The Official Flightposite 2014 Thread Vol. Carbons, H20, Possible Coppers

He's making them a lot of money. Why would they fire him? Dudes lined up every month for 2 years to buy every color foamposite in the rainbow. They even lowered the shoe half an inch and charged $30 more and dudes still bought them. Pretty soon he will find some new model to ***** out with gimmicks and people will line up in bunches again. Hell, it might even be this very model.
 
dtb00201 said:
He's making them a lot of money. Why would they fire him? Dudes lined up every month for 2 years to buy every color foamposite in the rainbow. They even lowered the shoe half an inch and charged $30 more and dudes still bought them. Pretty soon he will find some new model to ***** out with gimmicks and people will line up in bunches again. Hell, it might even be this very model.
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But, that's low hanging fruit. Anybody could have decided to pump out a bunch of pretty solid colors (and a number of reaches) to capitalize on a hot shoe. Correlation is not causality. Where it takes creativity, acumen, vision, and execution is to create new concepts and build new hype. I don't give him credit for playing a few trump cards that Nike had in its pocket for use at any time they chose. In fact, he took the momentum that playing that card generated and tried to launch his new idea off of it and it flopped, even coming off the previous momentum.

Overall, I'm not one of these people who plays armchair quarterback and criticizes Nike execs. I understand what it takes to get things done in a corporate environment with politics and all that, and I think a lot of people who complain are very naive to the way business and the real world works. But, judging off the merits of his ideas that he was able to get into production, he hasn't done a good job.

The Knicks make money hand over fist too - are you going to tell me that means that James Dolan makes good decisions for the brand?
 
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^ What BIP said 
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Bro, I agree with you. I think he makes terrible decisions, but they're still making good money on his watch. I worked at Footlocker for 3 years up until recently and all of those horrible griffeys, bo's, and speed turfs still sell very well. I don't even think people really like it, they're just buying it because it's what's available. It's not going to sell in one day, but it's these kinds of items that keep stores in business and stock on the shelves.I think there are plenty of people who could do his job better than he can, but we can't deny that the garbage still sells and NSW is selling. Once again, I don't credit him for this though. The average person isn't going to stop buying Nike, so when you walk into a shoe store your options are up to Gentry. If someone else was making these decisions, they'd buy whatever that person decided to put out too.
 
That's not the point....

Why not make stuff that the older dudes like, and will buy, and then the younger kids will buy too.. Because "it's what's available". More sales = more profits, right? Instead they give us this garbage, that only the young bucks that don't know any better will gobble up in limited #s, and the dudes that do know better sit out. Nike can make pairs the right way, in double/triple the volume and sell it all.

Gentry makes good decisions business wise, but they can be a lot better decisions as well.
 
Nike and Gentry know that they can live well off their legacy without trying much. It's sad. It's up to YOU the consumer to take a stand, but the monster is too big at this point. 
 
s dubl s dubl hit the nail on the head. Nike can produce all these retros exactly as they once were in greater numbers and won't miss a beat. I wouldn't mind buying a proper retro at a higher price then. For example a FP1 retro at 200$ that was once 160$ originally but instead as Nikes quality goes down their prices rise.
 
s dubl said:
That's not the point....

Why not make stuff that the older dudes like, and will buy, and then the younger kids will buy too.. Because "it's what's available". More sales = more profits, right? Instead they give us this garbage, that only the young bucks that don't know any better will gobble up in limited #s, and the dudes that do know better sit out. Nike can make pairs the right way, in double/triple the volume and sell it all.

Gentry makes good decisions business wise, but they can be a lot better decisions as well.
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That is the point. They don't care for whatever reason. They're making money so it's business as usual. My whole point was that they can put someone better in to do his job better than he can, but they don't have to because they're still selling. It's like a football team with a crazy offense and a terrible secondary. They still win 12 games, but they don't address the issue until they get exposed in the playoffs. Nike is winning 12 games right now, but just wait until those sales drop. They won't be proactive, they'll be reactive.
 
Gentry has a impressive record as far as keeping the money rolling in at all time highs. What exactly has he created on his watch though? The inspiration an creativity of the 90s is what he's living been off of. We all know there's more people involved than just him when it comes to decision making but he's the face and this is on his watch. Right or wrong.
 
I know he didn't create or design the retros from the 90s. I said that meaning he's living off others peoples work. Why I asked what has he created.
 
dtb00201 said:
That is the point. They don't care for whatever reason. They're making money so it's business as usual. My whole point was that they can put someone better in to do his job better than he can, but they don't have to because they're still selling. It's like a football team with a crazy offense and a terrible secondary. They still win 12 games, but they don't address the issue until they get exposed in the playoffs. Nike is winning 12 games right now, but just wait until those sales drop. They won't be proactive, they'll be reactive.
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I understand what you are saying. They could certainly improve with somebody else at the helm, but is the incentive strong enough to make the change? Probably not.

The problem isn't the short term though, it's the long term. Nike has a decent amount of models that they can always go back to the well with. The real successes are not taking more trips to those wells and coming back with buckets full of water, but creating new wells that didn't exist or reviving those that were left for dry.

Grey said:
Has eyes of hazel eyes of hazel chimed in on this?
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I'm sure my dude is crying on the inside.
 
you guys act like were the consumers,even with the culture at a all time high we are still only like 4%.

96% of the people that walk into a footlocker dont know nothing about design,cws,materails and history.

for example the sc trainer, nike removed probably the coolest part of them the webtec(who knows what that melted plastic on the side is now)but they still get eaten up by collectors.

collectors cant complain about changes on some models and not others,nike as a company wouldnt like putting that much individual effort on each retro.

its gotta be all or nothing.

nothing wrong with retro + cws but there is a bigger market then just us, it makes perfect to make loud shoes that attract hood little kids in middle school /hs.its a youthful intercity vibe with every loud cw that gets released.not old farts like us trying to relive are youth.every other brand has been doing the same thing nike just gets picked a apart cuz its the biggest and we just happen to know gentry name and we feel a little more inside of whats going on at nike..
 
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dtb00201 said:
He's making them a lot of money. Why would they fire him? Dudes lined up every month for 2 years to buy every color foamposite in the rainbow. They even lowered the shoe half an inch and charged $30 more and dudes still bought them. Pretty soon he will find some new model to ***** out with gimmicks and people will line up in bunches again. Hell, it might even be this very model.
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 gentry can you stop trolling on NT.Make the shoes right just different colorways, that simple
 
eyes of hazel said:
View media item 695716
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A gif is worth a thousand words.

BURKLINSFIENEST said:
you guys act like were the consumers,even with the culture at a all time high we are still only like 4%.

96% of the people that walk into a footlocker dont know nothing about design,cws,materails and history.

for example the sc trainer, nike removed probably the coolest part of them the webtec(who knows what that melted plastic on the side is now)but they still get eaten up by collectors.

collectors cant complain about changes on some models and not others,nike as a company wouldnt like putting that much individual effort on each retro.

its gotta be all or nothing.

nothing wrong with retro + cws but there is a bigger market then just us, it makes perfect to make loud shoes that attract hood little kids in middle school /hs.its a youthful intercity vibe with every loud cw that gets released.not old farts like us trying to relive are youth.every other brand has been doing the same thing nike just gets picked a apart cuz its the biggest and we just happen to know gentry name and we feel a little more inside of whats going on at nike..
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I understand what you are saying. The sneaker buying public - and even the "collectors" - aren't a monolith. It's rare that Nike knocks a retro completely out of the park. So, it usually becomes a question of whether something is "close enough." And, that's a subjective thing. Some people will say, no way. Others will say, I can deal with that. Others will say, I'll mess with this, but not at retail, etc. There's no Rosetta Stone that tells them when a shoe tips from a pass to a fail.

The only panacea is to take the time, care, and marginal extra cost to execute true to the original every time. Then, they can know that if they fail, it's because of marketing or misjudging the market, but not because of execution. They've likely concluded that it's not worth their effort to do that.

The one thing that would frustrate me about that approach from a corporate standpoint is that it doesn't really isolate the variable to diagnose the source of a failure when evaluating performance. ...A lot of these shoes do well enough, even if they don't smoke from day one. But, when you are comparing what did happen to the ideal, you can't be sure what percentage of the outcome was due to not having ideal product vs. not marketing, distributing, etc. perfectly. If you have a perfect product, you know that if you fail it was either because you overestimated the true demand, or didn't market well enough. When the product is weak, you could execute perfectly from those standpoints and you might not fully succeed if the product itself isn't "hot" enough to override all that noise.

At the same time, you have to remember that most of Nike's product isn't sold directly to customers. So, if they sell product to retail spots at half of MSRP, there's plenty of room for error in terms of everybody getting theirs. Plus, Nike holds the reigns in terms of what retailers get. As a retailer, you can't simply say, those Bakins didn't sell well, I don't want them next time. ...Nike says, if you want the Foams and the stuff that will sell, you have to take all this junk too - it's like the way buying cable works. So, the system is kind of rigged to insulate them from their failures business-wise, anyway. You can argue that along the value chain, they aren't even the ones taking the biggest risks.
 
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no consumer is checking for any retro.

so if you had a pair of air slants 96 then you might be excited they retrod but noone else cares so since the mold is already out why not make a bunch of wack retro + cws that target to the black youth that made the culture what it is today.

nobody at nike is saying" oh i bet those caucasian teens with the skater haircuts who play lacrosse are gonna love these yellow foams"

no its always gonna be a hood thing when it comes to loud cws.my family still lives in cherry hill and i visit for the holidays and 90% of the dudes i see wearing foams are black.so theres your answer for loud cws.

nike have shown in the past they can make nearly perfect retros i.e. late 90s sc trainers with proper webtec,late 90s dunks the nike veer 2003 the first couple jordans 2 that came back.why they have felt the need to change little design details i dont have the answer to but the colorways make sense to me.

marketing dosent really exist for nike anymore they dont need it. i think the last nike commercial i saw for a pair of kicks on TV was maybe the melo 5.5 that dropped in 2005,most there marketing is by the athletes themselves via twitter or sneaker celebs saying the rertos are hot cuz they have deals with nike so we know their opinion is biased.

taking the time for nike wouldnt be worth it,us as collectors say"its close enough i will buy now on wait for a sale"either way it ends up in the collection.

nike does care about us in some capacity tho.for example the air force 1.nobody cares about forces anymore but they bring them back for the nitch following that does.an example of a justified price hike on nikes end taking a risk since they reliy mainly on collectors to buy.
 
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Race isn't even a factor anymore. White kids, black kids, it doesn't even matter. They're all wearing a Nike shirt with a dumb phrase, Nike elite socks and a retro jordan, retro nike, or a lebron/kd.
 
dtb00201 said:
Race isn't even a factor anymore. White kids, black kids, it doesn't even matter. They're all wearing a Nike shirt with a dumb phrase, Nike elite socks and a retro jordan, retro nike, or a lebron/kd.some vans or roshes
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fixed
 
dtb00201 said:
Race isn't even a factor anymore. White kids, black kids, it doesn't even matter. They're all wearing a Nike shirt with a dumb phrase, Nike elite socks and a retro jordan, retro nike, or a lebron/kd.
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i can tell your pretty young by the lame points you try to make,guessing around 18-22 huh?

sneakers will always be a more important part of black culture than for whites,living poor not working and not have the money or need for dress shoes was the reason sneakers became something to be proud of in urban areas by black youth .wayyyy before you were ever even a twinkle in your fathers eye.
 
Geez, I'm hesitant to even get into this discussion. But, while there is some truth to the glorification of sneakers being rooted in poor, urban communities, that hasn't really been relevant in a while. Today, the thirst for being a "sneakerhead" transcends racial and most socioeconomic lines. In fact, as it becomes a bigger money game, most of the sneaker celebs become soft, rich kids who have no connection to the roots of sneakers becoming a major thing in the first place.

Sneakers were part of being fresh. That was the urban side of things. When I was younger and doing my thing, everybody who was getting any kind of street money was fresh with new kicks on the regular. But, that's a far cry from being into kicks as a hobby. None of those dudes joined NT, none of them really cared about the history or anything like that - it was all about just having the latest and greatest and having something fresh and new to rock with everything. The undercurrent of the streets that glorified sneaks may have been partially responsible for the coolness factor that subsequent generations and dudes from the burbs feti****ed, but they had really nothing to do with turning sneakers into what they've become today.

That's largely been a middle class thing. And, like I said, you can tell by the types of ultra soft clowns who become shoe celebs. 9 out of 10 of them wouldn't have made in home with what they left the house wearing during the "golden era."
 
BURKLINSFIENEST said:
i can tell your pretty young by the lame points you try to make,guessing around 18-22 huh?

sneakers will always be a more important part of black culture than for whites,living poor not working and not have the money or need for dress shoes was the reason sneakers became something to be proud of in urban areas by black youth .wayyyy before you were ever even a twinkle in your fathers eye.
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Bruh, why are you always so angry? Every single thread you're in it's the same thing. NT isn't your enemy, so stop attacking any rebuttal someone makes to your posts and have a normal discussion without getting super defensive. I'm 25 btw and I worked at a kids footlocker for the last 3.5 years of my life (until last month) so I'm speaking on what I know. I don't care if it's more important in one culture more than the other. I know it is, but I'm telling you as fact that kids of every race are buying exactly what I'm saying and in large amounts. I saw it one a daily basis and I also have a 10 year old nephew and 13 year old niece who want lebron 11s and kd 6's for xmas. I know it's not strictly my area because if you go look at pics from one of those sneaker conventions in any city it's 60% 14 year old white kids in foamposites with their moms. The internet has bridged that gap for young kids and retro stuff/Nike basketball is what kids are wearing. I'm not saying they don't also wear vans, I'm just saying from personal experience I've seen a huge shift in the last few years in what's popular for younger kids and race has become less and less of a factor because they're wanting the same things now.
 
BIP Roberts said:
Geez, I'm hesitant to even get into this discussion. But, while there is some truth to the glorification of sneakers being rooted in poor, urban communities, that hasn't really been relevant in a while. Today, the thirst for being a "sneakerhead" transcends racial and most socioeconomic lines. In fact, as it becomes a bigger money game, most of the sneaker celebs become soft, rich kids who have no connection to the roots of sneakers becoming a major thing in the first place.

Sneakers were part of being fresh. That was the urban side of things. When I was younger and doing my thing, everybody who was getting any kind of street money was fresh with new kicks on the regular. But, that's a far cry from being into kicks as a hobby. None of those dudes joined NT, none of them really cared about the history or anything like that - it was all about just having the latest and greatest and having something fresh and new to rock with everything. The undercurrent of the streets that glorified sneaks may have been partially responsible for the coolness factor that subsequent generations and dudes from the burbs feti****ed, but they had really nothing to do with turning sneakers into what they've become today.

That's largely been a middle class thing. And, like I said, you can tell by the types of ultra soft clowns who become shoe celebs. 9 out of 10 of them wouldn't have made in home with what they left the house wearing during the "golden era."
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so basically you agree but dont feel like taking any heat so you backpedaled bit?idk why this needs to be turned into a race thing 99% of the dudes i dealt with until the age of 17 were black.this convo was about colorways right well the reason nike puts out loud cws IS BEASUSE black hood cats not white suburban kids.for them this a fad.

a 14 white kid at a sneaker show with his mom will realize its more fun fooling around with girls in a a couple years and to do that he needs a "cute" haircut and to make her laugh.

now where i grew up if you werent fresh then it was a no go,jordans made you cute.they were probably more important than physical appearance.brown sneakers were considered work or play shoes loud colored shoes were coolest and got you the most attention.

whether or not they were knowable about kicks thats not the point.black youth pushed the louder colorways and is the reason they are put out today.

not saying others races had nothing to do with it just saying low income area aka hoods are like 80% blacks,so the majority rules.
 
dtb00201 said:
Bruh, why are you always so angry? Every single thread you're in it's the same thing. NT isn't your enemy, so stop attacking any rebuttal someone makes to your posts and have a normal discussion without getting super defensive. I'm 25 btw and I worked at a kids footlocker for the last 3.5 years of my life (until last month) so I'm speaking on what I know. I don't care if it's more important in one culture more than the other. I know it is, but I'm telling you as fact that kids of every race are buying exactly what I'm saying and in large amounts. I saw it one a daily basis and I also have a 10 year old nephew and 13 year old niece who want lebron 11s and kd 6's for xmas. I know it's not strictly my area because if you go look at pics from one of those sneaker conventions in any city it's 60% 14 year old white kids in foamposites with their moms. The internet has bridged that gap for young kids and retro stuff/Nike basketball is what kids are wearing. I'm not saying they don't also wear vans, I'm just saying from personal experience I've seen a huge shift in the last few years in what's popular for younger kids and race has become less and less of a factor because they're wanting the same things now.
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idk maybe because you say something on this site and it gets picked apart.

i said  i didnt like am95s with jeans and i believe your response to me was"your dumb" lol well thanks!

same with the air raid thread i said"i think the blk/gry colorway will sellout" and had like 5 dudes telling me a was dumb for thinking so.

its just how this site is you act like im the one who starts these arguments.these little white kids will not stick around for long but for blacks sneakers/fashion will always be important part of their culture .other factors come into play sure.

you can argue hip hop and break dancing   blah blah blah  got the ball rolling but if it wasnt for black youth in urban area there would be no ball.
 
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