Who, you may wondering, is this guy?
His name is Vinnie and you had to go through him to get to the promise land of the new Adicolor range. It was a piece of marketing that wouldn't have been out of place in a small emerging shoe company rather than one of the biggest companies, let alone sneaker companies, in the world. It wasn't marketed, it wasn't emailed/spammed around, it wasn't even properly reported, the only news of this preview came by word of mouth. Knowing a guy-who-knows-a-guy. Or by being tipped off on the right sneaker forum.
Once you knew about it, the instructions were to head down to Canal Street in Lower Manhattan (if anyones been there, you'll know Vinnie wouldn't exactly stand out) and keep an eye out for Vinnie who may or may not be floating around in his all white Adidas outfit. You give him a nod, he'll nod back and beckon for you to follow him down a series of alleys and backstreets till you went downstairs to a subterranean store/gallery.
Once inside, absolutely nothing was for sale. You were there purely to look and then leave.
It was genius marketing. It hit on everything that collectors get excited about. It felt exclusive, rare and very cool. The prime ingredients of sneaker collecting
Courtesy of PSFK, this is a brief video of the journey with Vinnie.
