DEATH OF THE INDEPENDENT SNEAKER STORE

To be fair, others like the hilariously brash Chris Vidal from Flight Club and latterly Alife, managed to make their raucous presence an essential and memorable part of the NY shopping experience. Last year I walked into the Supreme store in LA and nearly fell over when the counter-guy gave me a friendly hello. Good customer service will always win repeat business but you don’t always find it in the indie sphere.

Too busy blogging I guess.

When you haven’t got the luxury of being the hot-shit anymore, a snooty attitude looks dated fast. Frank Liew also noted, “There are people out there who believe this scene should be elitist in a cooler-than-thou type of way, but the true role of these people should be guidance, not segregation” Perhaps the superiority complex was and is part of a bigger conceit? Cool people don’t buy shit.

Just ask any store owner. And if you are a store that wants to trade in cool shit, what do you do when you’ve alienated an entire generation who suddenly don’t care about you or your reputation anymore?

Let’s think one predictable step further along in this process. What if there’s no more ‘cool guy’ stuff created by big brands to sell in ‘cool guy’ stores? What exactly, are the indies supposed to specialise in and what are we supposed to fiend after? GR?