I grew up in Togo, a French speaking country in west Africa where access to signature sneakers like the Ewing Athletics was almost impossible. You have to remember that this was in the 90’s when the internet was not popular and probably only used exclusively by the military. So the only way I could see any sneakers was via a friend of mine who had some strong ties with guys overseas that will periodically send him sneaker magazines. We would all drool over the pictures but didn’t have the necessary funds to acquire them. All we could hope for was to possibly find them in the second hand market ( pre-owned sneakers) . But the experience of looking through the magazine was itself fulfilling and sufficient enough for us . Thinking about it even now brings a lot of warm memories.
So in the 90’s which I consider the golden era of basketball, sports and sneaker magazines were our only way of connecting with the players we idolized. I was and still am a big Ewing fan to this day, but Patrick Ewing is now retired and the Knicks are a shell of themselves . So how do you reach today’s consumer. You couldn’t sell this generation a pair of sneakers with a magazine . I don’t even let magazines like Eastbay cross my front porch, they get tossed in the recycle bin . Some will say the best way to reach the consumer is through social media; to that I will say yes to some extent . But looking at my own traffic on my website, most of it originates from organic search which depends heavily on relevant content. I tried Facebook ads and it was terrible, my reach was poor and it didn’t create any bumps in traffic on the site.
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