A "Sneak Peek" Inside adidas Global Director Jon Wexler's Office

[Music] what's going on world it's another episode of sneak peek there on your screen I'm your host Jorge kill glad you tuned in after kicking off season six also known as the specifics with the visit to the perfect Paris collection in episode zero we officially begin the new season this time purely of seemed and focused collections with adidas global director John Whistler the Portland native recently invited us to his office on the adidas campus in rib city to check out his collection of samples autograph gems and more all while providing us with a history lesson of three stripes all right nice to expand I'm in Portland Oregon with the adidas global director John Wexler what's going on man I have to meet again thanks for coming through yeah definitely so tell us where are we right now in Portland Oregon at the adidas global North America headquarters and this is the office where most of our product marketing design sales retail operations all sit right so we're gonna get a little tour of the plates but also get a sneak peek inside your collection yeah so back when I started in the brand in 2000 I was working in Footwear and worked in both basketball and in originals and so I brought in a bunch of products that I've had in my hand since then and then some of the newer stuff so you'll see a mixture of kind of our past present and future well this is the first time we shot one on a campus so history in the making all right cool let's take it out [Music] this is what I would call the 2014 Walk of Fame these are all of our key highlight products that we rolled out over the course of this year over here you have two two chains too good to be true top ten Jeremy Scott wing shoe and the gold execution Keyshawn Johnson trainer the key trainer that we released earlier this year one of the matumbo colorways a little bit of a history around Run DMC Metro attitude Kareem and then of course Stan Smith so just kind of some of our more premium executions that we rolled out this year so which is it's made of all shoe laces here yeah this is a wonderful tapestry and it's made of all shoe laces the kind of stuff that just randomly appears in the hallways here I'm always super super into it this is my sneaker collection which basically starts and I'd say around 2000 when I started working for the brand and product and was in product marketing in an entry-level position called sweeper that doesn't even exist anymore but more or less our job was to make sure samples were organized we were running reports on cell through data reporting that back as basically the hub of all information for the different parts of the brand whether it was design marketing sales and then transitioned into my current role now so I have a bunch of product that we basically are responsible for seeding to celebrities and influencers around the world so have a variety of stuff from samples that have ever been showed before to autograph stuff that I just get sentimental value from and with something and some summer Grady's over there that I haven't seen before so they start with those sure it's actually one of my first projects at adidas on day one I was asked to risk by 40,000 pairs of this matte handle shoe which was Tracy McGrady's first shoe not a signature shoe but the first shoe that we created just based on consumer need materials price point and and knowing that there was demand there but it was before a time when our designers had a chance to sit with him and really take his influences and create stuff which is I think what you were seeing over here that I could talk about second but Matt Handel was one of the very biggest programs that we did that year based on just the the amount of energy that Tracy had around 2000 2001 when he was still playing out the Raptors so I have an autographed version of that shoe which was the the black colorway that he wore to kick off the season then we transitioned into his first signature shoe which was when the market was really going towards that feather construction midsole and this is the t-mac one but you see the aggressive toe sort of squared toe which indicates the era from which it was created you know taking those various market influences into effect so when this shoe launched it was like vapor in the marketplace this shoe no one's ever seen before if you've seen it you had access to part of the brand that most people don't because we never made this shoe the actual execution of this shoe we used a colored toe wrap instead of this translucent midsole and outsole I just kind of hung on to it because when we were in the room making that call about which version to go with this was the one I wanted to go with but you know why is the people in the room chose to go with the other execution and it too was vapor in the marketplace we put I want to say 20,000 pairs in the market in February of that year when t-mac was in that all-star game in addition to having players like that in our products we also have great heritage adidas so as we talk about our brand obviously we have to make a nod to Kareem abdul-jabbar this shoe was creams for signature shoe you see him the skyhook on the tongue there was another execution with his face on the tongue this was autographed by Kareem which again for sentimental value the samples from March of 2004 he we did an execution with him for all-star and for for this year and in 2014 which we called the blueprint and the name the blueprint actually came from I believe it was Giroux holiday we were asking all of our players to tell us what they thought of careens game and I believe it was Giroux who said he's the blueprint for all that came after him and so we called it the blueprint we made this amazing execution out of this tie-back material we had wonderful marketing around it and this shoe also is a very high man product and so very well I think another really cool execution of a heritage basketball model is the pro model this is an execution we doing with Pistol Pete I'm but I love that the the vintage outsole midsole execution on this shoe speaking to the performance attributes of the shoe the original reason there's a shell toe on our products was because back then there was a pivot area and it still kind of is but we've just developed newer technologies to help players in that regard but it was there as originally as a performance enhancing attribute obviously everyone in our world knows them because of when Run DMC wore them on stage and told everyone in Madison Square Garden to raise the shoes above their hat and made the shoe so famous through their song but in actuality this thing is born from sport and I think that that's even why the guys like Run DMC who gravitated towards it because they knew at the time was the most innovative technology in the marketplace and that was a sign of premium you know value to whether you're an athlete or a rapper or a DJ or an artist you don't just live in that one isolated world you see all the other influences are taking place we partnered with roc nation for their brunch on us a year or two ago and the shoe that that they picked out at jay-z's direction was the pro model to embellish with their logo and that they were gonna gift out to their artists so their whole diverse portfolio of artists were all gifted the shoe at that Grammys from Haim to Rita Ora and Rihanna jay-z himself etc this is obviously autographed by Stan himself but but as you know we've we've advanced and updated the shoe a great deal this year especially with the relaunch of it while tennis looks have have definitely gotten more prevalent white leather etc as a result of this launch we still have the ability to kind of trade off of that for example this is the collab that we have launching with concepts just really dope printed execution the guys at concepts and Jimmy Manley and our high team and Josh her design they created a real banger here while we're talking about innovation let me talk to about the micro pacer because that was really one of the the greatest innovations that time when we've relaunched originals back in 2000 the micro pacer was one of our key statement products and this as you can see is numbered USA five five three and we released 600 in each market around the world and numbered them and labeled them so that people who bought them in those parts of the world whether you're in the UK here Asia Latin America etc would have that you know added value of making it meaningful things that are easy to get not meaningful when you wait in line for a shoe like I did because this came out before I actually worked here and actually bought this specifically because of this story behind it I you know it's something you hold on to had an odometer on it and a clock on it so that you could actually measure the distance you were running which in 1984 was heralded as one of the greatest innovations of its time so Mike rapacious issue that we will constantly go back to and we look at the beauty of the beauty in this execution is just perfect we partnered with Packer shoes on the eqt platform again paid homage to the micro pacer you see the micro pacer upper inspiration on there and then the 1984 lace jewel which speaks again to that heritage obviously you can't talk about ideas without talking about the superstar we're just going back to that sport heritage even though people know it today for what we said earlier about Run DMC the truth is is that it was the first ever leather basketball shoe so at the time when it came out from the shell toe innovation on the toe for the abrasion zones that the leather materials that was considered a real statement above and beyond all other products in 2005 we celebrated the 35th anniversary of the superstar and for that we created 34 different collaborations and then a 3050 that I'll show you in a second the first package of those 34 different shoe collapse was called the consortium collection the first executions of consortium that we did were with neighborhood which aside from the chalky toe which just happens over time you still see the beauty and the execution and the simplicity of it with the black/white and the different material suade stripes with without their upper foot patrol so you see the the hands interweaving consortium logo that still stands to this day d mop so at the time it was the top-tier retailers from asia europe the u.s. etc union tape which is another beautiful execution and this rich leather with the green suede and the the chalked out vintage look and then last but certainly not least undefeated with the snake execution and undefeated logo these have actually worn a couple times which is why they look a little more beat-up than the other ones but yeah like Clark Kent says wear your shoes we also made a thirty fifth iteration of the shoe and it was more or less impossible to get and the reason why is because it was actually like a proper construction men's shoe more so than a sneaker so you see the different outsole execution here they're actual like shoe construction to it to the leather wrap on the on the shell toe itself again on that superstar ATS more sleek execution this is a shoe that never made it to market but this is one of the alternate executions that we did for Red Hot Chili Peppers this is actually a note to Dean Loucks who was the product manager on the project out of out of Germany and flea wrote this saying how much he appreciated that we were doing it but they ultimately went with the other version of the sample we created which was another excellent iteration these here are Pharrell he came in and you know obviously was a great partnership with him so he came through and did a quick quick you know autograph on those tell me what's the most memorable project you've ever worked on in your time at adidas the greatest one I actually don't even have here it was the Goodyear product that we made the first ever iterations of those were called Monaco and Tuscany the Monaco was the high top the Tuscany was the low-cut it was just one of those situations where everyone kind of wanted to put their toe in the water but we had to take a certain amount of risk to really see it through and with the support of the team here in our senior management we were able to take a position on the shoe that turned into a massive program ultimately like 10 to 15% of our total originals business within two years of launching it there's been a lot of amazing projects with like Big Sean the three shoes that we made with him over the past three years have been incredible to work on my team's role in it is to forge relationships with people that when the product team comes to us and says hey we have a collab we'd like to do to amplify it to amplify a certain model and then we bring in a partner for that one of those examples would be the the snoop stuff in adidas football US and Adidas Originals they had products that they felt were viable but they felt like they needed a bit of additional awareness created around them and so we partnered with snoop back in 2000 and I think these are from 2011 because these were for all-star LA the last time it was there we also partnered with him on a performance shoe as well so there's his - shoe package with snoop yeah this was the first Cleef ever sold it undefeated we launched honestly like 600 pairs of them with them earlier this year the reason why we work with these people because it's such an innovative business practice yes we the brand has always embraced outspoken figures like Muhammad Ali and people who are who are known for sort of moving the envelope with culture like Run DMC Bob Marley it's just that element of innovation you know yes the designs themselves and the partnerships themselves would be innovative but also the way that we deliver those products in the way that consumers experience them I think you'll see some really great things coming from us over the next three or four months in that regard we recently launched the ZX flux my ZX flux photo app someone in Germany his name is Tilly Uggla thought of the idea at four years was trying to sell it internally and developed enough energy around it momentum for his idea that the brand invested in it and I got to say it is I mean this is the print quality it's phenomenal this is a picture I took just sitting of a bunch of backstage passes from projects that we you know shows that we've thrown around the world this shoe was definitely the most demand that we created from our inline range in a long time this is another sample that never got made unfortunately I love the Holloway but this is something we made back in 2004 I want to say it's the ZX 8000 when you look at the ZX 8000 sorry I'm going to grab this and the ZX flux you really start to see the you know the inspiration behind the midsole and outsole and sort of where the cage comes from you can you can definitely gather that and just a more modern sort of like chill zone type you know again on that spirit of innovation tip that the greatest advancement and sneaker technology and energy absorption comfort etc is boost we launched this last year runners World magazine not me the runners were magazine took a pair of our shoes that had over a thousand miles on them from a kid here named Erin who runs a thousand miles everyday he sent them to runner's world they got box fresh pairs from all our competitors and this was the highest rated shoe in terms of energy absorption and energy you know output when you talk about setting the bar high this takes Footwear into a whole new classification recently there was some immigrant Meunier playing basketball and a pair of pure boosts while he was in Australia he had told me that he was wearing those shoes to play the ball in and I begged him not to because I we have basketball product and stuff that's better for that category obviously and his response to me was like I can't take these shoes off my feet the technologies are so amazing they're so comfortable and the reality is that every person that tries them on has the same thing to say about it and it's just the coziest comfiest best ride it's like foot therapy so here's to new camel prints that are that are hitting the market in November this is the new materialization of becoming on ZX flux we have it in a couple different base colorways so that it's not just the gray black sort of shimmer we made these for our 25th anniversary these are the samples from yeah 2007 and the forum is an amazing shoe for us in that this last shape inspired a whole family of shoes from a variety of from brands including our own the strap on the shoe this is actually the first basketball shoe for over $100 and this is Jam Master Jay favorite shoe from adidas ironically one of the retailers that we partnered with on that project was harpist I want to bring them in because just shows the the iconic nature of this shoe and how you can do it in different colors and materials to make it you know this was inspired off the adidas shoe the Americana that was made out of that mesh material that the red light blue stripes other cool stuff that we have worked on over the past few years you know Jeremy's constantly innovating on his stuff and and when you when you take someone like Jeremy and an ASAP and you put them together you get a greatness like that Big Sean for our very first collab with him the product team maurice Minar is LaToya Kamara created a shoe that had that snakeskin pattern to it the gold that Sean is known for and the different you know the the the Rings the POW chains and all that we tried to put a song lyric in his and every shoe and the box for the shoe represented Detroit and then for the next shoe he wanted to make it a little more premium and so he he has to remove the gold executions but really layer up on the material story so this is the Big Sean Hall of Fame shoe so it went from the Detroit player to the Hall of Fame and then on this one the quote is nothing is stopping you which you know is from the first song off his album all fame which by the way that voice saying nothing is stopping is actually Pharrell and then most recently we launched the attitude Metro attitude which is inspired off again going back to that snake execution but it's inspired off of the recording studio in Hawaii where it records a lot of his music as with Kanye you know as well they like to go and get away from all the distractions and really just holed up in the studio so when we went to relaunch the purpose we created these amazing seating kits for lack of a better term and we only made about five of them but the five that we made that were in this colorway I called bun and asked him for his help in seating these and bun made sure that the people who receive these kits were like authentic Texas icons and then Matt Havel who had the exclusive on this colorway actually was branding the shoes in his store whose very instrumental in that as well and then Clark Kent helped us to see doubt these other versions of the shoes so basically we took the the campus that was going to be available at retail and and created this sort of packaging around it that really helped it to sort of sort of be special to the people that receive them and you know our job is really forging these relationships with people and trying to create hype for our products and sometimes the best way to do that is just to really just listen to the experts in the field and and partner with them to make sure it gets out there the right way but the most iconic partnership that that really gave a Dita's energy for the last 25 years is the Run DMC partnership when I was in product into in the early 2000s a horrible thing happened with Jam Master Jay where he was murdered and we worked with his mother and his family to produce this shoe which was in honor of his life we made a thousand pairs and we donated all the money to jam Jay's family you know we'll never forget him and the contribution that he made to the culture to our brand and really music we've continued that partnership with Jam Master Jay family and the scratch foundation where again the portion of proceeds went to their their family this is the 25th anniversary superstar that we did with these guys you see the Debray at the lace jewel 1986 Run DMC Jam Jam the heel again working very closely with the family or with with the guys in the band on this one the team went over to Japan and I remember them coming back and telling me about it and being like there's this retailer in Tokyo we got to work with the kids line up for the store every time they released something it's it's they flipped the business model from like mass consumption to really niche but it's high demand and so they introduced us to Bay the name and we I believe are the first sneaker brand are really partnered with them on this type of level where we co-created the super ape star with them you see the way that the brand marks are kind of intertwined there we created our own camel print with them and then you know the vape guys are kind of known for their camel prints so again using that pay the nape inspiration on the camel this is the baby side that we did with them a couple years ago just really lush proper again with that babe camo print insole I will wear these someday but I just haven't gotten around to it yet I've been through busy beating up these ZX 8000 babes you see I'm kind of more into the like running shoes to be honest in terms of wearing them around two different versions of the campus this is the one that I have which you can see I also have beaten to shreds by a large I tend to gravitate toward the babe stuff just because I back when I was making shoot or was involved in product marketing you know there's a connection to it then and then now it's just continue to gain momentum and now knee goes a partner with us thank you Paul middleman for making sure that knee go wanted to work with us still you know because that's like the first domino it's like Paul and vice and ego and then ego talks to Pharrell and Mike next thing you know we've got all these amazing partners sort of as satellites for the brand that can help us to move the culture [Music] [Music]

Channel: Nice Kicks

Views: 371,725

Rating: 4.8576159 out of 5

Keywords: Nice Kicks, Wex, Sneak Peek, Sneak, Peek, Jon Wexler, Wexler, Shoe Collection, Shoe Closet, Sneaker Collection, Sneaker Closet, Sneakers, adidas, Big Sean, ASAP Rocky, Jeremy Scott, Run DMC, Pharrell, Nigo

Id: -7IzlqNIA2M

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 20 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/ghettocarebear89]

Sorry about the first posting. It was made private for whatever reason. I deleted the previous one and put this up.

[u/alwayscptsensible]

That was awesome. Thanks for posting.