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From September 2020: From Crocs to Nike Dunks, The Grateful Dead Are Taking Over the Shoe Market
WSJ. MAGAZINE | FASHION
From Crocs to Nike Dunks, The Grateful Dead Are Taking Over the Shoe Market
The jam band and their iconic dancing bears are having a style moment thanks to a pair of fuzzy Nikes and tie-dye Crocs.
By Jacob Gallagher
https://twitter.com/jacobwgallagher
jacob.gallagher@wsj.com
Sept. 29, 2020 8:34 am ET
Jerry Garcia never wore Crocs . The Grateful Dead’s Gandalfesque frontman died in 1995, seven years before the clog company was even founded. Yet on September 2, Crocs launched a pair of officially licensed Grateful Dead shoes in a resplendent tie-dye pattern. The psyched clogs were a three-way partnership between the band, the Colorado-based clog company and Chinatown Market, a Los Angeles streetwear brand whose products tend to fly off the digital shelves. At just $60, the Dead Crocs were no different: selling out almost the moment they hit the Crocs website. Weeks later, they garner as much as double their retail price on eBay.
But, these psyched-out Crocs were not even the most hyped-up Grateful Dead shoes of the past few months. That honor goes to the trio of faux-fur-coated Nike SB (skateboarding) Dunk sneakers—in green, orange and yellow to mimic the band’s jaunty dancing bear icons—which were released in July. The limited-issue pairs now trade for thousands of dollars on sneaker resale sites.
It has been 55 years since the Dead first took to the stage in Northern California, and this one-two punch of florid footwear is an attempt to make sure the music never stops. “Part of the way to keep the music in perpetuity is by touching the younger generation and right now the younger generation speaks through product,” says Alix Kram, the VP and head of global retail and brand licensing at Warner Music Artist Services, which holds the Grateful Dead license and who worked with Nike and Chinatown Market on the launches. For Warner Music Group , the hope is that even seeing the Dunks might turn some sneaker fans onto the music. If a shoe collaboration “touches one in every five and influences them to understand more about the music, then we’ve done our job,” says Kram.
There have been a slew of officially licensed Grateful Dead shoes before—there was even a prior Dead Croc issued for the band’s 50th anniversary in 2015—but we’re nearing peak footwear fanaticism here in 2020, and particularly around both Nike Dunks and Crocs. At StockX, a popular sneaker resale website, prices for SB Dunks have more than tripled in the past three years, hitting a high of over $730 on average this July. Currently, of all the shoes released in 2020 that resell on StockX, the ten with the highest price premiums (the average resale price compared to the retail price) are SB Dunks. On StockX, Croc sales are growing 8x faster than the overall sneaker market
Jesse Einhorn, senior economist at StockX, says that both Dunks and Crocs are rising thanks in part to a “collaboration strategy, and on a deeper level, a storytelling strategy [that’s] really unique and differentiates them from a lot of other brands.” In recent months, both companies have unveiled surprising partnerships with familiar brands like Ben & Jerry’s (Nike) and KFC (Crocs). The Grateful Dead shoes are in line with this unconventional collaborative approach.
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From Crocs to Nike Dunks, The Grateful Dead Are Taking Over the Shoe Market
The jam band and their iconic dancing bears are having a style moment thanks to a pair of fuzzy Nikes and tie-dye Crocs.
By Jacob Gallagher
https://twitter.com/jacobwgallagher
jacob.gallagher@wsj.com
Sept. 29, 2020 8:34 am ET
Jerry Garcia never wore Crocs . The Grateful Dead’s Gandalfesque frontman died in 1995, seven years before the clog company was even founded. Yet on September 2, Crocs launched a pair of officially licensed Grateful Dead shoes in a resplendent tie-dye pattern. The psyched clogs were a three-way partnership between the band, the Colorado-based clog company and Chinatown Market, a Los Angeles streetwear brand whose products tend to fly off the digital shelves. At just $60, the Dead Crocs were no different: selling out almost the moment they hit the Crocs website. Weeks later, they garner as much as double their retail price on eBay.
But, these psyched-out Crocs were not even the most hyped-up Grateful Dead shoes of the past few months. That honor goes to the trio of faux-fur-coated Nike SB (skateboarding) Dunk sneakers—in green, orange and yellow to mimic the band’s jaunty dancing bear icons—which were released in July. The limited-issue pairs now trade for thousands of dollars on sneaker resale sites.
It has been 55 years since the Dead first took to the stage in Northern California, and this one-two punch of florid footwear is an attempt to make sure the music never stops. “Part of the way to keep the music in perpetuity is by touching the younger generation and right now the younger generation speaks through product,” says Alix Kram, the VP and head of global retail and brand licensing at Warner Music Artist Services, which holds the Grateful Dead license and who worked with Nike and Chinatown Market on the launches. For Warner Music Group , the hope is that even seeing the Dunks might turn some sneaker fans onto the music. If a shoe collaboration “touches one in every five and influences them to understand more about the music, then we’ve done our job,” says Kram.
There have been a slew of officially licensed Grateful Dead shoes before—there was even a prior Dead Croc issued for the band’s 50th anniversary in 2015—but we’re nearing peak footwear fanaticism here in 2020, and particularly around both Nike Dunks and Crocs. At StockX, a popular sneaker resale website, prices for SB Dunks have more than tripled in the past three years, hitting a high of over $730 on average this July. Currently, of all the shoes released in 2020 that resell on StockX, the ten with the highest price premiums (the average resale price compared to the retail price) are SB Dunks. On StockX, Croc sales are growing 8x faster than the overall sneaker market
Jesse Einhorn, senior economist at StockX, says that both Dunks and Crocs are rising thanks in part to a “collaboration strategy, and on a deeper level, a storytelling strategy [that’s] really unique and differentiates them from a lot of other brands.” In recent months, both companies have unveiled surprising partnerships with familiar brands like Ben & Jerry’s (Nike) and KFC (Crocs). The Grateful Dead shoes are in line with this unconventional collaborative approach.
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