Creativity is a glamorous sickness rushing through my veins. Between my outfits, the words that are spoken from my mouth, down to the shoes that cover my feet, if it’s not true to my character, I don’t want it. 

Something I’ve noticed is that personalization and customization is something that is heavily lacking throughout the sneaker community. Buying pre-made colorways that are in no way original is lame and boring. With Nike’s new Dunk Lows ‘By You,’ they are offering a step in the right direction for self-expression and originality for all shoe lovers. 

The option to be able to select from many different colors for each different section of your shoe, as well as lace color, and hopefully the toe box, there’s so much versatility for inventing your own colorway. Although there isn’t much public information about these custom kicks, personally, I am ecstatic about this concept Nike has created. Not only will it benefit the company as a whole, but the creative juices inside all sneakerheads’ brains can explode onto their shoes. However, though this idea is on the right track, there are a few flaws where Nike might be missing the mark.

Originality is amazing, but this idea is seeded with blemishes in numerous different ways. The first one is obvious, how will anyone have enough time to customize your shoes when there’s limited stock? And buyers are pawning for this opportunity. From experience, it takes me around fifteen minutes to customize a pair of AirForce 1s on the Nike website, but in that amount of time, it’s positive there will be no blanks left to purchase. 

In addition to the short span of time that will without a doubt cause this customization extravaganza issues, resellers will not be pleased. Throughout the community, everyone despises resellers. Buying up stock and raffles is simply unfair. For most that do it, though, it’s a full-time job, and you can profit from fifty to three thousand dollars off a simple pair of sneakers. 

Implementing the Dunk Low ‘By You’ will allow customers to create the colorways they fiend over for much cheaper. For example, instead of paying the marked-up price on Goat or StockX of the Panda Dunk Lows, or the UNC Dunk Lows, you can simply create them at the click of a button. It’s not only putting resellers out of a job, or their side hustle but lowering the value of highly desired sneakers.

Overall, I think the concept is unique and has great potential. It’s not every day you get to see your favorite brands attempting to implement originality into the community they created. Nike is surely trying to please all of their customers, and I am excited yet nervous to see how this new approach to creativity plays out.