Ich habe mir gerade ein neues Paar Stiefel gekauft, mit dem ich schon lange geliebäugelt hatte: Die tollen „Blackspot Sneaker V2“. Sehen cool aus, tragen sich hervorragend, aber was sie vor allem auszeichnet:

it’s made in a safe, comfortable union factory with all– vegetarian materials, including 100% organic hemp uppers and recycled tire soles. One of the Earth-friendliest shoes around.

BlackSpot Shoes

Für mich war das also vor allem ein guter Weg, vegane Schuhe zu bekommen, habe sie auch über eine Seite aus der Veganer-Szene bestellt, die ich bei der Gelegenheit auch nicht-Veganern sehr empfehlen möchte: Roots of Compassion.

Ich habe mich dabei schon ein bisschen gewundert, wo der Marken-Hass herkommt, der hinter der Sache eigentlich mehr als vegane Ideale steckt. Und es jetzt zufällig herausgefunden: Der Druck zu Markenklamotten ist unter jungen Leuten in Amerika ein echtes Problem, was auch einen berühmten Basketballer motiviert hat, mit einer eigenen Billigserie auf den Markt zu gehen, die auch cool sein soll, ohne dass die Käufer verarmen oder Opfer von Raubüberfällen werden:

Basketball star unveils low-cost clothing range to curb violence in US inner cities
By Tony Favro, US Correspondent

17 December 2006: In September 2006, professional basketball star Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks announced that he was producing a line of inexpensive athletic clothes and shoes. The Starbury-brand items retail for less than US$15, far less than the $150 to $300 for name brands of sportswear such as Nike or Adidas. One of the reasons Marbury gave for entering the apparel business was to “keep kids a little safer.” Marbury reasoned that children wearing low-priced jackets and sports shoes would be less likely to become crime victims.

In American inner cities, where residents are predominantly poor and Black or Latino, youth are beaten, robbed, and even killed for their fancy sports apparel. Atlanta police report an average of 12 violent muggings for sportswear per month since 1990. Over the same period, Chicago police report about 50 violent acts involving jackets and coats with sports-team logos and about two dozen involving expensive athletic shoes each month.

When Stephon Marbury unveiled his low-price clothing, he referred to a 15-year-old girl from Minneapolis, Minnesota who was murdered for the expensive jersey on her back. Such murders of children have become commonplace in American inner cities, as designer sports clothing has become popular among violent street gangs. Clothing with logos was involved in some way in virtually all of the more than 4500 juvenile gang killings in the US over the past five years.

City Mayors: Starbury brand to curb violence, Hervorhebungen von mir

Was für ein Wahnsinn. Die eben schon zitierte Seite bietet auch einen schönen Abriss der Entwicklung des Marken-Hypes:

In 1962, the same year that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested and jailed in Albany, Georgia for his nonviolent protests against the racial and economic segregation of Black Americans, a man named Phil Knight started a sport shoe company called Nike.

By the early-1980s, Knight realized that he didn’t have to manufacture the products he sold. He could have them made by subcontractors in third-world countries for a fraction of what it costs to produce them in the United States. He did this, and Nike’s profits soared.

It set a new standard for manufacturing. Companies that were traditionally expected to have a 100 per cent markup between the cost of factory production and the retail price could now get a markup of 400 per cent. Wall Street loved this idea, and demanded the same from other manufacturers. As a result, jobs began to leave the US in droves. The more jobs a company exported, the more its stock went up. As Phil Knight said, “There is no value in making things anymore… value is added by marketing.”

Phil Knight used his enormous profits to advertise like no other company had ever done before. While similar companies were spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising each year, Nike spent hundreds of millions.

Nike hired basketball superstar Michael Jordan and other prominent athletes to advertise its products. The company sponsored high-profile extreme sporting events, and opened Niketown stores – all of which worshipped the Nike logo, the “swoosh”, as both art and heroic symbol. Phil Knight turned Nike’s “Just Do It” motto into an attitude, a lifestyle that every young person had to have. In other words, he created a superbrand. It’s the idea that image is everything.

City Mayors: Starbury brand to curb violence

Irgendwie freut es mich, diese Effekte schon beschrieben zu haben, bevor mir konkrete Beispiele bekannt waren, wie scharf dieses Phänomen tatsächlich ist („Clothing with logos was involved in some way in virtually all of the more than 4500 juvenile gang killings in the US over the past five years.“). Auch wenn mir lieber wäre, es wäre anders.