Are Sneaker Releases an Appropriate Way for Brands to Celebrate Juneteenth?

Sneakers have long provided a platform for brands to celebrate holidays or commemorative moments. Halloween and Christmas sneakers are commonplace every year, for example, as are releases surrounding Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Pride Month.

Juneteenth sneakers, however, are not something you see in the marketplace.

The reasons insiders believe this is the case are vast. For sneaker YouTuber David “Kari” Daniels, he believes Juneteenth, although intended to be a celebratory moment, could prove controversial if a brand activates around it through product. Daniels said sneaker brands tend to like culture without controversy.

Juneteenth marks the official end of slavery in the U.S., when, in 1865, Union soldiers rode into Galveston, Texas, bringing news that enslaved Black people were officially emancipated.

“When it comes to sneakers that highlight specific culturally-themed stories like Juneteenth, to effectively roll it out, you have to shine a light on what is viewed as a major pain point in this country, even if rooted in liberation,” Daniels explained. “That can get sticky if done incorrectly, so I can understand many brands abstaining from any product directly associated with the holiday and widening the aperture to Black history or Black culture in its entirety. It’s a lot easier to stick to the positive feel-good aspects of everything.”

D’Wayne Edwards, founder of the Pensole Lewis College of Business & Design in Detroit, said that although the holiday is far from new, it wasn’t discussed on a wide scale until the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Because of this, he believes brands have not yet figured out how to navigate Juneteenth.

“Juneteenth is new to corporate America, they just now are acknowledging it,” Edwards said. “It wasn’t until George Floyd was murdered that brands became more conscious of how they support Black communities, and then it went to, ‘What are we doing for our own employees?'”

What’s more, a product release, if done incorrectly, could come off as exploitative, and the brand could face backlash. Walmart was blasted last year when it released its “Celebration Edition: Juneteenth Ice Cream” flavor through its Great Value brand, which was widely viewed as a poor attempt to commodify a Black holiday.

“Companies want to be careful that they don’t exploit Juneteenth because it’s now another Black holiday outside of February where they can create and sell product to Black folks,” Edwards said. “It’s hard to do anything today that calls out a single single race or gender or whatever because someone is going to complain. Corporations are getting safer and safer as it pertains to individual celebrations for race or religion or whatever.”

With these risks, are Juneteenth-themed sneaker releases appropriate? Jazerai Allen-Lord, founder of True to Size Agency, is unsure.

“The consumer has to have an opportunity to say what they want to see from Juneteenth. The Juneteenth story wouldn’t feel so controversial if brands didn’t have large moments for so many other things,” Lord said. “What I see online is, ‘There’s a large celebration for this community and that holiday,’ but Black culture is inherently tied to sneaker culture in a large way and it feels like those stories are rarely told. I don’t know if product is right, but product is the highlight of a conversation because you see product for everything else.”

Daniels is confident that there is plenty of opportunity for brands to do something powerful via product.

“Specially-themed sneakers, in my eyes, are a physical manifestation of something stemming from a cultural element,” Daniels said. “When you view a shoe as not just a shoe, but an extension of what and who that shoe represents, it makes sense to extend that to Juneteenth.”

Edwards, too, believes a sneaker release could be appropriate, but he explained how go-to-market strategy has rarely been delivered properly when it comes to the Black community.

“Think about all the charity-type sneakers that are out there — Doernbecher and N7 [with Nike], breast cancer awareness, the Red campaign with AIDS [which includes Primark, Balmain and Louis Vuitton as partners]. Nobody has released a product for Black folks to support Black folks for a terminal issue,” Edwards said. “The only one that’s close is Jordan Brand. They do a Wings shoe every year because it supports the Wings program, which generates millions of dollars. It’s a product that goes toward education.”

He continued, “Every other cause product goes to some charity of some kind. Everything that’s Black is exploitive and does not.”

What is certainly appropriate for brands to engage in for Juneteenth, according to Lord and Edwards, is a commitment to education.

“The most appropriate way for brands to activate is to educate internally first. It’s not to depend on the Black people within the office to educate,” Lord said. “If there was stronger education and infrastructure to support Juneteenth, we would see an authentic tie between the brand and the Black community. Allocate funds for internal education that [could] spark more authentic stories around Juneteenth and Black people, period.”

Edwards added, “Pick 10 Black friends that you know and ask them, ‘What is Juneteenth? Where did it come from?’ There’s not enough education on it for people — even Black people don’t know enough about it. It wasn’t something that was in our books, it wasn’t what we were taught. We had to seek that information out on our own.”

Both Lord and Edwards believe stronger education would directly lead to better storytelling with products release into the marketplace.

“A lot of times, when some of these celebratory products come out, the people who do it, they don’t even know why they’re doing it. They do it because they know they need to do it to fill in the line plan,” Edwards explained. “The brands who do it well, they’re actually telling a story, they’re sharing education with you that you did not know about beyond, ‘Why is the American flag red, black and green this month?'”

Aside from education, Daniels said brands could best support by tapping into what the community likes to do.

“Read the room. Juneteenth means cookouts, celebration, music, time with family. If I owned a store, my activation would be a Juneteenth Block Party. It’s the summertime and that means people want to be outside laughing with good fun, good food, good friends and fly gear,” Daniels said. “If I were sitting in a corporate office, I would do a video remote with Black employees, hearing them in their own words express what Juneteenth means to them, along with panels and interactive activations to engage and educate. Juneteenth is a time to celebrate. I wish the brands understood that more.”

In terms of retailers, the work of DTLR as of late is noteworthy. Recent efforts include partnering with nonprofits and community partners in 2021 to raise awareness around the country. “We also used social media platforms and retail locations to educate consumers about Juneteenth and encourage people to sign a petition to make the celebration a nationally observed holiday,” explained DTLR director of community outreach Tremayne Lipscomb Sr.

This year, DTLR hosted an event on June 17 with Dallas nonprofit For Oak Cliff in the city’s South Oak Cliff neighborhood, which featured several benefits geared specifically toward the community. These included free memberships to the Perot Museum, a live cooking demo by Joppy Momma’s Farms, art installations educating visitors about Juneteenth and produce giveaways for more than 200 families.

Although the role of a sneaker brand around Juneteenth is still up for debate, both Daniels and Lord believe good examples of what to do are out there.

Daniels noted Jordan Brand’s “tasteful rollout” of player-exclusive cleats worn by several of its sponsored baseball players in 2021, created with Pan-African colors and the word Juneteenth stitched into the tongues. Also, Daniels made note of Vice’s documentary with Adidas Running titled “Running While Black,” which was released on Juneteenth in 2022.

In terms of internal brand efforts, Daniels applauded the sneaker brands that have made Juneteenth a paid company holiday as a “subtle way of showing support” by “allowing time off for employees to reflect.”

As for Lord, she appreciates the efforts of Adidas, working with its retail partners to activate around a given community’s specific need.

For example, the Eric “Shake” James-owned store Black Market in Milwaukee held its annual “Black on the Block” community giveaway and celebration event on Saturday. This event was done with help from Adidas Cornerstone Community, the athletic brand’s initiative that is focused on removing racial disparity by supporting businesses owned by people of color.

“[Adidas] put the power in the retailer’s hands and said, ‘What do the Black people in your community need?'” Lord said.