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.

Sole Collector Magazine highlighted the sneaker industry in a way nothing had before. It was a quarterly print magazine just dedicated to sneakers that started in the early 2000s. It profiled actual collectors, and you could read about other people who had the same passion as you did.

It’s a website now that highlights new sneaker releases, reviews shoes, and features interviews with people who influence sneaker culture.

Another moment that I feel moved sneaker media forward was Kicks On Court and Celeb Kicks that happened through Nice Kicks, a website all about sneakers. Those became places you could get your internet dose of what players were wearing in the NBA, and what your favorite rapper or entertainer was wearing through paparazzi photos.

Another key moment was probably the show Sneaker Shopping. There was really nothing like that that had existed before. It was the zenith of where we are now with sneaker culture. It started in 2014 and is in its tenth season now.

The show features celebrities who are identifying themselves as sneaker-heads and athletes or entertainers that are identifying themselves as sneaker-heads. You get to see what clothes and sneakers they’re into because you’re actually going on a shopping experience with them.

Another major media moment for sneakers came when Vine was the big thing. Remember the meme about shoes that went: “Officer, I got one question for you. What are those?”

Usually, internet memes come and go. They’re hot for a week and then gone, but that shoe meme felt like it lasted for months. It spawned sneaker podcasts that were named after it. People used the audio from it in their Vines and their posts on Snapchat or Instagram.

Sneaker education has changed along with the media, too. Online sneaker education has replaced a lot of in-person classes and internships.

The media highlights how similar the sneaker industry is now to the way it was 10 or 15 years ago. The media covering the sneaker industry has changed, but what people are looking for and want to be a part of is still the same.

One example is the collector profiles in Sole Collector Magazine. You would open those pages up and read about other collectors who had this same passion for Air Jordans as you did.

Now, instead of looking at a paper magazine, you’re connecting with these people through Facebook in an Air Jordan Facebook group or through the curated people that you follow on Twitter or Instagram.

There are new ways to consume media today, but I think the core tenants of it and why people consume it are still the same.

Gary Warnett, who had his own blog, GWARIZM, passed away last year. He also wrote for sites like Complex, and Crooked Tongues, a forum that went into retail. He wrote for a bunch of brands and was probably the most notable sneaker writer of all time. In the early 2000s, sites like Hype Beast and Highs Nobiliety came up. Sneaker News and Complex really tapped into sneaker media. They started off really bare bones but they’ve become a lot more robust over the years, and now you have a lot of sites getting into sneaker coverage.

Sneaker Education in Media

GQ, the Bleacher Report, and Sports Illustrated are all covering sneakers now. Speaking of Sports Illustrated, they had a revolutionary article published, I believe, in 1990, called “Your Sneakers are Your Life.” It detailed a story in Chicago about a kid getting murdered over a pair of Air Jordans sneakers, and on the cover is a pair of Air Jordan 5s with a bookbag and a gun on them. That moment has always led sneaker journalism, especially from a very mainstream response.

A colleague of mine, Rich, started Kicks in the City, which has been around forever. Rich is a super important dude in the world of sneaker media. He did it all by himself for many years and really killed it. People don’t necessarily give Kicks in the City the credit it deserves, but it was one of the first, if not the first, sneaker blogs. For whatever reason, some other sites did a better job expanding their brand, but Rich was there first.

A little bit after, there was Kicksology. Professor K back in the day. These things all came from the forums. After that, it became commercialized a little bit to where people realized, hey, we can tell these stories and turn it into a business, rather than just a community. Now the game is overrun, and you have a million websites, a million Instagram accounts, a million Twitter accounts that serve this information.

Sneaker Media Evolution for Students in Online Sneaker Education

Back then, it was totally different. You didn’t have as many sources. You didn’t have as many shops taking photos of their sneakers and posting them online. I wasn’t working in sneaker media during that early era, but just looking back on it and seeing the kind of content people were creating, you can tell how different it is. How much they still had to learn. I mean, those things are important, but we’re really on a different level now as far as what we’re thinking about or what we can accomplish or basically how seriously the brands take us.

The Olympics have always been a big opportunity for not only sneaker companies and the sneaker industry, but also for fans of sneakers or sneaker fanatics. You always see a lot of new things in the Olympics. This has been true back as far as the ’30s. One example of Olympic branding opportunities was when Jesse Owens wore Dassler Brother track spikes when he won multiple golds in Nazi Germany. If you look at a lot of Adidas’ classic trainers, you could call them all-purpose trainers, you’d have stuff like the Rome and the Montreal, or the SL72. A lot of those classic trainers are named after either cities where the Olympics were held in. Companies have also used the year the Olympics occurred, in the case of the SL72. Adidas dominated that market for a long time, if for the only reason that they had sort of that grasp on the European market and on doing all-purpose trainers. Nike didn’t exist as Nike until 1972. In starting Nike, Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight got runners wearing the shoes. Steve Prefontaine was a big example. He was an Olympic runner from Oregon. He Died tragically in a car accident when he was in his early 20s. He didn’t even get a chance to run in what would have been hopefully his redemption Olympics. He’s the person on whom Nike based a lot of the ideals of their running business, where he would come out so strong and want to just run everybody into the ground. He would not be able to carry through the line, even though his records did stand for a very, very long time. I believe some of them still do. Later on, if you want to jump ahead, you would get Michael Johnson in 1996 running in gold spikes. That was a big historical event in sneaker education. The gold shoes. There was just something so prideful about that. I was in college at the time having our athlete kick butt on the world stage in our country wearing gold shoes. Nothing said “America” more than that in my mind- his swagger, his dominance, and those shoes were just kind of a perfect combination for saying, “Welcome to the United States, we’re here to kick your butt in track, and we’re going to have the world’s best athletes in the world’s best footwear.” That’s what I really remember distinctly when it comes to shoes in Olympic games. The Olympics is a very important platform for sneaker brands to show off their latest technology. Nike, in particular, always takes advantage of this stage. In 2008, they brought out their lunar cushioning foam. That went on to be an important piece of sneaker technology for the brand for years to come so remember that as you continue your online sneaker education. In 2012, at the Olympics, Nike used that platform to roll out Flyknit, which of course is now a billion-dollar franchise. Nike is the brand that most takes advantage of the Olympics, but of course, everyone wants to be part of this gigantic global sporting moment. I think the amount to which brands want to put their logos on athletes for these types of moments, like the Olympics, shows just how incredibly important it is for them. This is true whether the logo is on the athletes when they walk in or when they’re on the medal stand. There’s a famous story from the 1992 dream team. Michael Jordan didn’t want to show the Reebok logo on his Team USA jacket, so he put the jacket over his shoulder or obscured the logo. This was because he was a Nike athlete, because he is such a huge Nike guy. Nike had paid him so much money up to that point and continues to make him billions of dollars. There was no way he was going to show off a Reebok logo. So if you look at the images from that event from that medal stand, a couple of the Nike guys are very carefully obscuring the logos on their Reebok jackets. You had much of the dream team in ’92 wearing Nikes. It was Michael Jordan in his 7s with the number 9 on the back, Scottie Pippen in the Air Flight Lite, and then even Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and John Stockton all in different Nike inline models done up specifically for the ’92 Olympics. I remember seeing them in stores, and again, that was like innovation, an event marked in a specific time. Unfortunately, with an event, if you bought it right then, you were of the moment. It was perfect, but just for those moments. Six months from then, it didn’t really matter how cool the shoe was. The event was over. In those days, especially in the early ’90s, before retro really became a big thing, it was more important to be in the moment and have whatever the cool shoe was right then. If you are wearing Air Jordan 1s in 1990, that wasn’t necessarily cool. That was sort of saying you’re behind. What are you waiting for? So the Olympics would always mark something and establish it as the new thing, whether it was the Lunar Racer, or the first Hyper Dunk, or the Flyknit Trainer and the Flyknit Racer. It was an opportunity to look at Nike. Adidas did the “made in Germany” Prime Knit for the Olympics, and you know those are very, very hard to find, but the Olympics is still that showcase for new technology and new shoes.

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Sneakerhead culture has significantly grown since the 1980’s. As music and sports embraced sneakers, the industry’s influence on shaping the identity of its consumers has been visible. Whether it’s repping you’re hometown or your favorite sports team, sneakers have emerged as an visual way to express who you are. Russ Bengtson, sneaker writer and editor, spoke to Yellowbrick about how sneakerheads have found identity through sneakers.

Sneakerhead Locale

“There has always been a bit of a split between East Coast and West Coast when it comes to sneakers. I grew up on Long Island in New York,” says Bengtson. “There has always been a lot of overlap between the two coasts, but you had shoes like the Chuck Taylors and the Nike Cortez that really make an impact on the West Coast.”

“The East Coast — especially New York — is different because a lot of people don’t have cars. Instead, your sneakers would really be where your status would come from. Maybe in California, you would get away with other things because you had a car. Your car would be your status,” Bengtson continued. “In New York, your shoes are your status. In this area, you’re dealing with subways and crowded streets. You gain respect from making sure your shoes don’t get stepped on and making sure your shoes don’t get taken. This doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but it was something significant. Shoes were something you’d protect and place quite a bit of value on.”

Team Love

“Before we talk about people, we have to talk about basketball programs, team colors, certain athletes being on certain teams, and how those things affect sneaker culture,” says Bengtson. “You would want powder blue Uptowns (Nike Air Force 1’s) because North Carolina was crushing teams. This was before the golden era, when everybody was rocking the starter jacket and the jersey, before the Mitchell & Ness phenomenon,” he explains. “Going back to my childhood, it was about watching North Carolina and Duke, watching UCLA, wearing the powder blue and maize, or any other colorway. It was about Boston College, wearing the burgundy and mustard.”

Although individual endorsements weren’t popular during this time, it was standard practice for college teams to have endorsements deals. As a result, teams and brands were closely affiliated. “North Carolina had the weapons and all of the emerging styles under Converse. Georgetown had the Hoya Nikes — the midnight blue with the smoke gray,” recalls Bengtson. “With college basketball teams, you had the particular colors of their uniforms all the way to brand Jordan. All of a sudden, you had these college teams’ colors on everybody’s feet around the way.”

The Price of Being a Sneakerhead

“When sneakers would get popular, it wasn’t always just because of who was wearing them. In some cases, it would even be about how expensive they were,” Bengtson remembers. “You can look at something like the Adidas Forum, which didn’t have any player associated with it. Players wore it, but it wasn’t necessarily a signature model. However, people still wanted it because of how expensive it was.”

For sneakerheads, price and exclusivity adds to allure. “A lot of these brands that didn’t necessarily make a lot of noise in other spaces were able to have an impact because of the price tag and because of the status that the shoe gave you, says Bengtson. “When it really comes down to it, in a lot of places, the sneakers you wear are a lot more meaningful than just being a pair of shoes. They say a lot about what you value and what you identify with, and they have a real effect on the way other people view you.”

You can learn more about the history and future of the sneaker industry by exploring Yellowbrick’s Sneaker Essentials online course.