In the first round of the NBA playoffs, the Milwaukee Bucks were up against the Miami Heat. The game was teetering on the edge of garbage time. Heat’s substitute player Victor Oladipo, standing at the top of the key with the ball, easily drove to the right and was about to score his tenth point of the game—having made four out of six shots, a 67% shooting rate, a more stable performance than the previous game. This offensive play didn’t manage to prettify the stats any further. In the open paint area, Oladipo made a motion similar to stepping on air and slipping, then fell out of bounds. This was destined to be an unusual injury. As Oladipo clutched his left knee on the sidelines, some Chinese fans shifted their gaze to his feet. He was wearing a rather unusual pair of shoes, without a prominent logo, resembling the “Kobe 8” that Nike released in its early years. These shoes were the SPO Player1 model launched by the domestic TikTok (Douyin) blogger, Ye Zi (Coconut).
This was a microcosm of “independent shoemaking” at the time. In the basketball shoe industry, which is full of technological barriers, everyone believed that only strong brands and ample capital could produce qualified basketball shoes. In China, a few individuals began to attempt to make basketball shoes according to their own ideas, mostly sneaker bloggers who were automatically categorized in the field of “blogger independent shoemaking.” “Independent shoemaking” is a rare attempt worldwide. Consumers find it hard to accept a shoemaking model that seems more like a “small workshop.” In the first year of independent shoemaking, skepticism and criticism became the issues these bloggers had to face.
In the second half of 2023, the field of “independent shoemaking” sold over 50,000 pairs of basketball shoes, even though there were probably only three or four bloggers in this race. Bloggers, feeling the favorable wind, began to more optimistically and boldly advance their shoemaking endeavors.
Making sneakers expensive is not a difficult choice for Ye Zi. “I can’t make ‘cheap’ sneakers. I can’t make a pair of shoes that emphasizes cost-effectiveness with low-cost materials. This itself will not bring me passion, nor will I delve into it.”
The logic behind SPO’s shoemaking is: what are the new materials and processes available now? Can they be applied to shoes? This is the source of Ye Zi’s passion and also leads to increased costs.
Just as Ye Zi said, “You never know when you might suddenly sell poorly, nothing is certain.”
There have been some twists and turns, but it’s been relatively smooth sailing so far. Here, the bloggers are just halfway through this race. Known and unknown problems continue to surround them. As the clock of independent shoemaking ticks towards 2024, there is still the opportunity to overtake on the bends, and there are still hidden dangers of going off the track.
From Steppy Trend Weekly
