. That’s a good thing. And it’s exactly what they should’ve done.
All eyes are on Puma. They can’t ignore this.
They’ll have to do something about it and that might mean opening an investigation into this themselves. We don’t know.
We do know this, though. Inaction won’t be tolerated. It is unacceptable to remain silent here.
We don’t know what happens from here but it’s good that this has been brought to the public eye. Shaming works. And the more shaming we do of Neymar, the better. Who knows? Maybe the investigation is reopened and moves forward with his participation.
One last thing: Believe women.
Keep the brands close and your designs even closer
(Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash)
Never ever ever ever ever enter in a brand’s DIY design contest. It rarely ever ends well for you. There’s always a slim chance you win. And when you lose, you either get nothing or…OR….the brand just takes your design and uses it anyway.
That happened to this guy with Vans. Artist Ment Nelson doodled some cow print on a pair of his Vans back in 2018. And Vans stole it.
Here’s what happened:
In 2018, Nelson created his design. The next year in 2019, he entered the shoe into a DIY design contest — you know, the ones Vans normally has.
The prize was $25,000. He didn’t win. Yet earlier this year, Vans was riffing off his design and using a slogan he created to go with his shoes.
Here’s a great synopsis.
This isn’t surprising at all. His design was awesome — of course, they were going to steal it. And they probably knew that as soon as he entered into that contest.
And that’s the thing about these things. What these contests are are really just brands asking you to do their work for them.
Fashion brands in and outside of sneakers have regularly been known to steal designs from independent creators and small brands. And it’s completely legal.
These contests are an open invitation for creators and artists to submit new designs to companies to put on ice for when they run out of juice. That’s what happened here. It’s that simple.
Here’s the big picture: DIY designing has been en vogue for more than half a century now, but it had another boom in the midst of the pandemic. People are really into this stuff. And they love sharing their designs. That’s why this matters.
Let this unfortunate situation be a lesson. Be careful sharing your designs and ideas on the internet. Because these brands will snatch them up in a heartbeat and give you 0 credit for it.
It’s not right. It’s sad. But that’s also the game.
This is not sneaker culture
Fam, at some point we have to stop letting these sneaker stores embarrass us like this. We have to.
Concepts had folks in line doing push-ups for the Yeezy Foam Runners this weekend.
*NSFW language is included in this video.
Look, I love Concepts. I think this is a very important store and has earned its place in sneaker culture. But this? This ain’t it.
There’s having fun with contests and things of that nature like Atmos did with bingo. And then there’s straight-up embarrassing people. That’s what this is.
Asking customers to physically do anything other than hand you money, generally speaking, is wack. This is wack.
This isn’t sneaker culture. This is just silly. And to the folks who voluntarily chose to do those push-ups for a pair of Yeezy Crocs, be better.
SPECIAL DELIVERY: The Playstation PG5 is so fun
As a gamer, the latest episode of Special Delivery hit near and dear to my heart. We got a chance to unbox Nike’s and Sony’s collaboration — the Playstation PG5.
The details are good! But how they put it all together is what makes the shoe fun.
Hope y’all have as much fun with these as I did! Make sure you like, subscribe and drop a comment! Lemme know what your favorite gaming system growing up was.
OH, and add me on the 5 @Mikenasty_13. I need a 5th in 2k.
What’s droppin, bruh?
Adidas NMD R1 OG — Tuesday, June 01
Nike Dunk Low “Michigan” — Thursday, June 03
Nike Dunk Low “Team Green” — Thursday, June 03
Air Jordan 1 High “Court Purple” — Thursday, June 03
Fragment x Nike Dunk High “Beijing” — Saturday, June 05
Thank you so much for rocking with your boy today! Appreciate y’all so much. We’ll talk on Wednesday in the thread.
Don’t forget! Tell your homies to subscribe. Y’all could win some kicks!