The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 356 — Bjørn Gulden gets it 🫡
Innovation has been a buzz word in sneakers all 2024. Here's what it really mean from Adidas' CEO.
Gooooood morning, family! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear. Thank you so much for rocking with me today. I appreciate you giving me a bit of your time.
Hope you’re having a good week so far! Three more wins, Celtics fans! Congrats to y’all. Mavs fans, I’m sorry. Everyone else, I apologize in advance for how obnoxious C’s fans will be this year if they win it all.
I say that with love, btw.
Let’s jump in.
Bjørn Gulden gets it
Bjørn Gulden has a long way to go before Adidas is back on the right track, but he has been saying all of the right things lately.
Gulden sat down with Footwear News’ Peter Verry for a wide-ranging interview that touched on several things, from the brand’s Yeezy timeline to whether working from home impacts productivity (looking at you, John Donahoe). The entire interview is well worth your time.
READ MORE: You can check the full piece out here at length
Speaking of Donahoe and Nike, Verry also asked Gulden a poignant question about innovation. How does Adidas avoid being criticized for a “lack of innovation” like Nike has recently?
This discussion was fascinating for two reasons:
First: It’s Gulden speaking on the record directly to a problem Adidas’ biggest competitor, Nike, is struggling with. That’s rare to get this sort of candid answer.
Second: Adidas actually faced this problem. I’d argue it still does, though things have improved recently. So Gulden has some experience in turning what is plaguing NIke around.
His answer: “Innovation [isn’t just] technology,” he said. “Innovation is also how you rotate your franchises so they are perceived as being new.”
Those are just the first two sentences of it, but he said so much. That’s what Nike, Adidas and many other brands have failed to figure out recently. It’s not just about the new things being brought to the table. It’s also about repurposing and refreshing what’s worked in a way that feels new.
The balance is delicate, of course. Gulden pointed that out with the rest of his answer.
“A year ago, we were criticized for not having running lifestyle, which was innovations like NMD and Ozweego — and the [Yeezy] 350 was drifting away. We briefed the running unit, Originals, Sportswear and said, ‘You can work on new things in running that they haven’t seen before.’ We’ve got six or seven projects out of that [effort] that will go to market. You will be surprised when you see shoes coming in the back end of this year, interesting new silhouettes that the market hasn’t seen before.”
Translation: Dropping the same four or five silhouettes repeatedly gets stale. Sometimes, it’s worth diving into the archives to find something interesting that fits the time.
Adidas has done that most recently, particularly with basketball.
The brand returned some of its old Kobe models and turned them into the Crazy Iiinfinity line.
It’s also applied some of that futuristic design language to its signature basketball silhouettes, which the public has been receptive to.
To be fair to Nike, Adidas — and other brands, for that matter — have more freedom and flexibility to do that because they’ve never been as popular as the Swoosh. Gulden said people are being a bit too harsh on his company’s rival and I do tend to agree with him.
Nike is still Nike. Its archive contains thousands of shoes that could help the brand. It’d also be hugely helpful if it didn’t just lay some of the folks who work in its archives off, but hey. Regardless, we should expect Nike to figure things out at some point.
Hopefully, Donahoe and company are not so high and mighty that they’d ignore Gulden’s words here.
Kyrie Irving’s dad will have a literal Dad shoe
Kyrie Irving’s Dallas Mavericks may have (badly) lost Game 1 of the NBA Finals, but he did get a big win this week.
What’s happening: Irving signed his father — yes, his dad! — to a signature sneaker deal with Anta, according to the latest from The Athletic’s Shams Charania. Irving’s dad, Drederick Irving, will have a signature shoe under Anta’s Kai brand as part of this deal.
This is interesting: I’m fascinated by how unique this is. It’s quite the flex of creative control from Irving, who almost certainly couldn’t pull anything like this off with a bigger brand.
Be smart: Signing your dad to a “signature sneaker” deal is a sweet thing to do. But the product will probably be another version of Kyrie’s signature shoe.
After all, we don’t see his dad. He doesn’t play basketball. The only person wearing these will probably be Irving himself.
Even with that, this is a pretty creative effort from Anta and Irving and will certainly drum up some media and public interest. I mean, shoot. I’m here talking about it now.
The big picture: We probably won’t see anything like this from another brand. But I would love to see more creative angles of older telling athletes’ stories with signature shoes.
The homie Nick Tuths proposed a pretty interesting idea via Twitter: Create a signature shoe line built for the game’s unsung legends.
That’s the sort of creativity I’d love to see. If Irving can get his dad a signature shoe, maybe somebody else can do this.
Somebody’s lying
It pains me to talk about MSCHF’s Big (stupid) Red Boots again. But something ain’t adding up here.
MSCHF CEO Gabriel Whaley hopped on the Business Untitled podcast to talk about the “art” of going viral. He was asked how many pairs of boots they made. He said he couldn’t talk about it before…promptly proceeding to talk about it.
This was what he had to say:
“It doesn’t even matter because so many fakes came out. So, now, we are, like, intimately connected with Shein. Fashion Nova. You go, like, all of these sort of dupe companies. If you’ve seen one in the wild, it was probably fake. What I will say, originally, is we made 200 pairs. We were just like ‘It looks cool. Nobody’s gonna buy this,’.”
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP: Oh, don’t be startled, folks. That’s my BS detector going off.
Now, look. A world with fewer Big (stupid) Red Boots is a world that I would love to live in. But I’m just not sure how this could be true.
As Sneaker Phetish points out, MSCHF did multiple drops with the Big Red Boots and even discounted pairs because inventory wasn’t moving.
I’d also like to point out that there are still pairs left for sale on MSCHF’s site and app. If there were ONLY 200 pairs made then how is this possible?
Maybe we’re all misinterpreting what Whaley is saying here. Maybe the company only intended to make 200 pairs of these before things blew up? Those fake pairs out there certainly do exist.
I don’t know what the answer is. But the math is just not math-ing here.
A Grinch cleat is crazy
I’ve already had enough of the Grinch Kobes. You see them everywhere on the basketball court these days. NBA, college, and pick-up games. Whatever. They’re everywhere now.
Now we’ll see them on the football field, too. Grinch Kobe cleats are coming, y’all. CLEATS. Unreal.
When I first saw these, I thought they were one of those weird customs folks like to do on Instagram. But nope. These are real. This is happening. These will go on sale via Nike for $230 this holiday season.
Y’all wearing these? Let me know, man. Because I hate them. So so so much.
#TheKicksWeWear
LET’S GET IT!!!!!
First, the homie Storm got us popping with her fit check for the NBA Finals. SO MUCH HEAT.
The homie Josh popped out with the Everglade 11s. This has got to be one of the more fun Bron shoes from that era. So good.
The homie Cpt. CMFT came through with the Adobe Dunks. I am SO MAD I slept on these man.
My guy Waterloo popped out to see the Dream in the Bred 4s. Never get tired of this colorway, man.
The homie Alex pulled out ALL the Dunks today. We’ve got the Grateful Dead joints AND the Powerpuff Girl joints. Sheesh.
My guy Young Choi sent us home with the Air Tech Challenge II and I know I complain a lot about retro but I CANNOT WAIT TO BUY A PAIR OF THESE FOR THE FIRST TIME.
Y’all did that! Good stuff gang. Smoked it.
That’s a wrap, folks! Thanks so much for rocking with me today. I appreciate you giving me a bit of your time. Have a fantastic weekend.
Peace and love. Be easy, be safe, be kind. We out. Peace.
-Sykes 💯
Jalen Brunson, Grinch Kobe aficionado, would like a word.
I'm a super basic casual sneaker fan. The only reason I want to buy a "signature" shoe is because it is worn by the player during games. So a Drederick Irving shoe or a shoe with a legend's name on it doesn't do much for me.