The growth of sneaker culture in Thailand has been huge from couple of years. The new generation of Thais has been influenced by celebrity, Social Medias, trends and word of mouth. The power of the influence was humongous that it has been a trend for all the young people out there to look fresh with their stacks of new kicks. The culture has taken a turn when the manufacturers from China knew about the trend, they started making fakes branded shoes for considerably lower price. The young people who couldn’t afford the original pairs will turn to the fakes for cheaper alternatives. The Fakes has got so identical to a point where it’s now even hard for a true sneaker head to point out one from the other.Other than that, sneaker culture are the force to be reckoned with. The leading players in this industry are Nike, Adidas, Vans, Puma, Under Armour and many more.
Designer Sneakers
In recent years, the designer brands have integrated themselves in the sneaker culture worldwide, including Thailand. There has been a lot of celebrity wearing designer brand sneakers, which influences the fan following to follow their style icons. This makes the existing manufacturers in the industry have more room for increment on their current price points. Each popular model of designer sneakers doesn't usually trend for a long time as the hype fades with the high price tag. The trend changes from brand to brand, Balenciaga took it by storm with their Triple S Models and the trend shifted to the Gucci new ace, shifted from Louis Vuitton trainer sneakers to the Saint Laurent Court Classic and the list goes on. Not to say that there was no popular collaborations before, but individually the designer brand has been a real player in this gigantic sneaker market.
Collaborations
Collaborations between high fashion and mass sneaker brands has led to the popularity and hype for the consumers, either with a brand or with influencers. There are regional influencers of every country who endorses the brand to promote it to their own people on their own terms. A very good example of the famous influencer in Thailand for Nike is P' Toon (Bodyslam) who, at that time had a very popular charitable campaign, a 55-day, 2,191-kilometer (roughly 1,361 miles) jaunt from Thailand’s Betong district in the southern Yala province to the Mae Sai district in the north Chiang Rai province — to be exact. Toon wasn’t running for himself. He was running to inspire the citizens of Thailand to raise more than the equivalent of 20 million USD for 11 local hospitals. But he didn’t meet his goal. He far exceeded it by bringing in approximately 1.1 billion THB with the Nike Zoom Fly. The most famous brand collaboration has to be Supreme collaborating with Nike, it was a very early collaboration between the two brand yet it is still very popular in the market today, Supreme has many successful collaborations with many multinational brands like BAPE, North Face and so on. The collaboration also includes the signature shoes of the sports superstars like, Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Christiano Ronaldo, Lional Messi etc, there are also artist collaborations like Drake, Travis Scott, 50 cent, Billie Ellish just to name a few.
Hip-Hop Culture X sneakers
Since the early days of Hip-Hop, the sneakers and rap song goes like bread and butter. The two always have been in the same culture and with the growing popularity of the Hip Hop artist, the sneaker culture is highly impacted as the artist will be seen wearing the sneakers in popular venues, events, TV shows, music videos and rap songs itself. There has been many collaborations with famous Hip-Hop artists.
The sneaker culture has a huge room to grow to be even more gigantic in Thailand and worldwide according to the impact of the trends and many more. We will be covering the topic Reselling sneaker market next blog. See you in the next one!
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