“A lot of people get copyright and trademarks mixed up,” says sneaker industry professional Kenneth Anand. What is a copyright? A copyright protects an original work of authorship. “Original works of authorship” can include, but are not limited to, architecture, graphics, pictures, sculptures, works of literature, or other types of artistic work.

Examples of Copyrights

Jay-Z would have a copyright on the lyrics that he writes for his songs. He would also have a copyright on the songs themselves, as they are fixed in MP3 or CD format. Artist Daniel Arcam would have a copyright over his paintings, unique Pokemon, and eroded DeLorean sculptures.

Writer George R. R. Martin would have a copyright over his books for “Game of Thrones” and the screenplay for the HBO TV series “Game of Thrones.” These are various examples of the types of copyrights that you can have.

Benefits of Copyrights

“One of the main goals of copyrights is to allow the inventor the ability to reap the benefits of creating the work,” Kenneth Anand explains. This means that whoever owns a copyright has the exclusive right to reproduce, publish, promote, and sell their works of art. In order to obtain a copyright, the work must be fixed in a tangible form. You cannot get a copyright for just an idea.

Obtaining a Copyright

In order to obtain a copyright, your work must follow three basic requirements. First, the work must be original, meaning it must be independently created rather than a copy of something else already existing. Second, it must be creative, meaning that there must be some minimum basis of creativity for the work. Finally, it has to be fixed. Copyrights cannot be ideas or things made up out of your imagination. Instead, they must be fixed in some tangible form. If a work has all three of these elements – original, creative, and fixed – you can obtain a copyright for it.

What types of works can you copyright? As said before, a copyright protects works of authorship, such as songs, books, videos, and other similar creations. You can even get a copyright for fabric patterns, jewelry designs, software, and architectural designs.

Copyrights in the Sneaker Industry

What do copyrights mean for sneakers? Are copyrights even applicable to sneakers? Typically, under US law, you cannot get a copyright for things that are useful articles, like hoodies, shoes, and/or pairs of pants. These are useful articles that are not copyrightable because they are not considered creative, unique, or original. However, there are some ways copyrights can be applied to sneakers.

Many sneaker companies are now turning to copyright law to protect their designs. How? First of all, designs on the side of a sneaker can only be copyrighted if they are separate and distinct from the useful article (the shoe) itself. Kenneth Anand’s former colleagues at adidas, for example, obtained a copyright application and protection for the design of the Yeezy 350 Boost.

“Well, they applied to the copyright review board. And they originally denied their application, because the copyright board said that the designs on the side of the Yeezy were not original, and were not separate from the useful article itself,” recalls Anand. “They were not satisfied with this so they appealed. And ultimately they were able to obtain a copyright application for the design of the 350 Boost, which is the stripe pattern that everybody knows and loves of the 350.”

It took many years and a lot of legal fighting, but Kenneth Anand’s colleagues managed to obtain a copyright. Today, more and more sneaker companies are turning to copyright applications for a cheap and easy way to protect the designs on the side of their sneakers, as long as the designs qualify as copyrightable works.

While sneaker companies are turning to copyright law to protect the patterns and designs on the side of their shoes, copyright law is traditionally used in the sneaker industry in many other ways. “For example, you can copyright your website, photos, or other promotional materials that you create, in relation to the sneakers themselves,” Kenneth Anand continues. “So copyright is useful in many ways to protect a sneakers brand and all of the collateral that goes around building that brand.”

An important thing to note about copyrights is that you must ensure your designs do not infringe on other people’s works. If you do not, you could find yourself in a lawsuit that could take years to resolve and can be quite costly.

Final Thoughts

Sneaker education expert Kenneth Anand highly recommends that you make sure anything that you are creating is original, creative, and fixed in a tangible form. If you meet those three requirements, you will be on your way to obtaining a copyright and protecting your own intellectual property.

Sneaker YouTube is a growing genre where there are several different types of videos and content that are being made. You have higher-end productions like Complex’s “Sneaker Shopping With Joe La Puma,” where he takes celebrity guests to sneaker stores and then interviews them, sees what they purchase, and gets their thoughts on sneakers.

You also have debate shows like the one I’m involved with on Sole Collector called “Full Sized Run.” And you also have a lot of independent creators out there making their own vlog-style content who aren’t attached to any media company. The video might be going through their day, they might have a new pick up they want to show, they may have their thoughts on some sort of sneaker content, or they might even have beef with another sneaker YouTuber. And it’s always usually first-person style following them around the city if they’re on tour if they’re going to a Sneaker Con event, or just what’s going on in their life.

And people really get attached to these personalities. You have guys like Qias Omar, who has a lot of vlogs. You have someone like Jacques Slade, who’s known for his unboxing videos. It’s a true unboxing where he takes boxes and cracks them open right on camera, and you find out what’s there. They don’t let you know in the title what their shoes are, so you get the feeling of suspense.

If you’re in the know about footwear, you probably have a feel for what’s in that box. But for a lot of kids, they get excited. Unboxing videos are huge on YouTube right now. You have people unboxing Disney characters that have tens of millions of views. It may seem like pretty silly content, but there really is some excitement around seeing the unknown and having it revealed in front of you.

We do the unboxing videos. We do the decor content. But we’re also trying to figure out ways to look at things through a different lens. One way is through our game show on Facebook called “Price the Hype,” where we took the format of a similar show on TV (which I won’t name) and injected sneakers into it.

We make up these mini-games where we force a person to actually pretend to buy their shoes with an app we built and then take a photo of their shoes to do a real quick flex. If they do that, they win a challenge. If they don’t win the challenge, maybe we pour chocolate syrup on the $1,000 pair of sneakers that they were trying to get!

There are also some debate and opinion style shows like “Full Size Run” or “Quickstrike,” where it takes on an ESPN “Around the Horn” feel. There are people with opposite views on the same sneaker or sneaker-related topic, and they debate.

Indie Media Creators Hold Brands Accountable

A lot of people accuse sneaker media of being too safe in terms of their relationships with brands and with stores and them being afraid to call people out. We created the show so we could do just that. And some of the people at the brands aren’t happy about it, but we’re glad that we get to speak our voice.

A lot of sneaker media is very objective, and it’s just giving you the straight facts about what’s happening, what’s releasing, how did this release go down, things like that. We’re there to give our own opinions, tell you why we think this shoe was a garbage fire, why we think this shoe is better than other people realize, why this designer messed up, things like that.

There’s a couple of reasons why you need to remain authentic in sneaker media. One is that the brands really need you more than you need them. You’re here to serve the community, not necessarily the brands. I think a lot of people let that slip and don’t realize to what extent they need to be honest with people about exactly what happened. And I understand because it’s a difficult relationship to maintain. If you’re going to tell people how Adidas messed this thing up and you’ve got a contact at Adidas, it makes them look bad. But you’ve got to tell the truth.

Also, you have to think about your authenticity when a brand approaches you with some type of partnership. Maybe you’ve got enough of a social following for them to want you to take a little bit of money to post something on your Instagram.

The first question is, do you actually like that thing? Is that a shoe you would actually wear? The second thing is, is it going to alienate your audience or your followers if you’re on there shilling with a hashtag ad post about how much you like this shoe? I’ve taken money to post things on my Instagram before. I got plenty of hate for it, but it was a shoe I actually liked, and I felt comfortable with it.

Can Social Media Make Money for Creators?

There’s a lot of different ways to get paid off of social media. There’s traditional ad revenue where you’re getting a cut of the ads from YouTube. Influencers might be offered sponsorships where a brand might come in and offer them a nice check to exclusively wear a certain brand in their videos. And there’s a traditional corporate sense, which I fall into, where the company gets the ad revenue, and you get a salary. When I started out as a freelance writer, I was getting paid per story. It may start out as a passion project, but there are different ways to actually pay your bills through sneaker media.

There’s also vlogging, which is a popular format in sneaker media. Take examples like Money Kicks, who is a 16-year-old kid who just happens to have billionaire parents and wild exotic animals at home. You know, he documents how he lives his life. And it could be Fat Joe and Khaled coming by his place to meet his monkey or his lion! Another one that we use at Complex is called “Life at Complex,” where it’s Tony. It’s just his day-to-day life or just things that go on at the Complex office. One aspect is opening the mail that we get from our viewers. We get a lot of really cool promotional packages from a lot of different companies, and not just from sneaker brands.

So, there’s a lot of different formats. There might be one that doesn’t even exist yet. I think the most important part is knowing that there’s going to be an audience for something and doing something that you know will give a unique point of view on footwear that hasn’t been seen before. There are a lot of ways to get into sneaker media. You don’t just have to be a blogger or a YouTuber, which is what most people first think of when they think of sneaker education. You can just run a really good curated Instagram or Snapchat account.

One example that comes to mind is Corgishoe. He’s built a following based on just buying sneakers on clearance and then storing them for years before he sells them on his Instagram. And people will find him, and they’ll say, I remember these. I forgot these existed. He’ll resell them on his Instagram and then delete the photo right after. It’s all about finding a niche or finding a way that is, one, relevant to you and that an audience is looking for.

Our show “Full Sized Run” all started off as a Facebook Live broadcast every week before it got to YouTube and before we had sponsorship money. You look at DJ Khaled’s Jordan partnership. I feel like that started off when he was a real pioneer in using Snapchat first and cultivating an audience.

There are also these super-niche audiences. One guy that comes to mind is Brad Hall. His unboxings are kind of a mix of dry humor and comedy and an actual unique point of view on products. He’s not really taking himself too seriously. The quality of it is almost something that could be seen on Comedy Central. That’s just one example of how you can have a super targeted audience outside of just the Complex’s and the Sole Collectors and the Sneaker News and the Nice Kicks talk.

You cannot talk about the popularity of sneakers without acknowledging their origins as part of the hip hop culture. Since the birth of hip hop in the 70s, sneakers have been the official footwear for the global phenomenon.

Sneakers Represent a Movement

Hip hop and its related elements were all about anti-establishment, youthful expression, and creativity. So it was only natural that sneakers represented that movement when you think about all the places you couldn’t go wearing them. They weren’t allowed in 70s clubs, churches, or restaurants. You couldn’t show up to work wearing sneakers or get married in them.

Sneakers were a marginalizing piece of footwear, but they created a stereotype of what kind of person you were. If you wore sneakers all the time, folks didn’t view you as living up to your full potential in becoming what you aspired to be.

Hip Hop Represented its Own Rules

In the hip hop culture, sneakers were part of the experience of expressing yourself through things like B-boying, graffiti, DJing, and MCing. This experience transformed into the rules that governed being a true hip hop person.

Furthermore, there were rules of originality that manifested through sneakers. These abiding rules still apply today. If my friend and I showed up somewhere wearing the same sneakers, we would have to find a way to make them look different. We would change the laces, use bleach, or spray paint stripes on them. These different methods were being used to ensure that we abided by the original hip hop rules. In the quest to make sure that we lived up to those rules came the birth of customized sneakers. These were created as a basic bonafide everyday way to honor the rules of hip hop. You can never disassociate what sneakers are today from the origins of the hip hop culture.

Run-DMC Recognition

In the early 80s, record labels were signing more hip hop artists, which led to more visibility and served as a reflection and representation of inner-city life. This was a pivotable moment for sneakers.

During the Raising Hell Tour at Madison Square Garden in 1986, Run-DMC performed their song called “My Adidas.” This song was a response to another song called “Fell Into Sneakers,” which was a disparaging song about people who wear sneakers. The lyrics sang about “felony cases committed by brothers with phat shoelaces.”

During Run-DMC’s live performance of “My Adidas,” they requested that concert-goers take their Adidas sneakers off and put them in the air. Some of those attendees were Adidas executives. Thousands of fans in the arena waved their shoes in the air.

The Adidas executives instantly saw the influence that the urban community had on trending and branding long before those words even existed. They saw how powerful the urban community could be when they got behind a particular product.

Shortly after that performance, Adidas gave Run-DMC an endorsement deal. This was huge because it was the first non-athletic endorsement deal by a global sportswear brand, let alone a sneaker company.

This endorsement spoke to the fact that Run-DMC were great ambassadors for what was already happening in the urban communities. Especially in New York, where they represented being from Queens. It also showed that no matter where their worldwide fame and stardom took them, the urban and hip hop aesthetic and rules went with them.

Laces Tied to the Hip Hop Culture

When it comes to sneaker education, you’ll learn that a lot of it is based on making the most of the little that you have. I came from a time when it wasn’t about having the most expensive or most colorful sneakers. It was just about being fresh, which meant that everything you had on was washed and clean. So when you live in a neighborhood where everyone has Bobos, you want to rock my Bobos fresher than everyone else.

For me, it started with the lacing styles. It wasn’t about having the most fly shoes. I was rocking hand-me-downs from my older cousins. We came from pretty humble beginnings, so we were just trying to have fun and be fresh at the same time. At the time, canvas sneakers and light suede basketball sneakers were the most popular. Chuck Taylors, City Brocades, Puma Clydes, and 69ers were more affordable options.

Shells were the opportunity of the day because they were on the higher end of affordable for the people in the hood at the time. But it wasn’t really about how much the sneakers cost; it was about being fresh and staying fresh. I knew dudes that would get a pair of kicks at the beginning of seventh grade, and the same sneakers would still be crispy at the top of eighth grade using just some dishwashing soap and a soft toothbrush.

Sneaker Industry

I think most people think that sneaker culture is primarily an American thing, but it’s spread throughout the world in different ways.

Europe

European sneaker culture evolved to a huge degree during the ’80s and ’90s because they had Adidas. Adidas was huge then, and it remains huge now. Europe also had Terrace culture, soccer stadiums, and football stadiums. People would stand, watching sports matches, wearing general Adidas sneakers. You could almost call them sports shoes. They are made for training. They are made for anything.

Adidas has been turning out sneakers for years. In America, you’d be hard-pressed to tell which year or era a sneaker came from because they all looked very similar. In addition, many new shoes have been reintroduced as retro models. However, Adidas in Europe have more significant distinctions between them, so people who grew up with a specific model have more memory connections with that particular design.

Japan

I think the sneaker culture in Japan took a lot of inspiration from the American market and then hit it back to us. It’s almost like we served it to them before they returned it back to us with a whole lot of backspin on it.

Take a look at resale shops in New York or LA. such as Stadium Goods, Flight Club, or Rif LA. The iconic way that the sneakers are presented — shrinkwrapped on the shelves — is something that came over from Japan.

All of this came from a time when it seemed like Japan almost valued American culture more than we did. I remember a time when people in America were selling Air Jordans to people in Japan because they would pay top dollar for them. I’ve heard stories about people clearing out thrift stores of brands like Nike and Levis then selling them to people in Japan to make a profit. This was during a time when Japan cherished these things more than we did.

The Shift

The exchange with Japan eventually turned back around on America though. Japan started getting limited-edition things that America now wanted. Nike CO-JP program made shoes specifically for the Japanese shoe market. They got their own Dunks, Air Force Ones, and Colorways. These were marketed only in Japan, making them even more coveted here in America.

What started with Japanese consumers desperately wanting things from America turned into products being explicitly made for the Japanese market, then ended with American consumers desperately wanting products from Japan. There are still shoes to this day that are hard to find and highly coveted in America.

Export Sneaker Culture

During your online sneaker education, it’s important to take a look at new sneaker markets that are trying to open. Furthermore, study Nike or Adidas as they expand their markets in America. You’ll see that it’s difficult to expand a market like that at such a high level. Are they able to get American consumers who already own 100 pairs of shoes that they don’t know what to do with to buy even more? Maybe it’s better to open a Chinese or Indian market with billions of potential new consumers. Perhaps it’s better to try and export sneaker culture again and get it going somewhere else in their own way.

I would say that to some degree, sneakers have always been aspirational. Stan Smith would be wearing a pair of tennis shoes, and you might think, wow, I could get the same pair of shoes as the guy who won Wimbledon. Then there’s also Eric Jordan being its own thing. But if you look at a show like MTV Cribs, that kind of brought it all together.

Before MTV Cribs, you would see a celebrity in whatever his or her role was, whether it be a rapper, or actor, or athlete, and you’d see bits and pieces of it. Maybe you would know what car they drove, or you’d see a picture of their house, but that show kind of brought everything together. Suddenly it was like, you would see the same person who owned a Rolls Royce or Ferrari, and a huge pool, and a 600-bedroom house with an entire closet dedicated to their sneakers.

That was the first time you really got to see inside a rapper or celebrity’s sneaker closet. Or, if you’re a sneaker-head, you probably remember the rapper Fat Joe opening up his crates of white Blanco Y Blanco Air Force Ones and licking the soles of them. And then there were just these moments when they’d go into the closets of celebrities, you would know who was really into shoes and who wasn’t.

Probably the biggest one was Fat Joe licking the bottom of his sneakers, which a lot of people then imitated to a degree. Hopefully, they didn’t lick their shoes for real, because as someone who’s been around plenty of pairs of new and old sneakers, I would not recommend it, as they definitely don’t taste very good.

Overall, though, it gave it all context. It showed you how important shoes were in relation to a lot of other things in their lives. Maybe someone didn’t have a t-shirt closet or a video game closet, but they would have a sneaker closet. They would have a room dedicated to their shoes. Maybe your parents didn’t quite get it but seeing that could have been something that helped clue them in. They could see that even if their kids made millions of dollars someday, they would still love sneakers.

If you have an interest in learning more about the sneaker industry or media, give online sneaker education a try. If you have an interest in a sneaker education, there’s no reason why you can’t get started learning right away.

One popular trend in sneaker culture right now is unboxing videos. And the best unboxing videos are the ones that are the most creative, whether it be camera angles or the suspense of what’s going to be shown, or if it’s just that the product is such an amazing one that people need to see it. Those are a few of the things that make a good unboxing video. However, what also makes a good unboxing video is a good host. Someone who can interject humor into their own personality in a way that adds to the product. When the host is able to do that, it gives you a real reason to want to watch it.

For the most part, people are unboxing all of the same stuff. One of the biggest criticisms about sneaker media in general is that oftentimes, the hosts aren’t as informed as maybe they should be. They don’t necessarily take the time to do the research before getting on camera, but they’re still making statements without really knowing what they’re talking about.

So, if you’re going to make an unboxing video, or any type of sneaker YouTube video, you should go into it with an informed opinion, and probably already have an idea of the things that you’re going to say. Or, at least talk about a subject that you feel confident giving factual information about. This is a good idea because if you’re going to have potentially hundreds of thousands of people watching it, you don’t want to be giving them the wrong info.

There are thousands of sneaker-related Instagram and Twitter accounts out there that you can follow. But which ones are actually worth spending your time on? Well, it kind of depends what it is that you’re looking for. The brand accounts are kind of obvious because they’re going to end up in your feed regardless. Usually, it’s best to look for the accounts that can give you something you aren’t seeing elsewhere.

There are a lot of good resellers to follow. There are guys like @solestreetsneakerco in New York who sometimes have some good information before the official accounts really do. Vintage sellers are also worth following too because they show you a lot of history that you don’t necessarily see on regular sneaker websites. A couple of these are Gusto in Japan or Doggsfoot. They come out with posts showing crazy pairs that you totally forgot about, or didn’t even know existed.

Leaker accounts are also good to follow because they’ll show you what’s coming out way ahead of time. Some of these accounts, like @pinoe77 can help give you an idea of what’s going on behind the scenes in the sneaker industry.

Hashtags are important because they’re a fun way to talk to others in the sneaker community and create little moments around what people are discussing. We use them a lot on our show “Full Size Run,” just to reference moments that we’ve talked about before or reference the hashtag “team early.” That’s the hashtag that someone might post on Twitter or Instagram when they want to show off about getting a new pair of sneakers a couple of weeks ahead of time.

These are just a few of the ways that people in the sneaker industry and community use social media to interact and share information. And it’s great to see how the advancement of technology can really help grow these kinds of communities.

Online sneaker education allows you to learn more about how the sneaker industry and community have changed and evolved, and it’s the perfect way to get your sneaker education with nothing more than an internet connection.

The internet has become the ultimate equalizer for everyone to respectfully look the same. At the start of hip-hop culture, however, originality was a major rule. For example, if you showed up wearing a pair of shoes that no one else had, you’d get the question, “Where’d you get those?” — which also happens to be the title of a book by Bobbito Garcia.

That phrase was important to the hip-hop experience because originality is a serious law and rule to live by. If someone asked you where you got your shoes, you were not going to tell them. They just had to wait to see what you came up with next. You had to go and hunt for yourself if you wanted something that somebody else had.

The Sneaker Industry: Then vs. Now

These days, you don’t speak only about technology and how the internet has made it the ultimate equalizer, where anyone can get anything they see, anywhere, at any time — especially with e-commerce platforms. Now, you also have a new business model where certain companies are publicly traded on the stock market. When you have shareholders of sneaker companies that are publicly traded on the stock market, they want to see activity that is going to lead to a return on investment.

This means that sneaker companies cannot just mysteriously drop sneakers, place them on a wall, then report some numbers a few months later. The shareholder wants full communication on what’s happening. So, now you have release dates. You have all these different things that go into sharing the news about the latest product.

Now when this product releases, not only do the shareholders and others who care about the ROI know, but the sneaker lovers also know. That’s because everything is now on a 24/7 news cycle of full reporting, giving you release dates, colorways, and the stores where the new sneaker is going to be sold.

This new way of doing things has totally shattered that rule of originality that folks like myself lived by for so long. So, in the early 2000s, with the popularity of sneakers, you had people starting to create their own websites, discussion groups, and forums online discussing their love of the shoes. Since this was uncharted territory, you had certain chat rooms and discussion forums online where there was a lot of common ground.

The Start of the Online Sneaker Education Movement

People shared an interest in talking about certain brands of sneakers. This led to a sort of flea market behind the scenes, where people would buy, sell, and trade them. People would report their thoughts about certain shoes and stories connected to them. This tightly tied into that whole sneaker community vibe.

The sneaker media really expanded when sneaker companies began to put money behind some of these companies to give them seeded product. This means they were getting product for free, which leaned them toward reporting more about one brand over another.

For example, when you’re a person like me — with 29 brands of sneakers in my closet — you looked at the sneaker media online, and after a while, in those media outlets and forums, you started only seeing reports, praise, and coverage for maybe two or three brands. This influence was not lost on the sportswear and sneaker companies themselves.

Quality Sneaker Education Is Hard To Come By

These manufacturers knew that they had to get in on the ground floor of gaining influence with the sneaker journalists. Some companies operated with little or no influence, so they remained purely impartial. Those companies were the ones that were actually able to give the consumer a real take on the good versus the bad — that this shoe does what it says it’s going to do, while that one makes claims it really can’t live up to — while addressing price, quality, and things like that.

Now, there really isn’t a lot of neutrality in reporting because of the corporate influence on the sneaker journalist. So, because their sites are now owned by major corporations, a lot of sneaker journalists have to march to a corporate policy and watch what they say about certain sneaker companies because there are ad dollars at stake.

There are business deals at stake. There are still some companies that will give you a true consumer reporting experience about the sneaker and its related products. But as a whole, the sneaker media outlets have become tainted over time.

Improving the Sneaker Industry

I think the entire industry needs to operate with a little more impartiality and honesty. There are still outlets out there that can give you that. You’ll have a true picture of what the product is that’s representing the industry these days.

I think internet culture has been super important to the way sneaker culture has grown and changed. In the earliest days, you had message boards like NikeTalk. You had the earliest version of the SLAM website, which was updated maybe once a day. It is really funny to think about how it would get just one update a day that included all the new information.

Now everything changes all the time. I think on one hand, it’s easier than ever to keep up and be on that leading edge. You’re going to get your push notifications not only from the actual sneaker companies through the SNKRS app or Adidas CONFIRMED app, but you’re probably also going to get pushes from Complex, Highsnobiety, and SLAM — often about the same exact show, probably with a very similar story.

I mean, look, we all have jobs to do. I think we do them well. At some point, a sneaker is a sneaker, and whatever you read about is going to tell you pretty much the same thing. So as much as all of us are editors, writers, and whatever else, you kind of have to be your own editor of this stuff. Maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot here, but you don’t have to follow everybody who talks about sneakers because you’re going to hear a lot of the same things from them all.

Finding Legit Online Sneaker Education

If you’re getting overwhelmed by the information, photos, or whatever else, you can can adjust that. You know the funny thing is that, in the earliest days of the sneaker internet, there wasn’t enough. Everyone was asking, “Who’s the plug?”, “Who’s giving us the best information?”, “Where can I find the photo of this sample Air Jordan that’s floating around?”, and “Where can I find a better photo of it?”

In many cases, the answer was nowhere because you would have a shot of a shoe on a conference table that someone smuggled out of headquarters, and that was all. Now there’s almost too much. Nike or adidas will do their promo push on a shoe. Minutes or seconds later, everyone in the sneaker internet, whether a publication or a person, will push out that same information.

So, it might seem like a flood, but it’s a flood of the same things. If you cut it down to specifically what the product is, there’s probably a lot less out there than you think. It’s just a matter of finding the right places to get it.

The good thing is there are a lot of answers to that. There is no wrong place to get it, unless you’re looking at sites selling fakes, which I don’t really advise. For legit info, feel free to pick amongst all of us. Pick amongst everyone. Find the one that suits you best, and you really can’t go wrong.

When it comes to trying to get into any industry, I believe that the biggest thing is to pay it forward. With the sneaker industry, I’m not going to sugarcoat it—you aren’t going to get in and immediately start making a six-figure income with your first job. However, you can learn from people who will help you to eventually make six figures in this industry if you’re passionate about sneakers. With the right determination and approach, you could literally will yourself into getting a job.

The good thing for people who are going to participate in sneaker education now is that the industry is a lot different than it used to be. When I was around, it was very cut and dry. Sneaker media wasn’t even what it is today. Nowadays, there are so many different aspects of it. I remember thinking of a marketing job as being stuffy and having to wear a suit. Now, though, when you’re in one of those jobs, you’re marketing the next Lebron shoe. Or you’re marketing the next Yeezy.

The industry has grown so much that now there are so many different jobs that you would previously have thought of as only corporate jobs but have now been created by sneakers. I’m not going to say that it’s an easy business to get into, but I will say that there are a lot more opportunities in the industry. In the present day, there are many more jobs available to get into the sneaker space than there were back when I was first starting out. You just have to know how to work your way in.

For anyone interested in finding their way into the sneaker industry, online sneaker education is an excellent starting point.

Personally, I’ve never done an unboxing. But the content, in terms of unboxings in the sneaker industry, that I really like to consume are people whose voice I really trust. Authenticity is really important when it comes to unboxing. You have WearTesters.com. You also have Nightwing, who really puts sneakers to the test, and he’s very unbiased. If it works for this, if it doesn’t work for this, he’s going to tell you.

In such a crowded space of unboxing, you really need to separate yourself through authenticity. There are tons of shoes that come through the Complex office nonstop. If we were giving the same amount of attention and the same amount of review time and not really pulling at the idiosyncrasies of what makes this sneaker better than the other or this sneaker better than the one we’ve reviewed last week, then no one’s really to take you seriously.

When I think “authenticity,” I think a straight review of who, what, where, when, and why, but also what this is best for and what this is not best for in terms of a sneaker. That’s going to reign supreme and is currently really separating people when it comes to unboxing on YouTube. But consistency is the thing that makes you stand apart, and basically, the audience taking your word as legitimate. That’s part of your online sneaker education right there.

You also must refrain from ever faking an audience. And always remember to be true to your fans. It’s a big deal. So, you could have the sneaker unboxing. Reviewing sneakers can be a really crowded area, but some people are doing it right. Consistency is key. And it may sound cliché, but your word is your bond when it comes to standing out in a space that’s already severely crowded.

If I were doing YouTube unboxings, I would always look for a different angle. If the review thing is not my thing, maybe it’s something about how these look with this style of jeans. Or I would get into putting an outfit together with these sneakers and then establish some sort of rating system.

But whatever it was, consistency and something that’s a little different than what’s happening in the unboxing space. It gives you a great opportunity to stand out. But really, your voice, your consistency, and how much your audience trusts your word reigns supreme when it comes to stuff like this.

Even with something as simple as an unboxing video, there are a lot of different factors you have to consider. How many other people already have these shoes at the moment that I’m unboxing them? How fast can I turn this video around? Can I be the first one on YouTube who has these shoes? Because if I wait too long to edit it, there are already 20 other people who got sent the shoes from the brand, and I’m not really adding anything new. Just a bit of sneaker education to pay attention to here: you’ve gotta be able to bring something new to the table.

As far as adding things that are new, you have to have your own perspective, your own voice, because just showing the product is not going to set yourself aside enough. If people care about who you are and they care about your opinions, then they’re going to be willing to listen to what you think about these shoes. Now, people don’t necessarily give their actual opinions in these videos because they might be scared of offending the brands or the person who sent in the sneakers gratis.

But that’s a different story. Basically, you have to present these things in a way that’s unique. You can’t just show the product. In my opinion, in unboxing videos, the product is the star. That’s kind of different from a lot of these sneaker YouTube videos, where the person is the star. In unboxings, it is all about the sneaker, too, so you have to make sure you have gratuitous sneaker-porn type shots in there.

You have to show the shoes. The shoes have to look good. If the lighting isn’t on point, if the shoe is out of focus, you’ve just got to start over. In making an unboxing video, the first thing I want to think about is, “What’s coming out soon that people really care about?” In any given week, there are a lot of shoes hitting retailers, and most of them aren’t going to be worth your time to create content around.

What’s the biggest show releasing that week? What’s the limited collaboration that there’s not a lot of content around just yet? The second question is, “Can I get that shoe? Who can I rely on to get that shoe?” A lot of times, the person at the brand may have samples. They may be able to send you a pair. But they might not be able to get you a pair quick enough.

Do I know a person at a retailer who can help out with that? Do I know a reseller who might have an early pair who’s willing to lend me them so I can shoot a video with them and maybe even send some business their way? Even if you don’t have access to a brand-new shoe that’s coming out, there’s still a lot to talk about with shoes that have been out or shoes that came out before the advent of a lot of this stuff.

Even if you think about the SEO aspect, what are people searching for? What’s the shoe that came out 20 years ago that there might not be a lot of information about it online? Can I make a video about that that will populate in Google search results? And people will come, and watch the video, and learn more about the shoes, learn more about me, maybe even subscribe to my YouTube channel.

What are the holes in that space that I can fill in that aren’t necessarily about new shoes, or what’s coming out next week, or what’s coming out two months from now? After that, it’s figuring out what exactly we want to tell about this shoe in a short time span. Two to three minutes is usually a good time to shoot for.

How much information can we get in there? How much is too much? And then also, we kind of try and make it a little bit funny because we feel like the whole unboxing thing, a lot of people might take it too seriously. So, we try to give people a reason to come back, and hopefully my brilliant humor shines through in that.

I think the best way to cultivate an audience is to think about your brand. It’s kind of corny at this point, but I think you really do kind of think, “What are the things I care about?” or “ What’s my point of view, and how can I show that to people?”

Ask yourself, “What specific sneakers am I into? What brands am I obsessed with? Which ones do I not care about so much?” Be honest with yourself. Ask, “Which ones do I go to only for those looks?” If you’re not an Adidas guy, people are going to know that it’s not that authentic if a pair of Adidas sneakers show up on your feed and you’re talking about how obsessed you are with them. People on the internet remember things. If you didn’t like this shoe two weeks ago and now you love it, they’re going to call you out on it. And they’re going to want to know why.

I think it’s really important to just think about the things that you’re putting out there. Once you figure that out, you can decide how and when you want to put it out there. At that point, you can also decide who you want to interact with to get into different people’s feeds and hopefully make people pay attention to the things you have to say – things that are of value and what stories you want to tell.

The Ultimate Online Sneaker Education

It’s extremely important to have a website to have your work and portfolio housed within a digital space where people can easily access and look into who you are and what you do.

In terms of social media, there’s obviously a way to brand yourself. As creatives, we tell stories visually. We engage visually, so Instagram is like a dream come true for everyone and maybe even having a Facebook gallery or Twitter page is beneficial.

What Are Different Ways That We Can Craft That Story?

The storytelling process and the presentation itself is a form of art. With the boom of social media, I’ve been able to just build my own separate brand, ironically, with just the pictures that I post. I actually didn’t even know that I had an eye for photography or for real imagery until I started using social media. That was a fun exercise for me to better understand cropping, imagery, and lighting. I had to figure out how to keep information entertaining and discover different ways to capture and retell a story that’s been told over and over again.

I have multiple classes that I teach and occasional in-person workshops about different ways that we can brand ourselves. Someone who’s a jewelry designer, or a florist, or someone who’s a sneaker designer will all need to find ways to tell stories. But how can we do it in a way that’s engaging, interesting, and that’s worth telling? There’s enough content in the world, so what can we do and offer that’s actually different and special?

Using Social Media to Dive Into the Sneaker Industry

The best way to maintain, grow, and connect with your audience is through social media. I think social media is an extremely powerful platform that, when utilized correctly, can open up a lot of doors and can take you to places that you would have never dreamed that you could have gone otherwise.

The most important part of social media is that it’s social. It’s a two-way street. It’s a conversation that you’re trying to have with people. It’s a community that you’re trying to build.

I think a lot of people fall short in their social media strategy by trying to make it too much of a one-way street – too much of, “I’m talking at you and not talking with you.” You want to create a conversation with people.

To start, you have to figure out what your angle or approach is to the content. If your content is primarily video-based, obviously, you go straight to YouTube. But you also have to leverage Twitter and Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, and all other social platforms to kind of funnel people back to your hub, which in this case would be YouTube.

If you’re going for more of a still image approach, obviously that is Instagram. That would be more of where you’re taking stylized pictures of sneakers that you picked up and your outfits – the things you would see on Instagram.

If you’re looking to do written words, especially now that Twitter has increased their character count to 280 and let you thread things up, you’ve got to go to Twitter. In that case, what you would be doing is posting maybe one or two images of sneakers but then providing some detailed text along with it.

With that being said, in order to really have a full approach to sneaker content in 2018, you basically have to have all of them. But what you should do, because it’s impossible–especially if you’re one person–to give 100% to all the platforms, is choose one that is going to be your main platform. Give most of your energy to that and then use the other platforms as complementary pieces to drive people to your main platform.

I think for me, when I look at social media or media as a whole, it might be best to have different accounts. You have a Twitter account. You have an Instagram account. You may have a YouTube account. You may write for a website. You might write for Medium or something like that.

If you’re continually updating all these things, you’re going to see which ones you’re getting the biggest reaction out of. That’s just natural. Some of these sneakerhead guys are really good at Instagram, but they’re not really good at Twitter. They’re two different platforms. You have to just try them out and see what you’re going to be best at. And chances are, you’re probably going to be better at one than the other.

You should also follow a variety of people. You can follow someone who just came into the game, but they are making a name for themselves. In contrast, you shouldn’t balance that with people who have been into this for a very long time and have a proven track record of producing good content, knowing what they’re talking about, and having good connections.

If you’re serious about getting a career or starting a career in the sneaker industry, you have to balance them both. You have to know what the 13-year-old kid is doing on YouTube but also maybe the 30-plus-year-old man who’s been doing this for 20 years. This way, you will get a nice, full scope of the culture and of the community.

My direct line of content is YouTube. That is the largest community of sneaker-related videos in the world. So from YouTube, I am able to get 12- and 13-year-old kids who are doing vlogs and showing what they copped from Supreme, the Yeezys they unbox, and so on and so forth.

I’m also able to get the people who are doing a bit more deep dives into the background and details of a sneaker, to people who give you your release dates and your info, and to people like us at Sole Collector who are doing different things. Where we’re giving you a sneaker-related game show, which is more of a scripted platform rather than a “vloggy,” social media-type thing. And following the right people on both platforms is very important to shaping your editorial perspective.

The shoes that NBA players wear on the court has its own history. If you go back into the ’70s and the early ’80s, kind of the outlaw days of the NBA and the ABA, you had guys wearing a lot of wild stuff. Sometimes it seems like things now are crazier than they’ve ever been. But if you go back to the ’70s and ’80s, you will find Boston Celtics wearing green suede shoes, or things completely different from anyone else.

I think, obviously, these pre dress code days, maybe there wasn’t too much concern about what guys wore. Then you get into the ’80s, and the now famous Michael Jordan brand show, the black and red shoe while his team was primarily wearing white, they needed everyone to sort of be similar so they weren’t going to let him wear that shoe. That obviously turned into a moment for Nike. That turned into an entire marketing campaign, and those $5,000 fines the NBA levied were nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue they made selling that shoe.

It kind of moved into a stage where you would have guys wearing player editions. I know us at Slam would look at that and go look at photos of the NBA. You’d also look at what they were wearing. There would be things that were not available at retail and whether it was just embroidery or different colors than you could find in the store, it was still something different and something else to highlight.

I don’t know when this would have changed – probably in the 2000s. The NBA encored sneaker has kind of become self-aware, if you want to say it that way. Guys already knew that what they were wearing, was going to get noticed. I think if you look back in the ’80s, someone like a Tiny Archibald wearing a green suede pair of Blazers, I mean he knows he’s fly but, I don’t think he knows that people are really going to be pointing out his shoes.

Now you have it where before a shoe even makes it on a blog, you have a player themselves maybe taking a picture of their shoes on their way to the game or in their locker saying, “Look out for this.” They’re breaking their own news about what they’re wearing.

Online Sneaker Education: Evolving the On-court Sneaker

You have guys like PJ Tucker, who might not be known very much for what he does on the court, but he’s known for what he wears on the court. He’s a guy who wore the Virgil Air Jordan 1s on the court. Who does that? I think Gilbert Arenas maybe was the one who ushered in this whole era of, “You never know what a guy is going to wear from one night to the next.”

Kobe did it too, when he was a sneaker free agent, wearing a different pair virtually every night. Whatever, they’re pro athletes. They can get away with it. I mean, you look at someone like Michael Jordan who wore a new pair every night, but it was a new pair of the same couple of colors. He wasn’t wearing like anything made for him specifically super crazy.

Now you have guys wearing a different pair almost every game. Basketball drove sneaker culture for a while, kind of unaware of what they were doing, maybe. Now they know all too well what they’re doing, and guys get you to tune in just to see what they’re going to wear on court.

Basically, with sneaker education, anything that happens in sneakers now is going to be scrutinized to an insane degree, and that applies to court sneaker coverage. There are a handful of guys in the league, like PJ Tucker, DeMar DeRozan, and guys like Nick Young, who wear cool, rare, vintage sneakers on a regular basis.

People want to know what they are wearing, what they are bringing out of their closet, what did LeBron James scribble on the midsole of his shoe, what is that Black Lives Matter message that some player wanted to send through their footwear, and things like that. Players have taken advantage of this, too, by referencing social movements or maybe a family friend who died, things like that. They’re using their sneakers to actually say something.