Yeezy QNTM "Mono Carbon": Will Adidas’ foray into basketball shoes work?
Air Jordans are synonymous with basketball shoes. So synonymous, that Nike and Air Jordan have a 90 percent market share in the basketball shoe niche. Despite being the world’s second-largest sneaker brand, Adidas hasn’t been able to break into this niche, yet. Though they had released a few basketball shoes earlier, they didn’t make the impact Adidas expected.
Adidas aims to change this with a new colorway iteration of the Yeezy Quantum (stylized as QNTM). Christened the Mono Carbon, these kicks are poised to be the trending Adidas shoes for men online.
All about the Yeezy QNTM Mono Carbon
As is the case of all Yeezy’s, the Yeezy QNTM is a unique and somewhat bizarre shoe. It has a standard Primeknit construction along with a monofilament insert. It has a translucent upper along with grey striped details across the material. The shoe’s tongue and the collar comes in black with a semi-translucent Boost midsole and grey laces.
Can Yeezy take a slice from Air Jordan’s pie?
The Air Jordan brand is more than 35 years old. Nike has made sure its dominance is consistent in the basketball sneaker niche. With targeted marketing strategies and Michael Jordan’s charisma, Nike has released some of the most popular basketball (and fashionable) sneakers in the market.
Adidas is quite a late entrant to this space. The Yeezy brand, those quite popular, is merely 7 years old. It is seen as a lifestyle and fashion brand, not known for sports shoes.
Even though Adidas has the technological and manufacturing skills to match Nike, the deeply entrenched goodwill that the Air Jordan brand has would be quite difficult to break.
With this QNTM iteration, Adidas is probably hoping the goodwill enjoyed by the Yeezy brand would help to increase sales. However, considering their past experiences, this might not be that easy.
Currently, Nike has their own set of buyers for EVERY version of their Air Jordans. Adidas does not have even one version that they can bank on. Many critics say this is too little, too late. On the optimistic side, Adidas is using a trick up its sleeves to publicize this drop.
How Adidas is strategizing this drop?
As there isn’t much hype amongst sneakerheads to Buy Yeezy QNTM Mono Carbon shoes, Adidas is dropping these with the Yeezy Knit Runner ‘Stone Carbon’ iteration and the Cinder 450. Dropping this Friday 25th March 2022, Adidas is hoping the hype around the Knit Runner and Cinder 450 also falls on this Yeezy QNTM iteration.