Will the Starbury Change the Game?
Kids only want to buy sneakers if they are super-expensive and exclusive, and top sportsmen can’t be blamed for endorsing top-priced goods…right?
This conventional wisdom is being turned on its head by New York Knicks’ Stephon Marbury. Kobe, Lebron and Michael Jordan have all put their name to $150 Nike shoes, but Marbury has made it his mission to bring out a line of shoes for poor kids. The cost of the new Starbury
shoe? $15. And it’s not just a piece of tat. Marbury is wearing the shoe on court himself.
Sold only in US discount store Steve & Barry’s (which prides itself on enabling a family to be clothed for a year for $100) the shoe has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Queues run outside the stores, with a two-item per person limit now enforced on the Starbury range. Marbury’s aim is to show people just how little it really costs to make high quality sneakers. “Two hundred to buy a pair of sneakers? That’s groceries for the week,” he says. “History is going to say Stephon Marbury changed the game.”