The hype cycle surrounding limited products has become the Ouroburos of men's fashion and, specifically, sneakers. Companies famously tease a release to the point of disgust only to have manufactured so few of them that they're impossible to actually get. If you've tried to cop a fragment x Nike collab, you know this pain. Or, more prominently, any of Adidas and Kanye West's Yeezy Boosts. But how about that Breakfast Club interview earlier this year when Kanye spoke about everyone eventually being able to get their hands on some Yeezys? Well, no surprise here, but we've been bamboozled. When The Wall Street Journal Magazine spoke to Adidas executives about its Boost technology and trying to become cool again in the U.S., naturally the subject of 'Ye and his sneakers came up and the answer to everyone's burning questions is that nope, not everyone is getting Yeezys. The full passage reads:
To boost the new shoe’s air of exclusivity and draw attention, Adidas is deliberately releasing far fewer of the model than the market seems to want. At some footwear stores around the world, eager shoppers have camped out for days to buy the shoes, which retail for $200.
Adidas hopes the tactic will add allure to the rest of its product line. “Only a very limited number of people who want the new shoes will be able to get them,” a spokeswoman for Adidas said. “But they might buy other Adidas pairs.”
OF COURSE. It's an obvious marketing choice to get people to associate Kanye's Adidas products with being "cool" and "exclusive." But if Adidas wanted people to flock to other, more baseline models like, say, the already popular all-white Ultra Boost (thanks to Kanye again for that one), wouldn't they make more of those? Or perhaps a more extensive supply of the black/white version? That doesn't really make any sense and, quite frankly, might be even more frustrating than striking out on a pair of obviously limited kicks like the Yeezy Boost 350.
Adidas has had some wins so far this year for sure—Stan Smiths and Superstars were everywhere and the Tubular is making strides—but think of all the fucking money they could make by increasing the amount of clean Ultra Boost colorways. Unfortunately, they probably won't do it, especially not now at least, because these days it seems that being cool is more powerful than actually making money. Hype is the real currency in 2015 and we're all clearly worse off for that fact.
