Just Did It!

Not long ago, Royal Throne writer Queen Ogunyinka wrote a piece on who would be the first to pull a Beyonce and drop a surprise project that will sell as well or better than she (you can find that column here). Turns out it wasn't even in the music industry. Nike Just Did It. The billion dollar corporation decided to surprise drop the infamous Red October Air Yeezy 2's. Before today you couldn't even find them on retail shelves anywhere and the cheapest they've gone for on ebay included at least 3 zeros behind the first digit. Nike decides to drop them for $245 retail and they sold out in less than 15 minutes. That's insanity at it's finest.

Non sneaker heads don't really understand the severity of the situation but it's monumental. It's part of the reason Kanye West left Nike in the first place (along with issues about designs, royalties, etc.). What's really surprising is that FootLocker dropped the original release date for the holiday season as you can see below.

Unfortunately, the Nike Air Yeezy 2 will not be releasing via http://t.co/K5S0xnnVF1 on Dec 27. We have no further updates at this time.
— Foot Locker (@footlocker) December 24, 2013

As expected, surprise releases are going to trend. In music there is no way to leak albums if there is no promotion for it. If no one knows what's going on, no one can steal. The only flaw is that with no promotion there is no promise there will be positive sales (in the eyes of labels and corporations). Thus far that has been proven wrong. Beyonce's self-titled album has sold three million copies and counting as of January 2014 and was the fastest album sold in one day in iTunes history. This morning, Nike was able to sell out of nearly 5,000 pairs of Air Yeezy's in 15 minutes. Will this trend continue in any other industries? I guess we will find out together.

Your Editor,