Sneaker Con Founder Yu-Ming Wu on 15-Year Anniversary, Returning to NYC and Donald Trump’s Appearance
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Sneaker Con held its first-ever event in March 2009 at the Time Square Arts Center in New York City. The event — which was founded by Yu-Ming Wu, Alan Vinogradov and Barris Vinogradov — attracted more than 3,000 people who were all enamored with sneaker culture.
Fifteen years later, Sneaker Con is stronger than ever, and the team has now made the show a worldwide attraction. For the first time in seven years, Sneaker Con will host a show in NYC from Sept. 21-22, taking over Maimonides Park in Coney Island, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. At the same time, it will host a one-day event on Sept. 21 in Australia at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Though the 15-year run for Sneaker Con has been largely positive, and is now hosting tens of thousands of people at events, it is not without controversial moments. For example, former President Donald Trump appeared at its Philadelphia event in February, promoting his $399 “Never Surrender” sneakers, a move that drew the ire of many sneaker collectors.
Here, Wu addresses both the good and the controversial moments of Sneaker Con, and offers FN a look into the event’s future ahead of its return to NYC.
What does 15 years of Sneaker Con mean to you?
“It’s incredible. Looking back on it, I can’t believe that a simple dream of maybe one day, if I bought this domain, that there might be a convention similar to a Comic Con for sneakerheads. That was a wild dream. Today, we’re going to do 30 events this year, all around the globe, all around the country, whether it’s a big city like New York City or Los Angeles, or a smaller city like El Paso [Texas] or Minneapolis. Fifteen years ago, sneaker culture would not have existed in a place like Mumbai, India. We’re working on a show there. Extra Butter has a store there. We’re going to go to Saudi Arabia next year. We’re going to Seoul, South Korea next month. We’ve been to Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Japan, where a lot of the culture started. We’re going to do four shows this year in Japan. We hope that we will get to Spain next year, Mexico City. The list continues. J Balvin in Colombia, maybe one day we can do something in Colombia. He’s helped lift up speakers in the country.”
Sneaker Con is returning to New York City after seven years away, and the late-September show is the first in Brooklyn. What has kept you away?
“We started at Times Square Comedy Club and ended our run at the Javits Center, we were not invited back for whatever reason. We’ve been trying very hard to find a venue. I saw comments on Instagram, some really wild reasons on why we haven’t been to New York. I had a fun time reading some of those (laughs). Alan [Vinogradov], Barris [Vinogradov] and myself are all right out of Brooklyn. I’ve lived in Brooklyn for most of my life, and Coney Island, there isn’t another place like it anywhere in New York City. The other thing, there really isn’t another place that can accommodate us at the scale that we are at. We can maybe go to Yankee Stadium, but the stadium is so complex. Same with Citi Field. Stadiums are very complex. This stadium we’re using is not a standard major league stadium, and we actually have ground level access. All the other stadiums actually require you to go down and up. Same thing with Madison Square Garden. We’ve looked everywhere. Brooklyn Navy Yard is hard to get to transportation wise. Industry City, there’s really nothing there that can accommodate us. All the piers are no longer usable. Javits isn’t returning our phone calls, or at least not giving us a contract. When we saw a few people use this stadium, we said it’s outdoors so it’s risky, but we’ve got to do it. It’s important that we do a show in New York in our 15th year. It’s going to be beautiful — it’s not going to be too hot, too cold. It’s absolutely perfect. It is a perfect return for us.”
What about Sneaker Con has changed the most significantly over 15 years?
“I don’t think a lot has changed. I think we’ve changed only to accommodate a bigger size. The mindset of sneaker guys like myself, whether you’re a collector, a reseller, someone that’s walking in for the education of it, hasn’t changed that much. The major change is really our size compared to our first show at Times Square Comedy Club. It was a really small space, maybe 3,000 square feet. We may have had 500 or 600 people, but those guys are not much different. They were flipping sneakers, they came out to show off what they had on their feet, they dressed for the occasion, they were there to buy, they were there to sell, they’re there to trade. Obviously, we’ve introduced new activities at the show, but the real activity is the buying and selling and trading of shoes.
How many people are you averaging at an event now?
“It varies. We on purpose go to smaller cities to ensure that we continue to do what we do. We want to continue to build a community in each pocket. We’ll launch new cities. El Paso had 3,000 people. Our first show in Seattle, we were hoping that we’ll get to 3,000 to 5000 people and 10,000 people showed up. Our major shows, such as Los Angeles, we saw about 15,000 people. For New York, it’s our first time back so it’s going to take us a little bit of time to refresh the memories that we are there, but we anticipate seeing 10,000 to 15,000. Our big flagship cities, there are a bunch now, from Los Angeles to Chicago, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale [Fla.], Seattle is slowly becoming our Pacific Northwest flagship, an dTexas is huge. We did four Texas cities this year.”
What is one thing you’d change over the last 15 years?
“That’s a tough one. I don’t recall a time where I said, ‘We wish we could have done that.’ I think some partnerships we got into didn’t make sense, but those are easy throw-aways and we’ll continue on our business. As we enter new markets, we have to partner with someone local to ensure we do it right, and oftentimes they don’t understand as much as we to do because we’ve been doing this for 15 years and have a certain way of doing it. But that’s not even a mistake. And this also is not a mistake, but we were building our business in China and COVID destroyed a lot of what we were building out there. Early on, our first Shanghai show where we had Jeff Staple art direct the show, our second China show with Steven Harrington art directing the show, we did some incredible stuff — big crowds, amazing art — and we’re proud of it. But it has failed to continue to build on that momentum, and we’re rethinking how we operate in China because the economy is very different now, the consumers are very different.”
How is it different?
“The consumers are a little bit more conservative with dollars, with money. It’s the same thing with U.S. consumers.”
Is it possible to reclaim what you were building in China?
“Oh yeah, we’re going right back there. It just took us a little bit of time to refocus our energy. Post pandemic, we were busy starting back up, entering new markets. Our first show was in San Antonio and it was crazy. We’ll continue to move forward, we’ll continue to learn how to give real value to people coming to Sneaker Con past what they have been offered — and also continue our efforts to educate new sneakerheads. Every few years, people say sneakers are dying, and you and I know sneakers are never going to die. It’s obvious. Every year, new kids enter sneakers, whether in kindergarten, elementary school or as they get to high school and they may start making their own decisions. With [social] media, a lot of them will have to find new ways to find stuff. We were lucky enough to have been in the early wave of Instagram and rode that wave with our consumers. We were able to reach them in a really easy way. Today’s social environment, we can’t even reach a quarter of our audience. We have to find new ways to educate consumers about who we are, what we do and how we do it. That’s the reason we do shows all across the country, big or small.”
What are your biggest concerns with Sneaker Con and the broader industry?
“The biggest fear is the tech companies, what they do and how they allow us to reach the audience that we built. On Instagram, Sneaker Con has 3.7 million followers, and sometimes we’ll only reach 100,000 of them. The first 10 years of Sneaker Con, we didn’t spend any money reaching our people because we had full access. Today, we have to spend to reach those same people and new people. We obviously have a few more dollars to spend now than we did in the beginning, and we’re able to bring some special guests out. We have [basketball great] Stephon Marbury coming back from China, he’s a local of Coney Island. He’s bringing his Chinese brand Xavier3, his new sunglasses line also. Those things excite me. But that’s the only fear I have. I don’t fear where the economy is going. I know it’s going to pick back up in three-to-four years. I know that all the retros that are sitting on shelves are going to sell for $400 to $500 in the next three-to-four years, I know that there will be another big celebrity or whatever that will create the next big wave for highly sought after stuff. There’s new sneaker brands that I’m really excited about, especially the ones coming from China, like Anta, the guys that signed [NBA star] Kyrie Irving, and there’s Rigorer with [Los Angeles Laker] Austin Reeves. There’s just so many stars that are doing deals that are not with big brands, and that’s incredible. One of the videos we posted on Instagram was this guy selling Asics and he said he couldn’t keep it in stock. Looking back, if I told you Asics is going to sell like hotcakes, you’d be like, ‘Yeah, OK.’ Same with New Balance.”
Sneaker Con was heavily criticized when former President Donald Trump attended the Philadelphia show. What are your thoughts on his attendance looking back? Was this the right move?
“It doesn’t matter to us if it was Donald [Trump] or if it was [Joe] Biden. People embracing sneakers is incredible. I’m not political, I don’t spread any political message. We’re not political in any way. Minus who he is, he’s doing sneakers and that’s incredible. Biden has also embraced sneakers on some level. [Former President Barack] Obama embraced sneakers in a really incredible way. We all respect everyone’s opinion. If we have to say, ‘You’re one direction and we can accept you into our community,’ then we’re not really for the people. We cannot now start making judgments. ‘You’re of a certain income level, maybe you shouldn’t come to Sneaker Con,’ or ‘You’re of a certain gender or a certain color, this is not for you.’ To me, and to us as a group, it makes no sense. We have to welcome, allow all, because we thought if shutting one group off were saying that they’re no good for sneakers. We’re not there to spread the political message. We’re there just to talk about shoes. We wouldn’t have done anything different, whether it was him or Biden. We would love to have had either one of them or both of them.”
Looking ahead, what does the future hold for Sneaker Con?
“Not getting too outside of our comfort zone, especially when it comes to the community aspect of it. We continue to introduce new activities for people to get excited about — our stage show, things that add value to you coming to Sneaker Con. Our continuous growth around the globe, how we can do that with a very small staff. We’re 13 people doing 30 shows around the globe a year. About 10 days ago, we had Vintage Con, which is a new thing we’re doing here in New York City. Vintage Con is something new from us, all about vintage in New York City. We had a small team here, sent a small team out to London to do London Sneaker Con, and then another small team went out to Minneapolis to do Minneapolis Sneaker Con. This coming weekend, we have a show in Melbourne as well, and we have our big show here. We will continue to do that. We’ve done seven to eight shows out there between Sydney and Melbourne. I casually mentioned maybe one day we’ll be in Colombia. J Balvin has laid the foundation out there. And there’s other cities. Argentina, I was following a friend of mine who was in Argentina, and I saw very vibrant events going on out there. I’m most excited about continuing to move into new markets. I’m excited about Spain, I’m excited about France. We foresee ourselves continuing our journey in Japan, in the Asian countries, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, India and so forth.”
About the Author
Peter Verry is the Senior News and Features Editor for Athletic and Outdoor at Footwear News. He oversees coverage of the two fast-paced and ultracompetitive markets, which includes conducting in-depth interviews with industry leaders and writing stories on sneakers and outdoor shoes. He is a lifelong sneaker addict (and shares his newest purchases via @peterverry on Instagram) and spends most of his free time on a trail. He holds an M.A. in journalism from Hofstra University and can be reached at peter.verry@footwearnews.com.