After Samsung China’s ‘fake’ Supreme deal, we look at 5 of the original brand’s skateboarding collaborations
As the company faces a backlash for its partnership with Supreme Italia, we look at some of the genuine NYC company’s top partnerships – from Nike to Louis Vuitton
Last week, during the launch of the Galaxy 8As, Samsung China announced its collaboration with the brand Supreme to a small audience via live stream on their official Weibo account.
Within hours, however, the army of Supreme fans almost brought the internet to a standstill as they denounced Samsung’s partner as an impostor. Turned out, Samsung wasn’t talking about the famous New York-based streetwear brand Supreme, but Supreme Italia.
After a public relations backlash, the Korean tech giant was said to be re-evaluating its partnership with the Supreme Italia company. It emerged that the original skateboarding brand Supreme didn’t register a trademark or intellectual property rights worldwide, leaving open the opportunity for others, such as Supreme Italia, to create and sell “legal fakes” of Supreme’s designs.
In China, Supreme Italia has obtained authorisations to sell its merchandise in the Asia-Pacific region, except Japan.
The original Supreme starting as a cult a skateboard shop in Lower Manhattan Supreme and has grown into a fashion superpower valued at about US$1 billion. Perhaps ironically, it’s famous red logo box was “borrowed” from a 1987 artwork titled Untitled (I shop therefore I am) by the conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. And while Supreme was critical of consumerism, the company created the most counter-intuitive strategy for growing their business.
The store’s “drop” strategy, which uses sales of limited collections publicised by viral content, has become a famous sales tactic. With 12 million Instagram followers, the brand has an army of obsessed fans willing to camp out at “drops” in front of its stores to be the first to wear its new products.
While fashion companies optimise their websites with fine search-engine optimised (SEO) headlines and call-to-action buttons, Supreme’s website is relatively basic – with a simple email marketing strategy, their collections are sold-out in minutes. And this overall scarcity strategy is fuelling a remarkably lucrative resale industry, with items marked up by 1,000 per cent or more.
More than a business model, the Supreme’s skateboarding-inspired philosophy can be explained in five collaborations.