Instyleshoes "Give Back 14" : 14 Year Anniversary & Give Back to Niketalk

Thanks for the aknowledgement on our Give Back Program, but it seems you are mistaking the ISS Forums and the ISS Online Store. They later re-named the ISS Forums to Sole Collector sometime after the Magazine launched.

-ISS

INSTAGRAM : @instyleshoes1999

 

Yikes. That post is even uglier than I remember!

Glad those days are a distant memory, and we have the opportunity to do what we are doing with NT today.

@Method Man, Thanks for clarifying that our post is Legit. I look forward to a day when you don't feel compelled to do that again. You probably do too. To answer your question about ownership of Instyleshoes :

In Summer of 2010, ISS Steve contacted UTA Steve about a buyout. The purchase happened & as many of us know, both UTA Steve and ISS Steve made very public posts about it. In August of 2010, UTA Steve called me up and asked if I wanted to Own / Run Instyleshoes. I purchased 95% of ISS from UTA right then and there, and in the past month (Sadly, as Uptempoair was closing it's doors), I purchased the rest of ISS making me 100% owner. That's the story of how I got control of the Company (for anyone else that was wondering).

The next part is more important :

WHY buy Instyleshoes?

I've been asked this many times, including this past week by those that have read this very thread. In short, because the Good outweighed the Bad (in my own opinion back in 2010). As Method Man has mentioned a few times now, I'm "one of Niketalk's own" who started way back in the early days before Niketalk even had it's own proper url. I elected to take on the task of trying to rebuild something that I had "grown up with". I knew about the "Fiasco" and also the issues mentioned in that ugly link above, as I read about them here with the rest of you guys back in the day and thought "WTF".

INSTYLESHOES was one of the first online boutiques. It was Flight Club before Flight Club even existed as we know it today (then it was "Vintage Kicks" and looked very different). In the early 2000's, Instyleshoes was one of say, five or so sites that offered exclusive and hard to find shoes that we all loved, some of which we had never seen before (there weren't ANY other sites offering PE's back then). Picture quality and also acknowledging the "fakes" that were coming out / being one of the early educators against it were all things that Instyleshoes stood for. In the early 2000's, I remember checking out BOTH Instyleshoes (the store, NOT the forum) and Niketalk daily. It was exciting and I learned a lot from both. In 2003, a mutual friend put me in touch with UTA Steve, and I got to work closely with him from 2003-2010, learning a bunch. Thanks (and good luck to) "Uncle Steve" is an understatement.

I believe in giving back to those that got me to where I am, both personally and professionally. I'm lucky to work with a team of 13, some of which have been alongside me for the ride about a decade or so now. Since 2010, I've put in a lot of energy to try and bring Instyleshoes back to the way I remembered it as a kid and I've had a lot of help doing it with having such a great team around me. One of the biggest pieces is that we help our clients, for a variety of reasons, sell their collections. Some have contacted us and said "I'm going back to college, I need to sell my collection to pay tuition" or "I've got a kid on the way and priorities have changed". That's a lot of what we do, and we payout fairly. In a sense, those shoes are going to get sold regardless, so why not through ISS and we will share our profits accordingly with those that help us. That's what ISS is today.

As for the Niketalk Sponsorship and this Give Back Program, it goes really without saying, how happy I am to be here (despite a very justified amount of resistance from some older members of this forum).

Going back to the point of this post, I'm very much honored to celebrate the 14th Anniversary of Instyleshoes with you, Niketalk. It brings two things that I love together. That's kind of it, not much more to it than that actually.

So, again, thanks to those that have supported ISS being a sponsor here on NIKETALK. Especially to Method Man, who had the biggest reasons of anyone to not want to see INSTYLESHOES on this forum.

Thanks,
Tom
Instyleshoes Owner & Team Lead

INSTAGRAM : @instyleshoes1999

 

Say what now?

 

Just email us, and we'll go from there. And thanks for your orders with us!

Thanks,

ISS

INSTAGRAM : @instyleshoes1999

 

Thanks for the public kudos P.

We would like to ask for NT's thoughts on which initiative we should work with next? As mentioned, we've contributed to the sizable Room to Read dontation that Niketalk made last year, but we are asking if you guys have an opinion or want for us to donate with any specific charities moving forward.

All suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

-ISS

INSTAGRAM : @instyleshoes1999

 

@BabyJordan0312,

Thanks for the post.

To answer your question :

No, we are not affiliated with RockDeep in any way since we bought ISS in 2010. I don't have any first hand knowledge of what happened with him here.

Thanks for the Kudos on "Playing the Charity Game", however it is indirectly in intent that we got involved in it. When we became a sponsor here on NT in 2013, I wanted for us to make Niketalk a true partner in our business by giving a percent of all sales on our website back to Niketalk Initiatives. In discussions with what to do with the money, the best idea that was introduced was to put it towards one of the many charity's that Niketalk already had a relationship with.

Moving forward, one of the things I'd like to see the money go towards is funding the information pipeline / resources for finding out GM pairs vs retail release pairs. Niketalk is the best resource on the planet with regard to this topic, but every day we see these Grey Market Resellers popping up and taking advantage of the unaware public. We do want to help educate, I believe this is the best place to accomplish that.

As for rebranding ISS....well, I've been asked that quite often actually. In my opinion, ISS (as it was up through 2010 when it changed hands) had problems, but not impossible ones to fix. There were the obvious HUGE issues they had, but, many doors have opened for us now because of them....the biggest being us having the chance to be here now doing this. We have ZERO room with this crowd, and we are well aware of that. Which is also a part of why we are doing it.

I do believe in giving back to those that got me to where I am in life, that's me as a person. Professionally, the same principal applies. I learned a LOT about what NOT to do by seeing the original ISS reputation go up in smoke, and that always bothered me because I was (then a kid) visiting their site as frequently as this one. BOTH sites have helped me be in the position that I am very grateful to be in today. Call that corny or whatever, but it is 100% the truth.

We aren't selling that many more shoes than we normally would by doing this promotion or because of our sponsorship here per se. We are here doing this because I want us to be here, even against the wishes of almost everyone else on my team helping me run ISS. It's easy for people to say "it's all marketing" and I get that, but I thought it was a great way to acknowledge where we came from as well as where we are going as a company. I've also been called stubborn once or twice. ; )

So there you have it.....that's why I continue to choose to support the ISS branding as well as doing this Give Back 14 Campaign.

Thanks,
Tom
INSTYLESHOES Team Lead / Owner

INSTAGRAM : @instyleshoes1999