December 6, 2024 • 18 mins
The Black Cement Jordan 3 is high regarded as one of the best Air Jordans of all-time. The release of the 2024 retro has been nothing short of controversial. The stories of lacking quality and inconsistency beg the question of whether sneaker lovers should voice with their wallets more loudly going forward. Matt checks in with his thoughts.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The Jordan 3 black cement isone of the most iconic shoes of all
time and it recently retroed.
How did it go?
We're going to talk about itthis time on Fire Footwear.
(00:27):
Welcome back to Fire Footwear, everybody.
As always, this is your host,Matt Fraits.
I hope that this finds you well.
I want to, as always, thankyou for coming back to this podcast
or if you're brand new,welcome to the Fire Footwear community.
I hope everybody whocelebrates here in the United States
and honestly, just everywhere,I hope you had a great Thanksgiving
weekend, a Thanksgivingholiday, specifically those of you
in the US That I knowcelebrated last Thursday, I know
(00:50):
some of our Canadian friendscelebrated a couple of months ago.
Wherever you are and howeveryou spent this weekend, I just want
to say out front that I'mthankful for you.
I'm thankful for the time thatyou give to this podcast and I'm
just thankful to have the kindof platform that I do, the life that
I have.
There's many things, includingthis podcast, that make my life great.
My wife, my son, my friends, alot of things.
(01:11):
And I'm thankful for all of it.
So I hope that it treated youwell and hopefully the end of this
year will continue to treatyou well and 2025 will again continue
to treat you the best that it can.
But we're here to talk aboutthe Black Cement 3.
Now, this isn't something thatI was actually going to talk about
quite this way.
As you know, I'm a big fan ofcultivating history around here.
(01:33):
I do think that it's importantto talk about shoes like the Black
Cement 3 in a way thatremembers where we came from.
The Black Cement 3 obviouslydebuted in 1988, and it is a shoe
in many, many ways that reallysaved Jordan brand at the time and
really got it to where we are today.
And the reason being isbecause the Jordan 2, while we look
(01:54):
at it a lot differently Today,the Jordan 2 was a shoe that nearly
lost Nike Michael Jordan.
The Jordan one was great.
Michael Jordan got hurt.
The Jordan two tried tobasically get into exclusivity.
It tried to get into luxury goods.
And it just didn't work at thetime for a basketball shoe.
Fast forward to today and itprobably does work.
(02:16):
Back then it didn't.
And so Nike had to take a realrisk in order to get Michael Jordan
to be convinced to stay withthe company.
It was difficult enough to getMichael Jordan to sign with them
in the first place.
Now they had to keep him aftera disappointing release.
So if you think about it theyreally had to find something to get
him there.
And they took a chance on aguy who had hit a home run in 1986
(02:38):
with the Air Max 1.
And that was Tinker Hatfield.
Tinker Hatfield was given thekeys to the kingdom, the keys to
this Ferrari.
And they said, you are goingto save this brand.
And Tinker Hatfield, the storygoes, basically went to Michael Jordan
and said, what do you want ina shoe?
And what came out of all ofthat was the Air Jordan 3.
And more specifically theBlack Cement 3, which is the one
(03:01):
that I think everybody thinksof when they think of the debut of
the Air Jordan 3.
Obviously there are other OG colorways.
The White Cement 3 is anothericonic one.
We all know the history here.
And that's what I originallywanted to talk about.
I wanted to talk about thefact that the elephant print overlays
and all of that stuff, thataesthetic had never been seen before.
(03:23):
And that is really what makesthat shoe iconic and what makes it
one of the most, or at leastprobably the highest selling Jordan
ever.
And you have the one, thethree, the four, those are probably
some of the most popular.
Let's throw the 11 in there too.
And so every so often, what,five or six years or so, Jordan brand
goes back to the vault andthey pull out some of these OG color
(03:44):
of these iconic shoes thatthey know are going to sell very,
very well.
It happened in 2018, I thinkit happened in 2012.
So for the Black Cement 3, itseems to be about every six years
or so that we get a trueproper retro of the Jordan 3 black
cement.
And so sneaker culture hasbeen very excited about this for
(04:04):
a while.
There's been a lot of buzz andthe release came about.
Now the release came aboutwith a shock drop, which is always
a good thing, especially intoday's world when we know about
the shock drops.
Now, I know that I've probablytalked about that and said, well,
how can you call it a shockdrop if we know about it?
And at this point, I've justkind of come to grips with reality
that social media is going toruin a lot of these things that beforehand
(04:25):
we would have never known about.
So the shock drop comes and itgives people an opportunity to cop
a shoe that they really want.
Many people out there probablyown at least one retro of the Black
Cement 3, if not more.
If you've been in the gamelong enough, you may or may not have
every iteration of it, but youat least have the 2018 pair.
I did have the 2018 pair.
(04:46):
And before we get intoeverything that I saw in the commentary
and reviews of the shoe that Isaw, I had the 2018 pair.
And while I appreciate theshoe for what it is, I appreciate
it for where it is in history.
Probably one of my hottesttakes is I don't think that the black
cement Jordan 3 is one of thebest shoes of all time.
(05:06):
I know many people feel that way.
I know a lot of people areprobably going to gasp, maybe even
clutch their pearls, hearingme say something like that.
But that's the thing aboutsneakers, right?
Is we don't always have tolike the same thing.
That's something I've talkedabout a lot on this show over the
course of this year, is thatyou should like what you like.
And if you don't like a shoeor you don't want to pay money for
(05:27):
a shoe, just don't go after it.
Trust me, plenty of othersneaker people are going to go after
it.
So the Black Cement threedrops is a shock drop.
People start getting theirpairs and you start hearing some
rumblings, some whispers aboutthe fact that this release was not
good quality.
One of the things Jordan Brandseemed to really hone in on in this
release, and it's somethingthat I think that they've tried to
(05:47):
hone in on a lot more over thelast couple of years, especially
after watching people likeChris from Wear Testers talk about
the fact that they can't getthe shape right as it relates to
the og.
And you'd think to yourself, Iwonder why that is.
So Nike and Jordan Brand havegone back to the drawing board to
try to make sure that theshape is as close to the OG as possible.
And then the big release happened.
(06:08):
People were able to cop pairs.
Obviously, some pairs made itto the outlets, but there's a little
bit of a difference betweenbeing in an outlet these days and
being at outlet prices.
To me, the Nike outlet reallyisn't an outlet anymore.
It's just a way for Nike toput more merchandise in front of
us and make us think sometimesthat we're getting a deal, when in
reality we're paying retail,if not very, very close to retail.
(06:31):
And now people are gettingtheir pairs en masse.
So you're seeing a lot ofpeople on social media, you're seeing
a ton of people on YouTubereviewing this shoe and across the
board.
The through line that I haveseen is that quality is very, very
down on all of these pairs.
While the shape is amazing anda lot closer to the og, which is
great for the historians out there.
(06:51):
When it comes to the actualquality, the actual execution of
the shoe, many, many peopleare very disappointed in the pairs
that they got.
And we saw this before anothericonic shoe, the Air Max 90 Bacon,
which is one of my favoritecolorways of all time.
That shoe was retroed kind ofin 2021.
And the quality of that wasvery, very bad across the board.
(07:14):
And at the time, I remember, Ithink I even had this podcast, I
remember talking about thefact that listening to a lot of people
talk about that shoe andcomplain about the things that they
saw on that shoe, it very muchwas reminiscent of the way that other
kinds of sneakerheads talk.
And that's really where I wantto get into kind of the meat of what
I want to talk about here.
(07:35):
A lot of the complaints that Ihave seen have talked about quality
of materials, and they'vetalked about the inconsistency in
the quality across the board.
And I think that that's a fair criticism.
I think that if you're talkingabout the kind of money that we're
paying, and this releaseactually shines a very, very bright
light on the fact, and it'ssomething we've talked about a lot
here and you hear in otherplaces is that these sneaker brands
(07:58):
are asking more and more of us.
And not just in the fact thatthey're giving us more shoes to choose
from.
They're asking us to pay moreand more money every single time.
Even within a given year, onesilhouette like the Jordan 3 could
go up $10.
And I think what they haveassumed is that we are so embedded
in this culture that we are sointo sneakers that we're just going
(08:21):
to pay it blindly.
And the numbers are notproving that.
The numbers are showing thatNike has had to pivot in a lot of
ways.
They've changed CEOs for thatmere fact that they have lost, what,
billions of dollars becausesneakers have taken a downturn.
Now, Nike is obviously anathletics wear brand, but at the
end of the day, when we'retalking about sneakers, a lot of
(08:41):
people love sneakers today.
And so when you go back intothe vault and when you go back and
take a piece of history likethe Jordan 3 black cement, in my
opinion, the details matter.
And you have to make sure thatyou get the details right.
And when we talk about badmaterials, when we talk about inconsistent
elephant print, and when wehear a lot about other quality control
(09:04):
issues that have come out ofthe Nike warehouse, it begs the question
of this global brand, thisiconic brand, not just Nike, but
Jordan Brand.
Also, how can they not gettheir quality consistent?
That's something that I don'treally understand.
Now, this other group ofsneakerheads that I'm talking about
are people that really orsolely live in the fake sneaker space
(09:28):
or the replica space.
I've been very open about thefact that I do think that it's important
for me to know what's going on there.
But I remember one of theturning points for me when I was
embedded in that was lookingat all the comments on Reddit about
shoes that people posted andthey wanted a quality check of the
shoes that they were going to get.
Now, a lot of people who maybedon't know this, what happens in
(09:50):
the replica market is you havesome type of a supplier, whether
it's a middleman or whetherit's directly from a factory or directly
from a seller who can get itat a lot cheaper of a price.
You place an order and beforethat order gets to you, you are shown
pictures of the shoes thatyou're actually going to get.
And you'd think to yourself,well, how do you know that you're
going to get those?
(10:10):
Well, a lot of that marketactually self polices itself.
So if you're going to bait andswitch people, word is going to get
out very quickly.
So for the most part, anyseller that's worth a damn is going
to show you the actual shoesthat you're going to get.
And one of the reasons thatthis happens is because it allows
the customer, somebody likeme, to look at the quality of this
shoe, at least as it relatesto stitching and the way that things
(10:33):
are embroidered and justmaking sure that things are even.
I remember thinking to myself,I just want to make sure that the
shoe that I'm getting is asclose to retail as possible, but
also doesn't look likesomething that I actually made in
my attic.
That was kind of my standard.
But I noticed that a lot ofpeople in that market were doing
what I thought was nitpickingabout these shoes.
(10:56):
They'd be like this littlestitches off here.
This midsole seems like it's alittle bit darker than it should
be.
And it got to the point wherethe minutia of the things that people
were pointing out were soridiculous that it made American
sneakerheads seem so picky andjust seem so kind of bougie compared
to a lot of the internationalpeople that were buying there.
(11:17):
And the reason I bring this upis because I realized something.
Listening to people talk aboutthe black cement release, listening
to people talk about thequality issues with it, the inconsistency
with it.
I realized that we're all kindof the same.
And I've realized that nomatter what market you traffic in,
what you really want at theend of the day is that whatever brand
(11:39):
it is that you're buying from,whether it's from Nike and Jordan
brand, or whether it's fromsome middleman in China, you want
to make sure that your hardearned money is going to translate
into the best quality productthat you can have.
And today, whether we like itor not, sneakers do represent clout
for a lot of people.
That's no shade on anybody whofeels better because they have shoes
(12:02):
that other people don't.
But you also, if that'ssomething that you do, you want to
make sure that the shoes thatyou have in your collection are as
good as they can be.
Because when you are showingthem off to other people, you never
want somebody to look at themand say, man, this shit is whack.
And that's the truth.
Whether you're buying retail,whether you're buying fakes, that's
(12:24):
what you want at the end ofthe day.
And one thing that I'venoticed that these fake replica sellers,
whatever you want to callthem, actually strive for, for the
most part, is making sure thatthe quality is high because they
know that their business couldsuffer because of word of mouth.
The difference here is thatNike and Jordan brand, even though
(12:45):
it seems like they're strivingfor that consistency, the execution
of it from release to releasedoesn't happen.
And that is a problem.
And it's a problem becausethey don't think that we actually
care about that in a way thatis going to put any type of a dent
into their bottom line.
And that's kind of what I wantto talk about even more here is that
(13:06):
we have an opportunitysometimes as sneaker heads, to really
make a difference in this market.
But I think that we have beenconditioned to not sit things out
because we feel like we'regoing to miss out and we feel like
we're not going to havesomething that maybe other people
are going to have.
But The Black Cement 3 shouldtell you something.
It should tell you that weshould ask for more from these brands.
(13:28):
We should not just assume thatthey're going to get it right and
we should not just assumethat, well, this is the only time
I'm going to have to get it,so I need to make sure I spend my
money on it.
If it's not worth your Money,no matter where you're getting the
shoe from, you shouldn't buy it.
And we as consumers shouldmake sure that that message gets
sent loud and clear to Nike,to Jordan brand, to Adidas.
(13:52):
It doesn't matter what thebrand is.
We should be telling them withour words and more importantly, with
our wallet that we want betterand the Jordan 3 black cement deserved
better.
Just because it's not a shoethat I like and just because I don't
have this particular iterationof it doesn't mean that I can't go
to real sneaker heads.
The people that I called theboots on the ground and get their
(14:14):
real feedback, their honest feedback.
That's something I've talkedabout in the show earlier this year,
too, is the fact that Nike andJordan brand, they really need to
get people like us in the lab,in these meeting rooms, get real
feedback.
And they would learn that theJordan 3 black cement is so sacred
in this space that they can'tmess it up.
(14:34):
And they've messed it up big time.
And we as the consumer, weshould be telling them loud and clear
that we are not going to standfor this.
And with that, let's get tothe release of the week.
(14:59):
Release of the week, where Ilike to highlight a shoe that has
caught my eye.
It's not always hype.
It's just something that Iwant you to know about.
So we talked about the BlackCement 3 being iconic and something
that we remember today.
Well, something else that wasiconic were the Seattle Supersonics
and if you recall, in the 90s,Sean Kemp, Gary Payton, there were
some really good Supersonicsteams and teams that could have won
(15:21):
the NBA Finals if not forMichael Jordan existing.
So on December 7th, Nike SBDunk Low Sonex Colorway.
This is an absolutely firecolorway of the Nike SB Low, especially
for people like myself whoremember those teams and just it's
something that is nostalgic to me.
It makes me feel a certain wayand brings me back to those times.
(15:44):
And I think if you're of acertain age in sneaker culture, you
have those memories.
So December 7th is your time.
It's probably going to be 120,$130 on the sneakers app.
It's going to be tough to get.
But you know what?
You should go out and get itbecause the Supersonics were fire.
These shoes are fire.
This gum sole, amazing execution.
I can't wait to try out for it.
How do you feel about theBlack Cement 3 in 2024?
(16:05):
And how do you feel about theidea that we should be more vocal
to these companies about thelack of quality and consistency with
their releases, let me know.
Hit me up on Instagram.
Irefootwearpod is the handle.
Of course you can call theFire Footwear Hotline, area code
202-643-9170 is the number togive me a story, give me an opinion.
(16:26):
Whatever it is, I'd love toplay it on a future episode.
YouTube Fire Footwear SneakersTalk with Matt Frates I'm going to
be putting up some reviewspretty soon and hopefully we can
get back to some consistentcontent both in audio and in video.
I appreciate everybody's time.
I hope this finds everybodywell and safe as I always do and
I'll talk to you next time.
This is Fire Footwear.
(17:04):
The opinions and viewpointsexpressed on Fire Footwear are those
of Matt Frates and his guestand not necessarily those of the
Maddie Ice Media Network.
Fire Footwear is exclusivelyowned by Matt Freights and is brought
to you by the Matty I.
The Jordan 3 black cement isone of the most iconic shoes of all
time and it recently retroed.
How did it go?
We're going to talk about itthis time on Fire Footwear.
(00:27):
Welcome back to Fire Footwear, everybody.
As always, this is your host,Matt Fraits.
I hope that this finds you well.
I want to, as always, thankyou for coming back to this podcast
or if you're brand new,welcome to the Fire Footwear community.
I hope everybody whocelebrates here in the United States
and honestly, just everywhere,I hope you had a great Thanksgiving
weekend, a Thanksgivingholiday, specifically those of you
in the US That I knowcelebrated last Thursday, I know
(00:50):
some of our Canadian friendscelebrated a couple of months ago.
Wherever you are and howeveryou spent this weekend, I just want
to say out front that I'mthankful for you.
I'm thankful for the time thatyou give to this podcast and I'm
just thankful to have the kindof platform that I do, the life that
I have.
There's many things, includingthis podcast, that make my life great.
My wife, my son, my friends, alot of things.
(01:11):
And I'm thankful for all of it.
So I hope that it treated youwell and hopefully the end of this
year will continue to treatyou well and 2025 will again continue
to treat you the best that it can.
But we're here to talk aboutthe Black Cement 3.
Now, this isn't something thatI was actually going to talk about
quite this way.
As you know, I'm a big fan ofcultivating history around here.
(01:33):
I do think that it's importantto talk about shoes like the Black
Cement 3 in a way thatremembers where we came from.
The Black Cement 3 obviouslydebuted in 1988, and it is a shoe
in many, many ways that reallysaved Jordan brand at the time and
really got it to where we are today.
And the reason being isbecause the Jordan 2, while we look
(01:54):
at it a lot differently Today,the Jordan 2 was a shoe that nearly
lost Nike Michael Jordan.
The Jordan one was great.
Michael Jordan got hurt.
The Jordan two tried tobasically get into exclusivity.
It tried to get into luxury goods.
And it just didn't work at thetime for a basketball shoe.
Fast forward to today and itprobably does work.
(02:16):
Back then it didn't.
And so Nike had to take a realrisk in order to get Michael Jordan
to be convinced to stay withthe company.
It was difficult enough to getMichael Jordan to sign with them
in the first place.
Now they had to keep him aftera disappointing release.
So if you think about it theyreally had to find something to get
him there.
And they took a chance on aguy who had hit a home run in 1986
(02:38):
with the Air Max 1.
And that was Tinker Hatfield.
Tinker Hatfield was given thekeys to the kingdom, the keys to
this Ferrari.
And they said, you are goingto save this brand.
And Tinker Hatfield, the storygoes, basically went to Michael Jordan
and said, what do you want ina shoe?
And what came out of all ofthat was the Air Jordan 3.
And more specifically theBlack Cement 3, which is the one
(03:01):
that I think everybody thinksof when they think of the debut of
the Air Jordan 3.
Obviously there are other OG colorways.
The White Cement 3 is anothericonic one.
We all know the history here.
And that's what I originallywanted to talk about.
I wanted to talk about thefact that the elephant print overlays
and all of that stuff, thataesthetic had never been seen before.
(03:23):
And that is really what makesthat shoe iconic and what makes it
one of the most, or at leastprobably the highest selling Jordan
ever.
And you have the one, thethree, the four, those are probably
some of the most popular.
Let's throw the 11 in there too.
And so every so often, what,five or six years or so, Jordan brand
goes back to the vault andthey pull out some of these OG color
(03:44):
of these iconic shoes thatthey know are going to sell very,
very well.
It happened in 2018, I thinkit happened in 2012.
So for the Black Cement 3, itseems to be about every six years
or so that we get a trueproper retro of the Jordan 3 black
cement.
And so sneaker culture hasbeen very excited about this for
(04:04):
a while.
There's been a lot of buzz andthe release came about.
Now the release came aboutwith a shock drop, which is always
a good thing, especially intoday's world when we know about
the shock drops.
Now, I know that I've probablytalked about that and said, well,
how can you call it a shockdrop if we know about it?
And at this point, I've justkind of come to grips with reality
that social media is going toruin a lot of these things that beforehand
(04:25):
we would have never known about.
So the shock drop comes and itgives people an opportunity to cop
a shoe that they really want.
Many people out there probablyown at least one retro of the Black
Cement 3, if not more.
If you've been in the gamelong enough, you may or may not have
every iteration of it, but youat least have the 2018 pair.
I did have the 2018 pair.
(04:46):
And before we get intoeverything that I saw in the commentary
and reviews of the shoe that Isaw, I had the 2018 pair.
And while I appreciate theshoe for what it is, I appreciate
it for where it is in history.
Probably one of my hottesttakes is I don't think that the black
cement Jordan 3 is one of thebest shoes of all time.
(05:06):
I know many people feel that way.
I know a lot of people areprobably going to gasp, maybe even
clutch their pearls, hearingme say something like that.
But that's the thing aboutsneakers, right?
Is we don't always have tolike the same thing.
That's something I've talkedabout a lot on this show over the
course of this year, is thatyou should like what you like.
And if you don't like a shoeor you don't want to pay money for
(05:27):
a shoe, just don't go after it.
Trust me, plenty of othersneaker people are going to go after
it.
So the Black Cement threedrops is a shock drop.
People start getting theirpairs and you start hearing some
rumblings, some whispers aboutthe fact that this release was not
good quality.
One of the things Jordan Brandseemed to really hone in on in this
release, and it's somethingthat I think that they've tried to
(05:47):
hone in on a lot more over thelast couple of years, especially
after watching people likeChris from Wear Testers talk about
the fact that they can't getthe shape right as it relates to
the og.
And you'd think to yourself, Iwonder why that is.
So Nike and Jordan Brand havegone back to the drawing board to
try to make sure that theshape is as close to the OG as possible.
And then the big release happened.
(06:08):
People were able to cop pairs.
Obviously, some pairs made itto the outlets, but there's a little
bit of a difference betweenbeing in an outlet these days and
being at outlet prices.
To me, the Nike outlet reallyisn't an outlet anymore.
It's just a way for Nike toput more merchandise in front of
us and make us think sometimesthat we're getting a deal, when in
reality we're paying retail,if not very, very close to retail.
(06:31):
And now people are gettingtheir pairs en masse.
So you're seeing a lot ofpeople on social media, you're seeing
a ton of people on YouTubereviewing this shoe and across the
board.
The through line that I haveseen is that quality is very, very
down on all of these pairs.
While the shape is amazing anda lot closer to the og, which is
great for the historians out there.
(06:51):
When it comes to the actualquality, the actual execution of
the shoe, many, many peopleare very disappointed in the pairs
that they got.
And we saw this before anothericonic shoe, the Air Max 90 Bacon,
which is one of my favoritecolorways of all time.
That shoe was retroed kind ofin 2021.
And the quality of that wasvery, very bad across the board.
(07:14):
And at the time, I remember, Ithink I even had this podcast, I
remember talking about thefact that listening to a lot of people
talk about that shoe andcomplain about the things that they
saw on that shoe, it very muchwas reminiscent of the way that other
kinds of sneakerheads talk.
And that's really where I wantto get into kind of the meat of what
I want to talk about here.
(07:35):
A lot of the complaints that Ihave seen have talked about quality
of materials, and they'vetalked about the inconsistency in
the quality across the board.
And I think that that's a fair criticism.
I think that if you're talkingabout the kind of money that we're
paying, and this releaseactually shines a very, very bright
light on the fact, and it'ssomething we've talked about a lot
here and you hear in otherplaces is that these sneaker brands
(07:58):
are asking more and more of us.
And not just in the fact thatthey're giving us more shoes to choose
from.
They're asking us to pay moreand more money every single time.
Even within a given year, onesilhouette like the Jordan 3 could
go up $10.
And I think what they haveassumed is that we are so embedded
in this culture that we are sointo sneakers that we're just going
(08:21):
to pay it blindly.
And the numbers are notproving that.
The numbers are showing thatNike has had to pivot in a lot of
ways.
They've changed CEOs for thatmere fact that they have lost, what,
billions of dollars becausesneakers have taken a downturn.
Now, Nike is obviously anathletics wear brand, but at the
end of the day, when we'retalking about sneakers, a lot of
(08:41):
people love sneakers today.
And so when you go back intothe vault and when you go back and
take a piece of history likethe Jordan 3 black cement, in my
opinion, the details matter.
And you have to make sure thatyou get the details right.
And when we talk about badmaterials, when we talk about inconsistent
elephant print, and when wehear a lot about other quality control
(09:04):
issues that have come out ofthe Nike warehouse, it begs the question
of this global brand, thisiconic brand, not just Nike, but
Jordan Brand.
Also, how can they not gettheir quality consistent?
That's something that I don'treally understand.
Now, this other group ofsneakerheads that I'm talking about
are people that really orsolely live in the fake sneaker space
(09:28):
or the replica space.
I've been very open about thefact that I do think that it's important
for me to know what's going on there.
But I remember one of theturning points for me when I was
embedded in that was lookingat all the comments on Reddit about
shoes that people posted andthey wanted a quality check of the
shoes that they were going to get.
Now, a lot of people who maybedon't know this, what happens in
(09:50):
the replica market is you havesome type of a supplier, whether
it's a middleman or whetherit's directly from a factory or directly
from a seller who can get itat a lot cheaper of a price.
You place an order and beforethat order gets to you, you are shown
pictures of the shoes thatyou're actually going to get.
And you'd think to yourself,well, how do you know that you're
going to get those?
(10:10):
Well, a lot of that marketactually self polices itself.
So if you're going to bait andswitch people, word is going to get
out very quickly.
So for the most part, anyseller that's worth a damn is going
to show you the actual shoesthat you're going to get.
And one of the reasons thatthis happens is because it allows
the customer, somebody likeme, to look at the quality of this
shoe, at least as it relatesto stitching and the way that things
(10:33):
are embroidered and justmaking sure that things are even.
I remember thinking to myself,I just want to make sure that the
shoe that I'm getting is asclose to retail as possible, but
also doesn't look likesomething that I actually made in
my attic.
That was kind of my standard.
But I noticed that a lot ofpeople in that market were doing
what I thought was nitpickingabout these shoes.
(10:56):
They'd be like this littlestitches off here.
This midsole seems like it's alittle bit darker than it should
be.
And it got to the point wherethe minutia of the things that people
were pointing out were soridiculous that it made American
sneakerheads seem so picky andjust seem so kind of bougie compared
to a lot of the internationalpeople that were buying there.
(11:17):
And the reason I bring this upis because I realized something.
Listening to people talk aboutthe black cement release, listening
to people talk about thequality issues with it, the inconsistency
with it.
I realized that we're all kindof the same.
And I've realized that nomatter what market you traffic in,
what you really want at theend of the day is that whatever brand
(11:39):
it is that you're buying from,whether it's from Nike and Jordan
brand, or whether it's fromsome middleman in China, you want
to make sure that your hardearned money is going to translate
into the best quality productthat you can have.
And today, whether we like itor not, sneakers do represent clout
for a lot of people.
That's no shade on anybody whofeels better because they have shoes
(12:02):
that other people don't.
But you also, if that'ssomething that you do, you want to
make sure that the shoes thatyou have in your collection are as
good as they can be.
Because when you are showingthem off to other people, you never
want somebody to look at themand say, man, this shit is whack.
And that's the truth.
Whether you're buying retail,whether you're buying fakes, that's
(12:24):
what you want at the end ofthe day.
And one thing that I'venoticed that these fake replica sellers,
whatever you want to callthem, actually strive for, for the
most part, is making sure thatthe quality is high because they
know that their business couldsuffer because of word of mouth.
The difference here is thatNike and Jordan brand, even though
(12:45):
it seems like they're strivingfor that consistency, the execution
of it from release to releasedoesn't happen.
And that is a problem.
And it's a problem becausethey don't think that we actually
care about that in a way thatis going to put any type of a dent
into their bottom line.
And that's kind of what I wantto talk about even more here is that
(13:06):
we have an opportunitysometimes as sneaker heads, to really
make a difference in this market.
But I think that we have beenconditioned to not sit things out
because we feel like we'regoing to miss out and we feel like
we're not going to havesomething that maybe other people
are going to have.
But The Black Cement 3 shouldtell you something.
It should tell you that weshould ask for more from these brands.
(13:28):
We should not just assume thatthey're going to get it right and
we should not just assumethat, well, this is the only time
I'm going to have to get it,so I need to make sure I spend my
money on it.
If it's not worth your Money,no matter where you're getting the
shoe from, you shouldn't buy it.
And we as consumers shouldmake sure that that message gets
sent loud and clear to Nike,to Jordan brand, to Adidas.
(13:52):
It doesn't matter what thebrand is.
We should be telling them withour words and more importantly, with
our wallet that we want betterand the Jordan 3 black cement deserved
better.
Just because it's not a shoethat I like and just because I don't
have this particular iterationof it doesn't mean that I can't go
to real sneaker heads.
The people that I called theboots on the ground and get their
(14:14):
real feedback, their honest feedback.
That's something I've talkedabout in the show earlier this year,
too, is the fact that Nike andJordan brand, they really need to
get people like us in the lab,in these meeting rooms, get real
feedback.
And they would learn that theJordan 3 black cement is so sacred
in this space that they can'tmess it up.
(14:34):
And they've messed it up big time.
And we as the consumer, weshould be telling them loud and clear
that we are not going to standfor this.
And with that, let's get tothe release of the week.
(14:59):
Release of the week, where Ilike to highlight a shoe that has
caught my eye.
It's not always hype.
It's just something that Iwant you to know about.
So we talked about the BlackCement 3 being iconic and something
that we remember today.
Well, something else that wasiconic were the Seattle Supersonics
and if you recall, in the 90s,Sean Kemp, Gary Payton, there were
some really good Supersonicsteams and teams that could have won
(15:21):
the NBA Finals if not forMichael Jordan existing.
So on December 7th, Nike SBDunk Low Sonex Colorway.
This is an absolutely firecolorway of the Nike SB Low, especially
for people like myself whoremember those teams and just it's
something that is nostalgic to me.
It makes me feel a certain wayand brings me back to those times.
(15:44):
And I think if you're of acertain age in sneaker culture, you
have those memories.
So December 7th is your time.
It's probably going to be 120,$130 on the sneakers app.
It's going to be tough to get.
But you know what?
You should go out and get itbecause the Supersonics were fire.
These shoes are fire.
This gum sole, amazing execution.
I can't wait to try out for it.
How do you feel about theBlack Cement 3 in 2024?
(16:05):
And how do you feel about theidea that we should be more vocal
to these companies about thelack of quality and consistency with
their releases, let me know.
Hit me up on Instagram.
Irefootwearpod is the handle.
Of course you can call theFire Footwear Hotline, area code
202-643-9170 is the number togive me a story, give me an opinion.
(16:26):
Whatever it is, I'd love toplay it on a future episode.
YouTube Fire Footwear SneakersTalk with Matt Frates I'm going to
be putting up some reviewspretty soon and hopefully we can
get back to some consistentcontent both in audio and in video.
I appreciate everybody's time.
I hope this finds everybodywell and safe as I always do and
I'll talk to you next time.
This is Fire Footwear.
(17:04):
The opinions and viewpointsexpressed on Fire Footwear are those
of Matt Frates and his guestand not necessarily those of the
Maddie Ice Media Network.
Fire Footwear is exclusivelyowned by Matt Freights and is brought
to you by the Matty I.
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