For years t-shirts have served as “walking billboards,” a relatively low-cost way for well known and unknown brands to capture new attention. Increasingly, as brands try to tie into the rampant sneaker culture, footwear is playing the same role.

Take Hamburgers, For Example
To be sure, footwear is no stranger to licensing and collaborations – deals involving fashion and lifestyles brands are too numerous to mention – but the pace of promotionally-based efforts involving corporate and pop culture icons has been expanding. Think  just about hamburgers —  White Castle with Puma, McDonald’s with Korean pop group BTS and Burger King’s collaboration with footwear artist Sierato.

Many collaborations are limited time offers or promotions.  White Castle’s footwear marks the chain’s 100th anniversary. The Burger King collaboration marked the 20th anniversary of the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards and plays off also BK’s decision to stop using colors from artificial sources in its food, with Sierato applying it to his new sneaker designs.

Celebrity Tie-Ins
For many artists footwear has become a blank canvas – Converse Chuck Taylor high tops these days are better known for shoe designs than plays on the basketball court. And Crocs has experienced a resurgence in recent years due in large part to its linking with celebrities such as singer Justin Bieber, who co-branded them with his own  Drew House (for Jiblitz charms). And then there are artists such as, most recently, Ron English, who applied his “Party Animal” design to a collection that launched exclusively at Foot Locker on Wednesday (July 7).

“Some collaborations are designed to give us an opportunity to attract and acquire new customers and provide us the opportunity to market to them in the future,” says Crocs CEO Andrew Lee. “Some are designed to be more interesting and buzz-worthy” to raise the Crocs profile such as a recent “Walk on the Weird Side” collaboration with DJ/producer Diplo for clogs and sandals. “So it is really a tapestry that we try to put together.”

Other footwear-related developments:

• Licensed footwear enters Ryan’s World franchise via a partnership with Skechers. Co-branded “Skechers x Ryan’s World,” the collection is a collaboration between Ryan and the Skechers Kids design team and is scheduled to launch in the U.S. this month.
• Footwear marketplaces are opening up and gaining new financing. StockX, which got its start as an online marketplace for sneakers, is adding electronics, game consoles, smartphones and computer hardware to the mix. The company has made its mark via collaborations ranging from rapper Eminem and celebrity jeweler Ben Baller to LeBron James, the latter marking the first time the star’s Nike retro shoes launched via the marketplace in bypassing retail. And rival reseller Goat Group recently closed a $195 million funding round that values it at $3.7 billion, up from $1.8 during its last round in 2020. The gross merchandise value of Goat’s marketplace increased 100% during the past 12 months to $2 billion.
• Allbirds/Adidas Futurecraft “sustainable” shoes will launch with 10,000 pairs this fall followed by a broader release in spring 2022. The shoes feature Allbirds “SweetFoam” that is made with 18% bio-based sugarcane and uppers with 70% recycled polyestser and 30% Tencel (wood pulp).
• Sneakers as a luxury fashion statement? Louis Vuitton artistic director Virgil Abloh “reimagined” Nike’s Air Force 1, first released in 1982, for a 21-shoe collection that debuted at the design house’s fashion show in Paris earlier this month. The Air Jordans featured “luxe” leather and Vuitton’s checkered motif with green, yellow, blue and silver colors.
• Reebok, whose parent Adidas has put the company up for sale, extended a “Hot Ones” collection inspired by Sean Evans’ YouTube interview series of the same name that features hot sauces. Reebok x “Hot Ones” Question sneakers were created as a nod to the spiciest hot sauce in the mix, “The Last Dab Apollo” sauce. It includes red uppers and “Hot Ones” branding on the heel and retails for $160.