This past week, perhaps the most hyped Jordan of the year released. Union, a clothing store in Los Angeles, sells high-end streetwear along with their own line of clothes. On November 17th, a collaboration between Jordan Brand and Union dropped, full of sweatshirts, tees, sweatpants, and most importantly, Jordan 1’s. The whole collection has a retro feel to it, especially the shoes, which were designed to look vintage. Union wished to make them look like an old pair of kicks someone could not part with, featuring yellowing soles and leather, in addition to the most accented part of the shoe: a mismatched upper sewn to the lower part of the shoe. The “Storm Blue” colorway has a blue and white bottom, stitched to a red and black top, and was a Union exclusive release. However, the “Black Toe” version features a red, black and white lower paired with a gray and white upper. This shoe was made available by both Union and Jordan.
In addition to their limited releases at select retail stores, the sneakers were sold on the Union/Jordan website and raffled on the SNKRs app. Unfortunately, the online release was an absolute mess. The website displayed a countdown timer which would end at 9:00am on the east coast and 6:00am on the west coast. Apparently, they meant for it to end at 9:00am PST instead of EST, however, this was not announced until after the countdown ended, leaving people sitting around their computers and mobile devices, waiting for a drop that was not supposed to come out for another three hours. This lack of communication was the first of multiple problems, and left everyone baffled by how such a mistake could be made by two large companies.
After everything was all sorted out with the times, sneakerheads went back on to the site at the intended release time, preparing to cop. They were met with a frozen site, which showed the Union x Jordan logo, along with the words, “Soon Come.” This is perhaps where my luck came into play, because I waited for at least a half hour. I think many people had lost faith in the release and gave up, but I certainly had not. When the site eventually refreshed with the collection, I was easily able to find the “Storm Blue’s,” add them to cart, and checkout. I could not believe it had actually worked, considering these were some of the most coveted Jordans yet to release this year, with prices reaching in the quadruple digits on StockX. Quickly, I had my dad get a blue pair while I went for a red pair. All three orders went through. Apparently not everyone had as much ease checking out as I did.
In addition to the time mess-up, some of the precautions taken by Jordan and Union to keep bots from gobbling up all the shoes backfired. Countless people were unable to checkout with the items in their cart and were told the system suspected them to be bots. The error message even said, “Try acting more human,” which was quite ironic considering how many shoppers received the message when checking out manually.
Since the release, I have sold all three pairs: one for $850, the next for $885, and the third for $650. The Union exclusive’s proved to be much more valuable, since the “Black Toe’s” had a re-release on the SNKRs app. Somehow I couldn’t manage to cop a pair of “Rookie of the Year” Jordan’s, but no worries, since my Union x Jordan profits will cover the cost of a pair from StockX and then some.
