I get that the strategy yields sales in that regard. But those Jordan 6 releases you cite were not exactly the norm in terms of a retro cycle. The varsity red release was really more of a retro + drop, not a true OG retro. What I was talking about is more specific to the more traditional retro drop cycles.
Take the new concords, for example. Just to illustrate my point, let's say this concord had the 23 instead of 45. At that point, it's basically a perfect concord retro. Now let's say they vault the concords for another 5-7 years, then drop them again exactly the same as this recent release. They'd sell just as many pairs as they did this time because at that point, the majority of people will have burned through their 2018 pairs. You know I have three pairs of them and I'll still buy them again when they come back around. I'd wager the same would go for the BC 3s. Put out the exact same shoe from last year in another six years and they'll all sell again.
Now, if they really want to be cynical about it all, sure, the strategy can yield more sales in the short term. If they put out a 23 concord retro two years from now, a boatload of people would buy those, too. But a lot of people would also be pretty PO'ed. Because if they did that, they'd really be trolling all of us. Part of the reason the more popular models like the 11 and the 3 sell so well at each release is an unwritten understanding between we the consumers and Nike that we aren't going to see them again for a long time. If that changes at some point--say they started dropping those especially popular shoes every two or three years, tops--that's OK, but it will also trigger a change in how each release is received and people's perception of how urgent their need is to buy another pair. Five or six or seven years between drops, I'll buy the next release for sure. Two or three, I might not need to. For that reason, I seriously doubt they'd go ahead and do something like dropping another version of the concord within the next 2-3 years. If their goal is to double the amount of concord sales within such a time frame, they could have just made 2 million pairs of this release. They clearly would have sold them all.
, now why would they release a clear bottom 3 to pay homage to the Dunk Contest win, instead of just releasing the actual shoe in the original form? Because they probably coming out very soon again. NikeTalk would have bought the same shoe over again, but not the rest of the world. That’s what they care about because ultimately that’s the 98%. But I’m done trying to explain what should be common sense.
