Breaking: Gentry Humphrey Headed Back to Jordan Brand

[JRepp23]

youre utter nonsense

i know you dont believe that.

 

[rainking]

youre utter nonsense

What are you mad at me for?
As far as I'm concerned, the way to respect us old ****s is to let us repurchase the shoes we fell in love with in the first place, replicated (as I know you call for repeatedly, too) as close to the OGs as possible. And even for the handful of people, relative to the whole of the sneaker-enthusiast population, who do have these OG shoes, so what if they put them back out again in perfect form? What does that have to do with the value of the originals? Nothing, because the originals are still the originals. Collectors--real collectors--value originality. You can't replicate that. Not to mention, of these mythical collectors, apparently Gentry figured they also had no desire to actually wear the shoes they had originally--and that they liked so much, they collected them in the first place. I guess, what, those people were more happy to have the OGs that they couldn't ever wear? **** never made any logical sense.

 

[The Fresh Prince]

gentrytobacco is making a return

 

[tonytobacco]

 

[tonytobacco]

Youre lucky the Saints are kicking *** right now or the av was coming back

Safe for now

 

[truenike81]

That whole "respect the OG collectors" BS was utter nonsense. First of all, the idea that there was/is this sizable group of people sitting on original examples of Air Jordans was idiotic. I'm not saying there aren't people like that out there, but placing a priority on what, keeping their OG collections valuable, was moronic. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I played a lot of basketball and knew a shedload of other players and just people who liked Jordans. I never once crossed paths with anyone who was actively maintaining any sort of Jordan or sneaker collection. So right off the bat, that entire respect the OG collectors line was stupid as hell. I always felt like, hey Gentry, I'M an OG, but I don't have my OG shoes anymore, because we actually wore our **** out back then. And even if I had somehow kept a bunch of DS pairs from back in the day, guess what genius, I can't wear them because they'll fall apart. So can we please have the shoes again that we had back then? But nope, we had to respect some mythical group of collectors who couldn't actually wear their collections, thereby depriving us for years of good replications of the shoes we loved and were willing to buy again. It was like, thanks a lot, you **** LOL

Well said

 

[staffsgtdignam]

You make good points, but Ferrari hasn't been putting out garbage like Jordan Brand has lately. That analogy doesn't exactly work because the JB's decline in quality and increase in price has been a pain point for years.

I know JB is raking in tons money, and I'm not saying they're gonna disappear overnight, but they're losing their target market because of oversaturation, poor quality, wack colorways, price increases, inconsistent production quantities, etc. I'm not sure who they're making most of these shoes for anymore. Like... Who did they think would buy hideous 8 from last week?

I think the issue with “JB putting out garbage” really comes down to their sales growth projections vs their marketing of the brand. Specifically, this comes down to the sheer number of almost weekly retro releases (their bread and butter, in terms of revenue) at $190+/each which inevitably end up sitting simply because demand at that pricepoint is simply nonexistent.

I know Gentry and JB wishes every release had the demand of a Bred 1 or Concord 11 release but that’s simply not the case. Consumers have responded to JB’s weekly GR releases by becoming more selective in what they buy or waiting for inevitable discounts. Sure JB still makes money one way or another but the aspirational luster of Air Jordan retros has also been dying and, pretty soon, the average consumer is simply not going to pay $190+ for 95% of retro releases (with rare exceptions to very iconic releases like the Concord 11s that I mentioned). Hell, I was watching a popular sneaker YouTube channel early review on the recent Turbo Green 8 release and they actually advised people to wait for discounts! This would have been unheard of even in 2013-2014, which wasn’t honestly that long ago.

EDIT: Spelling

 

[rainking]

I think the issue with “JB putting out garbage” really comes down to their sales growth projections vs their marketing of the brand. Specifically, this comes down to the sheer number of almost weekly retro releases (their bread and butter, in terms of revenue) at $190+/each which inevitably end up sitting simply because demand at that pricepoint is simply nonexistent.

I know Gentry and JB wishes every release had the demand of a Bred 1 or Concord 11 release but that’s simply not the case. Consumers have responded to JB’s weekly GR releases by becoming more selective in what they buy or waiting for inevitable discounts. Sure JB still makes money one way or another but the aspirational luster of Air Jordan retros has also been dying and, pretty soon, the average consumer is simply not going to pay $190+ for 95% of retro releases (with rare exceptions to very iconic releases like the Concord 11s that I mentioned). Hell, I was watching a popular sneaker YouTube channel early review on the recent Turbo Green 8 release and they actually advised people to wait for discounts! This would have been unheard of even in 2013-2014, which wasn’t honestly that long ago.

EDIT: Spelling

Yeah, I find it all pretty interesting just from a business-strategy standpoint, especially in the long term. There's definitely evidence to suggest that the aspirational luster has been dying, especially compared to its apex a few years back. The rise of the knit trend, sleeker shoes, increased competition from Adidas etc. almost certainly has taken a bite out of the Jordan business that the company has had to respond to. I wonder, though, how much other factors are actually more responsible for what seems like a drop in demand for even the Jordan retro business. As you said, they release so many shoes now. The potential audience for each of those shoes is basically the same people every week. People simply can't afford to buy everything even if they want to. This alone seems to lead to talk around these parts about, "see, shoe X didn't sell out" within a day or two, and people jump to the conclusion the whole thing is in a big decline. There were people in the black toe 13 thread basically saying there was no demand for that shoe and that it was a failure because, gasp, the shoe was available for a month or so after release. That sort of thinking illustrates a lack of real-world understanding of what is and isn't a success for a business.

I suspect that if Jordan went back to way fewer releases, and cut the production numbers back to where they once were, this perception about it being in decline would evaporate. People rely on what they see at their local stores and/or online retail sites to determine the state of things, but that really doesn't tell the whole true story. The brand definitely has that challenge, though, of trying to stay aspirational and in demand while also having to strive for ever-expanding revenue goals. Sometimes those two things don't go together very well.