SHANGHAI, CHINA – The latest edition of Sneakercon in Guangzhou saw China’s sneaker fans and hype beasts flock to the city to celebrate sneaker culture and street wear design. With hundreds of brands clamouring for their attention, premium sneaker and streetwear marketplace Stadium Goods wanted a design for their booth that would cut through and speak directly to the sneakerhead attendees.
GPB Shanghai explored how to combine the worlds of hip hop and sneaker culture using the designs of Shanghai based urban vinyl toy maker, Naughty Brain. Together they developed “The Sneakerhead”, a figurine featuring the body of a street smart punk, his head replaced with a platform for displaying sneakers. With a different sneaker for each head, the dolls take on their own individual personality.
The booth was adorned with an army of these dolls creating a show stopping, shareable experience that had attendees swarming to the booth throughout the festival.
Lucky attendees got to take a figure home and, as sneakerheads do, some put them up for sale. The branded dolls were soon being snapped up for inflated sums with some resellers so taken by the design, they were unsure how to price the dolls.
Alvin Lim, Creative Chairman at GPB said “The design was right on brand and the experience we built around the booth was perfect for the Sneakercon environment. The client put a great deal of trust in our collective judgement on this, and this approach really paid off as we ended up creating a huge amount of buzz that was literally priceless for Stadium Goods.”
“China is one of our most vibrant markets in terms of sneaker culture and we hoped to generate a more creative brand experience for the younger generation” said Stadium Goods’ Doris Liu. “Our booth design at this year’s show was extremely popular and actively sought out by many sneakerheads. The success here has given us greater confidence to further develop our presence in the Chinese market.”
