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Air Jordan 12 “Flu Game”
Air Jordan 12 “Flu Game”
Release Date: 22 March 2025
Nike SB x Air Jordan 4 Blue
Nike SB x Air Jordan 4 Blue
Release Date: 10 April 2025

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Matt Halfhill : The Story of Nice Kicks and Its Impact on Sneaker Culture 

When it comes to sneaker culture, few platforms have had as significant an impact as Nice Kicks. Founded in 2002 by Matt Halfhill, the brand has evolved from a small reselling operation into one of the most influential sneaker media platforms in the world. What began as an entrepreneurial experiment, flipping rare and hard-to-find sneakers on eBay, quickly became a full-fledged business, driven by a passion for storytelling and community-building.

Halfhill’s journey into sneaker media was sparked by a realisation that the online marketplace, not the sellers, was receiving credit for sneaker sales. This insight led him to register NiceKicks.com in 2002, laying the foundation for what would become a cornerstone of digital sneaker journalism. By 2005, he transitioned from selling to content creation, launching the Nice Kicks blog in 2006. Despite skepticism from family and peers, Halfhill’s belief in the growing sneaker audience proved correct. Through a combination of affiliate marketing, banner advertising, and strategic partnerships Nice Kicks has flourished.

What inspired you to start Nice Kicks and how has the original vision evolved over time?

When I started, you have to go back to 2002. I was buying clearance items at the store I worked at in the mall, called Athletes World, and selling them on eBay. These were items that weren’t sold in America, they were sold in Asia, Canada, and sometimes Europe. I started out buying clearance items in Canada that weren’t available in the U.S, and I was able to arbitrage them and do pretty well with it.

While I was working, there was a guy who walked into the store wearing a vintage pair of Reebok Pumps. I asked him, “Where did you get those?” and he said he got them on eBay. It was in that moment I realized: If I want to actually build a business here, I’m going to need to build my own website. Otherwise, the platform is going to get all the credit for my work selling the products.

I don’t know why a 17-year-old thought like that, but for whatever reason, a light bulb went off. Back in those days, reselling wasn’t even really a term. We were just buying and, honestly, a lot of the early internet sneaker sellers were like treasure hunters—digging diamonds out of the rough. We’d find items stuck in clearance sections or in stores that couldn’t move the inventory, and we’d make them available on the internet so the customers who were looking for those products could actually find them.

A lot of those early sellers, who were finding these odds and ends and listing them online, really deserve credit for the whole expansion of sneakers – especially online. Before that, if your local store no longer carried a shoe, it was tough to find it. You’d just think, “Well, I missed it. That’s it.”The guy credited the marketplace, not the seller, for where he got the shoes. That’s why I registered nicekicks.com back in 2002.

How did it grow from this platform idea to what it is today being a media giant that it is? 

When I started working on the blog in 2005, I began creating a lot of different content, like pages. But in April 2006 April, I officially flipped over. My first WordPress install was in December 2005, but by April 2006, I had fully transitioned. I remember at the time, my father and brother thought I was crazy. They were like, “No one’s going to go to a website to read about shoes, and I can’t believe you’re changing directions. How are you going to make money if you’re not selling directly to customers? You’re just relying on advertising? What is this, banner ads? Pay-per-click?”

At that point, I didn’t fully understand how it would work either, but I had this vision. I just knew there were going to be a lot of people who wanted to read about shoes. I felt that the addressable market for people interested in shoes was much larger than the market of people I could directly convert into sales just by having them walk into a store.

There was affiliate marketing, I actually started doing that in 2003. My first affiliate marketing partner was a hip-hop jewelry company called Iub Gear. I chose affiliate marketing because I didn’t want to deal with the logistics, overhead, and challenges of stocking products myself. So I arranged an affiliate partnership with them starting in July 2003, and that was my first month working with them.

By 2006, we had some affiliate marketing in place, but the problem back then was that there weren’t many good shoes being sold online by merchants with affiliate programs. So at the time, we primarily relied on Google AdSense, where you’d earn money through text links or ads that people clicked on. Eventually, we expanded into banner ads, and it really took off when we entered the banner and display advertising business. Things stepped up significantly when we joined the Complex Media Network, we were actually the first site in that network in 2007.

When was the point that you realised that this is it, this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life? 

I don’t know when the point of no return came for me. I mean, keep in mind, I started in 2002 when I was 17 years old. By 2007, I was still just 22, very young. I had dropped out of school to pursue this, but I always kept in the back of my mind that I could go back to school if I needed to. So at that time, I definitely didn’t feel like, “Oh, there’s no turning back, I’m doing this for the rest of my life.”

I wasn’t thinking about becoming a multimedia giant, either. Honestly, I didn’t even think of us as “media” back then. We were just a website that focused on itself. This was so early on that now, looking back, a blog feels as archaic as a print magazine. But at the time, brands didn’t even see us as media. I couldn’t get a single email returned by any brand for years.

It wasn’t until we joined the Complex Media Network that things started to shift. I’d name-drop Complex, and brands would say, “Oh, the magazine? Okay, you must be legitimate.” And I’d be sitting there like, What about my 3 million visitors a month? That’s not legitimate? I had to name-drop a print publication just to get taken seriously. That’s why I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the term “media”, because for the longest time, we weren’t even considered part of it.

What were the values and principles that have being essentially shaping nice kick is direction?

Yeah, I think one of the mistakes we made as a publication was holding onto the idea that our content had to be longer than necessary for too long. It was like we were trying to cling to this medium being important in a certain way. But the reality is, there are only so many stories you can tell about certain products, and you can only go so deep before you’re just filling space.

For example, we’d write about a shoe, say, an Air Max 90 or a Superstar, in a White Navy colourway. The story is the story. We’ve heard it a million times: it’s just a White Navy inline shoe. We don’t need to write three paragraphs about it, and frankly, the consumer doesn’t want to read that. A lot of that kind of content is better served on social media anyway.

What that shift does, though, is free us up as a publication to focus on more meaningful stories—ones with more depth and substance. So while we’ve dialed back on posts about individual products, we’ve been able to create some pieces that are much more significant, like long-form articles that are 6,000 words.

One of the other principles we’ve always held onto is being open to new ideas and new brands. From the very beginning, Nice Kicks wasn’t just a Nike and Jordan blog. Back then, most message boards and forums were almost entirely focused on Nike and Jordan, but I wanted to ensure there was representation for all kinds of brands and styles, especially new and emerging ones.

How do you decide which brands and collaborators you wanted to feature on the website?

Yeah, there wasn’t really an exact science or strict rubric we followed. It was more about curation and tastemaking within our team. The process was something like, “Do we like this? Could we vibe with this? Could we see ourselves wearing this?” And if none of us personally connected with it, we’d ask, “Could we see someone else being interested in it?” Sometimes, a product would come in, and no one on the team was super excited about it. In those cases, we’d just say, “Let’s throw it to the wolves.” We’d let the readers decide whether they liked it or not. There were a lot of times we’d test things out just to see if the market might go for it.

Looking back, I’m really glad we were never afraid to try new things. That openness to experimentation made all the difference.It’s about more than just Nike as a brand. One of the things we really wanted to push was showcasing styles that might not traditionally be seen as “sneakerhead” shoes. And I’m using air quotes here because, honestly, I don’t even like that term anymore.We tried to highlight good shoes, period—or at least make sure good shoes made it into the feed. For example, something like the Nike Free Run or the Nike Free Run 2. That was a big one for us. On the surface, you might look at it and think, “That’s not a boutique shoe or a sneakerhead shoe.” But it was a great shoe, and we believed in getting it out there in front of people.

Our approach was simple: don’t be the reason people don’t discover something. If you see something good, something you believe the audience might like or that deserves attention, even if it’s not trending or considered “cool,” don’t wait for the market to validate it. Just put it out there.

Nice kicks has a dedicated community of sneaker enthusiasts, how have you managed to keep and maintain that audience over time? 

One of the key principles of our company, going back to the foundation, is being accurate and consistent, especially when it comes to history. I can’t tell you how many times I begged forgiveness from my writers for how nitpicky I was about phrasing and wording. But to me, it was critical. For example, whether we called a shoe the Jordan 11 “Bred” or the Jordan 11 “Playoff” might seem like a small detail, but being consistent in how we presented things was essential.

Part of the reason we were able to maintain credibility over the years is because you couldn’t just open Nice Kicks one day and find a bunch of inaccurate articles. We were extremely diligent about getting things right. Does that mean we got everything perfect? Of course not—we made mistakes like anyone else. But one thing we’ve always been humble enough to do is correct those mistakes immediately. I think that dedication to honesty and accuracy from the very beginning is why we’ve earned the trust of our audience. It’s something we’ve taken very seriously, and I’m proud of that.

What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in sneaker culture since founding Nice kicks?

The over-glorification of reselling, this idea that secondary market sales determine how good a shoe is, has always bothered me. And no, it wasn’t brought on by COVID or stimulus checks. This nonsense started long before that. It goes back to the mid-2000s. By 2013 or 2014, you started seeing articles that tied resale prices to the perceived quality of a shoe. Then by 2015 or 2016, when platforms like StockX and GOAT launched, the whole reselling apparatus became formalised. Sure, COVID may have put it into overdrive, but this had been happening for years.

I specifically remember the first article that really got under my skin. It was a news piece on a mainstream American outlet, and the opening line said something like, “This is a sneakerhead.” They showed a young guy and went on to describe how “sneakerheads go to conventions and buy and sell shoes like people traded baseball cards in the ’80s and ’90s.” And I thought, hell the fuck no – that is not a sneakerhead!

It felt like a turning point. I’m not blaming that journalist entirely, but that piece tied the term “sneakerhead” directly to reselling, and from then on, it stuck. Other journalists writing about sneaker culture would look up the term, find that article, and assume that being a sneakerhead was synonymous with buying and selling shoes. That conflation has been an ongoing issue ever since.

Do you think the essence of collecting is different now to how it was when you started? 

Between 2013 and 2014, several significant shifts influenced not just sneaker culture but broader consumer behavior and media practices. One of the pivotal changes was Facebook’s shift away from a chronological timeline to an algorithm-driven feed. This transition prioritized content that generated high engagement, amplifying popular or sensationalized narratives and changing how people discovered products and interacted with trends. The effects rippled across industries, including sneakers, as certain products or stories gained disproportionate attention, reinforcing their popularity further.

Simultaneously, programmatic advertising reshaped the financial model for digital media. Previously, websites relied on ad sales teams to secure premium ads that generated substantial revenue, allowing them to pay for quality journalism. However, with programmatic advertising, ad placements became automated, enabling advertisers to target consumers directly across various sites at a much lower cost. This shift reduced the revenue per ad, forcing publications to cut budgets for quality reporting and incentivizing the production of clickbait or low-effort content to drive page views.

These dual trends, algorithmic amplification on social media and the declining quality of online ads, created a feedback loop. Popular narratives became louder, and the financial pressures on media outlets led to a decline in thoughtful, on-the-ground journalism. For the sneaker industry, this meant that the true essence of sneaker culture often got misrepresented. Journalists, lacking resources or time, would rely on surface-level research rather than immersing themselves in the community. This led to reductive portrayals of sneaker enthusiasts, conflating them with resellers or oversimplifying their passion for the culture.

The impact of these changes was profound. The rise of social media algorithms and programmatic advertising didn’t just influence how people consumed content, it also reshaped perceptions of subcultures like sneaker enthusiasts. The emphasis on clicks and engagement contributed to the over-glorification of resale culture, equating the value of a shoe with its resale price rather than its cultural significance or design. This dynamic created a perfect storm, shaping the sneaker scene in ways that continue to influence the divide between “OG” collectors and newer entrants. It highlights how external technological and economic factors can redefine entire subcultures, often in ways that diverge from their original ethos.

Are there any emerging trends in the sneaker design or technology space that particularly excite you at the moment? 

The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed significant shifts in the footwear industry, especially in the rise of comfort-casual footwear as a dominant category. Brands like Crocs and designs like the Yeezy Foam Runner and Yeezy Slides, which were once unimaginable as fashionable items, gained mainstream and cultural acceptance. Kanye West’s success in making foam-based slides and runners fashionable opened the door for other brands to explore similar design approaches, legitimising this as a viable and desirable segment of footwear.

This trend thrived for several reasons. First, comfort-casual footwear relies on relatively simple manufacturing processes, like EVA injection molding, which eliminates the need for advanced shoe construction techniques (e.g., creating lasts or using complex material assemblies). This simplicity allows for lower production costs, whole-size-only molds, and fewer barriers for new entrants to the market. This democratised the space, making it accessible not just to established brands but also to startups and independent designers.

Second, the pandemic itself played a key role. Lockdowns gave many designers, entrepreneurs, and creative individuals the time to research and learn how to manufacture products. With more time at home, people explored sourcing options, production methods, and partnerships with manufacturers, often in places like China. This newfound knowledge, coupled with the low-cost production potential of EVA-based footwear, allowed young and emerging designers to bring their visions to life without requiring the resources of a massive, established footwear company.

These factors have created a space where the barriers to entry for footwear design are lower than ever. Young creatives with fresh ideas now have the tools and pathways to produce and distribute their own footwear lines. This shift has diminished the dominance of legacy brands in this segment, as consumers are increasingly open to experimenting with unique and independent designs.

In a way, the emergence of comfort-casual footwear reflects broader cultural and industry trends. The focus has shifted from high-tech performance footwear to simple, functional, and stylish designs that cater to modern lifestyles. Furthermore, the rise of direct-to-consumer models and e-commerce has empowered independent brands to bypass traditional retail gatekeepers, leveling the playing field.

The result is a flourishing of creativity and innovation in footwear, where comfort and casual aesthetics are no longer at odds with fashion. This category has become a platform for new voices in design, and its accessibility ensures it will remain a significant and growing part of the footwear landscape for years to come.

Nice kicks has collaborated with many brands of the years. Are there any particular partnerships which you are particularly proud of? 

I mean, my project with Ronnie on the Asics Gel-Lyte 3 was a very important one. It was the first time, from the time that I had started working in this space and saw collaborations being done, that I actually had the opportunity to work on and make a shoe. So that one’s always going to mean a lot to me. The 1500 is one that I did with New Balance. That was a special one for a five-year anniversary because, again, the product and the design of it. The reason I chose the 1500 is that it reminded me of the W124 Mercedes, which was my first car, a car I really loved the body style of it. And I think the 1600 as well, because that one represented where I lived in the Caribbean. Every panel had a meaning behind it. But, I mean, I could give you those kinds of soundbites about every shoe I did. I have a hard time picking what my favourite one is, to be honest.

Do you have any plans to diversify the way Nice Kicks operates?

Yeah, so one area that you might not have noticed yet is what we’re doing in the running and fitness space. Personally, I’ve gotten into running, fitness, and hybrid training, and it’s been fascinating to see how this area is evolving. Running has always had its own unique culture, a dedicated community with a long history, but recently, it has exploded in terms of interest and engagement, particularly among younger demographics.

It’s incredible to see how much more integrated it has become with youth culture compared to the past. For a long time, running was viewed as an activity that skewed toward an older audience, one primarily focused on endurance and health for its own sake, rather than as a lifestyle or cultural movement. But now, it feels like running and fitness have begun tapping into a more dynamic space that seamlessly blends performance, lifestyle, and fashion and we are here to push it forward!

Also we must prepare for life beyond Instagram, nothing on these platforms is truly ours. Everything is borrowed, leased, and subject to change. We lack direct, one-to-one connections with our audience, making it crucial to build out our social presence while diversifying our strategy. We’re in control, not just of growth but also of navigating disruption. As a business, our focus is on creating and owning our own ecosystem, one that isn’t dependent on others.

What legacy do you hope to leave in the sneaker culture?

Its too early to discuss legacy… it sounds like we are done!

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