The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 204 — Nike's legal team strikes again
The latest on Nike's lawsuit against John Geiger
Goooooood morning, family! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear! Thank you for giving me a bit of your time today.
Hope you had a good Super Bowl Sunday! Congrats, Rams fans. All 6 of y’all have been waiting years for this! You deserve it. Love to all the Bengals fans out there, too. There’s always next year.
We’ll get to football later. Let’s chat.
The John Geiger lawsuit isn’t going away
Nike’s legal team is blocking shots like Dikembe Mutombo out here. The latest one is John Geiger’s call to dismiss a suit Nike filed against his company for his signature GF-01 sneaker.
What happened: The John Geiger Collection, LLC. motion to dismiss the complaint was dismissed by the judge, per The Fashion Law.
Catch up:
Nike filed a complaint against Geiger in August claiming the sneaker infringes on the Air Force 1’s design.
They claim Geiger is intentionally creating “confusion” in the marketplace with his product. There’s that confusion term again — we heard that a lot in the StockX complaint.
Geiger pushed back by saying his design is too different from the original Air Force 1 for Nike to sue.
Geiger is right. The GF-01 is a different shoe that uses premium materials the Air Force 1 doesn’t. There’s no swoosh and it also has a completely different sole than the regular shoe.
The judge obviously didn’t think so. The court concluded that it doesn’t even pose a threat to Nike, per TFL. But because the design was similar enough, they’re still allowed to go after it. The case will proceed with Geiger having to fight for his design.
Nike’s is cracking down. They’re making it clear that any designs, trademarks or logos that come even close to a Nike product are going to get dinged. They will find a way.
You don’t even have to be a competitor. Nike is also suing a small succulent plant business named “Just Succ It” founded by a Black woman on TikTok. Last I checked, Nike isn’t selling plants.
Looking forward: This is going to be a pretty big case with a lot of implications for customizers and designers moving forward.
If a shoe that has this many differences from an OG design gets clipped, that completely reshapes the boundaries from what independent sneaker creators can create. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Under Armour’s not-so-shiny outlook
Very rarely do we see a corporation beat its projections in record fashion but still have a huge dip in the value of its shares. That’s what happened to Under Armour.
The details:
On an earnings call last week summarizing Q4 and the 2021 fiscal year, the company announced that it had a net income of $110 million for the quarter and revenue was up year over year by 9% at $1.5 billion.
But they also announced they’re projecting a single-digit growth in revenue for Q1 of 2022. When that news broke, the stock dipped by 9%.
Why the drastic change in growth? You know the answer already. It’s the supply chain.
Under Armour CEO Patrick Frisk said the company expects a “negative impact due to higher freight expenses” and other pandemic-related challenges. Basically, these containers cost a lot of money, man.
Between the lines: This issue isn’t slowing down at all. People are still spending at rates the same rates they did last year despite inflation numbers and, well, the chaotic state of the world. That, somehow, hasn’t been a deterrent to big spending.
There’s still a massive strain on the system in which goods are moved around. Companies have yet to adjust to this. That makes sense — it takes years to completely adjust internal processes and budgets for this stuff. But, in the meantime, they’re going to pay for being unprepared like Under Armour is here.
We should expect more of this in 2022 for a number of companies in and outside of the footwear industry.
We love to see a good bot protected drop
One of my big questions heading into the year was whether we’d continue to see retailers using bot protection strategies that worked so well last year.
You know the usual hCaptcha techniques. Click the box, answer this question and draw this box around a cat.
The whole secondary website hosting the drop was something that was extremely effective, too.
What happened: We saw all that and more for Friday’s Union LA Dunk drop. The precautions were abundant. And it was an upgrade from past Union drops.
Remember with last year’s Jordan 4’s, they used a raffle system via text that proved to be effective, but also pretty wonky.
It resulted in people flipping their raffle entries online for hundreds of dollars. It was ridiculous.
There were plenty of manual W’s on my timeline. Even had a couple homies in the #KicksFam group chat come up with a couple pairs from the drop. It wasn’t without a hitch — there were some errors and long wait times for some people. But, all in all, this seemed to be pretty good.
The big picture: This is good for the consumer. These systems could obviously use work, but it’s good that retailers adopting strategies that work here. We love to see it.
Eminem’s Super Bowl AJ3’s are solid
Y’all know me. I’m not the biggest Eminem fan in the world. In fact, I may actually be the biggest Em hater in the world.
But I give respect where it’s due. And the new Eminem Jordan 3’s he wore for the Super Bowl were…solid. Just solid though.
I like the Fire Red vibe to em. But some notes.
That big ol’ 3 right there on the tongue? Nah, man. That’s no go for yerboi. But to each their own, though.
The heel tab also kind of bothers me. I’d rather see it red there.
But that Slim Shady tag? WHEW that is good. Love it.
We’ll never see these shoes. They’re probably 1 of 1. But, man, I’m sure someone out there would pay a million for these. Or two.
What’s droppin, bruh?
Nike Dunk Low “Valentine’s Day” — Monday, February 14
Air Jordan 1 “Marina Blue” — Wednesday, February 16
Nike LeBron 9 “The Big Bang” — Thursday, February 17
Yeezy 500 “Blush” — Saturday, February 19
Air Jordan 3 “Cardinal Red” — Saturday, February 19
Thank y’all so much for rocking with me, family! Have an absolutely fantastic week. Let’s chat again Wednesday.
Until then, y’all know the vibes. Peace and Love. Be easy. Be safe. Be kind. Catch you later.
-Sykes💯
Isn't the backwards 3 on the tongue a backwards E?
There goes my chances of copping the Cardinal Red 3s, thanks Marshall. Just like the AJ 1 Mocha … looks enough like a superhype pair 😫😖