Source: Bernard Smalls / @PhotosByBeanz83
Sneakerheads feel like their suspicions about the
SNKRS app and how trash it has been confirmed following the news of a VP connected to the app resigned from Nike.
Sneaker Twitter is livid after news broke of Nike announcing Ann Herbert’s resignation, its now-former vice president and general manager of the North American region. Now, normally, this news wouldn’t be a big deal, but this case is different. It was discovered Herbet’s resignation came after her son, Joe Herbert, was featured in a
Bloomberg piece highlighting the sneaker resale industry and his successful business calling kicks “bona fide assets.”
In the story that was already drawing criticism becuase it highlighted the “whitewashing” of sneaker culture, Herbert shared how he acquired his ridiculous stock of hard-to-get sneakers for his online store
West Coast Streetwear. The 19-year-old revealed that he used a credit card with the help of bots to help secure ludicrous amounts of sneakers to sell at jacked-up prices.
The story’s author, Joshua Hunt, discovered the relationship between Joe and Ann while doing some digging.
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“I looked the name up and discovered there was an Ann Hebert who’d worked at Nike for 25 years and had recently been made its vice president and general manager for North America,” he wrote. “The press release announcing her promotion noted that she would be ‘instrumental in accelerating our Consumer Direct Offense’—the Nike initiative that had helped fuel the sneaker-resale boom.”
Joe attempted to downplay the relationship and tamper any suggestion that he used his mother’s position in Nike to help him buy sneakers claiming she “was so high up at Nike as to be removed from what he does, and that he’d never received inside information such as discount codes from her.”
Nike spokesperson Sandra Carreon-John also told Hunt that Ann Herbert disclosed information about her son’s store to the company back in 2018. Hunt revealed in a tweet that Joe Herbert has since gone silent.
https://twitter.com/viajoshhunt/status/1366538555326009344?s=20
According to company policy, Nike forbids its employees from participating in the sneaker resale business and purchasing sneakers, whether at a discount or retail price, to sell them at a higher price point.
Herbert’s use of bots
already proves just how rigged the sneaker game is, but it’s also the fact the American Express company credit card he was using is in his mother’s name that is sparking even more outrage. A Nike spokesperson states that Ann Herbert wasn’t “formally dismissed” but decided to resign.
As you can imagine, the reactions to this stunning development have sneaker enthusiasts looking at Nike’s SNKRS app all kinds of sideways. It also shines a bright spotlight on how the resale game has gotten out of control, and resellers like Joe Herbert and
Benjamin Kickz are ruining the game entirely.
The sad part in all of this, there are more of these people out here, so unless Nike makes some drastic moves to combat the use of bots, we expect this foolishness to continue,
and the Ls when trying to cop kicks to be abundant.
You can peep more reactions to Joe Herbert’s headassness, which led to his mother resigning from Nike in the gallery below.
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Photo: Bernard Smalls / @PhotosByBeanz83
