Why is There Still No Major Black-Owned Sneaker Company?
Black athletes are awarded millions of dollars in sponsorships & Black designers have high positions in top companies but are they eternally employees?
If you’re Black and been on Facebook…once…maybe twice, I know you’ve seen em: Nike Air Max…covered in Kente — or Converse Chuck Taylor’s…with the continent of Africa sewn into the red, black, and green canvas shoe.
There’s usually hundreds of likes on these shoes with even more people leaving “I need these” in the comments. The subject of the post is usually SUPPORT YOUR OWN or FIRST BLACK SHOE COMPANY or some other all caps type affair.
And I’m not knocking it. I love how we put our spin on things, enhancing them, customizing them, making them our own. It’s a great part of our beauty as a people. But they’re hardly shoe companies.
Meanwhile, the largest Athletic Brand in the world, with revenue exceeding $31B, Nike can easily shell out a billion dollars a year in sponsorships and endorsements. That company, of course, is Nike and they’re predicting $50B in sales by 2020. To put that in perspective, Costa Rica, population 5 million people, has a GDP of $46.8B.
But Nike had to start somewhere. All companies do. Yet very few of us have thought to take that leap and the few that do rarely get the full support of the people. What gives?
In order to get to the heart of the WHY, we have to first look at HOW two other companies, Nike and Under Armour, went from start-up to taking on the giant of the industry. We’ll start with Nike.
When we think of Nike we think of Jordans (if you’re under 20 and not a fan of basketball, you may not even know the player). We think of Niketown and the various styles that they have to offer.
Whether it’s a retro shoe or technological wonder like the HyperAdapt, we think about a brand that makes a coveted shoe designed on a 216 acre campus with 22 buildings named after famous Nike sponsored athletes.
We think that Nike is a giant…and it is, but it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, what we know of Nike came into existence in my lifetime.
Nike’s humble beginnings start with Phil Knight importing Onitsuka Tigers from Japan. Knight’s belief was Japanese sneakers could one day overtake German-made shoes much in the way that Japanese cameras did with German cameras.
In the 1960s and early 70s, Adidas was the largest sneaker company in the world. Adidas, as would be the model for all shoe companies, gained their popularity by sponsoring a Black man from America, Jesse Owens.
Owens would win four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics and he would do so in a pair of Adi Dassler spikes. The popularity of the shoe company then known as the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory (translated from the German) skyrocketed to the tune of 200,000 shoes a year.
After WWII, the Dassler Brother company separated into two warring factions — Adidas and Puma. Adidas, ran by designer Adi Dassler, excelled due to the company’s technical innovation and relationships with athletes.
Phil Knight sought to disrupt Adidas dominance by importing the cheaper, better designed Tiger. He started with an order of 1,000 shoes in the spring of 64 that he stored in his parents’ home. Knight sold out of that order in three months.
Over the next seven years, Knight would continue importing large volumes of shoes from Japan, building a sales force, and with his business partner and former coach, Bill Bowerman, modifying the shoes for American needs. Knight’s company was selling $1.3M in shoes by 1971.
Success is a mothafucka though.
Knight’s company was financed by loans with every dollar going back into the company (Knight didn’t take a salary for the first five years). But the companies growth was impressive enough that Tiger made an offer…really an order…to buy Knight out.
Seeing the end in sight, Knight and his team quickly came up with a name and logo, Knight headed to Japan to find a manufacturer, and Nike was born.
On this trip, Knight had prototypes made for running shoes, basketball shoes, and football shoes. The running shoes, the Nike Cortez, and the Basketball shoe, the Nike Blazer, took off. The year was 1972.
I think it’s important to point out here that while most of the focus is usually on the disruptive power of the Cortez, the Blazer finding it’s way on to the feet of players in the NBA is just as astounding.
In 1972, Converse and Puma dominated that field. But Nike were able to get players on the Portland Trailblazers to wear their shoes as well as a few players here and there. It would take less than 12 years before Nike began to dominate that market. That dominance starts with the Blazer.
We’re going to take a second to focus on the growth of Nike’s dominance in basketball because for years this would be the companies bread and butter. Focusing on basketball also will lead into the meat of this writing.
I remember distinctly when I started paying attention to Nike.
I mentioned how I had a pair of Nike in The Original Sneakerhead but that was when I was a child and fashion meant nothing to me. In The Sneaker Boom of the 1980s I mentioned how becoming a B-Boy ignited in me a desire to be “fresh.” That was 84.
The first time I started paying attention to Nike was the Fall of 85, the year I became a Syracuse Basketball fan, thanks to the play of Pearl Washington.
Brooklyn’s finest, Pearl Washington was explosive on the court. He could steal the ball and pass it or drive down the court in seconds. But what made me love Washington (and what would be a ‘Cuse trademark in the 80s) was his ability to throw the alley oop.
The defense would be tight, it would look like it was impossible for Washington to get a good look at the basket, and Pearl would loft the ball up, when, seemingly out of no where Seikaly or Triche would look like their going to crash the boards but BAM! they’d throw the ball down with a nasty, rim swinging, nuts in the face dunk.
That’s when I became a Syracuse fan. It was 1985 and the players were wearing shoes that matched their outfits. They were wearing the Dunks.
As I mentioned before, we were starving for color in our shoes and the Dunks filled that order. But the most exciting shoe of 1985 was the very similar but distinct, Nike Terminator.
Made specifically for the Georgetown Basketball team, the Terminator had HOYAS imprinted on the heel of the shoe. That shit was hot. Despite the fact that I thought that Georgetown was an all-Black school (Black coach, all-Black team), they were the sworn enemies of the ‘Cuse.
I took this aside for one main reason. Me paying attention to Nike in 1985 wasn’t a coincidence. Nor was it an isolated incident. Nike’s rise to prominence in the Black community can be directly related to this era.
In 1985, the Big East (the conference that Georgetown and Syracuse played in) was featured prominently on CBS — Saturday afternoons would feature back-to-back Big East matches. That year, three out of four teams in the Final Four were Big East teams and every Big East team wore Nikes.
Around that same time, March of 1985, the Air Jordan was introduced. They sold tons of em. But Nike still wasn’t “that shoe.”
The first Rap album that I owned was Run-DMC’s debut.
As much as I loved that cassette and a few songs on there, recording Lady B’s Street Beat on Sunday was far more exciting. Fast forward a year, another state (New Jersey) and country (Germany) later, and I was back in Denver where the only radio station that played Rap was ECLIPSE, a fuzzy, static-y affair that by the winter of 1985, I had outgrown.
That’s when the second Rap album that I bought came out, LL Cool J’s Radio. A lot had changed in that year since Run DMC’s debut and that can be seen on the back cover of Radio. What do I speak of? The Jordan 1s on L’s feet. Although Nike didn’t catch on in the hood at that point, what LL wearing those Js signifies is something different — something that me and Understanding Allah often talk about — LL wearing those Js signifies the beginning of the shoe being a symbol of status based on price.
Up until the mid-80s, the sneaker, as I talked about here was a compliment to the outfit. We wanted different color sneakers to go with our different color outfits. The high end of sneakers was $35 dollars, which is $83 in today’s money. The Air Jordan was $65 ($149 in today’s money).
As the crack epidemic spread across the nation, sneakers became a status symbol and this is the world that Rap videos exploded in. And this is also the world that one of Nike’s most influential marketing campaigns originated in.
You would be hard-pressed to find a company that has marketed as heavy to Black folk as Nike. In the mid-80s when you saw Black people on TV or Films, as we talked about here, we were never ourselves. Tokens, jokesters, coon-funny type Black. That changed with Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It and the trailer for that movie is what attracted Nike’s ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy. But it was a character in the movie that sparked their imagination.
The lead character of the movie, Mars Blackmon, was a messenger in New York City and deeply in love with the beautiful Nola Darling. The only thing he loved more than Nola Darling were his Air Jordan shoes, and when it was time for him to make love with Nola, he refused to take them off. This was manna for (Jim) Riswold: a movie with a commercial already built into it. David Halberstam
“A movie with a commercial already built into it…” Halberstam illustrated that lovely. The Mars Blackmon character was cool, a B-Boy, and the character that many people of my generation identified with upon seeing the movie. It was a genius idea of Jim Riswold, a writer/producer for Wieden & Kennedy to take that level of cool, the actual character Mars Blackmon, gather up the director (Spike Lee), AND make the commercial, like the film, Black and White. Riswold recognized what we illustrated here straightaway, saw how it could benefit Nike, and the rest was as the saying goes.
Thus began the relationship with Spike Lee and Nike.
Spike’s commercials made Michael Jordan, the superb athlete and competitor, who was also very uncool, stiff, dry and one of the worst dressers this side of Boomerang’s Mr. “Coordinate” Jackson, iconic. It was this advertising that separated the image of Jordan from the superstars who proceeded him. The campaign, as Jordan said before his first retirement in 93, made him “into a dream.”
The first MJ & Mars commercials aired in February 1988 around the same time that this video made it’s premier:
In the first moments of this Fab Five Freddy directed video, KRS-One emerges from a Jeep Wrangler dipped in custom Dapper Dan wears, rapping the beginning of the song as Freddy PULLS BACK. When the camera finally stops on a FULL SHOT, the Air Jordan IIIs are revealed. I ain’t have the money for ’em, I was on a Burger King budget, but I wanted those jawns SO BAD.
And I wasn’t alone. This is around the time that phenomenon of people being robbed for their sneakers began. That was how desirable Jordans (and to a lesser degree, the Reebok Pump) became. Rap and Crack fueled that economy. The more expensive the shoe, the greater the demand, and that’s where we’ll end our Nike story. Because not much has changed.
Nike has continued to flourish with its use of star athletes and strong demand. It was all of the above events and strategies that helped Nike surpass the long-time giant, Adidas. Nike continues to employ those same tactics to keep their position.
It’s that and more. Nike remains one of the most innovative companies with self-lacing shoes, Flyknit, and their constant search for better performing footwear. But it’s the “cool” factor, coupled with their strong “retro” line, that keeps Nike on top.
I know I’m from a different generation but even the one directly behind me (at least the upper part of it) would agree, the Under Armour ‘U A’ symbol has got to be one of the ugliest in sneaker history (no disrespect to Nora Olson who designed it, hope she continued on in Medicine).
Our logo is the symbol of our company. It’s a symbol of balance. The top is the same as the bottom. The left is the same as the right. It speaks to our mission for keeping people at an even body temperature. That’s what makes it so great. Kevin Plank
Whatever, Kevin.
The only time a pair of Under Armour shoes appealed to me was when that logo was small or hidden. But I’m obviously not their market because my 11 year old son L O V E S Under Armour. He was almost in tears last year when he got a pair of Curry 1s and a matching Golden State jersey for his birthday.
That says a lot about the company and it’s direction.
Although it’s fairly new, the amount of ground that Under Armour has covered in it’s short history is staggering. Started by Kevin Plank in 1996 with $20gs in savings, $40gs more from credit cards, cash from family and friends, and a $250,000 Small Business Administration loan, Plank first produced a moisture resistant T-shirt for athletes.
He ran the business from his Grandmother’s basement.
The momentum began when Under Armour landed it’s first big account — Georgia Tech — with an order of 400+ shirts. The initial check from the college equaled to $4,200 and it was enough to get Plank out of the red. Now he had to find a way to make all of those shirts.
This is when Plank learned what Phil Knight before him learned, you’re only as good as the people who manufacture your product. And lucky for Under Armour, AAA of Bellaire, Ohio were good manufacturers.
Most importantly, they trained two people — Ella Mae Holmes and Leo Weber who would produce the bulk of Under Armour’s shirts in 1997 from West Virginia. Every day, Plank would drive from Maryland to West Virginia to assist in the production. That got old quick. Over Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits, Plank convinced them to move their operation to Baltimore.
A year later the company was moving into it’s first warehouse.
For the next few years Plank, Kip Fulks, his first business partner, former classmate, Roy Woods, and several other former teammates became the Under Armour sales force. Woods is the one responsible for doing on the West Coast what Plank and others were doing on the East.
He preached the glory of Under Armour, securing a deal with Arizona State University. Woods then pitched to law enforcement and slowly they began to sign on as well.
Under Armour was making its name in Performance Apparel. The brand became popular among athletes and was the gear of choice from baseball to football, from lacrosse to ‘soccer.’ It turned its first profit in 1999.
But Kevin Plank wasn’t satisfied. The $17,000(in 96) to $55 million in sales by 2005 wasn’t enough. Plank had his eyes on something bigger. He had his eyes set on Nike.
Seba Smith is practically unknown in 2017, but his truism, “there are more ways than one to skin a cat” is a part of most people’s everyday vocabulary. Under Armour personifies that statement.
While Nike chipped away at Adidas one sneaker and one sport at a time, the Baltimore based company built its brand up in an area that Nike and the other sneaker makers long neglected — Performance Apparel. This gave Under Armour a robust war chest.
But all the while, Plank wanted to make sneakers. As recently as 2014, sneakers only accounted for 13% of Under Armour’s sales. And they’ve been working hard at changing that.
Under Armour began design of what would be known as the Click Clack Football cleat in 2002 for a roll-0ut in June of 06. The first victory was joining the Big 3 (Nike, Adidas, & Reebok) as an officially sponsored shoe for the NFL. Before Plank entered the field, cleat technology hadn’t changed much in two decades. Within a year, Under Armour controlled 23% of the market.
We always knew we were going to make footwear. It was just a matter of which category to take down when. First, we said we wanted to do football cleats, and everyone told us we were crazy and that we should do basketball first, where the bigger market was.
We did football in 2006, second was baseball in 2007, where we were leveraging on-field sports. Third was to move off the field, into the training component, which was previously a dead category. Kevin Plank
It was that move off the field that proved problematic. Although Under Armour’s brand was enough to get people to initially purchase their footwear, it wasn’t enough to make the brand stick.
When Plank and company first took the dive into Cross Training with The Prototype, they dished out $5 million for a 60 second Super Bowl spot that analysts say left viewers confused. In fact, the whole $25M campaign did nothing to move the shoe.
A year later, Under Armour entered into the competitive Running category with six different shoes. Again, the response was tepid. An analyst at Citi labeled the launch “weak.”
Plank always said that he recognized that entering footwear was entering a new business all together but these setbacks made him hire Gene McCarthy, a 20 year Nike and Reebok veteran.
Guess what? Three years later after a few more failed launches and only marginal growth, McCarthy resigned.
I love reading these analysts and speculators on why a product succeeds or doesn’t succeed. Sure, there are some factors that I have no idea about. But what they don’t know…or what they don’t care to admit is that if a sneaker is to grow and capture the imagination of the youth, they need to keep in mind what Jack Schwartz said:
The inner city is the key to many industries, but it is the lifeblood of the sneaker industry…. [T]hese days the only way to get a middle-class suburban high school kid to buy your product is to have an inner city kid wear it.
Performance ain’t enough.
Everyone tries to ignore that fact, and like we pointed here, it’s pretty clear that while Blacks may be the minority in population, we’re the majority when it comes to spending and driving culture. Target Market News in their annual Buying Power of Black America once estimated that we spend up to $2B a year in athletic shoes. That’s a lot of money, yo. Enough to buy a franchise…
Only person I see come out and speak on the realness was Matthew Townsend, but by and large no one is addressing what the true issue is. Morgan Stanley analyst, Jay Sole, however did state that the future of Under Armour and whether it will be a buy or sell stock rests on how successful Stephen Curry becomes — the man Sole says is worth $14B (to Under Armour).
And that was what Plank was betting on when he introduced the Curry 1 in January of 2015. In 2008 Under Armour had gambled on Brandon Jennings as their entry into Basketball. Jennings had a good story. High school phenom skips college to play in Europe. But that narrative did nothing to move the shoes. The shoe flopped. So nothing was as great as stealing the under appreciated Curry from Nike.
Curry was one of the 74% of NBA players signed to Nike and when it came time to renew his contract in 2013, he was treated that way.
Stephen Curry’s father was in on the Nike pitch. The fact that Nike didn’t send Brand Manager Lynn Merritt was the first sign. You see Merritt, Nike means business. He was no where to be found. That was just the tip of the iceburg. They frequently mispronounced Stephen as StePHON, accidentally left Kevin Durant’s name in the slide presentation, and clearly demonstrated that Nike intended on Curry being a second tier priority.
With that, Curry made the move to Under Armour.
As with all the other launches, Under Armour went all out, even going as far as having press conferences where sneaker websites were invited. That’s not what really sold the shoe. Stephen Curry and Golden State’s record-breaking season did. That’s how my son came to hear about the Curry 1s. His classmates were talking about Curry and the shoes. Golden State was generating mucho press and that equaled beaucoup press for the Under Armour shoe.
Of course we know what happened in the Finals between Golden State and Cleveland. The Warriors blew a 3–1 and ended up being steamrolled by Nike’s two leading frontmen, Cavaliers Lebron James and Kyrie Irving. It came as no surprise to me that Under Armour’s stock cooled down a bit after that.
The conversation this season (2016–7) shifted from the all-encompassing Curry story, to the Kevin Durant-defecting-from-Oklahoma-how-will-he-play-in-Golden State conversation. With the addition of Durant, Curry’s had to do less…which equals less talk. A couple of months ago, some of the Sneaker sites were trying to claim that the Curry 3 was what sneakerheads want.
I’ve never met these people (and the Curry 3’s are already marked down from $140 to $99).
Sure, in 2014, Under Armour took over the number two spot (in the US) from Adidas and the Curry brand is driving huge increases in their Basketball segments year to year sales, they just introduced a signature shoe for The Rock (which ‘sold out’ — what does that even mean in 2017?), but if they’re ever going to over take Nike, Under Armour’s going to have come out the ‘burbs.
First things first…that damn logo. Maybe it can be relegated to the tongue (like they attempted to do on the Curry 3s) and perhaps they could come up with some other symbol. Who knows. One things for sure, we’re not fucking with em.
Maybe by the time my son is old enough to work and make his own money, him and his generation will make Under Armour for them what Nike was/is to many of us. Analysts don’t predict Plank’s company overtaking the Beaverton, Oregon behemoth by 2025. But Kevin Plank has never listened to them anyways.
We always carried a presence that we were bigger than we were, but we always became it. I’m a big believer that if you see it, it can happen. Get out in front of your company. Act like you are where you want to be in a year or two and then go out and realize it — make it happen. Kevin Plank
We’ll see, Kevin.
Black people always have jokes.
Recently, Fat Joe posted the above pic of himself, Stephon Marbury and Marbury’s son at a Knick game on Instagram and the jokes ensued.
“Wait, so not even his son wears his shoes?! Tells u something right there when ur own family doesn’t support your shit,” said outkastwill.
memo2self_ questioned Fat Joe’s status as a sneakerhead for not telling ‘starbery’ (sic) that his shoes were “corny af.”
I’on’t know either of those critics from Adam but I would be willing to bet that neither of them have a park, museum, or statue of themselves in their hometown…and surely they don’t have any of the above mentioned in another country.
Their argument would be that they don’t have to have shit to dislike something. To which I would say touché. I’ve got zero films on my resume and am highly critical of the filmmaking skills of Tyler Perry. But that’s based on the art of film though. I find the excessive over the shoulder shots and his shot composition pedestrian. Perry’s rich and he did it on his own. Get over it.
What’s my two IG critics criteria? One argues that Marbury’s son not wearing the Starbury brand indicates that the quality either isn’t good or that they are uncool. The other just throws out the age-old “corny” argument — I’m sure giving voice to the same thing other IG comedians were saying — lights on shoes are for children.
That is…until someone they deem worthy says it’s hot.
And therein lies the problem with Starbury and most Black-owned shoe companies. It’s a problem of image. But in the case of the Starbury, the issue is greater. Black people have a natural distrust of Marbury’s shoe because of the price point.
To us, inexpensive equals cheap.
That…is just plain foolish.
There isn’t a person alive that is unaware of the huge mark-up that we pay on goods. We know that much of what we buy is made overseas for as low a cost as possible. We know that the costs to ship the items back and packaging are included in that mark-up.
We know all of this, yet we still celebrate when an item that we covet goes on sale. Markdowns at the end of each season give us great joy, despite the fact that we know we’re doing the company a great service by helping eliminate unwanted inventory.
Recently I strolled into Ross on an underwear mission and walked out with a pair of Nike Free RN 3.0 Flyknits. The cashier was elated to get rid of the shoes that had been there “for two years.”
I doubt they were there that long but since I paid $15 for them…that’s right $15, the shoes were there long enough to go to a break-even price. Ross and other discounters’ bread and butter are these markdowns.
Most of the shoes in these stores are a year or two old but they are able to move because people trust the brand names. That, and the original price wasn’t the discount price. Psychologically, I felt that I was getting a deal for a shoe that originally cost $140 and went for $60 online. I felt that I had won.
But what if those shoes started out at $15?
That is why Stephon Marbury signed on with Steve & Barry back in 2006 — eliminate the huge mark-up, offer shoes at an affordable price, and make revenue by selling a large quantity of shoes. It would take a hundred or so sales to equal one marked-up shoe but at $15 a pop, that business model seemed probable.
Steve & Barry’s University Sportswear was founded in 1985 and known for it’s affordable prices. They came into the footwear game when the company hired Howard Schacter, marketer extraordinaire. Schacter brought his massive contact list to the table, one being Jordan Bazant, agent to Stephon Marbury. It was Schacter who proposed that Marbury come up with his own brand, sell it for a low price, all the while keeping the same quality.
Instead of an endorsement deal, Marbury chose to take royalties. Once the shoe was released, he didn’t just promote the shoes, he gave away over 3,000 pair in New York City Schools. That’s good promotion. But what was better promotion was the fact that Marbury played in the shoes. 48 games. If nothing else proved the quality of the Starbury, playing in intense NBA games for the majority of the season surely does.
The Starbury received mostly positive reviews…but media being media, they knew how to cause a divide and conquer controversy. That always drums up press. Ken Berger of Newsday decided to ask Lebron James if he would ever roll with a discount sneaker. James answered the only way that he could:
Me being with Nike, we hold our standards high. And we do a great job of putting out great merchandise, great shoes. It does come with a price that is pretty high, but at the same time you’re getting great quality for it. Lebron James
What was he supposed to say? Then, to stoke the fire, Stephon Marbury was asked to comment. Marbury’s answer then is the same that he would give on the relaunch (we’ll get to that):
I told him I’d rather be the owner than be owned, because you don’t own Nike, you work for Nike. I don’t care if they pay you $10 billion, you still work for them. Stephon Marbury
Although Steve & Barry’s didn’t reveal numbers, the Starbury brand was strong enough to have a second line, the Starbury II. That success also led to the company giving signature shoes to Venus Williams, Ben Wallace, surfer Laird Hamilton, and even actresses! That’s right, Steve & Barry’s launched a signature line for Sarah Jessica Parker and Amanda Bynes.
What happens next is quite fishy.
The Great Recession of 2008 hit and Steve & Barry’s were not immune. In July of that year, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Creditors balked at the founders desire to take a payout of $5M a piece. It’s said that BHY S&B Holdings won the bid for the troubled company….thing is two of the investors in that company were the founders of Steve & Barry’s.
Steve & Barry’s was allowed to pay Venus Williams $250,000. Sarah Jessica Parker said she was paid all of her royalties. They also sought to pay Ben Wallace and Laird Hamilton…what happened to Stephon Marbury? Steve & Barry’s made no attempt at paying Marbury.
It came out in the lawsuit that Marbury was owed a little over $2M in licensing and royalties. Not sure what happened with that case but by 2009, Marbury was out of the NBA, suffering from severe depression and having suicidal thoughts.
Stephon had hit rock bottom. But what a difference a year makes.
Remember that muesum that I was talking about? Yeah, Marbury has one…in China.
Stephon Marbury wasn’t the first NBA player to play in China. That honor might go to God Shammgod who played with multiple teams in the Chinese Basketball Association. Bonzi Wells also played for the CBA. Wells went AWOL, unable to adjust to life in a country that is Communist and 94% homogeneous. But no one has had the same impact as Marbury.
Having won three titles with the Beijing Ducks, Marbury is celebrated, loved, and has even become an honorary Chinese citizen.
It’s from this backdrop that Marbury reintroduced the Starbury, this time, totally financed by himself. He’s kept the name and for the most part, he’s kept the same price point:
I look at it as a mass play. I believe in the numbers. I think that what we’re doing is on the right path so my margins don’t have to be as a high as a Nike, Jordan, or LeBron shoe. They don’t necessarily have to be and I’m still able to give the type of quality. The quality doesn’t really change that much. The name is what people are paying for. Stephon Marbury
Currently there are seven styles on the Starbury site: The Streetbeat & The Highstepper (the $14.98 style), The Inflight, Strike, & Splinter (which goes for $32.98), The Kids Skurban Elite ($44.98), & the most expensive, The Starbury Elite Lightup ($49.98)
Last year the Starbury Elite Lightup caused a bit of a stir and fascination. The shoes, when paired with an app, light up in synch with your music. Those are the shoes that are seen above on Marbury’s feet but his IG also hints to non-metallic light up versions as well.
When the first Starbury’s were released, they were designed by concept-maker Rocketfish, an industrial design company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where the founders, TJ Gray and Ashley Brown claimed:
We have worked with many of the largest sneaker brands in the world. Cut the Starbury One in half and you’ll find that it is constructed the same way as other high performance basketball sneakers. Rocketfish
I wasn’t wearing sneakers in 06 when the Starbury debuted. I was resolved to the fact that all the shoes that were coming out in that time period were disgusting. But I did see kids roaming the Mott Haven streets in em. In 2017, I’m not sure what the market reach is.
People may have their complaints about the design. And I used to be of the belief that there were no Black sneaker designers.
I was wrong.
I learned about D’Wayne Edwards, a designer who got his break as the youngest footwear designer working for LA Gear at the age of 19. Four years later, he was the head of footwear design. Then he moved to Nike. There he joined another brotha, Wilson Smith III, who started out like Tinker Hatfield, designing interiors and then moved into shoe design. Between the two of them, they designed four iterations of the Jordan, the 16 & 17 (Smith) and the 21 & 22 (Edwards).
(Edwards would go on to start the sneaker design school, Pensole Design Academy)
I learned about Reebok’s E. Scott Morris who cut his teeth on Shaq’s (Shaq 4, 6) and Emmitt Smith’s shoes (ES22). Morris was in the Marines, got a Bachelor’s in Product Design in 89 and started working for Reebok in 90. He then took his talents to Nike and became cleat-centric.
I learned about Jason Mayden who came under D’Wayne Edwards at Nike, starting off as an intern, designing the Jordan 2009, and being ranked #20 in Complex’s Top 25 Powerful people in Sneakers 2013.
I learned about Ian Williams, a man who’s improbable story of creating a shoe as a janitor at Nike, ended up with him being an actual designer for nine years. A job that he gave up to open a coffee shop, Deadstock Coffee.
While the numbers are few, there are enough Black designers with years of experience creating new and innovative shoes, experimentation with materials and technology, and bringing a shoe to market. Any of the above mentioned people could be of service to Stephon Marbury. And that’s just the people that I know about.
Schools are brimming with students, who like my brother Divine Power, that I talked about in The Original Sneakerhead, have no idea how to get into the design business. D’Wayne Edwards was in the right place (LA) at the right time (before LA Gear took its meteoric fall) and flourished as a result. That was 1988. The competition to work for a major sneaker brand now must be incredibly fierce.
The Winner Take All market of Sneakers causes a brain drain of talent funneling any would be Black designer into Nike or Adidas or Under Armour.
Imagine how great it would be if these same talented Black designers turned their attention to Starbury, bought into the company’s value system, and turned out some of the greatest designed and engineered shoes…at a price that was affordable. Imagine if these young designers were able to have a stake in the company so that Starbury’s success meant their success. Imagine if all of that attracted some of the top athletes to support the brand. Imagine the pride that would produce in our people.
And what a great model of ownership that would be.
From my perspective, we’re trying to teach kids ownership because I think that’s where the younger generation is going to learn to have a sense of responsibility from doing whatever it is that they do. Stephon Marbury
During Starbury’s first run, they were a part of a company that did not believe in any form of advertising. Some analysts attribute Steve & Barry’s reliance on word of mouth as one of the factors behind the company’s downfall. While there may be some truth to that, the brand generated enough press to sell through whatever inventory they manufactured.
But it’s 2017, and even multi-national corporations are hiring young, quick, experts of social media to build campaigns for them. That money usually goes to everyone but us. Black people churn out memes and videos at break neck speeds. Watch how quick we put a crying Jordan face on anyone losing, be it the Grammy’s or the Superbowl. Watch how quick we edit together a piece with clips from old movies and viral videos to illustrate a particular emotion. We do this for free.
Imagine what these type of minds could do for a brand like Starbury.
And we’re not even going into the thousands of video makers, graphic designers, marketers, that work job Jobs who could have a real career if they joined on with Stephon Marbury.
Black folk could propel Starbury into the footwear conversation over night…if we wanted to.
Nike owes its popularity to exposure, getting the cool nod by the Rap community, and effective marketing, The Big East matches on CBS during the 1984–5 season etched the brand into the minds of viewers week in and week out.
That same year, Michael Jordan became rookie of the year with his Air Jordan being introduced during the spring of 85.
While LL Cool J wore the Air Jordan’s on the cover of his debut album, Radio, it wasn’t until the shoes began popping up in Rap videos in 87–88 that the brand became “cool.” That “coolness” was also aided by the Spike Lee directed Air Jordan ads that first aired in 1988.
In order for a Black-Owned Sneaker company like the Starbury to become a major player, they will have to take a page from Nikes’ book. Marbury would have to tap into his many relationships and make them believers. We’re talking the Rappers and entertainers who grew up with him, the ones cheering for him, hoping for the best. If we don’t do anything, we do “cool.” We do “cool” to death.
Marbury remains optimistic noting that with social media and the internet companies have a direct line to their customer base.
But it will take a lot of work to combat the inherent self-hate of the Black man and woman (which prevents us from seeing the good coming from anything Black) and an even more extensive marketing campaign to change the perception that the higher the cost, the better the quality shoe.
Most importantly, it will take the assistance of the many qualified men and women like D’Wayne Edwards, who worked and learned at major companies like Nike, who know about the technology, and the process of creating a successful and innovative shoe to propel a company like Starbury into the playing field with the Big 3 of the Sneaker Market.
That, and it would take the support of the hundreds of athletes that have been on the books at Nike, Adidas, & Under Armour to invest in Stephon Marbury’s vision. It shouldn’t be that difficult to understand considering that a majority of the Black players come from poverty and know what it’s like to be unable to afford the “cool” shoe.
At some point, we need to recognize that for over 80 years, shoe companies have been eating off our talent, blood, sweat and tears.
Every major shoe company since the days of Adidas has used the Black man and woman’s athleticism and star power to build their brands. Now, they use the taste and eye of designers who may make six figure salaries but have no stake in the company.
So why aren’t there any Major Black-Owned Sneaker Companies? We have yet to recognize that since the days of (dis)integration that we have become the ultimate consumer, that we produce very little, and are happy with the scraps that we get from the table of the people we continue to enrich. We have yet to come to grips with the fact that all we have is each other. We have yet to realize the power that we have.
And if we don’t invest in our ownselves, why should anyone else?
I’ve been doing this all by myself, I haven’t had any big help from a big company or investment firm. I believe that in time that will happen where I’m able to create revenue for myself to be able to make me blow up as big as the companies that are the leaders. Stephon Marbury
