The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 222 — Picking up the slack with Adidas
Foot Locker found a dance new partner, y'all
Gooooood morning, family. Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear. Thank you so much for rocking with me. Appreciate y’all.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms. Y’all are the light in every world. Shouts to Rhobyn for bringing me into this one.
Without further ado…
Speaking of Adidas, they’re getting serious with Foot Locker
A few months ago people speculated on Foot Locker’s future after Nike pulled some of its products from out their stores.
A few months later? They seemed to have rebounded pretty well.
In the news: Foot Locker just inked a new partnership with Adidas targeting over $2 billion in retail sales by 2025, per Footwear News.
The details:
Foot Locker will become the “lead partner” for the brand in their basketball category, which includes work for Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo.
They’ll also receive more Adidas Originals silhouettes like the NMD, Stan Smith, Superstar and many others.
They’ll get more access to Adidas’ womens and kids sectors, which will be huge for both footwear and apparel.
Adidas will also grant Foot Locker access to hype releases as they come.
Adidas is sliding into the slot that its biggest rival once occupied as the main supplier for Foot Locker. It’ll be odd to see.
Go into a local Foot Locker right now. The Adidas’ section isn’t the most sizeable. Hasn’t been in years.
My thoughts: This is a brilliant deal for both sides. Granting the consumer more access is always a positive for a brand. Adidas will benefit here. Consumers won’t seek out your product if it’s not as visible. Now it’ll certainly be more visible and that’s never a bad thing.
This is coming at an interesting time, though. Just as Nike is leaning hard into their direct to consumer strategy, Adidas is doing the same. They’re pushing for 50% of their sales to be DTC by 2025. This deal feels like the antithesis of that, but that $2 billion sales number feels like it’s too great to pass up on.
My question: I wonder what the collab space looks like? Will we see Ivy Park featured heavily? Pharrell product? Maybe all of that? Or will it be more commercial collab product like, say, the M&M Adidas Forums dropping next week? We’ll see.
The way this develops over the years to come could reshape the sneaker industry quite a bit. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
Speaking of Adidas, there was some Ivy Park confusion
Speaking of Adidas, there was so much confusion surrounding Beyoncé and the Ivy Park brand last week.
What happened:
Beyoncé removed the Ivy Park link from her bio on Instagram and fans were quick to point it out.
What was also weird was the fact that there was no Ivy Park product available on Adidas at that time. There still isn’t. Just a subscription box .
You typically don’t see that kind of thing happening with brand ambassadors. People’s reactions to this were natural considering the circumstances.
So what’s going on?: This seems to be much ado about nothing. The link is back in her bio and there’s supposedly a new Ivy Park summer collection coming later this month. Plus, the We Are Ivy Park page is still as active as ever. So everything seems to be good.
We don’t really have details on why this happened. I thought it may be because there’s an album rollout coming, but who knows. Beyoncé works in mysterious ways.
But here’s the thing: To me, this is confusion stemming from the Ivy Park partnership not quite living up to expectations with Adidas so far. And it seems reasonable that Beyoncé might leave the brand at some point because of that.
Will that day ever come? Who knows. But what I’m hoping for more is that we see new energy behind the product moving forward. Because that will squash any speculation behind this.
They can start to change that perception with the collection coming later this month.
Y’all really love Crocs, huh?
The Croc hater in me has fully accepted that people love Crocs now. And not just the Salehe Bembury Crocs, either. Nah. Y’all really like all the Crocs. Even the plain boring joints. It’s wild to me.
But what I didn’t know was just how much y’all loved Crocs. That is, until they gave us the numbers to show us how much y’all really love them.
Turns out y’all REALLY love them. Like, a lot.
Brand sales skyrocketed by 44% in the First Quarter compared to 2021. If anyone had told me this would be a thing back in 2010, I would’ve busted out my Count von Count laugh. There was no way. Who could’ve seen this coming?
But in our current state it makes a ton of sense.
Crocs are comfortable and versatile. You can wear them as a house shoe while also going out and about in them. Gen Z absolutely loves them for that reason.
They’re also generally cheap. You can get three or four of these things for $150 or less. It’s easy to build a collection.
Add in all that with high-energy collaborations with Salehe and Beiber and Post Malone and everyone else, you’ve got a hype hit.
That’s why Crocs works so well and that’s why everyone wants them so bad these days.
With all that being said, though, they still ugly as hell.
SPECIAL DELIVERY: The “Conversations Amongst Us” collection is a beginning
New Balance’s “Conversations Amongst Us” collection is pretty incredible, man. Everyone has been talking about this as a Joe FreshGoods shoe and, I guess, it kind of is? He was the creative director of the project.
But my favorite part is that these aren’t really Joe FreshGoods sneakers. These were made by New Balance’s “Black Soles” group. And I love that so much — they’re really building something over there.
I touch on that and more in this week’s Special Delivery.
Subscribe to the new channel while you’re there! Lots of cool stuff coming that way from me and the gang.
What’s droppin, bruh?
Nike Dunk Low “Cider” — Tuesday, May 10
Adidas Forum Low “M&M” — Tuesday, May 10
Air Jordan 6 “Midnight Navy” — Wednesday, May 11
Air Jordan 3 “Neopolitan” — Saturday, May 14
Adidas Forum Low x BSTN “Panathinaikos” — Saturday, May 14
Thank y’all for rocking with me! Appreciate you. Y’all are the absolute best people in the world.
We’ll chat again on Wednesday. Again, happy Mother’s Day to all the mommas out there. We love y’all. Peace. Love. Be easy. Be safe. Be kind. And we out.
-Sykes💯
Congrats again on the new YouTube channel!