We all know that there are some very expensive new sneakers in the stores today that look like they have been used and abused for years and have price tickets north of $500 a pair. These are very stylish brands that have really taken the market by storm. Most sneakers, on the other hand in the stores, look brand new, smell brand new and their colors shine brightly. What if you happened to be shopping for sneakers and picked up a white pair to try on. Upon lacing them up, you see that the laces have dirt and oil stains on them. You look in the store mirror and you see that these new sneakers don’t look so new anymore.
This was the case for a large sneaker brand this spring. After performing an audit in their distribution center, they found a large shipment of sneakers with laces that had oil and dirt on them. They knew that they couldn’t ship these to retail stores or to their online customers and knew that these were for a new launch, so time to market was extremely urgent. The possibility of shipping these back overseas to get them fixed was out of the question. This process would take too long and be too expensive.
The good news was that they had a partnership with Darn It’s inspection and repair teams. They immediately called us, and we could sense the pressure that they were under to get this problem fixed.
What are the options for this repair? Of course, you could take all the laces off the sneakers and wash / dry them and hope to get them clean. Chances are they would not all clean properly and many would be off white now and not match the sneaker. So, the best option turned out to be having 9,000 pairs of laces remade overseas and shipped directly to Darn It to swap out.
It’s not the most fun trying to relace a pair of sneakers but Darn It’s shoe repair team was able to engineer the process efficiently in order to remove the dirty laces and replace them with the new laces. In 5 days, the team was able to complete this task including repackaging all the sneakers back into their original tissue and boxes. The shipment was manifested and sent directly back to the brand’s distribution center.
The Darn It Inspection and Repair teams will never tie their own shoes again without thinking about this project.
“You’re Problem Is Our Business”
