The sneaker boom that happened in the 90s. It became a social issue that the term “hunting Air Max” was coined after an attack on people wearing popular sneakers. At the dawn of the sneaker boom, Mr. Hidefumi Motoaki quit his job and opened “Chapter” in Harajuku, Tokyo, which deals in parallel import goods. With 3 million yen raised from his family, he started with a 2.7 tsubo store and grew the “atmos” sneaker store to a 40 billion yen business. A partial excerpt from “The Man Who Made a Shop”, throwback to the 90s sneaker boom.
■”Air Max 95″ changed the market Shortly after the opening of the chapter, a turning point immediately occurred. Nike’s Air Max 95, released the previous year, was selling slowly. As its name suggests, the “Air Max 95” is a model released by Nike in 1995, and caused a big boom, centered on the coloring called “Yellow Grade”. It wasn’t until 1996, shortly after I left the company, that prices started to rise on the secondary market. At that time, it was gaining overwhelming support from young people, and its popularity was about to peak in 1997, when Takuya Kimura, also known as SMAP, wore it on his CD cover, and Ryoko Hirosue wore it in a pager commercial. .
In America, on the other hand, it was not as popular as in Japan. It was derided as a “yellow worm” due to its old-fashioned shape, and it was sold at a sale price even though it was below list price because it would not sell. But unlike second-hand clothes, which you can buy for less than a dollar, you need a lot of money to buy sneakers that cost $140. Plus, it’s bulkier than old clothes, so it quickly fills a big box. When a package is transported by air, it is calculated either by weight or by volume, and the higher rate must be paid. As for second-hand clothes, if you pack them so heavily that you can’t transport them yourself, you can fit hundreds of them, but you can only fit 20 pairs of sneakers in a box. Because it takes up space, the transportation cost per pair was high.
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