Fundraising Machine & “Athlete (Prosumer?) as God” Follow Up
Hi everyone, I hope all is well 🙂. Have some life updates and a follow up to my “Athlete (Prosumer?) as God” piece from last year on the docket for today.
Updates
Sfant nº2 last Saturday was a success! We had a good turnout, featured a local coffee roaster (@thoughtfulcoffee) and raised $90 for the NY Public Library and Doctors Without Borders. This time around we got to feature our new living room; Lily and I demo’d our flex wall a few months ago and have been re-doing our living space. The space offered a much calmer environment and people had a good time enjoying our baked goods!
The tennis ladder I joined for the summer has begun! It has felt good getting back into the rhythm of playing tennis consistently, but I am definitely rusty in my matches. Hopefully I can make the top 16 and play in the end-of-season playoffs! Would be fun to have some fans friends come watch 😛.
Excited for two classes (riso [!!!] printing and a dye workshop) in early June. If anyone has anything similar scheduled later this summer, lmk! I am eyeing an online French class or perhaps a typography intensive at Cooper Union 👀
Work has been unfortunately depressing the last 4 months, and this week I realized it will continue to be this way for at least the next year and a half as things stand. Most irritating is the feeling that I have stopped learning (beyond corporate politics, that is) and won’t have a real opportunity to learn what I hoped I would anytime soon. I have therefore started putting out feelers to see if there are any better opportunities for me… if you know anyone working on a project you think I’d find interesting, hmu!
Athlete (Prosumer?) as God Follow Up
Furthering this blog, if you haven’t read it before:
Athlete (or prosumer?) as God
The Sinking (?) Icebergs
Incumbent brands have continued to fall off the pace in the months since my last post. Nike has had layoffs, seemingly caught in the middle of two opposing directions. Under Armour has brought back a former CEO after its stock continues to slide - down 5% this year, and 70% in the last five…1
New Balance, on the other hand, has continued their growth. It seems that New Balance is connecting with premiere prominent young athletes (like Bukayo Saka, Coco Gauff, Shohei Ohtani, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Jamal Murray, Tyrese Maxey, and Cameron Brink most recently) in a way Nike used to be able to. They are increasingly building a portfolio of prominent cultural brand ambassadors as well (like Action Bronson, Amine, and Chito Vera to name a few). This is unique from Nike, especially in the way New Balance is combining these portfolios.
New Balance have begun synergizing their athlete and cultural brand ambassador relationships: Bukayo Saka of Arsenal fame has recently teased an ‘ALD Cleat.’2 This diverges from Nike - although Nike did play at this prestige… Federer’s gold trim blazer comes to mind3 - because of these talent brand-linked limited releases, giving the talent direct upside in the brand’s performance. It will be interesting to see if New Balance can maintain this connection with ‘the culture’ beyond a few cycles.
On Spreading Like Slime
On has expanded in a number of ways since my last post. They have entered new sports, expanded unique programs, and have also begun leveraging their talent with their partners.
On uniquely (at least as far as I’m aware) offers a subscription shoe (Cyclon) model.4 One used to be able to order a special shoe, wear it, and send it back to On when it was worn out. They would send you another and recycle the worn shoe, claiming they were working towards a circular shoe economy. The Cyclon program now includes three subscription shoes and a purchasable t-shirt. I am curious to see how this program continues to expand, I think it is genuinely quite innovative.
Culturally, On has been following the New Balance playbook in their own way. They have recently brought on FKA twigs as a Creative Partner. FKA twigs will be the face of the FW24 training collection, which they are helping develop.5 They have paired this by using their signed athletes (Ben Shelton, Masato Yokata, Alexandra Burghardt, and Aaliyah Mille to name a few) in a collaborative campaign with Spanish and LVMH luxury house Loewe.6 This positions them well into the ‘luxury’ space of technical clothing that they aim for, and away from New Balance’s ‘street’ and street-adjacent influences.
This prestige is being furthered with mini-documentaries of their highest performing athletes, like record-breaking and world #1 tennis star Iga Swiatek and runner Hellen Obiri.7
On has also branched out into new sports in major ways this year. They have launched the ‘Cloudpulse,’ the first On shoe built solely for the gym (verging on CrossFit). They have expanded their trail running collection of shoes and added new trail related clothing. On has also finally released their tennis apparel to the public, which sold out in days.
Bandit On A Rampage
Bandit has been on a tear in 2024 with their spring and summer collections. They sold out of nearly the entirety of their spring collection in the first week, Their summer collection is currently sold out of popular sizes after a week of sale.
Bandit have continued their more social media savvy ‘influencer as partner’ model to grow their audience. Joe Greer, a Bandit sponsored runner and brand photographer (700k IG followers, 100k on a dormant YT) continues to publish ‘behind the scenes’ content of their upcoming collection photography projects. Recently, this has included videos by other prominent NYC photo/video creators like Chris Chiu (200k followers cross platform). This has continued amplifying their brand to adjacent communities.
Continuing on that trend, Bandit is opening their second brick-and-mortar location in the West Village. This will be a shared space with trendy Greenpoint cafe Rhythm Zero… see for yourself on their IG.8
Conclusion
The graph of aesthetics among these brands and other new companies in their locales may be the topic of a future piece. Bandit has focused heavily on short clips posted across their social channels to gather momentum behind their releases and announcements. Fellow Brooklyn brand The Browser Company has done the same for all new feature announcements, and the aesthetics are more similar than different…!9 Perhaps the aesthetics of near-waterfront Brooklyn startups is worth analyzing in a future post (here come the millennials).
Can’t help myself… a few fun links 😛
Video about track and field athletes competing to represent India at the olympics
Lupe Fiasco (!!) wrote for Wired how tech is transforming rap beef
Cool infill lot house in LA - clad in cork!
Outro
That’s all for this letter 🙂– crazy to think that I am nearing a year of working full-time… I am excited for the fun and learning I have planned this summer and hope you can all enjoy some good weather.
Take care,
Andrei