Notes upon the passing of Supra
So arrivederci then, to Supra, one of the modern footwear businesses most salutary story arcs which has ended, for now, in the unceremonious removal of their web domain.
How did we get here? How did a brand which consciously straddled the velvet rope, Los Angeles in a shoe, manage to crash and burn so badly?
Supra's 2006 debut sent shockwaves through the skate footwear industry.
Any lummox with a chequebook can sign a skate team (coo-ee Ice Cream) but Supra did more than that: they signalled- nay, heralded- the skate shoe that was too good for you.
Although most people point to Stevie Williams, Chad Muska, Tom Penny or to a lesser extent Jim Greco as the brand's iconic marquee signings, it was in fact Erik Ellington who gave Supra early momentum.
If Supra were a song^The expectation at the time was that Emerica would cut Ellington some sort of lifetime deal as his Baker credentials were peaking just as his meaningful skate career was winding down.
Never the most talented skater but a shrewd and intelligent businessman, who, as onetime distributor of Baker Per Welinder noted 'Never takes a bad photo', Ellington was acutely aware of his marketing equity and cultural gravity right then.
When it was announced that he would be involved with Supra along with the above phalanx of Jet Skate lifestyle pros (Greco still went hard for Deathwish subsequently, admittedly) on an aspirational skate/ lifestyle crossover brand more expensive than anything hitherto seen and run in parallel with successfully ambiguous softgoods brand Krew, people realised an industry powerplay was afoot.
If Reynolds bailed with him, Emerica was done. As it was, Reynolds stayed put to launch the ill- fated Altamont brand (hot take there: don't make skate clothes which makes ironing even less likely)- but Emerica as a brand were holed below the waterline, and never recovered.
In short order, Supra's dinky little crown logo became a global phenomenon and their IG- friendly Skytops became the skater/ fashionista interface choice for queuing outside nightclubs in.
However, Supra's arrogance would impact on the editorial goodwill extended to their team: memorably they would circulate an email to every skateboarding magazine on the planet declaring that henceforth they would only advertise with magazines who guaranteed them equivalent editorial coverage in the same issue.
This was crossing a rubicon in terms of brand flex, and it backfired on the brand horribly amongst the tastemaking cognoscenti of the skateboarding world and its prismatically resonant cultural influence.
Supra would later also pay to be included in Made For Skate, the patchwork history of the skate shoe which simultaneously ignored Globe despite Supra having by then done precisely zero in skate against Globe's video and event output globally.
Such an uneven approach to anchoring their authenticity meant that even when Supra would later assemble a younger squad of skaters to generate actual skate content, the brand had obviously jumped the shark in terms of core credibility and their tours may as well have been for Ice Cream.
The brand was acquired in 2015 by K- Swiss Global Brands, a company pilloried for signing Greg Lutzka in an attempt to penetrate the influential skate market prior to then, and the writing was on the wall.
In the end, Supra's downfall was tied not just to losing sight of what made them, but also unfortunate timing: in a post credit- crunch world, they seemed offbeat, riding the show- off wave of Instagram influencers but not able to connect their brand positioning to the vacuous ecosystem of resellers and rich simpletons that Supreme and Palace rode so seamlessly.
So while the OTT flossy skate shoe industry would flourish, Supra who created it were by then a Vaudeville pastiche.
Like I- Path, Supra were unable to parlay a cultural moment in the sun into brand longevity and in so doing demonstrated the 22nd law of branding: most brands don't last forever, and knowing when to pull the plug is either something you choose, or which the numbers choose for you.
Sure did like that little crown, though.
Comments
Post a Comment