FIND YOUR PLACE

In 1993 Jay Gilbert, Seth Berger and Tom Austin founded a basketball brand

They called it And1

They started by selling T-Shirts with trash talking slogans on them

Three years in they were doing well

And set their sights a little higher

They wanted to be the biggest brand in basketball

Which meant taking on Nike

And more importantly it meant making shoes

Nike’s success with with Michael Jordan was legendary

So in 1996 they bet the company on NBA draft prospect Stephen Marbury

In the words of the founders ‘We tried to out Nike, Nike’

They launched their first shoe, the Marbury 1 to huge fanfare

Then on his NBA debut in the first ever outing in his signature shoe  

Stephen Marbury breaks his ankle

They became a laughing stock in NBA circles

Sales tanked

Berger, Gilbert and Austin thought they had ruined the company

They tried to out Nike, Nike and failed

Then they were shown a video by an intern

Of a completely different type of basketball

Being played in Rucker Park in Harlem

It was unlike anything seen in the NBA

This Street Basketball wasn’t really about winning

It was about entertaining

It was self-expression, meets art, meets hip hop culture

And best of all it was a world Nike didn’t go anywhere near 

So they switched strategy and embraced this culture fully

Instead of a highly produced campaign they created a mixtape

A VHS that blended street basketball with unreleased hip hop

And gave out 50k copies via street teams in New York

The reception was so good they instantly started working on Volume Two

They were the first brand ever to contract street basketballers

Creating the And1 All Stars

Taking them on a nationwide tour playing games against local street teams

In 2003 ESPN approached them to create a 30 city reality tv style show

Called Street Ballers

Which became the number 1 show on ESPN

They now felt ready to re-enter the shoe market

And this time it was different

They released the And1 Tai Chi’s which blew up

Making $65 million in sales in the first 18 months

And1 are a cautionary tale for trying to copy your way to success

But they’re also a fantastic example of the power of finding your niche