The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 281 — 🌊 Feeling the Flo
An inside look at the Curry Brand's newest FloTro model
Goooood morning, family. Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear! Thank you so much for rocking with me today.
NBA playoff time, so we've got some hoops content below. Hope you enjoy!
Let’s jump in.
The right time to go retro
My initial thoughts on the launch of Steph Curry’s Curry Brand with Under Armour back in 2020 were, honestly, thoughts of concern.
Here's what I wrote then.
There’s a world where this works. But, at the end of the day, the product still has to be good. It has to be a hit. And they’ve yet to prove to us that they can actually make one of those since they caught lightning in a bottle in 2015.
But with a commitment like this to Curry? They better figure out how to do it again and they better do it fast. Otherwise, this could turn left pretty quickly.
I thought the launch felt a bit fast and stood on unstable ground. At the time, excitement for Curry’s signature sneaker line felt like it was waning. It was far from what it was back in 2015 during Curry’s initial rise. Under Armour needed something new to excite consumers and it just couldn’t seem to find it.
Fast forward to today: The brand has found something. Ironically enough, that something is its past with Steph Curry, himself.
The brand has been retroing older Curry models and adding its new “Flow” tech to the sneakers.
Flow is UA’s new foam tech used for cushioning. It’s soft but also durable. UA trusts it enough that it removed the rubber outsole from its Flow sneakers.
Under Armour is taking that Flow tooling and attaching it to the uppers of older models, just like Nike has done with Kobe’s Protro sneakers. It’s the same concept. The brand calls it FloTro.
That plan worked. Extremely well. Under Armour introduced this with the “Lucky Lilac” FloTro Curry 4 during last year’s NBA Finals. The shoe was well recieved. Since then, UA and the Curry Brand have leaned on with other retro remakes.
Most recently the Curry Brand brought back the Chef Curry 2 Low — y’all remember the joint everyone roasted, right? Yeah, that shoe. It’s been FloTro’d. My first question was…why?
So I had a chance to chat about it with Steve Segears — a senior merchant for the Curry Brand who works on the line. What follows is our conversation.
Enjoy!
The right time to go retro
Sykes: Thanks for doing this, Steve. My first question when this interview was pitched to me was…Why? Why this sneaker considering the initial reception of the Curry 2 Low back in 2016?
Steve: Let me just back it up…The theme for this entire season is all around [Steph’s] greatest moments. It was all about his greatest hits. We did the Splash party, we did the Double Bang story, and even to start it off a few weeks ago we did Iron Sharpens Iron. So we were looking at some of the best moments Steph had. Of course, the dad shoe that a lot of people tagged it as, was one of the ones at the top of everyone’s list. A lot of the naysayers made jokes about the shoe, but that shoe did very well for us.
We lean into it. I think we’re a lot different than other brands — we’re OK to poke fun at ourselves and what happened there. With that shoe, it really just meant a lot to the brand. This is one of his greatest hits.
Sykes: That’s the thing about the shoe. I remember people roasting it, but I also remember not being able to find it online because it was sold out. Have you all ever gone back to the moment and parsed why the public reception was that way online but then the actual reception was so different?
Steve: We were the brand new to the shoe game. We were easy to pick on. We didn’t have the history our competitors had, but we were trying new things. We’re always going to do things to push the envelope. I will say, we could’ve done a better job selecting colors for shoes. You just put this all white shoe out when you were really seeing a lot of color in shoe. But, you look at it now, the shoe created a moment. The discussion was there. The fact that Steph is who he is and got behind the shoe…that always helped.
Sykes: As far as bringing this model back, was there anything in its build or tooling that lent itself to remastering it?
Steve: The great thing about FlowTro is, and I highly advise anyone…if you’re a basketball player, put that on your foot. I’d put my paycheck — and it may not be a bunch of money — but I’d put my paycheck that once a consumer wears our product vs [their collective competitors’] products, we’re going to come out on top. Nothing performs on the court the way this does.
We’re taking the uppers of our most iconic silhouettes on that technology. It’s basically a perfect marriage of our past, and the present and the future where we’re going. And we’re using that as a vehicle to tell some of the stories.
When we were looking at the 2, we were like “what is the most iconic 2 from a low perspective?” And, of course, that one quickly rose to the top of the list. It was all white at the time and people roasted it. We’re releasing it on April Fools Day for a reason. We are OK in making fun of ourselves a little bit here and being apart of the joke.
I don’t know if you remember, but Mache did a beautiful version of it and he did a marshmallow roast of it. And we saw that, from an inspiration standpoint, that something was there…It has a great visual to it.
Sykes: From a macro standpoint with Steph, he’s only 10 models in. What makes this the right time to retro older pairs? Why is it not too soon?
Steve: We had a lot of great storytelling points on retro models that we wanted to be able to get on the court. But the thing is, once you step into Flow, it’s hard to go back to the actual retro.
We wanted Steph to wear our retros, but he said “we have this beautiful technology that has changed the way that I play the game. It’s going to be hard to go back to anything else.” So, what FloTro gives us the opportunity to do is to go back and put those retro uppers on this new technology. It was almost like a happy mistake.
Sykes: That’s interesting to hear. Whenever I talk to people about basketball shoes, they always say it’s so hard to tell the difference between tech now and, say, 10 years ago. It’s fascinating to hear that Steph was so impressed by it.
Steve: The crazy part was that stuff was supposed to be in HOVR. So he was in HOVR for the Curry 6, the Curry 7 and he was supposed to be in hover for the Curry 8 but the upper wasn't done yet. We were testing flow out for him to wear the next year and he put it on and wore it on the court. He was like there's no way to get me out of this. I don’t know what you guys have to do, like, I don't care we don't have an 8. We will not have a Curry 8 if we don’t get flow involved. He made us work a lot faster and a lot smarter, but he was the one who made sure we got that tech in the 8. And the rest has been history.
There’s a new “most expensive sneaker” ever
Remember those Jordan 13’s we were talking about from The Last Dance documentary? Yeah, they’ve finally been sold. For $2.2 million. Yes, you ready that correctly.
What this means: This is now the most “expensive” sneaker ever sold. But it's not really a sneaker, though, is it?
As I said before, these sneakers aren’t really sneakers anymore. They’re memorabilia. There’s a huge difference.
This isn’t a shoe that you’re going to wear at all. You’d only put it on display somewhere. If you have $2.2 million to blow, that is.
With that being said: It’s still unbelievable to think that this shoe would sell for this much 25 years after its big moment. It speaks to the lasting cultural impact of Michael Jordan and those moments in the prime of his career.
It also speaks to how bored rich folks have to be to drop $2.2 million on 25-year-old sneakers. But that’s a different story for a different day.
An extremely creative 4/20 shoe
We’ve gotten a lot of 4/20 shoes over the years, obviously, but this new look on the Campus 80 from Adidas has to be one of the more creative looks I’ve seen.
Yes, that is, indeed, rolling papers surrounding a green hairy suede upper on this shoe. This is a successor to the Towelie Campus 80 and it’s a pretty good one. I’m not sure if I’d actually wear them, but this is pretty fun.
#TheKicksWeWear
LET’S GET IT! Now, let me start off by saying Elon Musk is hating on us. I can’t embed Tweets here anymore. So we’re going to try and use screenshots to make it work. So please be patient with yerboi.
The homie Storm popped out repping with these heaters.
The homie Mellie popped out crazy with these Air Max Excees. These are really good, yall.
The homie Jarem came through with the Craft Taupe AJ1 and these are BEAUTIFUL.
Then the homie Rick Dubb sent us gome with the Big Bubble Air Max 1 and SHEEEEEEESH.
SMOKED IT. I had so many more I wanted to include, but Ole Musky had to go and hate on us.
Ill work on solutions so we can get more heaters up here. In the meantime, keep em coming. 🔥
Thank you so much for rocking with me today. I appreciate y’all. Hope you enjoyed the content today.
Til next time, folks. Peace and love. Be easy, be safe, be kind. And we out.
-Sykes 💯