The role of an editor has changed over time. An editor for print magazines had to worry about the articles that were being printed, where the advertisements would be placed, and how the photos would be represented. They had to be meticulous about every single apostrophe or period because it’s in print, it’s on paper, and it’s there forever.

Online Sneaker Education in the Digital Age

Now with the digital age, it’s really changed. Instead of managing just one publication, you’re managing an entire brand and every sort of platform that your brand touches. It could be a print magazine, and it could also be how the Facebook page is curated. How the photos that go up on the Instagram feed. How things are copy-edited on Twitter. And where the logos are placed on your videos.

Sneaker Education in Brand Management

You have to be more multifaceted now. You still need to know how to put a sentence together because that’s the building block of everything else. When you are working with a brand of sneakers in this digital age you’re not just managing one thing. You have to think about it as an entire brand, especially if you’re running a media site.

Trademark infringement is a huge issue in the sneaker industry. Just look at Lil Nas X and MSCHF; they did the Satan Shoes, where they took a Nike Air Max 97, injected human blood in the sole, and put devil imagery all over the sneakers. Nike sued for many different causes of action, trademark infringement being one of them. Trademark infringement is not something to take lightly. Remember this as you continue your online sneaker education.

Converse filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission against 31 different companies over trademark infringement on the Chuck Taylor sneakers. Adidas sued Skechers and actually won the case for trademark infringement on their Stan Smith. Warren Lotas was sued by Nike for his version of the Pigeon Dunk. The list goes on and on and on. You’ll see no shortage of these kinds of issues in your sneaker education.

In order to prove trademark infringement, you have to demonstrate two things. First, you must prove that you have a valid and protectable trademark. Next, you have to demonstrate that there’s a likelihood of consumer confusion; that the consumer will likely be confused as to the nature or origin of the product or services. In order to prove a likelihood of confusion, courts look at the Polaroid Factors, which is a long list of factors that they weigh against in order to determine whether or not there is a likelihood of confusion as to who actually owns the product or service.

Sneaker media now is about a lot more than just writing about when the shoe is coming out and which stores will carry it. You have to figure out what people in the scene care about. You have to create video content that can kind of give your own spin on that shoe beyond the objective facts around how much it is and how limited it’s going to be.

Sneaker education, and particularly online sneaker education, have opened up the world of sneaker design and media to more people around the world than ever before. There are just so many more voices out there.

It’s also interesting because now, brands are kind of competing with sneaker media. When sneaker blogs first came about, brands and the sneaker industry in general hadn’t really figured out how to tell their own stories around shoes, so they had to rely on websites like Sneaker News or Complex to tell those stories for them.

Now, the brands have their own ways of telling these stories and are increasingly more interested in doing so because they can control those narratives and they can create them on their own terms. There’s a little bit of a push-and-pull now in that relationship because brands would rather tell the stories themselves in a lot of instances.

Sneaker media is something that evolved as a reaction to sneaker culture. I feel like you had people who were super interested in sneakers. You could see that in something as simple as basketball.

Not to make Michael Jordan an example of everything, but Air Jordan, to some people, was as big a deal as Michael Jordan himself. Regular media, whether it’s newspapers or even magazines, were sort of slow to pick up on that. You would maybe get a photo of a sneaker somewhere.

I believe it was in 1987 that Sports Illustrated wrote a little column next to a piece on Michael Jordan about the Air Jordan 2. That was a huge moment and something that I cut out. I think I still have it somewhere because it was a whole thing specifically on the shoe.

This is off-topic a little bit, but that was the attainable part of Michael Jordan’s sort of magic. It’s like you couldn’t literally be Michael Jordan, but you could wear the same shoes he did. To find something you could read about that shoe was really special back then.

This was even before Bobitto wrote his piece in The Source. That piece took this thing that a lot of people were interested in, and one person who knew a lot about it talked about it. That made a lot of people realize, “Hey, I’m not alone in this.” I think we all had friends we talked about sneakers with, but knowing it could be this thing was super important.

I remember when I was writing to SLAM to try and write for them. One of the reasons I wanted to is because I knew the first Air Jordan Retros were coming out in 1994 or 1995, probably because they were in a magazine. I forget who mentioned it. But I wanted to write about them somewhere, and SLAM seemed like the place I would be able to do that.

Sneaker media before that was a very service-oriented thing, whether it would be Consumer Reports talking about something or specifically running magazines. I think those magazines probably don’t get enough credit. Magazines like Runner’s World talk about running shoes, but as a tool. They’re not talking about it as if it’s cool because it has this visible airbag. It’s like, “No, we ran in this for 500 miles, and here’s what we liked about it, and here’s what we didn’t.”

Since then, obviously, it’s blown up everywhere. Bobbito did a sneaker show on ESPN. You had web-based sneaker shows even just in the Complex network, whether it’s Full Size Run or Joe La Puma doing Sneaker Shopping or DJ Clark Kent and me doing Quickstrike, which predated a lot of those things.

It was a matter of knowing an audience is out there and convincing someone to take the chance on you to serve that audience. I think that’s the most important part — the audience was there, and the interest was there. The audience just needed that product to serve them, and it grew up around them.

There are a bunch of different things that we do from a content standpoint. When you’re talking content, there’s a type of very elevated, longer or shorter long-form video that you can do that might end up on YouTube. There are live broadcasts that you could publish out through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any other similar service.

Most of the time, people want to have a better look at product. So, sometimes, it takes the form of an unboxing video where you’re showing someone a shoe that might be coming out next week. It might have come out last week. It’s pretty time-sensitive. Again, it comes back to being human, taking people through the product, giving people a little bit more information than they would get through other channels.

This has an influence in the sneaker world that changed how it used to be. In the ’90s, it was pro athletes doing the influencing. Just take a look at like Michael Jordan back in the day. Everyone always cared about what he was wearing on the court. Then, it used to be something like rap album covers. Those would influence people as well.

But now in the digital age, it’s kind of changed. Anybody can really have any influence on someone. It could be a 16-year-old kid in Dubai who just wants to start his own clothing brand, and he has millions of followers. Or it can be a writer, for example, like Russ or Joe who have seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of things within their industry. People want to see what they’re wearing. They know that what they’re wearing is what’s hot right now.

The spectrum is really widened from just entertainers and athletes. Through social media, anybody can have an influence on someone. This is especially important when it comes to sneaker education.

For today’s crop of sneaker influencers, there’s a kind of a fascination with younger kids who have a lot of money. It’s like the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Growing up, a lot of people always wanted to be rich. As a kid, not maybe as an adult, but in their youth, they wish they had had unlimited money. Younger kids are a little more forthcoming with their needs and desires.

So, you see these kids spending their money on things that an adult, who has the same amount of money, normally wouldn’t spend their money on, whether it’s Benjamin Kicks taking his Mercedes truck and making it look like a Virgil Air Jordan 1 or Money Kicks taking his father’s Ferrari and wrapping it to look like Supreme x Louis Vuitton.

It’s almost like a voyeuristic element to see what the lives of these über-rich, young, sneaker-head kids are really like. We’re never going to live that lifestyle, so we want to see what it’s really like.

The key to any industry, not just social media, is consistency. That’s an important lesson in your online sneaker education. The sneaker media personalities have become big names because they’ve remained consistent in who they are, whether it’s an act for the camera or not. They continually update and live this life as a certain persona. So, it becomes real even if that’s not who they were at first. They’ve made the world believe that that’s who they are, and that’s who they’ve created their social media personality behind.

Just being charismatic is another thing that really helps these people stick out. Sneaker YouTube and social media as a whole kind of has the flair for being overdramatic and doing stuff over the top. So, these guys have done over-the-top things on their social media accounts, which is going to get more attention than people who just keep it really simple. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be yourself. But any big YouTuber right now who has a huge following is typically doing ridiculous things.

A hypebeast is someone who tailors their purchasing habits around perceived hype or the perceived resale value. In sneaker culture, it’s typically associated with people who may want a very limited sneaker collaboration, or they may want a pair of Kanye West sneakers. Maybe they want a Babe hoodie or a Supreme T-shirt just because they know that a lot of other people want them.

Liking those items in their own is not bad, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed to like a pair of GCs or a Supreme hoodie just because it’s trendy. But hypebeasts are generally associated with teenage boys who are dressing based on internet trends and want to show the world they have all the cool stuff without really developing their own unique personal style yet. They kind of just throw it all together, and it can look very awkward because they’re generally awkward at that age as well.

In summary, that’s what a hypebeast signifies. It’s just someone who’s chasing the most sought-after items without any sort of rhyme or reason other than the fact that other people think they look cool.

When you speak about the merge between sneakers and sports, there’s no greater influence than Michael Jordan. One of the most compelling issues revolving around Michael Jordan and sneakers was when the NBA banned his sneakers for having too much black on them in 1985. This was a story that really tapped into the heartstrings of urban sneaker consumers.

Questions were asked about the issues of the sneakers. What was wrong with the coloring of the sneakers? What rules were being violated by having a lot of black on the sneaker? The unbelievable answer was that there wasn’t any white on them.

The Racial Tensions Were High in New York for the Sneaker Industry

Now you have the perfect storm of events with a whole lot of tension behind a whole lot of racial situations. You have this symbolism of the best player in the NBA, at the time, being told that his shoes had too much black on them and that he would be fined if he continued to wear them. The emotion in this controversial issue created a great marketing story for sneaker consumers.

On September 15th, Nike created a revolutionary new basketball shoe. On October 18th, the NBA threw the shoes out of the game. Fortunately, the NBA can’t stop you from wearing Nike’s Air Jordans.

Michael Jordan Was the Greatest Influence on Sneakers in Sports

At the time and up until Michael Jordan ended his career of being the best basketball player in the world, a new-wave phenomenon of sneakers became insanely popular. So here you have, arguably, the most important athlete of all times. He did everything. From an athletic standpoint, there is still no better player in the game of basketball. Everyone wanted to be like Mike on the basketball court. But in his younger days, Mike was also very fashionable. He wore Nike sweatsuits and rocked gold chains.

Michael Jordan helped transcend sneakers, the sneaker culture, and sneakers as a fashion object. The sneakers were so beautiful that people wanted to wear them off the basketball court and into the streets. People were wearing Jordans a hell of a lot more in the streets than they were on the basketball court. So Michael Jordan was everything when it came to sneakers.

Michael Jordan hasn’t played a professional game of basketball in decades now, but Air Jordans are still the number one talked about sneakers. They are still the number one sneakers that people line up and camp outside for. Jordans aren’t really used for basketball anymore. They rarely were back in the day, but they are even less now. Jordans have become more of a fashion product these days.

Sneaker Culture Fueled by Celebrities on Social Media

Celebrities are a significant influence in the sneaker culture. You see a lot of the sneakers they are wearing, especially on their personal social media accounts. For example, you see Lebron James taking lots of photos of his shoes and posting them on his Instagram Stories. He posts a lot of pictures of his shoes, and you notice that he has better sneakers than everyone else does. It’s a place for him to show off his sneakers, but it’s also his cosign, and this marketing tactic works. Kids are going to see his posts and want his sneakers.

Nowadays, athletes who play sports aren’t as influential in footwear as they used to be. However, we are in a place now where people are more interested in what the athletes are wearing before the game than what they are wearing on the court. If Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook wear a pair of Virgil Abloh Air Jordan 1s before the game, then that’s what everyone is going to notice. Fans and consumers may not be buying as many signature on-court sneakers anymore, but it’s those off-court moments that express their true personalities.

Every celebrity on social media these days feels like a sneakerhead. Sneakers make people feel good, whether they are rich or not. When you have new shoes, and that new shoe feeling, you kind of want to show them off to the world.

The internet has had a profound effect on all our lives, influencing everything from the way we watch television, to shopping to the products we purchase. The internet has greatly affected “sneaker culture” in that prior to widespread use of the web, popularity of sneakers and sales were often regional. At one time, one must either live in a certain area or know someone in that community in order to get certain styles of sneakers. Today, the internet allows us to choose our sneakers with the mere click of a button.

The internet provides information on release dates of limited-edition sneakers as well as those produced and sold solely in certain regions. Now, a person can simply hop on the internet in order to purchase that limited-edition sneaker or those that were relegated to a distant region just two decades ago. E-commerce has broken barriers that once were virtually impossible for most consumers to cross. Plus, the internet provides sneaker release dates so no one has to be left out of the sneaker industry’s latest offerings.

However, the internet is contributing to another phenomenon unheard of prior to the internet – reselling. Reselling of sneakers is at an all-time high, which has both good points and bad. Retailers have difficulty in that if they get a limited number of Yeezys, millions of shoppers may flood the organization’s website, crashing it.

The internet has created a raffle of sorts where consumers are searching for certain brands and styles of sneakers. Even parents are getting in on the selling aspect of retail; many will order that coveted pair of shoes at the retailer’s price (usually around $150). Then, they put the sought-after shoes on the internet where those who weren’t lucky enough to get those shoes from a retailer will pay $800 or more for the latest styles. It’s a win for the retailer who makes their initial profit, but the internet seller on eBay or other resale sites banks a huge profit, too.

However, the “purists” on the internet see this resale opportunity as a bad thing. At the same time, those with careers in retail might not have their jobs without the internet as it operates today.

Social media is also a driving force in both the initial sale and resale of sneakers. Online sneaker education chiefly comes from social media as well as sites that post reviews on upcoming popular models of shoes. Some look at the online sneaker sale movement as somewhat a “cult” thing; however, a company’s social media presence is definitely having a positive effect on sales.

In the 1990s, most of the attention a sneaker received was due to an athlete’s wearing a certain brand or style of sneaker. Maybe consumers would see the shoe on television; however, prior to the great improvements in high-definition television, it might be impossible for consumers to see an athlete’s kicks. Perhaps a photoshoot in the latest edition of “Sports Illustrated” would show that same cool shoe; however, consumers were on their own finding the exact brand and style of shoe.

Social media sites such as Instagram post photos of athletes in high resolution, and consumers can definitively see what their favorite athlete is wearing. Plus, one can quickly go to their preferred web browser to find the shoe and all available online shops. Even with limited-edition offerings, such as Nike’s LeBron James sneakers, consumers are still clamoring to get their hands on a coveted pair. A great example of this is Super Bowl LII, when Justin Timberlake wore a highly sought-after shoe. Those who have certain apps on their phones are alerted that the celeb is live wearing a limited-edition pair of shoes. By the next commercial break, most of those limited-edition shoes – made in a certain quantity, by the way – are gone.

Perhaps shoe enthusiasts should be more concerned with the amount of shoes being produced. Consider the Virgil Abloh Ten Nike – only a certain number of people will get this shoe during the initial drop. Some consumers report only getting error messages when trying to order. A larger number of shoes produced would help prevent this, but manufacturers have little desire to do so. Perhaps retailers should look at ensuring this won’t happen due to their website crashing.

Maybe consumers should be satisfied with the “halo effect” of shoe drops. If a consumer fails to get the coveted Yeezy 350 on its initial drop, then maybe the purchaser should consider the Alphabounce or the Ultra Boost. Regardless, consumers will need to move quickly to get any of the higher end sneakers desired by many in the public.

Perhaps consumers may need to consider looking for a product that is not the hot item at the moment. Few sneaker releases sell out almost immediately, unless the product is one of the highly coveted styles. Unless consumers must absolutely have that exact style, buyers will have to then scour the resale market where some of these shoes sell for up to $1,500. If money is no object, then it’s great to wait on the resale. However, those on a budget will have to find other ways to get that coveted shoe.

Sneaker education tells us that eventually, everything – no matter how popular – goes on sale. This includes those limited-edition sneakers. Consumers should perhaps worry not about what LeBron’s next shoe will look like, but on how they can still procure a recently released and still popular shoe at a much lower price.

Sometimes it pays to look back on previous releases instead of the latest, newest releases. Consider the Air Jordan, after 20 years plus of production, a shoe still as popular as it was upon initial release.

Back in the day, people chose their kicks based on what was popular in their location – on the street, down the block – today, people are looking to the latest sporting event and what a favorite celeb is wearing rather than one’s closest friends. Jordan chose to capitalize on Timberlake’s popularity and his appearance on the Super Bowl’s halftime show. It’s a decision that turned out to be highly profitable for the company.

Procuring our favorite sneakers today is no easy task, but we consumers have more avenues today than our predecessors just two decades ago. Download those apps and set your notifications to be able to get those coveted kicks at the best price possible.

After learning about trademark law, copyright law, and patent law, another important part of sneaker education is learning about trade secrets. So what is a trade secret and how is it protected?

A trade secret is a business method, customer list, pattern, idea, or some other non-public piece of information that a company will go through great lengths to protect. Trade secrets are important because companies work tirelessly to develop independent ways of doing business and to create a special product or a process, and they need to protect these items. The information is used in business to create an opportunity to obtain an economic advantage over competitors that don’t have that information. A really famous example of a trade secret is the secret ingredients in Coca-Cola’s recipe.

How Do Trade Secrets Apply to the Sneaker Industry?

Companies like sneaker companies go to great lengths to protect their trade secrets. In 2014, trade secrets were a topic at the highest level when three former employees left Nike to join Adidas. These gentlemen left and allegedly took with them information relating to various aspects of the Nike brand, including their processes of making sneakers and other confidential information about marketing, promotion, and many things that we discuss in our book about the business side.

As soon as these three gentlemen announced that they were leaving Nike to join Adidas, Nike filed a lawsuit. In it, they alleged that these gentlemen were taking specific confidential information, otherwise known as trade secrets, and using it for their benefit and for the benefit of Adidas. In its complaint, Nike asked for damages of over $10 million, claiming that this information was extremely sensitive and highly valuable to their brand. The case ended up settling out of court. But eventually, these gentlemen made their way over to Adidas, soo it was worked out. But it just goes to show you the extreme lengths and costs that companies will go through to protect their trade secret information.

Because trade secrets are so sensitive, it’s hard to know which companies have what information. But companies spend a lot of money on research and development to create trade secrets and to gain an economic advantage over their competitors.

How Does a Company Protect Its Trade Secrets?

One method that companies use to protect their information is by having employees that come into the company sign NDAs. NDAs are “non-disclosure agreements,” and they protect exactly what trade secrets are, confidential information such as data, customer lists, processes, patterns, and other sensitive and highly valuable information. NDAs are useful. But they don’t always work because many employees leave, and they go and use the information elsewhere. Sometimes, it’s hard to prove that an employee has breached an NDA. So they’re used to create a chilling effect to make sure that employees know that there will be a liability if they disclose the information that they obtained through their relationship with the employer.

Another way that companies can protect their trade secrets is through restrictive covenants in their employment agreements. We’re not going to get into much detail on restrictive covenants in this module. But when an employee joins a company, the company will sometimes ask an employee to waive certain rights and to abide by certain restrictive covenants. So if an employee comes to a company and then leaves, they may be asked, for a certain period of time, to not work for a competitor, to not disclose confidential information about the company, and to not solicit other employees that have worked for the company. These are what are called restrictive covenants. They’re methods and tools that companies use to protect their trade secrets through employment agreements.

Another way that companies can protect their trade secrets is by filing a lawsuit. This is, obviously, the most final and nuclear option in the trade secret protection ladder, but this is sometimes the last and best option when sensitive trade secrets are at stake. A company can bring a lawsuit against an employee or another corporation that it believes has stolen their trade secrets, and through litigation, they can try to work out protecting that information, stopping the dissemination of the confidential information, and, in some cases, returning the confidential information and trade secrets back to the company.

Now that we’ve covered trade secrets, we’ve really gone through all of the main facets of intellectual property law. We’ve covered trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets. After learning these basics of intellectual property, we can then move on to our next section, which is the law of sneakers and the more practical side of the business, which we call “The Art Of The Sneaker Deal.”