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.

A partnership is a type of business structure like a corporation, an LLC or a sole proprietorship. You can learn more about business structures in online sneaker education or any beginning business classes. For now, let’s focus on partnerships.

There are two types of partnerships: general and limited. In a general partnership, two or more people carry on the business for profit and act on behalf of the company, either as agents or in some other type of binding capacity. The people involved could be individuals or corporations.

A limited partnership is basically the same as a general partnership, but at least one of the partners will be a limited partner. Limited partners can act on behalf of the business without being liable for the debts and obligations of the partnership.

Designing sneakers in a partnership has advantages and disadvantages over using other business structures.

Advantages of Partnerships in the Sneaker Industry

As a partner, unlike a sole proprietor, you’re not by yourself. One of the biggest advantages is that you don’t have to make business decisions alone. You can have partners to share the work and come up with ideas. You can take on employees, and you can create a much bigger construct for your business.

You can also obtain outside investments, which is impossible to do under a sole proprietorship. You can raise capital and do more with your business.

There aren’t many formalities in a partnership, but there are certainly more than in a sole proprietorship. The interests of a partnership can also be assignable, which means that if someone comes along and wants to buy your business or buy out a partner, you can assign those interests to someone else.

Limited partners are not personally liable for the acts and obligations of the partnership. The big advantage for a limited partner is owning a stake in the company without the financial risk. This is a huge advantage over a sole proprietorship in which the owner has unlimited personal liability for the debt of the company.

Partnership Disadvantages

What are some of the disadvantages of a partnership when you’re creating sneakers? First of all, a partnership is not considered a separate legal entity from the individual partners that are running it. General partners can have unlimited personal liability, just like in a sole proprietorship.

For general partners, a person’s interests can also dissolve upon death. That means that the partner’s estate, spouse, or the party who would normally inherit their assets will not get that interest. It would go back to the partnership.

Something else that can be a disadvantage or an advantage, depending on how you like to treat your taxes, is pass-through taxation. The only way to avoid the individual income tax burden is to structure your business as an S-Corp or an LLC that’s taxed as one.

How Do You Form a Partnership in the Sneaker Industry?

Like sole proprietorships, partnerships are created with very few formalities. In fact, you can form them just by carrying on business with one or more partners. This can vary from state to state, but typically the requirements are pretty lax.

You may need to register your company in the state where you’re doing business. Design courses and sneaker education courses that focus on the business side should stress the importance of a legal partnership agreement, too.

Formal partnership agreements are recommended but not required by most state laws. However, we highly recommend that when you enter into any kind of a partnership with business associates you should consult a lawyer to create the partnership agreement.

I think the two most important people you have to talk about when you talk about early sneaker industry media are Bobbito Garcia and Russ Bankston. These are two people that anyone who’s into sneaker education or wants to write about sneakers should know about and study. These are guys who convinced bigger platforms that there was a reason to talk about sneakers beyond in the sneaker store, beyond in your living room. These are the kind of guys who made it a point to talk about sneakers on a bigger level to a national audience and even to an international audience.

That really paved the way for people like me to be able to have a job in the industry because now so many more people realize that these are things that readers and audiences care about. Russ is important because sneaker media, writing about or even caring about sneakers, is a relatively young thing, and it’s important for us to have older people whom we can look up to who have been around long enough and who remember these stories. A lot of these stories rely on brands to tell you, and you can’t always trust the brands when it comes to online sneaker education. You need to have actual people who were there who remember these things. Russ is one of those guys. Actually, Russ is that guy.

If I were a sneaker exec now, I’d be pretty excited about the way a new shoe can get marketed or the way a retro shoe can get remarketed. The second a sneaker gets released and goes into the general market, you have so many people on social media being creative in doing things around it and hoping to share it with like-minded people. Back in the ’80s, and even in the ’90s, it was a very straight line. The company produced the sneaker, and a creative agency produced a commercial. The commercial was used to sell that sneaker, and that was pretty much it.

The consumer bought it, and the consumer wore it. The consumer maybe bought it and put it away. But the company was on to the next thing. By the time the commercials came out for the Penny II, they were deep into the Penny III. They were pretty much done with it.

Sneaker Education in Marketing

The retro market has obviously done something to change this, and the resale market has, too. We can dislike resellers all we want but it’s a reality that’s not going away. Look at consignment shops. Sneakers have a secondary life. The lifespan doesn’t end when the design is done, and the factories are producing it.

You get to remarket these shoes. If I were a sneaker company exec, I’d be looking to the consumer. This doesn’t have to be a one-way thing where the company produces the shoe and says, “Here you go.” I think the company can produce the shoe, say, “Here you go,” and then say, “What do you think? What do you want to do with it?”

Social Media Lessons for Online Sneaker Education

Whether it’s an unboxing video or a sneaker shopping episode with someone who doesn’t necessarily endorse your product talking about it, there are just so many avenues. It should all be two-way. I think social media has opened that up to a degree. You can find all these different sneaker designers on Instagram.

And they’re not hugely popular. Sorry, sneaker designers, you’re not Justin Timberlake. You won’t have hundreds of millions of followers. But the good thing about that is, you might be able to actually talk to these people.

When I was at Slam, if I wrote a story, three months later it might get published. A month after that I would get letters about it. Now, if I write something online, I’m getting responses on Twitter immediately about how terrible it is or how good it is. The feedback is so fast.

With sneakers, that shoe isn’t going to go away. That campaign isn’t going to go away. You can be part of it. So it’s interesting to see where it goes. As much as brands are speaking to you, they’re also listening to you, whether it’s at round tables or focus groups.

Before, people would have to pay you $200 to go to a focus group and listen to them talk about some shoe. You, as a millennial, could tell them what you think about it. Now those conversations are going on every day everywhere. And there’s no reason why you can’t be part of them. And there’s no reason why you can’t change what happens in the future.

Young people have a lot of stories to tell. It’s important to explore finding your own voice. Have that conversation, even if it’s just with your friends and family to start, but make it something that can eventually be consumed by a larger audience. You need to have a true, common storyline and theme in the sneaker industry. Following what other people have already gotten popular off of isn’t going to help you much because you’re jumping into a crowded pool.

Kicks, the magazine, was something that grew out of Slam. Slam is that connection between culture and basketball, and sneakers are something that sits right on that edge. Sneakers are not something that transcends basketball. Obviously, basketball transcends sneakers.

A Visit to the Nike Campus

We knew that in order to find the sneaker history, the online sneaker education, a lot of that was at Nike, at their campus, and at the Wieden and Kennedy offices. It was a matter of convincing Nike to bankroll this. At its most base editorial level, it was a couple of guys who found something they were fascinated with and wanted to find answers to. If this was something we were interested in knowing about, there were probably a lot of other people interested in knowing about it as well.

In many ways, we had it easy, because people hadn’t done this before. People hadn’t gone to Wieden and Kennedy and asked about the Spike and Mike ads. People hadn’t gone to Eric Cooper and asked about him designing Scottie Pippen’s new shoe yet. Now that stuff is fairly commonplace.

Gaining a Sneaker Education

Sneaker media and Kicks and Bobbito’s story opened this lane to anyone who wanted to try and fill it. There’s something out there that you don’t know the answer to, but you’re interested enough to seek it out. To find what that answer is and talk to the right people and look at the right sources.

Find Your Unique Audience

Chances are, other people are going to want to know the answers too. That’s the way to open whatever the next lane of sneaker media will be. Because, like it was for us, the audience is there. The audience is waiting for you. They just need the right thing, and maybe you’re going to be the one to provide them with that.