The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 265 — The Kobes are coming 🐍
And this time you might actually have a chance at getting them
Gooooood morning, folks! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear! Thank you so much for rocking with me. Appreciate you.
LAST CALL (well, almost): The last Friday of the month is next week, so that means it’s almost time for me to close the KYW Mailbox for January. Make sure you get your mailbag questions in here before next Wednesday! Next Friday will be a fun one!
Let’s rock.
The Kobes are coming back
Folks have been struggling to get their hands on Kobe Bryant’s signature sneaker line for yeras since his untimely passing. This year, everyone might get lucky.
What’s happening: There are a number of Kobe drops coming down the pipeline, according to Sole Retriever.
We’re reportedly set to see pairs of Kobe 4s, Kobe 6s, Kobe 8s and Air Flight Huaraches coming our way this year.
After just getting the Mambacita Sweet 16 drop in May honoring Gianna Bryant, this is more-than-welcome news for fans.
It’s been hard: Many resellers were snatching Bryant’s shoes up and taking them to the secondary market to sell them at a premium. Those prices have yet to come down in a lot of cases.
This is mostly because the pairs releasing were so limited. Mamba releases turned into Jordan releases — the supply didn’t come anywhere close to the demand. This felt particularly gross after Bryant’s death, which I wrote about here.
Between the lines: There’s a reason things turned out this way. Before Bryant’s death, the Kobe line was always readily available. But that’s not because the stock was high — it’s because the demand wasn’t there. His passing, unfortunately, changed that.
Nike adjusted its plans for Bryant’s line on the fly and that was a mistake. It led to lots of fans being rubbed the wrong way.
The truth is this is a situation the sneaker world had never seen before. One of its icons died suddenly. There was no playbook for that and it takes years to plan this stuff out.
On top of that, it’s obviously no secret that Bryant’s deal was expiring. It’s hard to make concrete future plans without knowing what the future holds.
That’s why this time should be different. I want to emphasize the should here.
This time next week, it’ll have been 3 years since Kobe Bryant died. We’ve seen how the market works surrounding his sneakers. One would think Nike would have time to produce an adequate amount of sneakers while releasing them in a way that makes sense for fans.
To be clear, this might not happen. It could still be a disaster. And, if it is, Nike will deserve every bit of criticism that comes its way. But the opportunity is most certainly there. It’s just up to the swoosh to make it happen this time.
The future of footwear factories
KX Labs — an automated footwear factory based out of Los Angeles — may be giving us a glimpse at what Made in USA Footwear could be moving forward.
How it works: KX Labs, founded by Joshua Katz, uses “mostly automated” techniques to manufacture knit footwear, writes Fast Company’s Chadner Navarro.
The 36,000-square-foot facility based in LA’s Chinatown hosts a number of automated knitting machines built specifically for creating sneakers.
Automated transport vehicles move materials around the facility while robot arms put everything together.
This is a big deal: Automated footwear production is already a thing in a lot of spaces overseas. We’ve seen and read all about Adidas’ Speedfactories, for example. “While automated knit sneaker production has been thriving in Asia for years,” Navarro writes, “It remains a largely new fabrication method in the West.”
The supply chain was a huge issue for brands during the pandemic. Brands had products stuck in ports all over the country.
The why: A whopping majority of footwear is still produced overseas — mostly in Asia. Brands like Nike, Adidas and more depend heavily on imports.
The big picture: This isn’t a change we’ll see anytime soon. The work to shift to an automated operation takes years. Plus, cheaper labor costs get replaced with maintenance and oversight. As good as that would be for the environment as well as ethical concerns about overseas labor, these brands only care about their bottom line.
Still, this is something that will be hard to ignore moving forward into the future. All it takes is one brand to truly integrate it. It’ll happen. Just give it time.
Worth your time: This robot knitting factory might make your next pair of sneakers
Joe FreshGoods is the king of telling real stories through sneakers
I love storytelling in sneakers and nobody does it better than Joe FreshGoods at this point.
The latest: JFG is dropping a “Chocolate Valley Resort” collection with Vans today, which obviously sounds cool. But the inspiration behind them is what makes these joints even cooler.
The shoes are inspired by the perils of travel for Black folks during the Jim Crow era.
The Chocolate Valley Resort is a fictional safe haven for Black travelers created by JFG.
The collection pays homage to the Green Book — the book Black folks once used as a guide to quite literally navigate through the racist Jim Crow south.
The packaging even pays homage to the Green Book.
This is what using your influence to tell meaningful stories looks like. Right in time for Black History Month, too. We love to see it.
Sometimes it’s good to pump the breaks
We’ve all gotten bagged by sneaker leaks at one point or another in our lives. It happens. It’s all part of the territory when you’re in it this deep.
But y’all. There was no way Nike was dropping essentially every high heat drop from 2022 all in one shock drop no matter what these cook groups and Twitter aggregators want to tell you. It never made any sense.
Sure, it was Nike’s “3 Days of Drops,” but that always read to me like a promotion to further cut down on excess inventory.
A shock drop of that size isn’t feasible. We’re talking Lobster Dunks, Travis Scott Maxes, the Concepts joints, and more. The SNKRS app would explode.
Furthermore, did anyone see any credible account throwing this information out there? Because I certainly didn’t. That was the biggest red flag.
The lesson learned: I know we’re all chasing for information on the same shoes so we can beat everyone else to them. But sometimes it pays to just pump the breaks and think “hm, is this too good to be true?” If you’ve got to ask yourself that question, the answer is probably yes.
Besides, you probably don’t need no more shoes anyway.
#TheKicksWeWear
Y’ALL KNOW THE VIBES LET’S GET IT!
First, the homie Rube got us popping with the Georgetown 3s. I’ll accept this even tho he’s repping the Cowboys.
Then, the homie Didi came through with the Social Status Penny II and they’re so icy.
My dog Dandin popped out in an all-timer. The Yeezy Air Max 1s. Classic.
My guy Floyd came through with the Gorge Green AJ1 and I can’t believe these are sitting.
Speaking of Kobe, the homie Rick Dubb came through in the Del Sols. SHEEEEESH.
The homie Nola Darling came through with the Pendleton Air Max 1s. Always a go in my book.
Then my guy Sumeet and the homie Tash sent us home with ALL the Chicago AJ1 goodness. THEY NOT PLAYING FAIR.
*puts fingers on arm* SHEEEEEEEEEEEEESH.
Thanks so much for rocking with me today, family! Appreciate you. Hope you have a fantastic weekend ahead of you. Make sure you get those mailbag questions in!
Til next time. Peace and love. Be easy, be safe, be kind. And we out.
-Sykes 💯