Source: Nike / NIke
Last week the sneaker world was up in arms and furious when it was revealed that famous sneaker reseller WestCoastStreetWear, Joe Hebert, was actually the son of Nike VP/GM Ann Hebert (and yes, she oversaw the much-hated and frustrating Nike SNKRS app to boot).
After the news caused an uproar in the sneaker community, Hebert stepped down from her position after holding it down for a quarter of a century and possibly having a hand in having us hold all those L’s the past few years. Though her son Joe Herbert maintains that his cook group and sneaker bots are the reason that he has a massive stockpile of limited edition sneakers in his mini warehouse, heads feel like his mama helped give him some kind of keys to the SNKRS backdoor.
Now that Hebert has stepped down Nike is trying to rectify things and have begun by naming Sarah Mensah as Hebert’s replacement at the VP/GM role for North America and Amy Montagne is named VP/GM, APLA.
Yeah that’s cool but do they have any teenage sons or daughters that are sneakerheads though? Will they soon have kids that will turn into sneaker resellers right out the womb? We want answers! Okay, we’re sorry about that little outburst. We just frustrated round these parts.
Aside from those news, Nike CEO John Donahoe tells Complex that the company has been working on anti-bot technology for a hot minute to level the playing field for everyone, but it seems like they just can’t get it right.
“We’ve been working on anti-bot technology for the last several years,” Donahoe said. “That is part of the solution, but we need to double down our efforts.”
While it’s said that SNKRS is extremely hard to bot, there is word that SNKRS bots are available if you have at least $20K to burn on one. Hebert’s son is probably the one selling that too for all we know.
Whatever anti-sneakerbot technology they do we just hope it doesn’t end up like Foot Locker’s where if you try to “Add To Bag” a second time after failing a first you end up getting blocked from the website because you’re now suspicious. Christ on crutches the sneaker game is broken to pieces. We hate y’all bots!
One way Nike can maybe help out is by producing higher numbers of highly anticipated releases. 200K pairs of Travis Scott Jordans and 100K pairs of last weekend’s Air Jordan 1 “University Blue”‘s per release just won’t cut it when there’s millions of sneakerheads waiting for their chance to copp. Just sayin.’
And is Nike gonna do anything about Marcus Jordan’s notorious backdooring too? Probably not.
What do y’all think Nike should do to get right with the sneaker community? Let us know in the comments section below.