Rising up from seemingly nowhere, BrandBlack became a performance and fashion force three years ago with the release of the Raptor, Phantom, and the big name, the J Crossover. Why J Crossover? Well, if you have paid attention to WearTesters at all, you know – if not, it was for Jamal Crawford, of the L.A. Clippers, and has some of the sickest handles in the game.
But this past October, after three really nice signature models (Read here, and here, and here if you don’t believe me), Jamal decided to go a new road, signing with adidas and rocking the CrazyLight series. How will this affect BrandBlack? For starters, the JC4, scheduled for release this past October, is now the Rare Metal (review here), released on Finish Line and will soon be in Dick’s Sporting Goods.
BrandBlack founder David Raysse recently talked to Slam Magazine (22 years strong!) about the changes in the designs and company and where the road leads next without Jamal on board. With David’s history in the business and BrandBlack’s strong presence, the future is shaping to be legendary:
SLAM: What’s next for Brandblack?
DR: We’ve got really exciting stuff. The next basketball shoe is all knit. We’re working with a well known company that does things with soles and parts of the shoe that has never done basketball before. That’s all I can really say. It’s really exciting and unexpected. That shoe is going to be dropping for Holiday 2017. It’s the perfect embodiment of what Brandblack represents. On the court dominance and then off the court, it almost doesn’t look like a hoop shoe.
Read more at SlamOnline.com and tell us below if you think BrandBlack needs an NBA endorser or if the company has established themselves to last based on design, performance, and aesthetics.
i want the shoe he is talking about right now
+1 I’m very hyped for these.
I think every shoes that they drop are all heat. Brandblack and Adidas are on the top of the game right now. The only thing I hope is for them to make their products available worldwide. Open more retail stores overseas. And adidas, please make more of that beautiful Ultra boost and Yeezys. Make more of them, especially the highly sought after colorways.
There is a lot of design detail going into these shoes, as if it was more of a mechanical, industrial design vs. simply taking it as a shoe. Not to knock on Nike’s designers, but they keep going in random directions with narratives to sugarcoat the sequels — and in all fairness that really is the appeal with them. They have to keep trying to shake up design in attempt to upstart trends while Brandblack is keeping to its own identity with every pair and don’t seem to gamble.
It’s just using common sense for performance and taste. Aesthetic appeal is subjective, but there is a point where there’s pretty universal agreement, and BB hangs in that realm. Performance wise I don’t think they really ever put out a shoe that was noted as considerably bad. It’s just the simple act of paying attention to their own work.
Adidas on the other hand seems to be on that far extreme in being function-first with everything. They’ve been building around Boost and in the context of basketball shoes lately, there’s a very evident progression in how they found ways to control torsion and higher volumes of Boost going towards the forefoot. The attraction in aesthetic is how functional everything looks, save for the Harden V1 where there is more apparent effort to streamline the silhouette.
Ventruck, that post is so spot on bro. Seriously. I literally agreed with every word. BB is very meticulous I think would be an acceptable word in the way that the shoes are designed. The detail and small things are not ignored at all. I also love the direction that Adidas is going in by starting at the base and building up around that. Both Boost and Bounce are noteworthy cushion sources and to see more models utilizing both is both refreshing and appreciated as a consumer. The design can be extreme and almost off putting to some people but the performance appears to be there so if looks mean nothing to a person, they still get performance heat.
Get Isaiah Thomas, Brandon Jennings and some more good guards as ambassadors and you ll see how they ll sell. For example Brandon Jennings boost UA. I learnt UA and was buying their shoes because of him. They need fashion icons that they also post on social media a lot and not the best players..