Worldwide, so much of our day to day has changed in the past year while somehow feeling stagnant at the same time. In March 2020, COVID-19 was discovered in New York City. As the virus shut down businesses across the world and left a lot of us tethered to our homes, it also managed to impact the business of sneakers and even sneaker influencing.
In May 2020, we spoke to Jacques “Kustoo” Slade, Tamara Dhia, and Mike “Mr. Foamer Simpson” Lytle about what their work in the sneaker space was looking like for them as manufacturing supply chains saw disruption for a then to be determined amount of time and marketing budgets were swiftly frozen. None of us knew what we were at the ground floor of.
Since then we’ve entered our second NBA season, StockX has been valued at $3.8 billion seeing massive growth throughout the pandemic, adidas absolutely went through it between trying to stay open in spite of regulations and being called out for virtue-signaling and racism all summer and Nike has started to pull out of mom and pop shops that could not meet their order requirements.
Pre-COVID most sneaker influencers could fit all of their content into pretty straightforward boxes—product reviews and completely unsubstantiated professions of whether the shoe is hot or not, unboxings, and content for outrage clicks. Even some SoleSavy members are tired. “YouTube has become oversaturated with the same content, we know who got the free shoes from who because it’s uploaded at the same time, everything is predictable,” SoleSavy member Tony H said. As we found out in May 2020, the sudden lack of product and pause in contracts were just the beginning of COVID-19’s implications on the space.
This fairly narrow range of content that historically heeds the most views may have played a part in seeing an influx of content creators. “I think a lot more people wanted to become sneaker influencers,” SoleSavy’s Director of Women’s Strategy Anna Bediones said. “They took the time to finally dip their toes in that content creator space. I think it was a lot of people figuring out how to make their own money.”
And, with good reason. Pre-pandemic, Bediones did a variety of freelance social strategy consulting for small businesses in tandem with influencer gigs. “Within the first couple days, I lost three jobs, which is a considerable amount of my income, including one retainer client. March happened really quickly for me,” she recalls.
Being located in Canada did offer her a bit of a different experience than those in the U.S. as their government was offering residents $2000 government assistance a month. “I took some time to regroup and quickly started leaning into my influencer thing because I found that with everything shut down companies had nowhere else to spend their money except on digital.”
Last year, we reported that as budgets scaled-down brands were leveraging more micro-influencer talent. Nearly a year later, that trend has maintained. “I think there are a couple of reasons for that,” Slade offered. “Money is a big part of it, and I don’t want to say take advantage, but brands know they can execute more things with micro-influencers.”
For some—whether by force or intentionally—their content changed a bit too. Established influencers like Jacques, Foamer, and Tamara felt obligated to speak up on COVID-19 as well as police brutality and the surrounding protests last summer and the election last fall. Slade now recognizes that having a platform is not for everyone in the space.
“On one hand, you want people to speak up, but you also don’t want people to speak up because you don’t know what they’re going to say. Everyone doesn’t need to have a voice, and everyone doesn’t need to speak up on things, especially if they’re not well researched,” Slade pointed out.
Americans learned that that hard way early in the pandemic as former President Trump suggested that some specific lights and injecting bleach could kill COVID-19, a virus that he treated as a hoax initially.
Because of the lack of unity state by state in handling the pandemic across the U.S., influencers based in different areas had a variety of experiences. Atlanta-based YouTuber Blake Yarbrough said aside from his day job implementing safety precautions like wearing masks and temperature checks, his life altogether didn’t change too much.
Content-wise, however, without centering videos on anything COVID-19 related he said he tried to do more giveaways in the last year than in the year prior. “I gave away shoes or cash, and I would let the winner choose. I tried to give back and maybe help out a few people,” he says. “People that commented and asked me questions or different things [about the virus] maybe, but I didn’t make any videos directly about it.”
The SoleSavy community found themselves looking for content they could truly connect with, too. “In general, quarantine gave me more time to delve into what I love, with sneakers being top of the list, so the biggest change for me has been being able to explore more sneakerheads’ feeds and find creators (especially women!) who have styles that inspire me,” community member Calz shared. “Before I mostly followed the typical top accounts for news and public personas, but now I’ve found and connected with lesser-known people who do it because they love it. It’s made my feed much more fun to scroll!”
In addition to the content changes individuals started to employ, a lot of industries processes began to shift as well. Alissa Nevita has worked in marketing and partnerships in the last decade. Some of her experience includes holding positions as the marketing director at Packer Shoes and head of marketing and communications at Flight Club. Currently, she’s managing a variety of talent including sneaker influencer, LMSW, and mental health advocate Liz Beecroft. She’s also been leveraged as talent by Jordan Brand for its Women’s NYC collection. As the weather finally started to get warmer on the east coast, she said she started to see a glimpse of how the new normal would impact sneaker influencers.
By June of 2020, she remembers small shoots starting to take place more frequently. “By that point, everyone knew you’d need to get COVID tested, and there was protocol about how many people would be there.” This timeframe also birthed virtual shooting. “Instead of having those 10 to 20 people or whatever, it would really be like three, and then everyone else was via Zoom,” she says.
Even with the return of opportunities—and an influx, for some—the reality of the impact of the pandemic was hard to avoid. Candidly, Bediones shared, “It was hard to be happy, but then it was also like, are we always supposed to be sad? So, I was kind of just more sad than anything.” She said she probably wouldn’t have discussed any of this if we talked to her last year, and has taken more time off social media through the pandemic than she has in the past.
Despite it being part of the job and recognizing the gift and the curse of living life online during these circumstances, Bediones says focusing on it being her job and being grateful to be able to continue working continued to make it rewarding.
“I don’t really subscribe to that pressure of always having to be online and involved in everything, but I think of someone like Jacques [Slade], who continued to make videos. He just kept showing up to work, right? Anyone who was fortunate enough to keep working kept working,” she says.
Much like our lives beyond sneakers in the past year, in spite of the world of sneaker influencing getting turned upside down, everything kept moving—every weekly drop is considered a “must cop” and undoubtedly, there is an unboxing video processing on YouTube somewhere. Collectively, we’re still a ways away from life as we knew it before 2020.
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Image 1 via Nathan Legiehn / Coveteur
Image 2 via Raven B. Varona / Nike
Image 3 via Hypebeast