Are NFTs Really the Future of Sneakers?

When is a sneaker not a sneaker? It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke. And, essentially, in a lot of ways, it is exactly that. Especially when the answer to that question is something like, “When it’s an NFT,” — a punchline that won’t make anyone laugh. And one which, inevitably, wholly understandably, will make a lot of people very confused. Maybe even angry.

Still, as the old saying goes, “In every joke, a kernel of truth.” An adage which, bizarre as it may be, very much applies here, right now, when digital avatars of sneakers are being sold — and posited as the future of the industry — as if that’s somehow normal.

For anyone who has ever invested time in The Sims, or anything similar, this isn’t an unfamiliar experience: digital clothes aren’t new. The idea that digital clothes are now for physical people, however, is another thing entirely.

Yet, here we are. It’s 2021, and not only are the startups creating NFT footwear successfully completing $8,000,000 USD funding rounds without breaking a sweat, but the products themselves are selling for considerably more than their real-world counterparts.

People are buying, and buying into NFT sneakers in a big way. A way that suggests, while the bubble has yet to fully inflate — and will likely then lose just enough air to make for a more stable marketplace — it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

For the uninitiated — which, at this point, is essentially everyone beyond a handful of industry experts and a small group of risk-happy early adopters — it’s a strange concept: sneakers, as we know them, are tactile products. For the most part, they’re bought to wear. And, even when they’re not, they’re bought to admire and to be admired.

More than this, though, sneakers also have cultural capital. A cache of connotations built over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. Imbued with a history of music, sports — even politics. They mean something more than the sum of their various component parts, and that’s difficult enough to replicate when a new brand enters the physical market — or even when an established one releases a new silhouette — let alone in a wholly virtual form.

NFTs, in this sense, are a blank slate: there is, as yet at least, no accrued value through history or community. An NFT sneaker has more in common with cryptocurrency than it does with its real-word counterpart.

Emerging companies like RTFKT — an Extremely Online spelling of “artefact,” that has more in common with 2000s mainstays like tumblr or Flickr than a sneaker brand — are pushing the NFT angle hard; a green alternative, a new way to collect, a cataclysm in footwear with ripples in the wider fashion industry. And they’ve certainly conceived investors, although — like any form of crypto — NFTs’ environmental credentials are, at the very least, debatable, and any lasting or tangible effect on the sneaker business is still to be proven in any meaningful way.

And yet, NFTs are being touted effectively enough as the possible future of fashion that mainstream brands are trying their hand at entering the space. Jeff Staple is just the latest name to release an NFT sneaker under their label and, effectively, change the nature of their business in the process.

And, while some brands are succeeding, it’s clear that we’re still very much in the hit-and-miss stage: Gucci’s $12 USD NFT sneaker was roundly mocked and will likely stop them — and any adjacent high fashion names — from entering the market with such wild abandon without first taking time to understand what they’re getting into. When you sell sneakers at $900 USD in the real world, selling the digital version at $12 makes no sense; all it does is tell your consumers that these products have no real value. Or, even worse, that the price of your physical offering is wildly inflated.

Neither of these, obviously, is a great option.

Still, what this means for the future of sneakers remains unclear — although it seems unlikely to disrupt the industry at large any time soon. In a Twitter poll that we held recently, only 20% of voters answered yes when asked if NFTs could change the future of sneakers. Considering that NFTs are already being positioned as mainstream products — eBay has decided to begin listing them, effectively legitimising them to a much wider audience — an 80% negative response is a pretty striking figure.

Of course, of that 80%, some — in an unusual step for people on Twitter — had constructive criticism: “Could work having an NFT that comes with all pairs to prove authenticity,” suggested one respondent. Most, however, were either confused or indignant or both. “Change it how? You can’t wear it,” wrote one user; “It makes no sense,” said another. One simply wrote, “N ft?”

And in those mixed replies we see the scale of the problem for the NFT sneaker market — at least for now. More likely, at least in the immediate future, is that a separate, sub-market begins to take shape; one where the physical and digital aren’t in competition.

Because, realistically, there is no competition. And every sneakerhead knows that.