My Notre x Nike Dunk release recap is below.
Release Method:
Most of these major collaborations on a shopify based store have happened on a new site. There was a lot of uncertainty on my end around what they would do but I hedged my bet to be prepared for a new site and that obviously didn’t happen. Doing it on the same site was definitely not ideal IMO and likely made it harder than it needed to be. The new site method is 100% the best option and all stores should do it going forward. Stussy has seen how bad it can be when you don’t and Bodega/Union have seen how great it can be if you do.
Timeline for the Release:
The shoes dropped at 36 seconds after Noon EST, this is how it happened for me.
12:00:36 – Store password removed
12:00:37 – Monitor posted update
12:00:45 – I did the captcha
12:00:56 – I enter the queue
12:03:51 – I got through the queue
12:04:12 – I had paid
12:04:20 – order confirmed
Stock
As I mentioned, I heard a few things yesterday that they may have raffled a lot of pairs to locals in the state of Illinois. If you know anyone in the area I would be curious what the chatter is locally around how many people won. The online stock was far lower than I expected, we’re pegging it at a combined 6K pairs of both color. With white being exclusive that means it would have more stock than blue, I would say a 70/30 split.
Bot Protection
They used the standard new bot protection with the new hCaptcha and had a question on the captcha page (Answer: Chicago). This was definitely not the best option but it was good enough. I think for how low the stock was, there was still a lot of success.
ATC links
None of the add to cart size links in the monitors actually worked. It seems shopify did turn them off. If you used them, you would have gotten an empty cart when getting through queue. I assume this was to help stop bots so I’m sure it helped. Overall it looks like the best option was to do this completely manual which is a win for us.
Queue
As I mentioned on the zoom, the engineering behind the queue is really complex because it needs to manage thousands of entries per second potentially. If you were stuck in an endless queue, it was because you either we’re too slow to get into the queue (did you get in before me or after me?) or you had the unfortunate
luck of being stuck in an endless queue because the queue algorithm still isn’t perfected for handling crazy amounts of traffic in one second. It sucks but its happened to me twice recently (Stussy and CNCPTS dunk) for big big drops.
Overall Thoughts
For how much stock they dropped online, this went pretty well. Definitely limited and it would have helped to use a new website but it wouldn’t have changed too much considering the stock levels. I would give this like an 8/10 as far as execution because I strongly prefer the new site method.
SNKRS Release
The next release will go down on Saturday at 10AM EST on SNKRS only. The white pair will NOT release. Only the blue pair will drop on SNKRS and this will be one giant raffle as usual.
