Source: Soul Brother / Courtesy of Foot Locker
Foot Locker puts in the work to support Black designers with its LEED (Leading Education and Economic Development) program, throughout the year. For Black History Month 2023 the retailer focused on showcasing talented streetwear designers.
LEED started in 2020 is part of Foot Locker’s $200 million commitment to supporting the Black community. This is done via investments in educational and economic development and is also FL’s way of acknowledging that Black culture is instrumental to sneaker culture.
This is also where UNDENIABLE, which is a four-part content series comes in. The series features five rising designers who are part of the LEED program sharing discourse on their comes up and careers, and is hosted by sports analyst and media personality Taylor Rooks. The star designers are J. Grant (JJ Grant), Drew Sanders (AWARE Brand), Shakir Goodrich (Campus Remixx), Terrance Hosley (The SDN Brand) and Darryl Brown (The Midwest Kids), and they all ably shared the rigors of creating and fostering their own, successful brands.
CassiusLife got to speak to Drew Sanders about his involvement with LEED during the taping in January. “It’s benefited us in so many different ways,” says Sanders, who connected with LEED in 2020 after a Foot Locker buyer saw his Aware Brand at a pop-up in Detroit. “From exposure, not only national, but global exposure. People from all over the world can own our stuff.”
Source: Soul Brother / Courtesy of Foot Locker
He adds, “From the education standpoint of running a top-tier business—we’re in the conversation with Nike and Puma. Now we gotta take our business to that level. We’re not competing against them but we’re in the same room as them, right? We gotta step our business up—terminology, know-how and understanding your numbers. Those are the kind of things that we learned and we benefitted from LEED because they took in [The Aware Brand] and we’re in flagship stores now.”
Sanders credits LEED with following through and providing education to burgeoning brands like his to reach the next level. Watch part 1 of UNDENIABLE Conversations: LEEDING The Way below.
