Bears On Trikes
I love Converse’s brand resurrection over this last decade. Not just the way they embraced the Rock and Roll community’s affection for their 80 year-old Chuck Taylor All-Stars, but how they then extended that heritage by creating an imprint label with Rock and Roll fashion icon John Varvatos. The collaboration’s become a cornerstone of both brands’ retail experience, and the redesigned line of Chuck Taylors have been ubiquitous in chains and boutiques over the last few years. Back in September they launched at NYC’s flagship Bowery store (the old CBGBs) a modernized, street-casual redesign of the famous Weapon ’86 (if you were a fan of Magic or Bird’s back in the 80’s, you probably had a pair back in the day). The new line had been streamlined with a slimmer outsole, a sleeker ankle rise, and distressed leather uppers that come in colors like “Faded Rose/Black” (deep crimson) and “Nightshade/Gold” (dark navy). They were a great remix of the original, looked both modern and classic at the same time. The only problem was, by time the Christmas shopping season hit, they’d already discontinued the line.
My size (12) happens to be one of their most in-demand, which made it twice as difficult to track down a pair. The brick and mortars had long sold out so I shifted my search online. There I found some scattered inventory across various online retailers, but quickly saw the remaining size 12s sell out in the colors I didn’t want, while I held out for the colors I did want (Nightshade/Gold). I stalked each brands’ website and checked for new inventory constantly, and spent a week searching Google and Bing Shopping as well as leading Comparative Shopping Engines (CSEs) like Bizrate and Nextag. On Google.com I clicked 10 pages deep to uncover additional online retailers that might not come back within the CSEs. Ultimately I did find sites that carried the line, but found less inventory and fewer available sizes each next day. By the end of the week I’d begun to consider whether I could feasibly trade down a size, perpetually curling my toes or possibly binding them into a daintier size (which even the Chinese stopped doing in 1912). Just when failure seemed a certainty, I found exactly what I was looking for at Thom Brown, a small mom and pop shoe store out of Boston. They had it in the right color, in the right size, and they happened to have it cheaper than everyone else (bonus!) But I didn’t discover them on Google, and the CSEs don’t seem to know that Thom Brown exists. They’re not set-up within eBay Marketplaces and they’re not part of Amazon’s Market Place. I ultimately discovered this vendor on Pinterest.
I found that so interesting, that Big Search failed me yet Thom Brown’s modest grassroots tactics provided for this discovery and ultimately, my wish fulfillment. The bigger the Web gets, the more content Google will have to index, and by virtue of that, the more they’re bound to fail us as consumers. The search algorithms still favor the larger websites, based on their link authority, which has become an enemy of genuine discovery…
Quick anecdote: In college I worked at an independent record store (back when there still existed a thing called “independent record stores”). My employer was eventually put out of business by a brand within the Sam Goody chain, which set-up shop 3 doors down. This conversation about mega-chains killing off mom-and-pops is nothing new, and now the big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon are even killing off the biggest national chains. I guess that’s the way it goes, only the fittest survive and in this day and age, biggest = fittest. Except that’s not necessarily what’s in the consumers best interests. In an age where price pressure creates vertical consolidation, the only way to fit in is to stand apart, and small mom-and-pops can do that just by being nimble, by spending time on new, emerging platforms like Pinterest.
Pinterest hasn’t quite crystallized a commercial model, but they do host millions upon millions of passionate, highly engaged consumers — searching, surfing, desiring something new for their collections. Pinterest was able to do something that the biggest Internet companies in the world couldn’t, which was bridge the gap between the virtual world and the real world, and connect me with a small retailer I’ve never heard of, in a city I haven’t been to in 4 years, to buy a product I obsessively desired but couldn’t find. That’s something to think about.
Every generation has a moment, that all-galvanizing event that changes everything and lifts the veil of innocence and all we take for granted. For some it was Watergate, the Warren Commission or the Iran Contra scandal. For a younger generation it may have been the ballot recounts of 2000, WMDs in Iraq or Too Big To Fail. I’m talking about that solitary moment where you realize the game is fixed, the dice are loaded, and you’re being deceived and subjugated to serve the will of those in power. It’s the heart of the 99 percent movement, that epiphany where we see the world as it really is, and realize our place within it. For me that moment was the Nike Air Pump.
During the 1980s Nike and Reebok battled for market supremacy. It was a two-party race and for one brief moment in history, there were only 2 kinds of people in the world: Nike people and Reebok people. The brand you chose said something about who you were: Nike had history and heritage but Reebok had fashion and style. And unlike the cola wars, this wasn’t simply about marketing - the sneaker industry was driven by genuine innovation, of design and technology. Every new line of sneakers held the promise of better comfort and better performance. Marketing was always a big part of the movement, and nobody does lifestyle marketing better than Nike (“Just Do It”) but for the first time in modern consumer culture, lifestyle marketing was driven by something tangible, something real. There was a genuine ethos at play, and that ethos culminated with the Pump.
Reebok released the first Pump sneaker in 1989 with what’s become known as the “Pump Bringback”. It was a big, bulky high-top with an inflatable bladder embedded in an outsized tongue. On the tongue you had a big, bulbous rubber ball, which you’d squeeze to pump air into the chambers, and around back there was a value to empty the air. The Pump represented evolution, it was Homo sapien to Nike’s Waffle Trainer’s Homo erectus, and Reebok eventually incorporated this superior technology into all their lines, from basketball to soccer, football, tennis and track. It was a better product, and they staked their future on it.
Nike released their version of the Pump right on the heels of Reebok, with the Nike Air Pressure. The original model had a giant cocoon grafted onto the back that looked like an alien laid eggs in your Achilles. The shoe came with a separate inflation device you’d affix to the back, as if pumping a bicycle tire. It didn’t sell very well. The next edition, the super-excellent Air Command Force, improved on the design and provided an embedded solution that seemed easy, convenient and functional. But ultimately the line only went one further with the less memorable Nike Air Force 180 Pump. And that’s it. No more pump for Nike. They’ve never even re-released it as a retro edition (though they have brought back the abomination that is the Air Huarache Basketball, which is absurd).
Reebok’s rediscovered this technology over the years, shifting a manual pump and bladder in the tongue to a self-regulating pump in the heel, with the Pump 2.0 in 2005. It was an ambitious design: with every five steps the pump actuator would be compressed, causing the shoe to automatically inflate, forming a custom fit around the runner’s foot. The Pump 2.0 was said to be designed by engineers from NASA and MIT. It was born in a laboratory where people study high-minded things like Applied Physics, Materials Science, and Kinesiology. I’ve never bought the Reebok pump, but I do believe in it now as I believed in it then. Because I believe in science. But Nike doesn’t believe in the Pump, and ultimately buried the Pump as the next big thing that never was. Which makes me feel like a sap… every time I think about it.
