Observation: Sneaker

Observation One

Wednesday, January 22nd

to Saturday, January 24th

Time: 7pm- 9pm

Description of Location: my first observation has two different locations, which are

online websites and retail store. There are many websites that introduce sneaker’s

information to us. One of my favorite and also the one that I observe is

sneakernews.com. This is a very professional and awesome website which provides

the newest information, picture about any kind of special sneakers. You also can

check the release date about specific shoes. However, the most interesting thing in

this web is you can make comments about what you think about shoes. Another

location is a retail store which locates at Southpark Mall named Footlocker.

Footlocker is one of the most big and success sportswear and footwear retailer. It

cooperates with many sports company like Nike and Adidas. So each time Nike will

release some limited shoes, footlocker also release.

Figured World: It is a world that has its particular rules and behaviors. It consists

of its own actors and artifacts.

Rules: For the store sales, most of time, you have to get up early to line up in front of

store because the shoes are limited. You will have signed a ticket and the staff will

draw the sweepstakes. So it’s pretty hard to get it from stores unless you know some

special ways or people. In this observation, I observed how kobe prelude 8 released.

In partnership with mall management, select House of Hoops by Foot Locker stores

will implement a sweepstakes ticket procedure* in order to purchase the Nike Kobe

Prelude VIII (on sale 1/25/13 for $200). The sweepstakes tickets will be given out

Wednesday, January 22nd and Thursday, January 23rd. If your ticket number is

selected, you will be notified by phone on Friday, January 24th. These procedures are

for select stores only. You have to wait for the select store open and get tickets from

store staffs. They will ask you phone number and size of your shoes. After all of this

process, the only thing you can do is waiting. For the online sales, it will be much

easier but expensive. You can check and follow information about the shoes you want

from sneakernews.com. It will give you the information about how and where you can

buy it. For example, it will post a link to ebay or other website for you to purchase.

You also can see the comment in the talking area. Some people talks about they have

some easy way to get it and if you want, you can connect with them. Some people do

the business of selling limited shoes online,so you can purchase them from e-bay or

some other private website. Most of time you can get whatever you want, however,

you can to pay double or more price compare with the original price that the shoes is.

Comment [YL1]: Describe more about what this

Footlcoker looks like incase of some people never

want to there before.

Comment [YL2]: The describe of location is

good.

Comment [YL3]: You have really good

description of the rules about the people in actor.

So either ways have their advantages and disadvantages. By the way, there are also

plenty of websites or books introduce the newest information about shoes. You can

see some people give their comments about how they think about specific shoes. In

general, different situations have different rules. For instance, when you are lineup for

waiting, you cannot cut in line unless you want some strong black people to kick your

ass. Also, when you sell shoes no matter from stores or online sales, you must make

sure that the shoes are authentic. If you sale fake shoes, you will have a big trouble.

Actors: actors are people who play in specific figure world. They follow the

certain rules and behaviors.

Fans of sneaker: they are people who really love and collect shoes. I am a

good example. Collecting shoes is my biggest interest. I view sneaker’s

information every day. We also view some sneaker online forum to talk about our

experience about buying and maintaining shoes. When we find some shoes that

we really like, we will try our best to collect more information about how to buy

it.

Seller: in some sense, sellers are also fans of sneaker but they but it not for

collecting, they buy it for business. Most of time, they are not doing business by

self, they will be groups. They will have different role in this figure world. For

instance, some people will be scalpers; some people are in charge of selling. So

they have different responsibility.

Retail staff: retail staffs are people who work in store. Before the shoes release,

it will first arrive at store, so the retail staffs are the first people to see it. Their job

gives them a big opportunity to deal through backdoor. So retail staffs are biggest

seller.

Artifacts: artifacts are things that are made or created by actors. They don’t need to

be an actual thing; they can be minding or thought.

Shoes: everything we talk about is around shoes. The most value and hottest

shoes that most of sneakers like is jordan. Every year, nike will retro several

jordan shoes which attract our best attention.

Website: there are two kind of website.First is website like sneakernews.com to

introduce information to us. Second are online sales. It is a important source for

both seller and buyer to easily get the shoes they want. But, online sales website

also has their different. First is official website like Nike. This kind of website

sells shoes with original price, so both seller and buyer can but it fairly. However,

Comment [YL4]: Funny.

Comment [YL5]: Include the store and ticket

here.

Comment [YL6]: Also add money and computer

into this catalog.

another website like ebay, it is a good place for seller to sell shoes with a high

price.

Discourse community: it groups of people share common goals.

Fans of sneaker: This is good example of discourse community. They have

common goal which is getting their favorite shoes.

Seller: the common goal for the seller is getting all shoes and selling a nice price

for anyone.

Literacy practice: way of communication.

Website comment: you can see many people talking their opinion in forum area.

They will ask many questions that were relative to sneakers like price and where

to buy.

Observation:

January 22, 7pm. I viewed the sneakernews.com and check the newest information

about a pair of shoes which would release on Saturday. It gave us lots of pictures

about this pair of shoes from different angles.

7:10pm- I opened footlocker.com and find that this shoes will implement a

sweepstakes ticket procedure in order to purchase. The sweepstakes tickets will be

given out Wednesday, January 22nd and Thursday, January 23rd. If your ticket

number is selected, you will be notified by phone on Friday, January 24th. I checked

the Footlocker in the Southpark Mall was one of the retail stores that would

implement ticket, so I prepared to go there tomorrow.

January 23, 7:30am- now I am stand in front of a retail footlocker store in order to get

ticket. Even through it was 7:30am, I was not the first one to be here. There was three

man already waiting here.The store was closed and it will open at 8am.

7:50am- now there were about ten people here. Everyone lined up and chatted with

eath other. I talked with a person who named Joe and he showed me his collection’s

picture from his Facebook.

8am- the store open. Everyone went to the front desk to register personal information.

Everyone followed the rules. The process was very successful.

8am-6pm. There were many people view shoes in store, only part of them registered

for ticket. After one day’s observation, almost 100 people went to get the ticket. I

asked the salesman when they will call the lucky men and they said if you didn’t get

call before 9 pm, you ticket number will not be selected.

Comment [YL7]: A little bit confusing for

people didn’t know about.

Comment [YL8]: Talking about how they talk in

a friendly or rude way.

9pm- I went back to home and still didn’t get the call from store, so I checked some

comment forum in footlocker.com and sneakernews.com. Most of people didn’t get

call and complain about the salesman only call their friends to let them get the shoes.

There were a few people starting to advertise for these shoes and tried to sell it with a

high price.

Observation two

January 25th

Time: 7:30am- 8:30am

Description of Location: my second observation is observing how a pair of shoes

sells from official channels. There are four most common official channels, which are

Footlocker, Finishline, Footaction and Nike. Twitter is also observation because Nike

use twitter to release the link that let you directly find the selling page.

Rules: Because when some limited shoes will sell online, the website will have lots of

viewers. So you have to login in to your account several minutes before the launch

time. Due to the number of people that want to purchase shoes, you’d better to have a

high-speed computer and high-speed internet. Most of time, after you add shoes into

your cart, you will wait several minutes to let website to confirm. You need to be

patient to wait the confirmation. If you close the waiting page, you will lost the

chance to purchase. Even through everyone want to have equal opportunity to

purchase shoes from official website, there are still some way you can easily get. In

the figure world of sneaker, there is a cheat application called bot, which can shorten

your buying time to increase your opportunity to get the shoes. This is a tacit rule in

sneaker’s world.

Actors:

Fans or buyer: people like me get up early, sit in front of laptop and keep refresh the

selling page in order to purchase shoes.

Observation:

7:30am: I got up early because the shoes will release at 8am EST. You had to login in

your account 30 minutes before to make sure you will not be kicked out. I opened

four major website which will sell the shoes: footlocker, finish-line, footaction and

Comment [YL9]: Even though I have no idea

about what are you talking about, I still think this

have many details.

Nike. The website showed a countdown clock. By the way, Nike had a difference

between other online seller, which is they will post a link on twitter at 8am. I checked

twitter and it didn’t post yet.

7:40am: I opened some pervious twitters that talking about this shoes. Some people

left messages that asking the price of this shoes and asking if it had a grade school

size. There was a people whose twitter name was Kyle Tittle said that the real launch

tip was staying in the bed and going to ebay when you wake up, gonna be impossible

via twitter link. This is a truth in some sense because it is pretty hard to buy it from

official channels.

8am: now it was 8am, the twitter post a link and I clicked it. I quickly selected my

size and clicked add it to cart. The website showed in the waiting page. At the same

time, I also did the same thing in other online store. I could open the waiting page in

Finishline and Footaction. However, I even could not open footlocker’s website and it

said there is a website error because the number of viewers.

8:05am: I still could not open Footlocker’s website and Nike, Finishline and

Footaction kicked me out from the waiting page and showed this item was out of

stock.

8:10am: now, I finally opened Footlocker’s website, I selected my size, clicked add to

my cart but the website said now the shoes current are all in others cart. So I refresh

their website again and again to see if there were some replenishment.

9:21am: Nike post a twitter said the kobe prelude VIII has sold out on Nike.com. So it

means you could not buy it from any online store.

9:30am: after Nike post this twitter, there were many people left comment here. Some

people complain that the quantitive was small, so it’s impossible to get it. Also, some

people sais some bad words like shoes were gone before the link tweeted...WTF. It

was really funny to see how people react.

Observation three

January 26th

to January 27th

Time: 10am to 8:47pm

Description of Location: in my third observation, I am going to observation how you

can buy a pair of limited shoes from ebay when you have no chance to buy it from

official store. Ebay is one of tthe biggest online store platform in the world. You

almost can buy anything you want include limited shoes.

Comment [YL10]: Move the people in actor.

Rules: the most important rule is the shoe is authentic. Because most of the shoes you

want to buy is limited, so many seller will sell fake or replica to replace authentic

shoes. The first thing you need to do is check the description of this item to see if the

seller says this is authentic. No one wants to pay more to buy a fake one, so as a seller

you must sell authentic shoes if you have a high price. For buyer, you also need to pay

the item quickly, the fast you pay, the less problem you will receive. In this case, the

seller opened a bid for this shoes, if you offer a highest price at the time the bid was

end, you will win this auction.

Actors:

Buyer(myself): Buyer like me already buy several limited shoes from ebay. Although

they are expensive, this is a way you can get it.

Seller: In this observation, I observed a people whose name on ebay is hoffmanj92

sell a pair of nike air jordan 1 retro high og.

Observation:

Jan 25th

, 10am: in order to do this observation and also buy a pair of shoes that I

dream, I search this shoes from ebay and find a appropriate item. A ebay member

hoffmanj92 opened a bid for air jordan 1 retro with a price $0.99. This item started

from January 23rd

and ended on January 26th

at 17:46:13 PST.

10:10am: I checked some information about whether the shoes is authentic, after I

made sure about that, I followed the seller and wait for place bid. The reason I did this

is when you place bid at the last minutes, other buyer didn’t have enough time to

place a high bid again, so you will get it.

10:20am: I noticed that there were some buyers already placing bids. The first people

whose name is O***J placed a bid 26 minutes after the seller opened the bid with a

price of $200. Now the highest bid was $360.

3pm to Jan26th, 8pm: I checked this bid serval times during these 23 hours but no one

placed a high bid. The highest bid was still $360, so maybe many buyer had same

thought with me, which was place at the last minutes.

8:45pm: now, it was the last one minutes for this bid, I could not wait and place a bid

with $370. After 10 seconds, another buyer place $375. Five seconds later, a new bid

came out with $380. During the last one minutes, this bid became more competitive.

There were seven buyer placed bid and I became the winner with $405 after a

successfully place the highest bid in the last two second.

Comment [YL11]: Add some actors about bid

shoe with you at the same time.

Comment [YL12]: This observation show pretty

good process and details how you buy a shoe.

Interview:

I interviewed my friend Vincent. He is in Wisconsin, so I interview him by phone.

1) Are you a sneaker? If you are, how long have you been a sneaker?

Yeah, of course I am a sneaker. I have been a sneaker for six years.

2) Why do you want to be a sneaker?

Em. This is a long story. I bought my first pair of shoes when I was a senior in

middle school. At that time, I started to play basketball and watched NBA. Every time

I saw those players wear cool shoes and played well, I dreamed that one day I can

play like them or wear like them. So I bought my first sneaker, I still remembered it

was Jordan 20 team. After I bought some sneakers, I started to understand the culture

of sneakers and the sneakers didn’t only wear it to only play basketball, it also became

a kind of fashion and I do love shoes. That’s why a wan to be a sneaker.

3) How do you collect information about sneaker, from website or magazine?

Actually, I get information more than that. You know there are many way you can

get sneaker information. For example, there are some apps in the apple store, so if you

have an iphone you can download and most of them are free. They will give you

enough information of sneaker and you can check it whenever you want. I also get

news from sneakernews.com, twitter or instagram, there are many people talking

about shoes today, so you can get it in many ways.

4) How many collections do you have?

I don’t know, man. I do have a lot of shoes but I never count it. Maybe 70 or 80.

5) Where do you get them?

One third of them get from Nike or some online store like that. Others are getting

from ebay or some personal retail store.

6) Can you give us some suggestions for someone who want to be a sneaker?

Sure. First of all i money, you know. Being a sneaker need to collect shoes. And

most of them are not cheap, so you must have enough money to support you keep

working on it. Second are friends. Having more friends in this circle will help you a

Comment [YL13]: The interview is good, it is

very describe.

lot. More friends mean you will have more opportunities than others to get what you

what. So trying to get more friends will do help you.