New Balance, Under Armour, and the Year that Sneakers Got Political

[Stephan Bobb]

New Balance, Under Armour, and the Year that Sneakers Got Political

Illustration by Andrea Chronopoulos

New Balance, Under Armour, and the Year that Sneakers Got Political

CAM WOLF

December 22, 2017

Shoe brands like Under Armour and New Balance got caught in politics’ radioactive blast this year—but did it actually change people’s perceptions and shopping habits?

Usually, when Bernie Gross meets somebody, he does what any good sneakerhead would do: judges them based on their footwear choices. But when a New Balance executive “dressed like Andy Bernard from The Office” walked into Gross’s high-end sneaker boutique Extra Butter a few months after another executive from the company came out in support of Donald Trump, he didn’t need to go that far. The company hoped the new commander-in-chief would make good on previous administration’s promise to hand over a juicy contract to make shoes for the United States military, so there wasn’t much doubt in Gross's mind about the guy's politics—or at least his company's. So imagine his surprise when this particular executive made it absolutely clear to Gross that there was no real love affair brewing between New Balance and Trump.

“The first thing he said to me when he came into the store was, ‘Listen, man, I'm just letting you know I hope that what things were said from up top does not reflect who we are as a brand,” Gross says. Gross scrutinized the executive. Gross says that a visit like this counts as relationship maintenance on a “micro level,” but it’s proof of the lengths brands like New Balance went to do damage control. In this situation, the executive was putting aside politics for the greater good of selling more sneakers. (New Balance did not respond to requests for comment.)

The moment crystalized how closely New Balance was monitoring the situation. It witnessed firsthand Trump’s ability to divide customers into boycotters and supporters. “He’s very aware of the situation and he's trying to put out a fire,” Gross remembers thinking of his visitor. At the time, shoes from the executive’s brand were being roasted across social media. Literally: New Balance sneakers were tossed into pits, doused in lighter fluid, and engulfed in flames. Competitor shoe brand Reebok, meanwhile, was planting a stake in Boston—”New Balance owns Boston,” says Gross—and offering freeshoes to betrayed New Balance customers. Gross pauses, trying to find the right way to compliment the executive who put politics aside to put out both literal and metaphorical fires. He lands on “diligent.”

Politics seemed to swallow everything in 2017—just making coffee in the morning became a partisan act. But no industry seemed to have more of its players involved than footwear. Trump-supporting executives at Under Armour and New Balance got themselves in hot water, an L.L. Bean heir contributed money to Trump, Kanye’s support for the then President-elect dragged Adidas and Yeezy into the conversation, and startupBig Baller Brand took shots at Trump, too. Only Nike escaped this past year relatively unscathed. And politics can hit footwear brands the hardest. Shoes live and die on hype, and ever-present logos can absorb associations quickly. One moment an executive is explaining their support for Trump. The next? A headline like “Neo-Nazis have declared New Balance the ‘Official Shoes of White Pe...

Russell Winer, a professor of marketing at NYU, frames the situation with the idea of “brand hijacking”: “When a brand, through no active marketing of their own, happens to be picked up by a particular group,” he explains. The concept helps describe how a brand like New Balance, which quickly came out after neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer claimed the shoes for white people to denounce “bigotry and hate,” can lose a handle on its carefully curated image. Logo-driven footwear is especially vulnerable to brand hijacking—if you see enough N logos on people at an alt-right rally in Charlottesville, a subconscious association starts burrowing into your mind. The same thing happened to Fred Perry after far-right group the Proud Boys started constantly wearing the brand. “There's a real fear that we get to the point where you wear one kind of shoes and you're affiliated with one group and you're wearing that as a symbol,” says Witold Henisz, a professor at the Wharton School of Business who studies the effect of political hazards on corporations. “We're not that far from that.”

However, while the potential penalty is extremely high, it’s hard to point to any long-term effect these brands actually suffered. The debilitating speed news moves at in 2017 is actually a benefit to these companies, even if they’re momentarily caught in the tsunami. “The half-life of news these days is pretty short and eventually people are going to buy brands that work well for them,” says Winer. “The number of people [making purchasing decisions based on politics] is small and would not have a significant impact on the bottom line of the vast majority of these companies.”

Extra Butter’s Gross says that, as a retailer, he didn’t notice any effects on brands involved in political skirmishes. “The second you're a couple of thumb swipes away from the news it's almost forgotten,” he says. “Our consumer is pretty superficial. They're driven by hype, so I think a very small margin of our consumer base is insightful enough to come up with their own informed decisions to develop their own opinions on these types of things. Most would rather just see a trend happening on social media and go by that.” Gross makes an interesting point: by subsisting primarily on a diet of hype and cool to move shoes, the footwear industry inadvertently sealed itself off from politics’ radioactive blast. Customers make decisions based on how hyped a product is, not because of a brand’s political maneuverings. It's easy to imagine that customers gunning for Yeezys were unmoved by Kanye’s Trump Tower meeting.

Take the example of New Balance. Extra Butter continued to sell special-edition New Balance sneakers, like one themed around the New York City Marathon. The shoe didn’t sell out, and hype around the brand isn’t what it once was when New Balance was slinging beloved sneakers with J.Crew, but Gross is hesitant to blame political controversy. “They were behind on adapting to the climate in terms of what the consumer wants,” Gross says. Instead of focusing on hot chunky retro styles—2017 was the year of the Ugly Sneakers—New Balance kept our churning what used to be hot: the “J.Crew Americana thing,” Gross says, “subdued colors—navys, reds, and hunter greens.” Again, it has less to do with a brand’s politics and much more to do with hype.

Troy Reed, who founded sneaker consignment shop Sneaker Pawn with his son, says that it’s no different on the resale market. I figured shoes might be more susceptible to changing political winds there, mostly because in the resale market customers pay true market value and not a price set by a retailer. But that isn’t the case. “Donald Trump is not going to stop or send somebody into a sneaker store to buy sneakers,” Reed told me over the phone. “Politics don't have no effect on sneakers.”

But Trump can help brands put themselves on the map. Reed says one particularly hot shoe company is the Ball family’s Big Baller Brand. Remember patriarch Lavar’s GIF-heavy feud with Trump? “They're doing a good job staying in the media and marketing their brand,” Reed says. “They’re making a name for themselves and doing something extraordinary by putting themselves instantly on the same level as an Under Armour sneaker.” BBB might not be able to hold a candle to UA’s sales, but this year, both spent an equal amount of time in the news. And it feels safe to say Under Armour would prefer BBB’s press. But BBB’s risk is minimal—it’s a small company with a name to make and a customer base that is, presumably, solidly anti-Trump. It’s the sort of move larger brands like Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and New Balance can’t afford to make.

What really interests Wharton’s Henisz is how these massive corporations with investors to please will respond to the political moment. “There's a group of customers who see the attack on the media, attack on the courts, attack on the FBI, some of the racially divisive rhetoric and they want someone to stand up against that,” Henisz says. “Business leaders are thought of as leaders who could be such a voice.” Henisz holds up the LGBT movement for comparison. A decade or so ago, LGBT rights would have been a politically fraught topic for corporations to steer clear from. Now, brands like Nike strive to be inclusive, creating entire capsule collections around and to support the LGBT community. It’s no longer a political issue so much as it is the universally recognized right thing to do—as well as good business. It can pay to be a late joiner of the resistance.

Extra Butter’s Gross tells me another story before we get off the phone. He remembers going to visit a footwear brand’s showroom (he declined to name which) that’s located in Trump Tower in Manhattan. When Gross arrived, the representatives at the showroom asked if he was comfortable. Gross is used to offers of water or coffee at these things, but he wasn’t thirsty. “No,” he says they clarified, navigating the minefield seemingly any sneaker company finds themselves in these days. “Are you comfortable being in Trump Tower right now?”