Bright
Feet: Who Doesn’t Want Them?
by
Jack Gilman
Gliding back and forth across the grey
sidewalks in northern New England, bright colors catch the attention of
everyone passing by. The near glowing shades of yellow and orange on the feet
of young adults can be seen from a mile away, and though everyone is wearing
them, they’re
all unique.
Florescent shoes have become quite the
craze with young adults across Maine and New Hampshire, and students continue
to await the new models to keep up with the trend.
Students can be seen
wearing the florescent models all up and down Main St in Durham, and students
say it’s more than just looking like the pros.
“It’s about looking
different,” said Cameron Wichland, a UNH Senior. “I wear them because I want to
have to new colors of the new model, and be the first one to have them, they
make you stand out and look different.”
Many shoe companies have made the
florescent colors available of their shoe models, but none have embraced it
quite like Nike.
According to reports by Nike, in
the past 6 months alone, florescent Jordans have sold five times better than
the classic Jordans.
“It’s one of those
products that you see everywhere,” said Caduro. “Young adults love them, and we
are beginning to see the already great numbers improve.
Although they’ve
invested a lot of money into their bright designs, investing
over 13 million dollars,
it seems to be money well spent tripling their projected profit on many models
of their bright designs, including the makeover of the classic Air Jordans.
“It is an easy product to sell,”
said
Jon Caduro, a Nike Marketing Division Employee. “We
advertise them with some of our biggest faces in the sports industry, such as
Lebron James, and before you know it, our sales go up.
Many of Nike’s
marketers know their role in creating the new trend, but say that the craze isn’t
a new thing.
“It stems back to some of our colors
from the 80’s,”
said
Nike Product Designer, Dave Wilbur. “We just took our new designs and added
some of the bright colors we’ve used for a long time. Young people
were just ready for a change.”
While the production
companies have seen sales improve due to the bright colored designs, retail
stores are beginning to see a whole new market open up.
Tim Cochran, an
employee at Footlocker in Portland, ME, says that Footlocker’s sales of the
designs are much better than their other sales, finding that Footlocker had
sold 90 pairs of brightly colored Nike Frees over the past 10 days.
“People come in just
for the new colors,” said Cochran. “ We struggle to keep the popular sizes on
the shelves, but do anything we can to do so to meet the high demand.”
Wichland knows that
everyone has the bright colors, but says that if you can have the brightest and
the newest, than you’ve achieved the goal.
“I want the ones that
are the loudest,” continues Wichland. “It’s like a shoe war, you want to win.”
It’s not just guys in
on the craze, girls can be seen with the same bright colors on their feet,
something that Caduro claims is part of the strategies Nike uses when
marketing.
“We take a model that
both sexes wear like the Nike Free” said Caduro, “and then change up the
colors. It makes for another easy sell.”
Girls on the UNH
campus have embraced the new trend, but says that girls like them for different
reasons.
“Girls like the color but not the flash
that some of the men's shoes have, said UNH Freshman, Julia Lockwood. “Many of my friends wear bright colored
sneakers whether they are Nike or Reebok, and if you don't have them, you're
just not up to date with current trends.
Nike
knows that the recent success can’t remain on the same pace, but they say they
haven’t even scratched the surface of the possibilities.
“If
we continue to advertise,” said Wilbur, “with clever campaigns with our biggest
athletes as well as get our consumers to embrace the trend even more, there is
no stopping what we can do.”
With
new colors and models being released every month, students say that they don’t
plan on stopping their purchases of the new colors.
“I’ll
buy them until they stop trying to sell them to me,” said Wichland. “If I have
the money, I have no problem buying shoes, especially when they are this cool”
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