The Sneaker Savant

How do y’all feel about the company y’all falling over yourselves to support tweeting at you like a petulant 15 year old who works Tuesdays at the local strip-mall skateshop? Can’t lie, I chuckled when I saw it. I mean, I’d expect it from one of those small, too-cool-to-care spots, but it’s the last thing I expected to see from a branch of the world’s biggest clothing brand.

The first few times I walked into Supreme New York, I felt I was treated with such disdain that I swore off supporting anything Supreme for the coming years. And I’ve mostly held true to it. I haven’t stepped foot in a Supreme store in more than 10 years - the last one I actually walked into was in Harajuku, Japan, and that was only because I was there. I did buy a Supreme crowbar online, though. And I bought a couple pairs of those Supreme AM 98’s. But that’s about it...

I get the sentiment. They don’t want to be tagged in something that isn’t all that relevant to what they’re doing. Great. But what they’re doing isn’t really all that accessible, anyway. I’m not an all star skater. I’m actually a pretty bad skater. And Supreme is supposedly a ‘skate shop’. And Nike SB is apparently for skaters (and rappers). And that’s great. I’m probably a pretty big cornball by almost any measure of ‘cool’. But. I dunno...There’s something about treating a potential customer like shit that just doesn’t sit right with me. Like...I sell stuff...I build products...If I treated my potential customers like shit, I’d expect them to find another provider. And could I blame them?

I suppose Nike SB doesn’t need my money. They probably don’t need your money, either. They have 430k Twitter Followers and 6.5M IG followers and continually release their most coveted products in batches of 20-30k units. Seems like they could lose a good portion of their following and still sell out every release. Again, I’m not really their target customer.

But. What about y’all? How do y’all feel about a brand you support talking to you like you’re a punk? 😂