I have always been a tomboy. When I was in elementary school I would refuse to brush my hair, instead letting the gnarled mess be tucked away under my backwards baseball cap. In sixth grade I refused to wear jeans. Instead I would wear sweatpants or basketball shorts, even in the dead of winter. Since then I have certainly come a long way, but there is still a huge part of me that hates pink, cannot do makeup to save her life and would rather throw on sweats than plan out an outfit. So when I hear the phrase “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” all I can think about is changing that “diamond” to “sneakers”. Sneakers are to me as heels and handbags are to the girly girls of society.

      The sneaker industry is one of exclusivity, patience and observation. Sneaker culture as a whole fuels a one billion dollar secondary market. It is a fascinating and frustrating market all in one. You could spend hours scouring countless sights, searching for a particular shoe only to learn that you missed the release date and that your only hope at getting them is to pay double what they were being sold for on sites like ebay and apps like GOAT. Even if you do catch the release date for them it could mean waiting in long lines or refreshing sites that display messages explaining that they’ve crashed due to overload. People do not mess around. There are thousands of websites, blogs, apps and stores dedicated to this hunt for the perfect and exact pair of sneakers. What used to be just going into the store to get a pair of sneakers for everyday wear has blown up into a market of specificity. An entire experience has been created that encourages people to buy sneakers as much as they buy clothes. Or essentially, encourages people to buy clothes based off of what the sneakers they buy look like.  

My Collection So Far

      Since sneakers fit perfectly into my “look like I’m on my way to the gym but never actually go” look that I have worked so hard to procure as a lazy person/tomboy I was immediately sucked into the culture. I have spent hours scouring sites like Nike, Finish Line, Foot Locker, Champs, Six02 and dozens of others. I have spent far too much of my time typing in descriptions to google, trying to track down a shoe that I saw someone around campus or in town wearing in an attempt to figure out what shoe it is and where I can get it. I have added dozens of sneakers to my shopping cart, clicking on them and examining them deeply, weighing my options between all of them, just to end up scrolling through my instagram feed and finding a shoe that I like better than all of them. Thousands of dollars of my paychecks have been dedicated to this hobby, and even after constant complaints from my parents that I spend too much money on sneakers and refusal from them to buy me them for birthdays or christmas, my love of sneakers still prevails.

A Pair of my Favorites

      My sneaker addiction first started when I began working at a sporting goods store. Not only was I surrounded by shoes, but I was able to get a discount on them as well. And not only was a sporty, tom boy look encouraged as far as workplace attire, it was required. So I started to see these shoes at investments. After all, I told myself I needed them for work. In the beginning I started off with somewhat boring and regular shoes; basic shoes that I saw on the shelves at work. But the more my love started to grow, the more my knowledge and my scope started to expand. My closest started to grow. I started to become one of those people who keeps the boxes for all their shoes, stacking them on top of each other proudly.

     All of this immersion into the crazy, constantly changing, world of sneakers has heavily consumed my time and has made me envious of those who are able to work so closely within the industry. The way that the sneaker industry operates fascinates me. The media release dates, the articles examining the ins and outs of a sneaker, the reviews, the hype behind all of it. If nobody writes about these sneakers, alerts consumers of release dates, reviews them, discusses them, then the sneaker industry would be nowhere near where it is today. So as I take an inventory of my passions and interests, brought on by the proverbial quest of trying to figure out what to do with myself after college, the tandem pairing my love of sneakers and my love of writing present itself as a viable career path. The more that I have thought about it, the more that I have realized that I could become a blogger, a writer, a reviewer, for any one of these shoe companies.

      It is kind of scary when, after so much contemplation, you realize that your passions and your skills can align and actually end up culminating in a career. As soon as I was able to realize that every company needs a person on their staff that can effectively and articulately convey information I was able to allow myself to see the endless possibilities. What good are ideas if you cannot express them in an intelligent way that everybody can understand? Realizing the depths of this skill set has allowed me to open my mind to the myriad of options that are out there. It has granted me the opportunity to let myself explore and recognize that my English degree is so much more than some people, myself included, make it out to be. I have come to realize that my writing abilities are not just needed at magazines or publishing companies or in classrooms, but that they are valuable almost anywhere, even in the sneaker industry.

      With my passion for writing and my skills in that area in mind, my ideal career in this industry would look something like this: working for a sneaker website that mainly covers releases and shoe reviews. This would allow me to be involved first hand in the aspect of the hunt for the perfect shoe, being able to scoop it up at exactly the right time and the exclusivity of it all, the aspects which fascinate me the most. People crave the information that these sites provide and playing a role in giving it to them would be worthwhile and stimulating. Not only that but it would allow me to have an inside view of the sneaker industry, something that would allow me to amp up my sneaker game to a whole new level. For example, the website, SneakerNews, that I follow extensively has a position open for a full time staff writer/social media specialist. The job requires editing, extensive knowledge of sneakers, copy editing and producing editorial ideas, all things that I know I could thrive at.  

      My interest in the industry also sent me on the hunt to find a book that talks about this billion dollar market, the ins and outs, the major players and how they came to be. However, to my surprise all of the books I found were either about individual companies such as Nike and adidas or were simply catalogs of high profile sneakers. This lack of literature on the subject got me thinking that if there was not a book already out there then maybe I would just have to write one myself. There is so much work, time and care that goes into the industry and I think that it is important for that to be documented and conveyed and hopefully I can be a part of that.