The famous New York brand Supreme has officially been sold to Vans and Timberland owner VF Corp this Monday morning. It was reported that VF Corp paid up to $2.1 billion to founder James Jebbia.
“We are proud to join VF, a world-class company that is home to great brands we’ve worked with for years, including The North Face, Vans, and Timberland,” James Jebbia said in a statement for VF Corp. “This partnership will maintain our unique culture and independence, while allowing us to grow on the same path we’ve been on since 1994.”
Supreme is a streetwear brand founded in 1994 with 12 stores around the world. The brand is big enough to do collaborations with many companies including high end brands such as Louis Vuitton and Comme Des Garcons, as well as Nike, BAPE and Rolex.
Not only has the brand been able to gain a cult-like following from many “hypebeast” (a word to describe streetwear fans) but many famous celebrities. Being able to make collabs with them as well, this includes Morrissey and Mike Tyson. This also includes collaboration with big name artists such as Kaws, Jean-Michael Basquiat and Takashi Murakami.
Supreme has been able to gain such a large following due to its high demand and low exclusivity. With many pieces being sold for 10 times its original price. Which is easy to why the brand caught the eye of VF Corp.
“We are thrilled to welcome Supreme to the VF family and to build on our decades-long relationship as we create value for all of our stakeholders,” Steve Randle, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of VF Corp said in a statement. “VF is the ideal steward to honor the authentic heritage of this cultural lifestyle brand while providing the opportunity to leverage our scale and expertise to enable sustainable long-term growth.”
Although this is a new exciting opportunity for the two brands, many people are having doubts about this new opportunity for Supreme. Worried that its clothing will be saturated in the market, taking away what makes the brand so special, its rare exclusivity.
“I see Supreme as a high end skateboard brand that is special because it is so hard to get most of its pieces, said Alexis Cancholla, a Supreme collector.” Other brands like Vans and Nike are cool, but anyone can walk into hundreds of stores and buy whatever they want from them. You can't do that with Supreme, they only have four stores in the U.S. and 12 overall.”
Not only is this a worrisome problem to those who wear the famous red box logo brand, but it's a problem to those who resale it. Resellers are infamous for buying Supreme and sell it for double, triple or more from its original price. If the brand loses what makes it so rare, those resale prices would become non-existent.
“I buy Supreme because I like wearing it and because I can make a few hundreds bucks from it,” reseller Jayson Garcia said. “Supreme has already gotten harder to sell, with resell prices not as high at the moment. If they started to mass produce their clothes then they would be worth nothing in the resell market.”
At the moment there is no information about Supreme being mass produced as it’s fellow collaborators Vans and The North Face. However, many possibilities exist for the famous streetwear brand.
No comments:
Post a Comment