There once was a time where basketball players could directly influence trends in sneakers with what they wore on the court, not by their outrageous pre or post-game outfits. Basketball sneakers were actually cool to wear. Take Michael Jordan for instance. When you saw him play basketball, you bought the sneakers on his feet and they became a part of your style. The same was true for fans of Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Penny Hardaway, Chris Webber and their signature lines of sneakers. Well, times have changed and there's a whole generation of consumers who have never even seen Jordan and the likes play ball and probably couldn't care less about that. Today, the league is dominated by all new players with their own athletic accomplishments and sneaker deals, but the sales of performance basketball sneakers are steadily declining. According to Sports industry analyst Matt Powell, the performance basketball sneakers market has been on the downtrend for some time now, even if it’s most apparent right now.

“As recently as 2011, sales of performance basketball were negative and had been negative for six years from 2005-2011,” Powell says. span “Black Toe” Air Jordan 1s One factor that lends a hand in the decline in the sales of performance basketball sneakers is the price. Not all consumers can afford to pay big bucks for sneakers, and some players are actually cognizant of that. When Kevin Durant inked a deal with Nike, he wanted to keep his sneakers under $100, because he couldn’t afford Air Jordans growing up. Keeping his sneakers at that pricepoint was something he was able to do up until the Nike KD IV, a sneaker that retailed for $95 and was very well received.  While the KD V exceeded his $100 price point at $115, it was still affordable. Fast forward to the KD 8 and the price was up to $200, double the price Durant wanted his sneakers to be at. Granted, new technology is added to the sneakers, but doubling the price over four years excludes many of the original consumers from purchasing them.

Nike has realized that the price has gotten excessive and for the first time ever, Durant’s latest signature sneaker, the KD 9 is cheaper than the predecessor at $150. All of this came after word that Nike Basketball was in trouble and made a shakeup in leadership. In reality, steady increase and recent decrease in sneaker prices only play a very minor part in affecting sales. “Nike has lowered prices on several styles and sales have remained negative, so this was not a price issue, but a fashion issue,” Powell says. “They completely missed this shift in fashion and have not responded quickly enough to pivot to lifestyle and running sneakers.” span Under Armour’s sales increased by 754 percent because of Curry’s line of sneakers. Despite all of Under Armour’s newfound success, it hasn't translated to what's actually popular or trending in sneakers. Let's be honest: more likely than not, the only  people you see wearing Currys are kids who play ball recreationally or Golden State Warriors fans at games.

His all-white sneaker became a laughing stock on the Internet over the summer and similar instances happened Adidas athletes James Harden and Andrew Wiggins. Brands need to realize that not only basketball players buy and wear their products. nike sport shoes outletRegardless of the price, less expensive basketball sneakers like the Under Armour Curry 3s or Nike Kyrie 2 are nowhere near as wearable as more expensive running and lifestyle options like the Adidas Ultra Boost and NMD — at least by today’s style standard.best most comfortable running shoes span the sneaker resale market reached $1 billion in 2014 .cheap golf shoes adidas Things are moving in the right direction, though. womens nike shoes in australia

Adidas addressed style concerns with the release of James Harden's first signature sneaker, and Kobe Bryant has usually had a sneaker that's found a sweet spot with lifestyle consumers because of its low-top design.nike shoes prices in china At the end of the day, people buy what they like and what they like is often influenced by what other people like. running shoe stores njWhen a celebrity wears Yeezys or limited Air Jordans well before the release, it creates a sense of exclusivity and urgency to cop when they do drop. Trendsetting people don’t want a sneaker that any and everybody can get by walking into the mall. Even with a steady decline in sneaker sales, performance basketball sneakers can be cool again, although it may take some time. It’s not up to footwear companies to make their shoes cool; it’s up to the people that buy and wear them to make them cool again.

But u ntil performance basketball sneakers start making waves again, you can definitely expect retro, lifestyle, and running sneakers to continue dominating the market.Vince Carter was on top of the world, bouncing on his toes in Oakland, Calif., with boyish wonder one minute, swinging in the air with his elbow tucked inside the rim the next. Basketball’s biggest jumpman in 2000 was Carter, the Toronto Raptors’ star, who won the NBA’s dunk contest with jams that made an onlooking Shaquille O’Neal do this: On Carter’s feet were AND1 Tai Chis, the biggest basketball shoe of renegade brand AND1. Born of street basketball trash talking T-shirts — with messages like, “Give and Go. Give up and go home” — sold from the back of a van, the company eventually landed star sponsors such as Carter, Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury. On that night in 2000 as Carter etched his name into NBA lore, AND1 was the shoe in all of basketball.After the Tai Chi and some of the company’s other styles grew stale, AND1, slang for when a shooter is fouled while making a basket and awarded a free throw for the trouble, petered out by the late 2000s.

The company changed hands three times in six years. And AND1 went underground. Now the brand is launching a second act, reappearing in big-box stores and on ecommerce platforms with the backing of Sequential Brands Group, an acquisition machine geared toward resurrecting once defunct product lines. It’s done the same with Martha Stewart, Jessica Simpson and Emeril Legasse, licensing brand names every which way, maximizing distribution and squeezing out profit like water from a stone. Martha Stewart this week, for example, launched a meal-delivery service, something the brand’s namesake would never have been caught dead operating. Sequential though pushed the brand, once worth $2 billion, toward lower price points in more accessible stores. [How Martha Stewart lost her $2 billion empire] Once in basketball fashion bastions Foot Locker and Finish Line, you now can find AND1 in Walmart and Kohl’s. “They have an unparalleled ability to help their licensees source product and sell,” said Steven Marotta, senior research analyst at financial firm C.L. King.

Sequential brought back the Tai Chi, of Vince Carter fame, in 2015 to boost sales. In April, AND1 began selling in Canadian Walmarts and making basketballs that retail for less than $5. Back from the brink, AND1 under Sequential, which bought AND1’s old holding company for $100 million cash in 2014 plus 13.75 million shares of stock, is doing very well, with $500 million in retail sales last year, up 15 percent from the year before. It’s a sizable chunk of Sequential’s $4 billion in annual total sales, said chief executive Yehuda Shmidman, and the story of how the holding company peels recognizable brands away from crumbling financial structures then pumps air back into their lungs. “We’re not inventors of brands. We’re not trying to reinvent operation wheels. We’re really just brand activators,” Shmidman said. “Once you have that brand, how do you spread your wings and get it out there? That’s the machine we’ve built.” [Jessica Simpson fashion stores set to open worldwide]

And in the case of AND1, they’ve resurrected the label in an industry without a lot of marketshare to go around. Nike and its subsidiary Air Jordan already hold 90 percent of the basketball shoe market, according to industry estimates. Under Armour is clawing for space and represents reigning NBA Most Valuable Player and Golden State Warriors phenom Stephen Curry. Adidas has star sponsors like Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls and James Harden of the Houston Rockets. AND1’s top sponsor is NBA bad guy Lance Stephenson of the Memphis Grizzlies. “The business is very much focused on what we call marquee shoes, or shoes with a player’s name attached,” said Matt Powell, a sports industry analyst with NPD Group and writer of Forbes Sneakernomics blog. “AND1’s real success was as a street shoe, but not a player shoe. It was about fashion and it brought affordable fashion to the marketplace.”At some point, AND1’s shoes stopped being cool, Powell said. Instead, they were just cheaper than other basketball shoes, and Nike did worked to bring down the cost of their sneakers.

[The Raptors’ tribute to Vince Carter moved him to tears] As the years rolled by, Vince Carter went from superstar to bench player. Kevin Garnett aged — 2016 will be his final season, and Stephon Marbury left the NBA to play in China. But no basketball fan forgets Carter’s dunks, Marbury’s ball-handling or Garnett’s menacing stares. AND1’s historical brand still held cache. “Consumers want to find things that they discover or rediscover,” said Allen Adamson, founder of brand consulting firm BrandSimple. “If all your friends are wearing Air Jordans and you show up with AND1s and you can tell them it’s cooler, well that levels the playing field a bit.” AND1’s well-known history as a shoe for “ballers,” as Shmidman says, keeps the shoe’s story authentic. And by playing in big-box stores rather than traditional retailers like Foot Locker — in essence zigging instead of zagging — Sequential has positioned the shoe company in a unique place.