By Alden Racz For sneaker lovers, December 16th and 17th come as an early holiday in 2017, as they are the dates of the highly anticipated New York Sneaker Con event. Founded by Yu-Ming Wu and the Vinogradov brothers Alan and Barris in 2009, Sneaker Con has since been the meeting place for the buy, sell, and trade sneaker market. The evolution of Sneaker Con has been rapid. In just six years, its organizers have already begun global conventions such as Sneaker Con London, Tokyo, and most recently Berlin. In a recent interview with the magazine covering hip-hop music, politics, and culture The Source, co-founder Wu recounted how in 2009, sneaker culture was, “still pretty small, so just to test out the market we decided to rent out a comedy club in Times Square.” At that event there were roughly 600 people, vendors included. But at this year’s convention, the Sneaker Con founders are expecting a crowd of about 20,000 attendees alone! Events such as Sneaker Con fall into the secondary sneaker market, or resale market, which is its own entire entity from the primary market that most consumers identify with the Nike, Adidas, Footlocker, Finishline, and Champs brands. According to SportsOneSource, since 2004 the international sneaker market has grown by more than 40%, to an estimated $55 billion in sales. And according to The Washington Post, “Millennials have become a key driver for this market. Americans aged between 18 and 34 spent $21 billion on footwear last year, a 6% increase over the previous year.” When sneaker companies such as Nike and Adidas release highly anticipated models, they intentionally keep the production of them low, which makes the shoe more limited, and thus more desired by sneaker consumers. However, the first ones to buy these models aren’t the last ones to own them. A venue for buying, selling, and trading such as Sneaker Con allows footwear fanatics to do business in the secondary market, where the dynamics are much more interesting than the original market. Among the rarest and most coveted sneakers at the event could include rapper Eminem’s collaboration with the Jordan 4 line and U.S.-based apparel company Carhartt. This all-black shoe was initially only given out to friends and family of Eminem; and those lucky enough to have received the pair are now listing it at resale prices in the range of $10,000 to $20,000. Other highly anticipated sneakers include the recent collab between Adidas and singer Pharrell, with the line labeled as the NMD Human Races. The most recent sneaker they released, Human Race x Chanel, retailed at $1,000. With the release being extremely limited, resellers have estimated that the shoe will be priced around $28,000. Other extremely popular sneakers that will be easier to acquire include the Nike collaboration with the luxury streetwear brand Off-White, in which ten of Nike’s most iconic silhouettes of all time, like the Air Jordan 1 and the Hyperdunk, have been remodeled. Many of the models’ retail prices will most likely be no higher than $250, but some of the silhouettes, such as the Off-White Jordan 1 and Off-White Nike Presto, will be re-selling for upwards of $1,000. Additionally, rapper and fashion designer Kanye West’s collaboration with Adidas has sent smaller-spending sneaker lovers into a frenzy in the past two years. A pair of the “750” model from West’s signature shoe line, Yeezy, can go for as high as $1,500 in the resale market. Sneaker Con general admission tickets are $25 for each day, but are available for $40 by pre-purchasing a two-day pass. If you happen to have free time, go check it out. This celebrated buy-sell-trade convention may be hosted in other cities at other times throughout the year, but for sneaker lovers there is no place better than New York City during the holidays.
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By Kaelyn DiGiamarino A book review of Simon Sinek's Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Apple Macbooks overwhelmingly fill the desks of TCNJ classrooms, and there is a good reason why. Students do not buy laptops, but rather, they purchase confirmation that they think differently and that they challenge the status quo. It is unlikely they ever look closely at the specifications and features of any other different models or competitors. Apple is not a computer company. Apple is a brand that sells a lifestyle that resonates with the innovators and the creative-thinkers. In Start With Why, Simon Sinek explores notable leaders and companies, such as Apple, and the ways in which their messages, rather than their products, influence and inspire us. Business people most often speak of what: what the product does, what the idea is, or what its attributes are. Some delve further into the specificities of how they do it: how the product is made, how the process operates, or how it functions. But whats and hows create messages that are imbalanced and inauthentic. There is no passion, no reason, and nothing to resonate. Sinek confronts the way they communicate with consumers. He clearly differentiates the companies and leaders who got their message right, and those who got it wrong. He digs into messages from the inside out, and he starts with the why. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. People purchase passion. People buy brands with lifestyles and ideologies that align with those of their own. It is not the product itself, but rather the message the product communicates that people buy. Being clear and confident in your why keeps you grounded and focused and allows a brand to speak to consumers in a way that stands out. Energy motivates, but charisma inspires. Leaders who breathe the passion of their organization build the most sound and successful companies. These executives do not lead a company, they lead a cause. They know how to inspire and excite consumers to advocate for the product’s mission and values without incentive. Bill Gates did not build his company on his passion for computers. His success is found in the way his underlying optimism that even the most complicated problems can be solved makes consumers feel. Value is a feeling. Value is not a calculation; it does not come from rational thinking. Value is in perception. It emerges from consumer trust in a company’s mission, purpose, and clear sense of why. The decisions that feel the most right are the most difficult to explain because they are driven by gut-feelings. Being clear in your why equips people with a way to tell the outside world who they themselves are and what they believe in. There is an oversupply of book titles that emphasize the economics of supply and demand, or how to craft the perfect marketing mix. There are textbooks on target markets; and there is endless data on purchasing patterns and habits. But Sinek clears through the clutter of definitions and statistics and makes it simple: just tell people why. His writing style is one of simple passion. The book itself follows Sinek’s own why model in that he does not lead with telling you what to do. Page by page Sinek makes you feel the passion and the inspiration of the leaders he exemplifies. Start With Why magnetizes its readers with the truth it speaks and the application it offers, both personally and professionally. This book is for the innovators and for the creative-thinkers. It is for those who are fascinated by human behavior and the ways in which we consumers build our identities. It is for the person who is invigorated by books with last pages that leave them struck with inspiration. That, is why you should read it. By Sean Lange When both Tiffany Dufu and Joann Lublin mentioned the importance of gaining oneself “mentors and sponsors” in asides to their planned speeches, either speaker prefaced that their TCNJ audiences should have been long familiar with this key to career success. Nonetheless, this principle was essential to the storylines they had prepared and shared. On November 5th in the Education Building, Tiffany Dufu was the keynote speaker for the TCNJ Women’s Summit, having become a voice for women’s empowerment after writing her book Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less. As Chief Leadership Officer at the NYC-based career consultancy firm Levo, Dufu shared the practices she herself had mastered in transforming her crammed workday -- where she serves a business executive, mother of two, wife, friend, and de facto office counselor for colleagues -- into one of greater productivity. Most eminent in those adaptations was organizing the frequent solicitations of her help into the requests that could be handled by email response, by individual interaction, or by group meeting. Dufu said that this strategy of “alternative participation” allowed her to directly support every person that approached her for advice, and to make a “cumulative investment” in each person that enters her network. The most powerful revelation that an attendee at the Women’s Summit could have made was that Dufu, despite herself professing to be a mentor for as many people as possible -- and especially for the young women and girls in the various leadership programs she spearheads, forged her career path almost entirely on her own. Dufu explicitly talked about the emotional and pragmatic value of having mentors in one’s adolescence; but it was up to the audience to infer, from her brief mention of the adversity in her childhood home, that she had no one early on in her life to help her hone her professional and personal judgements. However, this conflict was juxtaposed with the ultimate validation and gratification Dufu conveyed at the end of her talk, when she revealed how her lifelong idol, Gloria Steinem, came to be one of her best friends and biggest sponsors. In no place is the message of sponsorship -- referring to the willingness to endorse another person’s virtues to others -- more literally displayed than on the opening pages of Drop the Ball, where Steinem writes the foreword. Where Dufu faced differentiating many daily sidesteps, Joann Lublin faced overcoming one massive obstacle. When the Management News Editor of The Wall Street Journal addressed faculty and students on the night of November 30th in the Library auditorium, she talked about how she was a trailblazer at the newspaper, having to literally and figuratively rip down symbols of the male-dominated industry to have her talents not only recognized, but appreciated. As the first female writer to win an award for outstanding journalism out of the Journal’s San Francisco bureau in 1973, Lublin was confronted by her male colleagues, who informed her that it would be out of her place to accept her award in person. Determining how to diplomatically dress or even arrive the ceremony became a challenge, especially with no previous female winner -- or any woman in her office at all -- around to provide reference for her. In ultimately deciding to break the male-only precept that had defined newswriters’ ceremonies by openly attending the gala, Lublin developed a quality of fortitude that was later valued by her boss in the Journal’s Chicago outlet. Having relocated to the Windy City by 1975, Lublin was soon offered the chance to fill an open bureau manager position. Thinking reflexively of her status as a new wife and as a future mother, Lublin made the snap-decision to refuse the potential promotion when asked by the Chicago bureau head. Esteeming Lublin’s true sense of command over the industry, however, her boss at the time nonetheless recommended Lublin for a higher role for years afterward. The loyal endorsement resulted in Lublin’s assignment as the news editor of the Journal’s London outfit in the 1980s. While both Dufu and Lublin discounted that their mention of “mentors and sponsors” provided no unique insights for their audiences, invoking the concept was instrumental to portraying a more meaningful idea about widespread success. Barriers can be broken individually, but creating a movement and a message requires more than one person. |