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Description: In this episode, we decide to go in full detail on the flaws found on the Air Jordan 11 Concord Early Release. The pairs we purchased were from Air Randy HK's website.
Just to let you know upfront, we purchased the shoes early in order to prepare a future sneaker project that we're working on. And no, I won't tell you what that project is at the moment.
The Concord 11 Early Release has been fraught with issues on its quality and legitimacy since orders finally reached sneakerheads. The biggest player in the spotlight has been, for the most part, Air Randy. You might ask, why choose Air Randy to buy shoes from? Well, he offered the best deal, with great shipping. Plus, his previous sale on the Black Cement 3 had very little issues. Most of those customers were pleased. With that kind of track record, and the fact that we needed an early pair, made him the perfect choice.
My first impressions of the shoes are that they looked good. From far away, the shoes were indistinguishable of any flaw. However, as you begin to inspect closer, you soon realize the problems.
Now I'm no stickler for detail, but when someone tells you your shoes are legit and not B grades, you expect them to not be those things. On the contrary, the 11.5 pair I got from Air Randy was just that. Terrible B Grades. Am I judging too hard, probably. But it's what you sold the masses on is what irritates me.
The issues:
1. Glue stains on the shoes, in particular, areas near the toecap. There was a sloppy job done on this part.
2. Dirt stains on the mesh.
3. Lack of consistency, no date code on the 10.5, and the 999999 on the size tag.
4. On the 11.5 my Air Jordan on the sole was touching an oval. This wasn't the case on the other shoe however.
5. The Jumpman Jordan tag doesn't have a properly stitched R, instead it has Q.
6. The carbon fiber isn't even finished properly. It looks rough. Plus, the carbon fiber
doesn't sit well on the shoe for some reason. It's almost as if it was the wrong size for my shoe.
7. 72 hour shipping turned into a 3-4 week arrival date. DELAYS!
There's this big issue for sneakerheads with regards to whether a sneaker is real or fake. For those of you that have been in the sneaker game for a while, you can definitely spot a fake when you see one. However, these Air Jordans are quite the anomaly. You can't really tell.
Speculation has it, that many of these shoes, although not authorized by Nike production, are made with genuine materials. That leads to the question, if a shoe is manufactured with the same genuine materials, but was not sanctioned by that company, would that make those shoes fake? With all things consistent, manufacturing processes and etc., are the shoes fake?
Would doing a sole swap, midsole swap, and back tab Nike Air replacement mean your shoes are fake? You're obviously altering the shoe with some other type of material from a genuine shoe. However, it was not sanctioned by Nike. Does that make your shoe fake? Does it make the Concord 2011 fake? Does it mean repainting your shoe's are fake?
What I can say is this? Because the quality of Jordan brand has spiraled down the past decade, you begin to reach a point where factories in China are able to duplicate and emulate the production and quality of legitimate releases. China is known for its knock-off productions. But if the material gets cheap enough and the manufacturing process is simplified, those Chinese knock-offs won't look so different than the actual releases.
