OK...?
Vans IS actually playing against Nike, Hoka, On, Adidas, New Balance, Puma, Asics, etc. because that's the size they are as a brand while they're also playing against Nike SB, NB#, the skate divisions at Converse, Adidas, Asics, Sole Tech, Lakai, etc.
Vans and Hoka (to use them as an case study, but replace Hoka with On, Puma, or any of the non-skate branches of Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Asics, etc. Fuck, even compare them to Crocs which are replacing Vans as the cozy chillers for people who are on their feet all day) are direct competitors outside of the skate market with major brand connections.
They overlap a lot in the sense that they're brands who came up based around edge users that are hyper focused on the tech benefits of their shoes and then they have secondary and tertiary audiences of mainstream, non-hyper athletic users that want cool, comfortable shoes even though they don't take full advantage of all of the tech in them. Historically, skaters are the edge users driving Vans tech and cool factor while trailer runners and hikers are driving Hoka's tech and cool factor. Both of those brands have built their brand identities around those edge users and seen that impact and cool factor trickle into mainstream, non-hyper athletic audiences' buying their products.
I'm not sure why you seem to think that people only buy things because they have a direct, functional benefit to the buyer but, come on - we all know that's not true. People often buy shit just because they see it a lot and assume that must mean it's worth buying or so they seem in the know. People buy shit because they think it's cool and why they think it's cool can have a variety of reasons (one cool colorway, the right person wears it one time, one person in one outfit makes it look cool). People buy things for many reasons outside of word of mouth. Word of mouth definitely had an impact on why Hoka and On exploded but it wasn't the only reason.
Vans was dominating a lot more than a brand like Hoka was for a long time and that has changed.
In both cases, that mainstream audience isn't taking advantage of the tech and other benefits that Vans and Hoka built their shoes and brand identity around. That mainstream, non-hyper athletic audience is buying on-trend shoes that maybe became popular because of the edge cases that then pushed those brands into the mainstream. That doesn't mean that technology suddenly goes away from the manufacturing process or the shoes that are getting made and are selling out (but it can!). But it does mean that that mainstream, non-hyper athletic audience (which is way larger than the edge case) is buying shit without caring much or actively paying attention to the technology.
As such, minor tweaks to the tech aren't going to make drastic changes to the audience. So we're nerding out around all of the tech changes between Vans' different lines and pro models because it directly impacts our experiences skating the shoes. But skating is a large, but still niche audience. It's an audience Vans cares a lot about and wants to cultivate and doesn't want to abandon, for sure. But we know that VF as a whole and Vans as a company is missing financial goals and targets and it's scaring stockholders. That's why they just sold Supreme. And one reason why Vans is missing those targets is a shift in MAINSTREAM TRENDS away from slim, minimalistic shoes like the Old Skool, Era, etc. Even the Samba and Spezial have more heft to them than those models. So now (and has been for a few years), Vans is trying to find a way to react to the changing market by creating shoes that feel more in line with the market while still feeling like Vans shoes and still playing off of the parts of the brand they don't want to give up (their outsider skater / surfer / punk music history, for example). Not wanting to give up the skater edge and not wanting to piss off skaters is why they're going to also give skaters who do want to skate these models options to do colorways and give skateshops the option to book them. It probably also makes things easier for the higher-ups while costing them nothing to do so.
You don't have to like it. You don't have to like the designs. No one on here does. I'm just saying that this is clearly what is happening.
Topic: new Vans models (Read 275677 times)