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When I was an impressionable kid, the guys in my local 'core' shop outright told me how much better quality the Janoski's and Bruins were over the emericas/etnies/lakais I was looking at. "emericas rip like soggy cardboard etc."
I bought the Janoski's and they loved it. Now I clearly see how they were trying to upsell and get me to spend my birthday money on higher price point shoes. Well, it worked, so who's fault is it I haven't bought emericas since?
perhaps yours for not trying other shoes and making that decision for yourself? I dunno, its different when you're a kid
it kinda sounds similar to the "independents are the best trucks" dude that has never ridden any other truck in his life
I always remember sb's were fairly pricey, and I only ever got sale shoes from the local shop growing up, and any time i spotted an Emerica, Lakai, or eS shoebox in the sale section, i'd immediately gravitate towards those versus whatever other SB's or other shoes were in that sale section.
I mean sure, the buck stops with me in what I spend my money on. However as a kid those words said about emerica, coming from older shop owner/employee, always haunted our group of 12yo skate rats anyway.
The point I was trying to get across is that it's ridiculous for people in this thread to have a go at what shoes younger people wear when surely it's the 'industry gate keepers' at the time who let everything crumble. For kids today it's not even a valid argument.
I'm in my mid 20s now and quite frankly although i'm huge fans of theirs, I couldn't care less if Rick & Mike are no longer making huge bucks slanging inferior shoes to skaters, I feel no real connection to the brand as a UK skater. Same with emerica, I couldn't name one UK skater emerica picked up in years. Throughout my years skating Nike + Adidas + Vans have done more for UK skating than any other company by twofold - I'm aware that's due to crazy budgets but unfortunately that's where the youth's connection with these brands stems from: skateparks, comps, videos, events. Seeing a socal emerica-figgy-looking skater dude in the uk would almost be comical. By the time I was old enough to fully understand the whole 'don't buy corpo brands' argument skateshops were already experiencing Nike forcing masses of 'dead' shoe models on them and they were trying to hard sell them again asap. It's all just extremely messy, or extremely calculated from wherever you look at it.
Could just be a purely uk thing, I know nearly everyone by me doesn't even think twice about it anymore.
Topic: Adidas Closing Shop Accounts (Read 22745 times)