https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Gj-NolDmE
Throughout 2016, the Consortium Tour has taken us around the globe. The Tour made monthly visits to the world’s industry leaders in retail for sneakers and asked them to collaborate with adidas, bringing their own stories and design concepts to a range of footwear models. After the success of the Consortium Tour, for 2017, adidas are going to develop this notion further and ask retailers partner up and collaborate with one another on models, creating something new and wholly unique. Introducing “Sneaker Exchange”.
Collaboration is an evolving idea. adidas believe that partnership is not based on the calibre of the parties, nor simply the quality of the eventual product, but on the information exchanged. Successful collaboration requires successful communication, working to overcome differences in geography, aesthetics or language to establish common ground and shared narratives. The results are top-level executions upon which both parties left their firm mark. Above all, with authenticity true to themselves, their partners and adidas.
These collaborations will present retailers with a new and interesting set of challenges unlike any previous Consortium project. Sneaker Exchange will push the boundaries in which ideas are shared, pull each partner from its safe space, push its sense of collaboration into new and exciting territory. We will see basketball retailer’s work with fashion-oriented stores; women’s retailers collaborate with menswear shops. In a world where borders are being dissolved by digital advancements, adidas are seeking to get their partners to embrace these changes to find new ways of approaching work together.
Sneaker Exchange will include one monthly drop over the course of 2017 in which two selected retailers will work together to create a bespoke sneaker pack of two silhouettes. Each pack will draw on models new and old. Expect Campus and EQTs to get redressed in modern materials while contemporary performance models like the UltraBOOST are drawn away from the sporting arena.
The Sneaker Exchange will offer a new platform for collaboration, celebrate the strength of the international sneaker community and raise Consortium models to a new level.
Stay tuned!
