Whose Fault Is Sneaker Violence?

With fights breaking out and brands botching sneaker releases, who is to blame?

The sneaker scene has exploded to the point that people are risking their own safety to get a pair of shoes. That's nothing new, but the other weekend proved to be a turning point in the madness around limited-edition footwear releases, with a fight breaking out at Concepts in New York City over Pharrell's Adidas collection and Nike having to cancel its online release of the Off-White collection due to too high of a demand. So who's to blame for this mess, the brands, retailers, or resellers consumers?

The answer is tricky. Of course the people buying the shoes are committing the actual insanity and fuck shit, but it's caused by limited quanties and drummed up by brands, retailers, and even media sources such as ourselves. On the latest episode of Sole Collector's Full Size Run, the guys, myself included, broke down the topic of who's to put the blame on.

And the result is muddy.

Yes, the brands are the ones who place way too much energy into small-time releases to compete with each other, playing games with sneakers that supposed "exclusives" that will only see wider releases. But retailer aren't handling these sneaker drops properly, either. You also can't discount the shear display of humanity that goes on with the actual folks buying the shoes.

Watch the video above to check out the discussion.