Here you can find the Outpump exclusive interview to Yeezy Mafia leaders, @7yl3rk and @future. Many informations you’ll read here aren’t available ANYWERE.
1. How did you start?
I Always have been attracted by the fact that trying to buy limited items was very hard. More, given that today sneakers prices are increasing and knowing that buying limited editions gives us a chance to make money in addition to integrate our collections, this fact made sure that we ventured into the world of reselling and collecting.
2. What is Yeezy Mafia?
At first Yeezy Mafia was a Group created mostly to help customers buy these limited sneakers, then it enlarged trying to get limited edition clothings, involving brands like Supreme and all collections presenting both reselling and limited value. In the beginning we were just Whatsapp users, few persons, then the group grew and we decided to work as private Twitter users, looking for people who could help us, developers in touch with retailers who could give us info. We succeeded, and we enrolled more and more capable persons, so we decided to insert “payment memberships”, because we were able, thanks to a great marketing and hype work, to create applications to enter the group. Given the large number of people asking for membership we decided to give them a chance for a payment enter, using some sort of filter too. The expansion continued until we decided to use our retailers to give customers exclusive information and, at the same time, increase advertising and group exposure, leading it to merchandising as well. In addition, we want to increase contacts with main brands, not just retailers, but directly with Adidas and Nike, why not.
3. Who’s behind Yeezy Mafia?
Sneakerheads, resellers, collectors, hypebeasts, because we all, group managers or not, want to be sure that the group can manage itself, talking about cop. In the group everybody works at the same level, there’s no leader, and even paying members have to contribute or leave. There are a lot of people behind info topic, retailers, contacts in HQ, friends of friends and rumors, contacts in Asia and America. But we have to preserve anonymity of our sources by publishing only information that don’t come from a unique source, in order to avoid issues.
4. Will the applications be reopened? When?
They will, but we won’t tell when, because we don’t really need to make money out of memberships, also because most part of members don’t pay. Usually helpful people fill the application forms and since we want to keep the users’ number constant we hardly ever open to paying users. I just can say that registrations will be soon open but not when, and that they will be no more than one or two.
5. You just published (13/9/2016) release for the next Yeezy. Can you tell us more? What do you think?
We expect three Black with stripes in different colors Yeezy, same day in November. We can’t tell the day in advance, since we receive calls and messages telling us to stop every time we do it. So that’s all, at least on Adidas schedule. Everything’s going to be confirmed, but that’s it for the moment. In Spring 2017 they’ll introduce the White ones.
6. What do you think of the reselling game and how is it changing on Yeezy?
Let’s say resell is quite steady, even if, with the Adidas market expanding on American Football and Basketball Presto and the new clothing etc… to me it’s going to lower. It’s going to remain a base market if the marketing work stays excellent as long as Adidas is leading it and we Yeezy Mafia and YeezyTalkWW are supporting. In my opinion, it will get down to become steady to a certain level, without disappearing, of course.
7. Can you tell us more?
We have info on some patterns that will be produced in higher numbers. I suppose the moment has come for Adidas to make money on it. Black-White striped Yeezy (BY1604) will be about 270.000, more than any other sneaker, more than NMD. Of course it’s all relative, since Diadora, for example, has patterns for only 200 pairs, but the demand is absolutely lower.