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they need to just give him his own shoe. TJ's carrying that entire brand on his back.
This.
Let him design a shoe, put his name on it, charge a few bucks more for it and that’s the royalty he gets. Why is so hard for them to do this. Instead they’ll swap panels from 13 different shoes together with an old sole design and have some atrocious colorway.
I brought this exact thing up before with some dudes being in colorway purgatory vs some getting their own shoes. Someone like Nakel getting colorway after colorway after colorway yet never getting a shoe, or andrew allen getting constant colorways but never his own shoe, but then seeing Tyshawn Jones or Rowan getting their own shoes with maybe one colorway of theirs coming out before their own models, and many said it's because they dont want to invest into them to that level to give them their own models vs colorways are something that make them feel included without spending to design a shoe from the ground up.
But I agree TJ has long deserved his own shoe. He is both tech and can huck down shit so for him to have a shoe that can cater to both of those aspects and be durable could do very well, as long as it aesthetically is pleasing. but with how much Es isnt willing to invest in 1:1 remakes that people have been demanding but instead remaking the upper but using soles already in the line up to cut corners and save money, im not surprised TJ is only getting his own colorway vs pro shoe. Less spend on designing a shoe that would have to go through the sampling process, more just in getting different colors with existing designs to have TJ feel "special" with his own colorway and still profit off it, win win for Es.