
The Air Jordan 11 Retro Concord release madness seems to be over. People got hurt, gun shots were fired, knives were pulled, pepper spray was used between people standing in line and by the police. Entire malls had to shut down – all this because of a sneaker. It seems unbelievable but it actually happened. A topic that is usually left to sneaker focussed blogs made the rounds on international high profile news sites. One thing is for sure, this is marketing that you could not possibly pay for even if you wanted to.
We had now a few days to reflect on the happenings, talked to some people around us, and opinions are all over the pace. Who is to blame for this mess? Nike for releasing a great shoe? The stores for not creating a proper environment and organization to release such a hyped product? Blogs such as ours for creating buzz around such a release? Some opinions by our readers were already expressed in an earlier post here.
Here is what we think. Nike cannot really be blamed, because releasing a great product should be their main concern. Producing great product and marketing it the right way to sell that product is the ultimate goal of Nike and they are certainly pretty good at that, as we were shown again in this case.
We cannot blame the stores either. Sure, they knew people would go crazy about the sneaker, but who could have expected this. Should a store now hire security personnel for a Jordan release? Carry weapons and pepper spray to keep people in order? That cannot be the solution to this issue.
Read the rest of the post after the jump.
