Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Would you pay $15 for these?

NBA star Stephon Marbury says it’s outrageous to market $200 shoes to kids. With Steve & Barry’s, he offers a solution.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published September 26, 2006

A TV sportscaster recently noted that an NFL running back appeared to be a half step faster after Nike outfitted him with some new shoes. But as far as I’m concerned, the only shoe performance news to watch this year is Stephon  Marbury.

He’s the NBA star who intends to wear his new line of $14.98 sneakers through the whole basketball season.

He exhibits no qualms about wearing something far less stratospheric in price, fashion and street cred than Air Whoevers.

“Cut these shoes in half. They are made the same as those expensive shoes,’’ said the 29-year-old point guard for the New York Knicks and two-time NBA All Star. “This is about finally taking the pressure off kids and their parents who think they have to spend $200 on performance shoes. I grew up poor. To us that’s grocery money.’’

Marbury last month kicked off a movement that aims to deflate some of the staggering prices and rich endorsement deals handed out by the shoe companies.

Marbury let his endorsement deal with And1  shoes lapse and switched this season to Steve & Barry’s University Sportswear, a fast growing discounter with 140 stores including one in Tampa’s University Mall.

Started by a pair of Ivy League students as a flea market booth in 1985, Steve & Barry’s subsequently made a name railing against the themed sportswear industry’s lucrative licensing deals, high advertising costs and fat profit margins. They came back with their own licensed products, starting with colleges, and have now moved on to their first pro athlete endorsement.

At $14.98, the five styles of Marbury’s shoes are the most expensive item at Steve & Barry’s. And even the rest of the 50 types of shirts, jackets and jerseys carrying Marbury’s Starbury logo sell for all of $9.98 apiece.

Marbury grew up in the New York’s Coney Island projects, the sixth youngest of seven kids raised by a mother on public assistance. He remembers trying to prove himself on the rugged playground courts in Brooklyn and being mocked for not wearing top-tier shoes.

“My mother would have told me I was crazy if I ever asked her to buy me $100 shoes,’’ he said. “We’ve got to teach young kids that it’s not about the shoes. You can save up and buy your own shoes. We’re teaching them to be responsible, to be a man.’’

The launch included little advertising. Marbury went on a 24-city promotional tour where as many as 300 people lined up to buy autographed pairs of Starbury Ones. A spate of shoe-jackings underscored his message. In Detroit he arrived after robbers relieved a teenager of a pair of high-priced shoes at gunpoint. In Minneapolis a local youth was shot and killed for a $250 throwback jersey and a matching pair of blue and orange shoes.

Marbury has struck a nerve. The Steve & Barry’s chain sold its first month allotment of Starbury shoes in three days. Officials are vague about how many units moved, but confirm “it’s far more than 100,000.’’ Marbury didn’t visit Florida, but the shelves at the Tampa store are bare except for pair of Starbury Cyclone high tops, one half of which hangs in the wall display. The chain had to air freight in a pair of Starbury Ones, the shoes Marbury wears in Knicks games, so the St. Petersburg Times had something to photograph.

The store offers no waiting list, so people have been calling every day. Clerks report turning down $20 bribes for a chance to buy $14.98 shoes.

“We sell out as soon as we get a few more to put out on the shelves,’’ said Jessica Meyer , store manager.

Athletic shoe elitism is well ingrained in our culture. In high school 45 years ago, my gym teacher warned us not to buy those cheap “gum shoes’’ that left marks on his prized hardwood floor. In the 1980s I scarfed up some early-adapter $80 Nike Airs that went flat within 18 months.

Steve & Barry’s insists Starbury One is the real deal.

“Stephon came to us with his dream of making a performance athletic shoe that families can afford and we were confident we could make it happen,’’ said Andy Todd, president of the Port Washington, N.Y.-based company. “We didn’t really have to cut any corners.’’

Some of the stitching looks less than perfect and the arch support doesn’t seem as solid. But the upper is made of the same synthetic leather as higher priced models and the sole is the same ersatz rubber.

Steve & Barry’s hired RocketFish , a Portsmouth, N.H., firm that includes some former Nike designers, to create a cheap performance basketball shoe. They set $14.98 as the price after market research confirmed people didn’t think anything cheaper was possible.

Starburys are made in China or contract factories in other Asian or African countries. Like the shoe companies that have virtually all their manufacturing done offshore, Steve & Barry’s hired a third party monitor to steer clear of sweatshop conditions.

Marbury has his critics. In the snark-infested New York media market he’s developed a bad guy image as a self-centered ball hog. (How that’s possible for the only NBA player along with Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson to average more than 20 points and pass off for eight assists a game is a debate for the sports pages.) He took much of the heat for the Knicks implosion last year as a non-team player who cost coaching legend Larry Brown his job.

Some sportswriters even suggested Marbury, estimated to be the seventh highest-paid player in the sport, is using a clever marketing stunt to repair his image.

“Those people don’t know me and they certainly don’t know anything about where I came from,’’ he said. “I have learned to take everything they say about me as a joke.’’

As evidence, he says he signed the deal with Steve & Barry’s before the disastrous season.

And to short circuit potential critics, he decided then not to accept an up-front cash payment like virtually all other shoe deals. Instead he’s getting an 8 percent royalty on each sale (about the same as most college licensing deals) “so I have a stake in whether we succeed or fail with this movement.’’

“He’s just telling these critics not to categorize him because he has refused to go with the flow,’’ said Lloyd Morrison, a store manager for rival Payless. “Personally it’s about time somebody questioned all this, so I say more power to him.’’

Marbury is not the first to offer a budget shoe for the masses. Hakeem Olajuwon several years ago insisted some of his endorsed shoe line be moderately-priced, which turned out to be the $45 range. Shaquille O’Neal’s Dunkman is sold at a budget price of $32.99 at Payless Shoe Source. This week it’s on sale for $23.99.

But Marbury is the first player to commit to wearing the bargain shoes every game this season.
The coolness factor may not be as big an obstacle as some sport marketers think.

“A lot of my friends are talking about it,’’ said Lakesha Nelson , a 27-year-old Tampa resident. “I know one guy in his 30s bought a pair for himself and his son. I know I’d buy them.”

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.

[Last modified September 26, 2006, 20:53:43]