The Future of Converse | BoF

Good morning, friends! Happy New Year! Welcome back to The Kicks You Wear. Thanks so much for reading today. I appreciate you giving me a bit of your time.

I hope you all had a great holiday season and took a much-deserved break! Glad to be back to hit here with you all. I have a New Year’s resolution: I will do my absolute best not to buy more than 10 sneakers this year.

I will keep you all abreast on how quickly I break that promise.

QUICK HITS:

Now, let’s dive in.

What’s Up With Converse?

CEO Elliott Hill made it clear that the company’s goal is to turn Converse’s business around as it moves forward under the Nike umbrella. But a dive into the company’s latest 10-Q filing has me wondering how, exactly, the brand will go about doing that.

What’s new: Nike made its latest 10-Q filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission public on its website over the holiday break on Dec. 30. This is a mandatory filing US public companies must submit to the SEC that details their financial performance and risks in each quarter.

Nike’s filing for Converse showed exactly what Hill detailed to investors in the company’s earnings call on Dec. 18. The brand is still facing major headwinds with sales down big in every category. But there was a number that genuinely shocked me when I saw it.

The big deal: Demand creation for Converse dipped in the second quarter by 44 percent, year-to-year, to $24 million down from $43 million in the same period in 2024.

Why this matters: Think of demand creation as another term for marketing and promotion. It’s what Nike does better than any other brand in the world — both in and outside of the sportswear industry. Lots of companies make great products, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that markets them as well as Nike.

Seeing a 44 percent decrease in a marketing budget of any kind feels so unlike this company. It feels especially strange here, considering that Converse is a brand Nike seems so keen on turning around. That’s exactly why I’m struggling to wrap my head around it.

Between the lines: Lots of people will speculate that this is, perhaps, a sign that Nike plans to eventually sell the brand off. I understand the logic behind this thinking. Nike is trying to beef up its own business and trying to do that while also supporting a flailing brand is hard.

But I don’t buy that. Converse is down right now, but when it works well, it really works. When vulcanised shoes are back in vogue, the Chuck Taylor represents a massive opportunity. I don’t think Nike wants to let go of that.

So what, then? Maybe this is an oversimplification of things, but I think this could have been Nike making a significant re-prioritisation as Hill restructures the company.

• Nike’s first half of fiscal 2026 seemed to be about putting the right people and resources into place. That included hiring Aaron Cain as CEO at Converse in July.
• While the brand’s $24 million demand creation spend was relatively small, it admittedly didn’t have that much to market outside of the Shai 001 and a few other drops here and there. Maybe Nike felt a bigger budget was unnecessary.

The big picture: I think it’s fair to say that Converse is still a key piece on the board for Nike. The company plans on activating around it, along with Jordan Brand and Nike, in a major way at the NBA All-Star game in February.

This is certainly something to keep your eyes on throughout the next quarter for Nike. But I think it’s still far too early to come with any sale speculation at this point.

SNKRS Still Loves Retro

Innovation was the overarching theme of the sneaker conversation in 2025. Footwear experts called for more of it. Fans spent their money with brands who went out their way to provide it. It seemed like everyone was looking for something new.

Yes, but: When you take a look at the most popular styles on Nike’s SNKRS app, you wonder just how real that thirst for innovation was.

By the numbers: Nike posted a 2025 recap in the SNKRS app over the holiday break that showcased the top 10 styles that were the “most wanted” on its app in the US.

• In order: Jordan 11 “Gamma” (No. 1), Nigel Sylvester x Air Jordan 4 “Brick by Brick” (No. 2), Air Jordan 4 “Black Cat” (No. 3), Kobe 8 Protro “What The” (No. 4), Air Jordan 12 “Flu Game” (No. 5), Air Jordan 5 “Black Metallic Reimagined” (No. 6), Air Foamposite One “Galaxy” (No. 7), Kobe 6 Protro “Dodgers” (No. 8), Kobe 6 Protro “Sail” (No. 9), Jumpman Jack “Bright Cactus” (No. 10).

The Jumpman Jack is the only non-retro sneaker on that list. The Nigel Sylvester “Brick by Brick” Air Jordan 4 and the Kobe 6 “Dodgers” and “Sail” colourways were the only retros that came in new colourways featured in 2025. The rest, we’d all seen before.

The takeaways: I think you can go one of two ways here.

• Maybe fans didn’t want new sneakers as much as we thought — they just wanted new styles. There’s a world where that’s innovative enough for consumers.
• Or maybe there just wasn’t enough newness to go around on Nike’s SNKRS app. Of course, there were new silhouettes available. But maybe they just didn’t connect with people for whatever reason.

Personally, I lean more toward the first point. I don’t think people mind retro offerings, as long as they’re the right ones. Nike seemed to key in on a few that worked here. We don’t have a look at sales numbers, but I doubt they reach the highs that we saw in some previous years with Jordan 1s and Nike Dunks. But I’d bet that, if the brand keeps tinkering and bringing different styles to the table, fans will continue to react more positively moving forward.

Sephora’s Home Court

The Unrivaled 3-on-3 women’s basketball league is back. The action tipped off on Monday with four games between the league’s eight teams.

If you watched the games, you saw a lot of Sephora branding all over the court.

What’s new: The global beauty retailer secured stadium naming rights at the arena that Unrivaled plays its games out of and held its grand opening over the weekend ahead of the action.

This move is an expansion on the deal between Sephora and Unrivaled during the league’s inaugural season.

• Sephora included a “Glam Room” in the arena for the players last season and sponsored the tunnel for their tunnel walks.
• This year, along with the naming rights, Sephora will have its logo on the court. It’ll also gift players with products throughout the season that they’ll work with them to market through content creation.

The timing could not be better (or worse, depending on who you’re talking to), with the WNBA and the WNBA Player’s Association stuck in a negotiation stalemate around the league’s collective bargaining agreement.

Why that matters: The WNBA will be back at some point, but it’s hard to say when, exactly, that will be with a potential lockout looming. In the meantime, Unrivaled will feature some of the WNBA’s biggest stars.

And, while fans are getting their fix in, Sephora will be front and centre.

A Ralph Lauren Classic Returns

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This is probably the thing I’m most excited about in 2026 so far. Ralph Lauren is working on a collaboration with Beams to bring back its Japanorak this year.

Folks. This is a classic piece. The Polo collectors out there and the normies are all going crazy about this one.

The backdrop: If you’re not a deep polo collector, like myself, you probably remember this jacket from when Kanye West wore a white version of it back in the day. But The Business of Fashion’s Lei Takanashi schooled me.

Here’s more from Lei, our Polo aficionado:

Originally released to commemorate the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the Japanorak is one of the most interesting grails sought after by Polo collectors because it isn’t from Polo’s golden era in the 1990s. Yet, how it became as valued as an 1993 Snow Beach jacket worn by Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan illustrates the unique fervour niche collecting communities can bring to brands.

The Japanorak’s popularity is largely credited to Timeless Truth, a rap duo from Queens who popularised the coat in the 2012 music video for their song “Wherever We Go.”

While the video garnered less than 40,000 views on YouTube, Timeless Truth’s significance within a tightknit community of Polo collectors elevated the jacket’s profile so much that it eventually made its way into a display of the jacket at the Polo Mansion in London, which credited the duo for making the jacket a new school grail. As mentioned in the caption by one of Timeless Truth’s members, Joel “Superbad Solace” Rodriguez, the “Japanorak” wasn’t a coveted item when it was initially released but was actually a piece that went on sale.

A decade later, collectors such as Dak Nishiyama only elevated the jacket’s profile even further by getting their own recreation of it on Ye. And today, with brands constantly mining their archives to build hype, it was only a matter of time for the Japanorak to resurface.

I can’t wait to try and get my hands on this one.

What’s Droppin’, bruh?

This is a dedicated section detailing upcoming sneaker releases for the week, and sometimes other interesting drops I think you might care about.

Thanks for reading, gang! Have a great week. Let’s do this again on Friday.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, reach out to me via email at michael.sykes@businessoffashion.com or shoot me a message @MikeDSykes via socials.

Peace and love. Be safe, be easy, be kind. We out.

-Sykes 💯

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