WTF is a Sneaker Savant and why am I getting emails from him?
A quick break from our regularly scheduled programming...
Hi. I’m James Platt. That’s me, above, in a pic that is more than 15 years old. Most of my friends call me ‘JT’. For the purpose of this awkward introduction - I’m an older sneakerhead who’s been hanging around the sneaker scene for the better part of 20 years. Through my childhood growing up in the mountains of Northern California, on to my first batch of jobs messing with Finance on Wall Street, my second batch of jobs messing with Tech in Silicon Valley and my third batch of jobs as a High School teacher in East Oakland, I’ve been TOTALLY immersed in the Sneaker world. It’s just something that never went away…my love for a dope pair of shoes.
(this pic is almost 10 years old and I’ve had two kids since then so…more wrinkles, less hair)
So, Who is The Sneaker Savant?
A few years ago, I decided to build a sneaker grading algorithm - ‘Shoemetrics’ - in an attempt to standardize sneaker condition in the secondary sneaker market. Think of something like grading for cards, or grading for comic books, or grading for toys or video games. Except, for sneakers. I built a whole persona around it called ‘The Sneaker Savant’ as I seem to have a pretty unnatural level of knowledge about the subject. With the grading, I’ve had some minor successes building it out - having worked with the likes of @urban_necessities and Wax.io and having been involved with several shops and marketplaces, but nothing really panned out. I’m a self-professed expert at sneaker grading, but I think the market just isn’t ready for it yet. I’ve sold more than a thousand pairs of graded shoes and have received nothing but positive feedback through my eBay store (100% positive feedback).
About a year ago, I had an idea - I wanted to build a set of sneaker trading cards in randomized packs and ended up creating the #824pack , based on the shoes that Kobe Bryant wore throughout his career. I was featured all over Instagram and actually hit some pretty notable accounts…reaching several million people - @nicekicks and @footwearnews and a few others really got the ball rolling for me. A few months later, I built another set of trading cards based on the early years of Nike SB - a set I called #dunkydunks , which also gave me a bit more exposure - this time from @sneakerfreakermag and a few big celebrities - guys like @lilyachty and @jbalvin …. I have a third set coming out in the next few weeks (cards are currently on a slow boat from overseas) called the #airmaxpax , which I worked on almost exclusively with @sonsofblackmaria .
How did I get your email address?
As I said before, I’ve been selling products…
graded shoes (which I no longer sell)
authentication checks (I do this through multiple outlets)
(or maybe you bought some TSS branded shoe trees. Because I sold close to 20,000 shoe trees. Seriously.)
…and you likely bought something from me. I scraped my PayPal transaction logs for emails and yours was there…so, I took the liberty of adding you to my mailing list. Feel free to unsubscribe, though, I’m not looking for handouts :).
But why am I emailing you?
Well, if you haven’t been following, I’ve been building out The Sneaker Savant Instagram account (@thesneakersavant) for the better part of 5 years. I had nominal success. About a year and a half ago I decided to take it more seriously and I’ve seen pretty awesome growth in that time - I went from about 5,000 ghost followers to about 15,000 real followers. (I hate the term ‘followers’, but it’s easy to say). And every time I posted a topic for discussion (damn near every day), I’d get upwards of 100 well-thought-out comments from people all over the spectrum - those that agreed and those that disagreed and everyone in between. For the most part, almost every conversation was *constructive* and *illuminating* and *educational.* I’ve developed all kinds of relationships with my 'followers’ over the years and I’ve seen plenty of them team up when they find common ground under my posts. It’s been awesome to witness.
Yeah, that’s great and all but WHY am I emailing you?
Well, inexplicably, for the 3rd time in about 6 months, my Instagram account was deactivated and deleted with no warning or explanation. I’ve sent countless emails and submitted countless forms and, although I do believe I will get my account back in the near future, there’s no telling whether or not that’s actually going to happen. The first time I got booted off Instagram - I believe it was a group of people who simply didn’t like my opinion on a pair of sneakers and decided to *report me* - it was devastating considering how much work I put in. I spent 3 sleepless nights searching for answers and finally got a message back from someone at IG that said ‘we made a mistake’. I knew at the time that I had to start thinking of contingency plans and started checking into other social networks (ie: Twitter and Facebook ) but trying to crack the code behind those networks has proven to be quite difficult.
So…uh…
I’m emailing you in hopes that you’ll be a part of this community. If you’re looking at this like it’s just another sneaker blog or newsletter or whatever, I’d say ‘give it a couple of weeks’ and you’ll see we really don’t talk about what the rest of the sneaker world talks about. We form our own opinions and find inspiration and interest in the things the major blogs either ignore or overlook. We’re not poseurs, we’re not flexin’ just to flex. We’re not talking about how much our collections are ‘worth’. We’re not beastin’ to buy or sell every new release in the comments. What we built on IG was a DOPE community that I hope to be able to help replicate outside of IG.
I hope that you’ll stick around and I hope that you’ll help grow it.
Alright. So here’s the plan.
I’ve been hard at work trying to answer the question ‘where do you want this to be in 5 years?’ I’ve been ruminating on it for months…and…truth be told, the IG ban was kind of a blessing in disguise because it gave me a chance to take a step back and re-assess what it is that needs to be done.
I created a second account about a month ago - @1tostock - to try to clarify the main feed coming through on @thesneakersavant . I planned on using @thesneakersavant for my long-winded posts, grading and sneaker stuff and the @1tostock account for the sneaker cards & subsequent NFTs…IG really forced my hand, though, a bit earlier than I hoped.
So for now, the plan is to post my long-winded stuff on substack, short takes on @thesneakersavant and the art & card projects on @1tostock . AND AND AND…we started a podcast. It’s called ‘Office Hours’ and it’s basically an extended discussion regarding the posts for the week…we want to do it as more of like a ‘live podcast’, so we’re gonna do it on Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse and let folks jump in and ask questions whenever it strikes. This dude @shoef___cohen had been hitting me up for the better part of six months asking me to start a podcast and I had been trying to wrap my head around it when it finally hit me - we just gotta get it going. Episodes should start droppin within the next few weeks.
If you’ve made it this far, Thank you. Seriously.
So, yeah. That’s the story in a bit of a long-winded nutshell. Thanks for stopping by!