Back from Las Vegas and New York, I just had time for my birthday and hang out with my wife and kids for a bit, and then back on the road. Or plane…
Nike Sportswear has a few collections under their umbrella, but perhaps the most exciting one right now is the Nike x Undercover line. The Nike x Undercover line, also known as the Nike Gyakusou Line is running clothes designed by Jun Takahashi and his Undercover team, and it has that perfect balance of extremely detailed, yet very clean. And that was the main reason for us to come to Paris for 2 days.

On top of that Nike also showed their Nike Pinnacle line, and some nice Nike Quickstrikes, and Nike TierZero styles. In case you are not as snowed in on this as I might be, I will give you a quick explanation of these terms.

Nike Pinnacle – almost what it sounds like. This has been the home for some top of the line clothing from Nike. You will usually find really well designed and underrated pieces of clothing in that range. With details as waterproof cotton, hidden zippers and so on. From what I hear, 2012 will be the last year for Nike Pinnacle. But you never know with these things.

Nike Quickstrike – if you like what you see and it says Nike Quickstrike – it means you have to strike quick. It also means that the productions is limited. For us it means a range of shoes that are outside the ordinary range that we buy into 4 times a year. Nike Quickstrikes are spread out over the year and have one drop every other (or sometimes every) week on Fridays (and some occasional Wednesday). I think there are about 5-10 Nike Quickstrike accounts within Sweden, but don’t quote me on that. But I know for a fact that Sneakersnstuff has been a Nike Quickstrike account since the release of the Edge pack with the Nike Air Force II, Nike Air Trainer 1 and the Nike Air Max 90. I think that was around 2002.

Nike TierZero – What we are gonna do right here is to go back. Back into time (hiphop voice) to 1999 when we opened Sneakersnstuff. At that time there was no Nike Sportswear. Just Nike. And the same guy that sold us running shoes was the same guy who sold us Nike Air Force 1 (What’s up Fryken). In fact, most of the styles we bought at that time were new styles. Not just retroed styles in new colorways. Some times I miss those days. Anyway – when the retro business started to blow up, Nike came up with the idea to tier all their accounts into different levels. Tier 1 was top level and stores on that level could get access to everything. Tier 2 was a bit more average stores, and they could not get access to all products. And so on. This was to segment the market to keep the interest in the brand as they grew rapidly. It would be hard to keep the attention from all the trendsetters if all, let’s say, price focused stores were able to buy all the coolest stuff. That could make even the coolest sneaker uncool.
Well – as the business grew, Nike had to keep pushing the boundaries of cool. And now they had a problem, since they already had some decent stores in Tier 1. But to top it of with even more limited runs of sneakers – they created Nike Tier Zero. So, at stores with Tier Zero account is where you can find even more limited stuff.
So far so good. But today this has all evolved a bit. Even though Nike Tier Zero still only has one door (yes, Sneakersnstuff are very proud to be Sweden’s only Nike Tier Zero account), Nike has lately added TierZero+(that really should be named TierZero- since it’s one level down from Tier Zero) and some other variations to the Nike TierZero world. So if you ask me what the rules are today, I don’t think anyone really knows anymore. Still – it is under Nike TierZero you will find some of the more hard to get styles.

And there you have it. A back dated update of my life. This updates brings you up to date to March 1st. Don’t be surprised if my next post will quickly sum up April and May to just get back to now. Because I am not really feeling this back-tracking thing…

And oh yeah – most of the time we go to Paris, we see the brothers from Tres Bien Shop. Not sure why, because most of the brands they deal with are Japanese. They should change their name to とても良いお店. Still, I like those guys. And they have a very good selection of brouges and such.