I thought after Kobe’s death we’d be seeing neverending release after release after release of Kobe’s and Kobe storylines...
unfortunately we only saw a couple...and I stayed away from them because all hit absurd amounts and I just made the assumption that we were going to see an absolute flood of Kobe product in the months to come. I was wrong.
But it brings up an interesting question. Why DIDN’T Nike flood the market with Kobe product? Did they have a whole cache of product that was set to release? Were they trying to be more strategic with timing? Were they focused on other athletes and product lines? Were they trying to ‘preserve the legacy’? Did they feel like merchants of death for capitalizing posthumously?
I saw an article earlier where Vanessa Bryant said ‘...Kobe’s products sell out in seconds. That says everything.’ As much as I think I understand what she was trying to say - ‘why aren’t Kobe’s products on shelves?’ - I don’t know that flooding the market is beneficial to anyone’s legacy...once Kobe’s start hitting sales racks...what does that do to the brand? Just about every Adidas Kobe hit sales racks...it’s really not a good look.
Adidas was able to continue releasing Kobe models and silhouettes (under a different name) well after he left, but I’m pretty doubtful we’d see anything similar from Nike. IMO...the Kobe line and any retros we were hoping to see are going to be a long way off (hence the sudden price jump). What do you think is going to transpire? Time to stock up?