Reading this will not make your day any better.
Self promotion just isn't my strong suit.
Today’s newsletter isn’t really about shoes, so if you were hoping for some debate on the newest Dunk collaboration Travis Scott is working on with Volkswagen and Sonic the Hedgehog you might want to look elsewhere (lol)
Truth be told I’m not all that stoked to put this out there, but sometimes this is what I’ve gotta do just to get it out of my head and move on with my life. And it might just come off like I’m bitching, and I kind of am, but I think it’s important for people to know that even when it seems like you have all your stuff together it’s ok to not.
Today’s newsletter is about the trials and tribulations of someone trying to get their small, hobby-based business off the ground and what (can) go into a product release.
I’m sure I’ve told the story of my brand (@thesneakersavant , duh) at least a couple of times over IG, but I like to tell it often because I think it helps for people to relate. Not all of us are an ‘overnight success’ and, in fact, almost anyone who is actually successful struggles in their success. If you remember - I started out with a sneaker grading algorithm and preservation process (which is still around and still works) that I worked on for roughly 5 years, but have suddenly found much more success with my writing (hey, you’re here reading) and the sneaker trading cards (and NFTs) I’ve been able to bring to market.
I don’t know how many of y’all have tried to create your own lane, but I suspect it’s more than a few. A lot of those who I mess with on the ‘gram, are likeminded individuals…and it might be what drove y’all to my account in the first place. We are creatives and, as creatives, a lot of us put ourselves into the things we choose to do. And when we see someone putting themselves into their thing, we feed off of each other. We inspire one another. For years I thought I was a technical person because I was always good at the stuff I did on Wall Street, but when I noticed that I was creating things in my spare time, I realized that my creativity as a kid didn’t just ‘go away’, it was just suppressed it throughout college and my first few years in the professional world because it looked like that was where the money was at. And to this day, I have trouble calling myself a ‘creative’ EVEN THOUGH most of the people I respect, in business, refer to me as a ‘creative.’
To put todays mood into perspective…taking it back a few years…I thought I was just going to create this dope product (sneaker grading) and I thought I was just going to be able to create it and then put it out into the world and I thought people were just going to be banging down my door to get to it. It’s funny because I literally whipped up a website in like 8 minutes with stock images and showed it to my friends and they were like…’uh, you might want to think this out a bit further.’ A couple of people I worked with asked me what my marketing plan was in the beginning and my response was simple: ‘I’m just going to grade shoes and I’m going to sell them on eBay and whether or not people want their sneakers graded doesn’t even matter because they’ll be buying the shoes regardless.’ And I can easily shake my head at myself now, because that was a total misrepresentation of what goes into bringing a new product to market. But I wasn’t alone…most of the people I met and talked with along the way didn’t tell me how shitty of an idea my marketing plan was, so I ran with it for years until I realized that I was just spinning my wheels. Bummer.
And this is kind of common knowledge now - not really when I started - but most of these startups like to ‘fail fast’ so that they can iterate and make improvements quicker. Back then, it wasn’t as common knowledge (or, it wasn’t as common to ME). I put all this effort into creating something and I really wanted it to ‘wow’ people so I never really got feedback until I felt like I had a cohesive solution to the problem that I perceived. And it was, I dunno, some people are good at putting stuff out all the time. And some of us like to think of ourselves as ‘perfectionists’, but the reality is - a lot of us ‘perfectionists’ are not really ‘perfectionists’ at all, we’re just scared. Scared of putting our creation(s) out there. It takes vulnerability to put something out into the world and to open yourself up to the criticism of friends and strangers and it seems it’s quite common to be scared of what you create. I went out and created a few products that I hadn’t seen before and I think I did a pretty great job at it. Actually, I think I did an incredible job at it - I don’t know ANYONE who has been able to create what I’ve managed to create. (And shoutout to the folks who helped me - you ALL know who you are!) The part that sucks, though, is that when you’re thinking in terms of ‘perfection’, and you wait for this massive unveiling, you don’t really give yourself much room to adapt if your ideas are actually shit.
And that’s why the thing with Jayssee and Urban Necessities didn’t work out. I showed Jay a half-finished product looking for feedback, and he assumed it was finished and I could start selling it door to door the minute I showed it to him. I had to actually wrap my head around what I was doing.
Yeah, so. OK. I got this in the other day and it was somewhat unexpected…I hadn’t been checking the tracking because I was too busy with all kinds of other stuff:
If you’re not sure what that is…it’s my next batch of sneaker trading cards that @sonsofblackmaria and I worked on. #AirMaxPax . I didn’t even have the peace of mind to open up a box…that’s how annoyed I was at this particular moment.
It took me more than two weeks to open up a single box, that’s how much stuff I have on my plate. And upon opening them, I was excited but also a little dismayed: the art and the experience was great, but I noticed more than just a few bumped corners and off-centered edges. I guess that’s all a part of creating cards, though.
This third batch of cards is about to drop and I’m dragging. Let me be clear: I love the cards and I think what we pulled off (yet again) was an incredible feat and a dope experience…but I am dreading the MARKETING aspect of these cards.
The first time I marketed some cards, with the #824pack, I had a date to hit and I had a few people in my corner helping me get the word out. I didn’t have time to think about how much I hate marketing, so as a result, I nearly sold out of that first set (I only have about 25 boxes left).
The second time I did it, with the #DunkyDunks, I really wanted to hit Christmas, but it just didn’t work out that way. I had a new manufacturer that ended up taking about 3 months longer than the last manufacturer…so when they arrived well after Christmas, I wasn’t too sure about when to release them. I had done virtually no marketing before I started sending them out, and I ended up selling about half with a really lackluster marketing push. I also got super interested in the NFT space, so pushing grading, new cards and NFTs got me almost burnt out…I almost stopped creating stuff altogether. People really seemed to like the #DunkyDunks, though, and it was a much more cohesive set than the Kobe set…I’m really proud of those. But, again, I just didn’t market them enough. There wasn’t much a sense of urgency.
This time, with the #AirMaxPax, I had a date I wanted to hit (3/26 - Air Max Day) but missed it by nearly 4 months. And there was a major mistake that was made that ended up costing me quite a bit of money - I sent the wrong file and we ended up with the wrong foil wrappers. They wrapped up 3,000 packs of cards before my dude in China did a quality check and realized what had happened. So they had to open everything up, re-print, and re-package 30,000 cards. And then I got word that the project manager I worked with on these - this dude in China who I had been painstakingly discussing requirements and pack ripping and box breaking and card culture with - he was fired shortly after our project shipped (as was his boss). And if you had been following me on IG for a while, you know I had this grand plan…I was going to release digital NFT boxes of these cards - I was going to sell those and give FREE physical boxes to everyone who purchased them…and I worked with this developer off Upwork for weeks to get this blockchain product down and then dude just went dark on me. Took my money and didn’t send me any code. Gone. And then my IG went dark for 11 days and that really screwed up my head. All of this momentum just came to a screeching halt.
I’ve always wondered how highly anticipated albums could be pushed back and I think I finally understand it. Sometimes things don’t work out exactly as you expect them to so you have to figure out how you’re going to adapt. I’m kind of stuck in this purgatory where I’m trying to figure out the best way to release these cards - I REALLY wanted to release them in conjunction with the NFTs we created…these NFTs really tell the story of the cards in a neat little package. And I want people who aren’t familiar with NFTs to understand the power behind them…I was hoping that the original release plan would have worked out because I really wanted y’all to see these cards in that light. I’m learning that the majority of people on IG couldn’t give a shit about NFTs and Twitter is really the place to be to push NFTs forward…and I really don’t have much of a presence on Twitter (yet).
But…enough of the bitching. How do I move forward in a productive way?
Anyway, if you’ve made it this far just know that the cards are coming soon…
…I just need to get out of my own way.
Amazing read per usual