End of the Independents?
In the past month, huge news came out that shook the entire sneaker community: Nike has finally been granted a trademark on their coveted Air Jordan 1 silhouette along with 2 other designs.
The release of this information came as a win to many, a loss to others, but — overall — a surprise to us all.
Over the last few years, as the sneaker resell market has begun to expand, so to have the amount of bootleg sneakers. Online giants, like Alibaba, have been a huge distributor of these knockoffs all around the world, and Nike is tired of it.
This is a win for many because now it will begin to increase prices in the resell market as sneakers, and especially the Air Jordan 1, will once again be hard to get.
However, there is a darker and secret side many people don’t realize.
Also in the past few years, there have been an increase in independent designers, many of whom are of color, who have started to gain tremendous traction due to their own artistic iterations of the AJ1 silhouettes in colorways not even Nike has dreamed up yet.
But after attacking popular designer Warren Lotus in court over his design that led to over $20 million in refunds to his customers, Nike has shown it will do anything to protect its brand.
All of this begs the question: Is this fair?
For years, Nike has been criticized by the secondary sneaker community for stealing all types of designs, colors and other ideas from independent designers with out giving any credit or recognition.
While fans have been upset, Nike technically isn’t in the wrong.
As we’ve seen in the last week, they have the absolute power and far more resources to stop any customizer, designer or reseller if they choose to primarily because all of these people are using Nike’s intellectual property.
However, many individuals have been quick to point out that this is only ever the case when an individual is amassing hype and power that actual rivals that of their own. In fact, it seems as though they’ve taken a page out of the playbook of tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and even Apple by crushing this competition by any means necessary.
Regardless, I believe that so long as independent designers create their own original designs from scratch within all copyright laws and protect their intellectual property, Nike will begin to have a huge fight on their hands for control of the sneaker market.
As Nike starts to crack down on creativity, where will this take sneaker reselling, and how will independent designers and customizers be further affected?
Only time will tell.
