Love stories
I am writing on Monday, January 11, 2016 one week prior to the day that will be celebrated as Martin Luther King Jr. day in the United States- a day to remember, celebrate, and emulate the ideal and the courage of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is, I think, fitting, as I consider the lessons I have learned or of which I have been reminded by Dr. King that I, once again, turn to two of the many inspiring stories on Ted Talks. I have previously mentioned Ted Talks. “The first six TED Talks were posted online in June 2006. By September, they had reached more than one million views. TED Talks proved so popular that in 2007, TED's website was relaunched around them, giving a global audience free access to some of the world's greatest thinkers, leaders and teachers” (Ted.com).
This morning I listened to and later read two Ted Talks: one about sneakers and one about LGBT life around the world. Both talks in my opinion, are examples of what my friend and mentor, Dr. Becky Johnen, talks about in her blog on focusing on the journey which she published today.(https://authorbeckyjohnen.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/focus-on-the-journey/)
In her blog this morning. Dr. Johnen talks about Dorothy and her friends in The Wizard of Oz which happens to be one of my favorite stories. Dr. Johnen talks about the importance of the quality of persistence. By persisting eventually Dorothy and her friends discover that they have always had all that they needed to make the journey: Dorothy had the power to get back to Kansas, the Tin Man already had the heart he wanted, the Scarecrow has the brain he wanted, and the lion has the courage he wanted.
Although I would wish that I could do more to help end pain and suffering in this world, I know that today I do have the power to dream and to take the next step in this journey of love with love.
Dr. King, Dorothy and her friends in The Wizard of Oz, Josh Luber and his love of Air Jordans, and Jenni Chang and Lisa Dazols all demonstrate the power of the dream – the power of love.
One might be wondering how the love of Air Jordans belongs in a conversation about people such as Dr. King and LGBT rights and claiming the essence of who we are as is exhibited by Dorothy and her friends. This is a fair question. To be truthful, I have often thought about the fact that some enterprising person or persons have taken what was a plain, practical product – an athletic shoe – and turned it into this amazing array of creative, colorful, fun shoes. No longer does one find a single pair of white or black shoes in the closet of even the occasional gym rat or teenager. One might find several pair of shoes in various colors and designs each pair costing more than the entire wardrobe I had as a child. Some very creative people took a very mundane, practical product and created a product which would not only allow Nike to sell millions of shoes but whose product sold in limited numbers would become a collectors market bringing as much as $8000.00 for one pair. Who knew? Mr. Luber knows about this industry – the very lucrative market for sneakers. He says:
“Now we have sneaker addictions. In a market where in the past 12 months, there have been over nine million pairs of shoes resold in the United States alone, at a value of 1.2 billion dollars. And that's a conservative estimate -- I should know, I am a sneakerhead. This is my collection. In the pantheon of great collections, mine doesn't even register. I have about 250 pairs, but trust me, I am small-time. People have thousands.
I'm a very typical 37-year-old sneakerhead. I grew up playing basketball when Michael Jordan played. I always wanted Air Jordans, my mother would never buy me Air Jordans. As soon as I got some money I bought Air Jordans -- literally, we all have the exact same story. But here's where mine diverged. After starting three companies, I took a job as a strategy consultant, when I very quickly realized that I didn't know the first thing about data. But I learned, because I had to, and I liked it. So I thought, I wonder if I could get ahold of some sneaker data, just to play with for my own amusement. The goal was to develop a price guide, a real data-driven view of the market. And four years later, we're analyzing over 25 million transactions, providing real-time analytics on thousands of sneakers. Now sneakerheads check prices while camping out for releases. Others have used the data to validate insurance claims. And the top investment banks in the world now use resell data to analyze the retail footwear industry. And here's the best part: sneakerheads have sneaker portfolios.
So an unregulated 1.2 billion dollar industry that thrives as much on the street as it does online, and has spawned fundamental financial services for sneakers? At some point I asked myself what's really going on in the market, and two comparisons started to emerge. Are sneakers more like stocks or drugs?
The resell market, we know, is $1.2 billion. Nike, including Jordan brand, accounts for 96 percent of all shoes sold on the secondary market. Just complete domination. Sneakerheads love Jordans. And profit on the secondary market is about a third. That means that Sneakerheads made 380 million dollars selling Nikes last year. Let's jump to retail for a second. Skechers, earlier this year, became the number two footwear brand in the country, surpassing Adidas -- this was a big deal. And in the 12 months ending in June, Skechers's net income was 209 million dollars. That means that Nike's customers make almost twice as much profit as their closest competitor.”
One can argue the social value of a retail or secondary marketplace of very pricy sneakers. My point is that someone had a dream to create sneakers costing more than most of the world pays to clothe an entire family and made them such a coveted collector’s item that they would sell for thousands of dollars.
The second Ted Talk to which I listened this morning was Jenni Chang and Lisa Dazols. Jenni Chang was a woman who came from Taiwan. When she told her parents she was gay they blamed it on her being in the United States and wanted to bring her back to Taiwan. She wondered if they were right but later asked the question:
“Of course, there are gay people in Asia, just as there are gay people in every part of the world. But is the idea of living an "out" life, in the "I'm gay, this is my spouse, and we're proud of our lives together" kind of way just a Western idea?”
Eventually she met and fell in love with Lia Dazois who was an HIV worker in San Francisco. At some point they decided that, without any background in creating and producing a documentary, they would travel over 50,000 miles to look for those “supergays” in other countries who had courageously claimed the right of LGBT people to live with dignity in countries around the world. They found these supergays in Nepal, East Africa, India and Argentina. What they found in East Africa was typical in many respects:
“LD: From India, we traveled to East Africa, a region known for intolerance towards LGBT people. In Kenya, 89 percent of people who come out to their families are disowned. Homosexual acts are a crime and can lead to incarceration. In Kenya, we met the soft-spoken David Kuria. David had a huge mission of wanting to work for the poor and improve his own government. So he decided to run for senate. He became Kenya's first openly gay political candidate. David wanted to run his campaign without denying the reality of who he was. But we were worried for his safety because he started to receive death threats.”
When they came back to San Francisco and reviewed the footage of their film they concluded:
JC: As we reviewed our footage, what we realized is that we were watching a love story. It wasn't a love story that was expected of me, but it is one filled with more freedom, adventure and love than I could have ever possibly imagined. One year after returning home from our trip, marriage equality came to California. And in the end, we believe, love will win out.
Jenni Chaang and Liza Dazol, Ted Talk, This is what LGBT life is like around the world.
The Ted Talks themselves are an example of this same belief in the power of education, the power of persistence, and ultimately the power of love. In its own way every Ted Talk is about a dream and about love.
Indeed as Jenni, Liza, Josh, Dr. King, Dr. Johnen and the creators of Ted Talks as well as a host of others demonstrate, in this brief life journey, persistence, courage, and determination will allow us to find a way to make this world a more colorful, just and loving one. It all begins with love – love of self, each other, justice, a dream and, yes even sneakers whose colorful fun designed also tell a story of love.
Written January 11, 2016
I am writing on Monday, January 11, 2016 one week prior to the day that will be celebrated as Martin Luther King Jr. day in the United States- a day to remember, celebrate, and emulate the ideal and the courage of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is, I think, fitting, as I consider the lessons I have learned or of which I have been reminded by Dr. King that I, once again, turn to two of the many inspiring stories on Ted Talks. I have previously mentioned Ted Talks. “The first six TED Talks were posted online in June 2006. By September, they had reached more than one million views. TED Talks proved so popular that in 2007, TED's website was relaunched around them, giving a global audience free access to some of the world's greatest thinkers, leaders and teachers” (Ted.com).
This morning I listened to and later read two Ted Talks: one about sneakers and one about LGBT life around the world. Both talks in my opinion, are examples of what my friend and mentor, Dr. Becky Johnen, talks about in her blog on focusing on the journey which she published today.(https://authorbeckyjohnen.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/focus-on-the-journey/)
In her blog this morning. Dr. Johnen talks about Dorothy and her friends in The Wizard of Oz which happens to be one of my favorite stories. Dr. Johnen talks about the importance of the quality of persistence. By persisting eventually Dorothy and her friends discover that they have always had all that they needed to make the journey: Dorothy had the power to get back to Kansas, the Tin Man already had the heart he wanted, the Scarecrow has the brain he wanted, and the lion has the courage he wanted.
Although I would wish that I could do more to help end pain and suffering in this world, I know that today I do have the power to dream and to take the next step in this journey of love with love.
Dr. King, Dorothy and her friends in The Wizard of Oz, Josh Luber and his love of Air Jordans, and Jenni Chang and Lisa Dazols all demonstrate the power of the dream – the power of love.
One might be wondering how the love of Air Jordans belongs in a conversation about people such as Dr. King and LGBT rights and claiming the essence of who we are as is exhibited by Dorothy and her friends. This is a fair question. To be truthful, I have often thought about the fact that some enterprising person or persons have taken what was a plain, practical product – an athletic shoe – and turned it into this amazing array of creative, colorful, fun shoes. No longer does one find a single pair of white or black shoes in the closet of even the occasional gym rat or teenager. One might find several pair of shoes in various colors and designs each pair costing more than the entire wardrobe I had as a child. Some very creative people took a very mundane, practical product and created a product which would not only allow Nike to sell millions of shoes but whose product sold in limited numbers would become a collectors market bringing as much as $8000.00 for one pair. Who knew? Mr. Luber knows about this industry – the very lucrative market for sneakers. He says:
“Now we have sneaker addictions. In a market where in the past 12 months, there have been over nine million pairs of shoes resold in the United States alone, at a value of 1.2 billion dollars. And that's a conservative estimate -- I should know, I am a sneakerhead. This is my collection. In the pantheon of great collections, mine doesn't even register. I have about 250 pairs, but trust me, I am small-time. People have thousands.
I'm a very typical 37-year-old sneakerhead. I grew up playing basketball when Michael Jordan played. I always wanted Air Jordans, my mother would never buy me Air Jordans. As soon as I got some money I bought Air Jordans -- literally, we all have the exact same story. But here's where mine diverged. After starting three companies, I took a job as a strategy consultant, when I very quickly realized that I didn't know the first thing about data. But I learned, because I had to, and I liked it. So I thought, I wonder if I could get ahold of some sneaker data, just to play with for my own amusement. The goal was to develop a price guide, a real data-driven view of the market. And four years later, we're analyzing over 25 million transactions, providing real-time analytics on thousands of sneakers. Now sneakerheads check prices while camping out for releases. Others have used the data to validate insurance claims. And the top investment banks in the world now use resell data to analyze the retail footwear industry. And here's the best part: sneakerheads have sneaker portfolios.
So an unregulated 1.2 billion dollar industry that thrives as much on the street as it does online, and has spawned fundamental financial services for sneakers? At some point I asked myself what's really going on in the market, and two comparisons started to emerge. Are sneakers more like stocks or drugs?
The resell market, we know, is $1.2 billion. Nike, including Jordan brand, accounts for 96 percent of all shoes sold on the secondary market. Just complete domination. Sneakerheads love Jordans. And profit on the secondary market is about a third. That means that Sneakerheads made 380 million dollars selling Nikes last year. Let's jump to retail for a second. Skechers, earlier this year, became the number two footwear brand in the country, surpassing Adidas -- this was a big deal. And in the 12 months ending in June, Skechers's net income was 209 million dollars. That means that Nike's customers make almost twice as much profit as their closest competitor.”
One can argue the social value of a retail or secondary marketplace of very pricy sneakers. My point is that someone had a dream to create sneakers costing more than most of the world pays to clothe an entire family and made them such a coveted collector’s item that they would sell for thousands of dollars.
The second Ted Talk to which I listened this morning was Jenni Chang and Lisa Dazols. Jenni Chang was a woman who came from Taiwan. When she told her parents she was gay they blamed it on her being in the United States and wanted to bring her back to Taiwan. She wondered if they were right but later asked the question:
“Of course, there are gay people in Asia, just as there are gay people in every part of the world. But is the idea of living an "out" life, in the "I'm gay, this is my spouse, and we're proud of our lives together" kind of way just a Western idea?”
Eventually she met and fell in love with Lia Dazois who was an HIV worker in San Francisco. At some point they decided that, without any background in creating and producing a documentary, they would travel over 50,000 miles to look for those “supergays” in other countries who had courageously claimed the right of LGBT people to live with dignity in countries around the world. They found these supergays in Nepal, East Africa, India and Argentina. What they found in East Africa was typical in many respects:
“LD: From India, we traveled to East Africa, a region known for intolerance towards LGBT people. In Kenya, 89 percent of people who come out to their families are disowned. Homosexual acts are a crime and can lead to incarceration. In Kenya, we met the soft-spoken David Kuria. David had a huge mission of wanting to work for the poor and improve his own government. So he decided to run for senate. He became Kenya's first openly gay political candidate. David wanted to run his campaign without denying the reality of who he was. But we were worried for his safety because he started to receive death threats.”
When they came back to San Francisco and reviewed the footage of their film they concluded:
JC: As we reviewed our footage, what we realized is that we were watching a love story. It wasn't a love story that was expected of me, but it is one filled with more freedom, adventure and love than I could have ever possibly imagined. One year after returning home from our trip, marriage equality came to California. And in the end, we believe, love will win out.
Jenni Chaang and Liza Dazol, Ted Talk, This is what LGBT life is like around the world.
The Ted Talks themselves are an example of this same belief in the power of education, the power of persistence, and ultimately the power of love. In its own way every Ted Talk is about a dream and about love.
Indeed as Jenni, Liza, Josh, Dr. King, Dr. Johnen and the creators of Ted Talks as well as a host of others demonstrate, in this brief life journey, persistence, courage, and determination will allow us to find a way to make this world a more colorful, just and loving one. It all begins with love – love of self, each other, justice, a dream and, yes even sneakers whose colorful fun designed also tell a story of love.
Written January 11, 2016
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