Dee on ESPN Piece on Starbury

One of my fave people from the sneaker world, Dee Wells, marketing director for Sole Collector magazine, recently appeared in an ESPN piece on Stephon Marbury and his new sneaker/apparel label, Starbury. He appears at about 4.40 in the video and talks about how the lower-priced Starbury sneaker is going to put major brands on the hot seat when it comes to explaining why it is their shoes are priced so much higher.



Like a lot of investigative stories on Marbury's $14.99 shoe, it's a pretty positive take. The reporter challenges Stephon on the shoe's quality versus that of higher-priced shoes by brands, but never goes past taking him at his word that there's no difference between his shoe and those of competitors. There's also no delving into what working conditions might be at a factory manufacturing such low-priced shoes.

The other thing is, the reporter keeps talking about $180 and $200 basketball shoes, but the truth is there are very few shoes out there in that category selling at that price, and I'd bet that these days the average price of basketball sneakers is somewhere in the neighborhood of $75, and that's even with the continued popularity of higher-priced styles by Jordan, probably the only remaining brand that can still sell large volumes of $100-plus basketball shoes.