Giulia Zecchini on building a community with Sneaker Sisterhood
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Anchor / RSS
Giulia Zecchini is the Co-founder of Sneaker Sisterhood, a platform for women to create, discuss, and positively impact the sneaker culture. Sneaker Sisterhood has grown their community to over 14,000 people and worked with brands like Jumpman, Nike, and Adidas since it was created in 2019. Giulia is a commercial strategy leader and has worked at leading brands in sports and gaming like Formula 1 and FACEIT. Brian and Giulia chat about how to build an authentic community, how technology platforms like Discord and Instagram can help a community grow, and the best ways brands can work with communities.
Follow Sneaker Sisterhood on Instagram.
Follow Giulia Zecchini on Instagram.
Full Transcript:
Brian Bosche: (00:13)
Hey, and welcome to the creativeBTS podcast. This is Brian Bosche your host. And today we have a very special guest Giulia Zecchini, a commercial strategy leader in sports and gaming and co-founder of the sneaker sisterhood. Julia, thanks for joining. So excited to have everyone.
Giulia Zecchini: (00:29)
Thanks for having me. Good morning.
Brian Bosche: (00:31)
Good morning. And we met as I do with a lot of people in London over Instagram, through the pandemic, I think are like right when we moved here and then we've actually met each other a few times in person now at different basketball events. So it's been great to actually meet you before having a podcast with you. And you're a Hooper too. You're not just on the fashion side of things. You can also play,
Giulia Zecchini: (00:50)
Um, yeah, sort of, uh, buddy's tried to keep up, but yeah, still try and get down on the court when I can.
Brian Bosche: (00:57)
Yeah, we're, we're both kind of veterans now where we both play in the basketball tournament this weekend and you start to get into like five or six, even three on three games and it starts to, uh, take a toll for sure.
Giulia Zecchini: (01:08)
definitely.
Brian Bosche: (01:10)
Uh, so let's get into your background a little bit. Uh, so you, a commercial strategy leader, you've worked at a lot of different sports and gaming companies. Uh, can you just give a little bit more about your professional background and kind of what led you up to starting sneaker sisterhood?
Giulia Zecchini: (01:23)
Yeah, so there's some sort of relation to it all, but I guess my background, as you said, primarily in traditional sports. So, um, I've worked in basketball, football formula, one boys, commercial strategy, focusing on partnerships. I've recently made the move to gaming because of the pandemic and seeing how everything developed. I was just quite interested in taking a, a leap into that world, which is growing exponentially, um, with sneakers sisterhood. My, my love for sneakers started from my love of sports mm-hmm . So, uh, as you said, big basketball head started playing when I was 12 years old and I used to, I didn't know I was collecting, but I had about a million pairs of, and one Thai cheese. I don't know if you remember those like really old school shoes. Yeah, it was pretty much all I could get back home in Italy and my size to, to hoop in when I was a kid and I was obsessed.
Giulia Zecchini: (02:19)
I had so many colorways and that kind of started off my obsession growing up in Italy, became quite big in the air max world. Um, and then kind of snowballed into the Jordan world again, through, through the love of sneakers, um, Reebok with Ellen Iverson. I just started building out this collection and then my love of sports and sneakers connected, made me want to do something further when I sort of settled in London and saw the community that was existing in London. Mm-hmm with some friends, we really decided that we wanted to take that community to the next level. And because of my background in commercial partnerships and sponsorships and working with brands, I also saw the potential to let's say also commercialize that opportunity other than like, just building a community. So yeah, it was all sort of interlinked.
Brian Bosche: (03:14)
Yeah. And so, well, first of all, when I talked to younger people, like on my basketball team that are in their early twenties about the 2000 shoes, like I was like, oh, member, those TMAC twos that like the TMAC twos were all the rage. They have no idea what I'm talking about. And it's really depressing. You just hit that, the two thousands babies you're like, oh wow, you have no idea what those shoes even were back then.
Giulia Zecchini: (03:35)
I know. And they've missed out on what I think was probably the best period for a sneaker, especially like hoop sneakers, but
Brian Bosche: (03:44)
That's all right. They learn. Uh, so when did you exactly start sneak? I always wanna say sister sneaker hood too, by the way. I'm glad I'll mix it up. I'm sure at some point in this podcast, but when did you actually start the community?
Giulia Zecchini: (03:56)
So the official community started in 20, oh my God. 20 18, 20, 20, 19, 20, 19, 20 19. Yes. So practically it started, it all started through, have you heard of offspring? The retailer? Yeah. Um, so offspring used to do these big pickup days on a Saturday called super Saturday and all the community would go and pick up their wins. And it was a great opportunity to mingle and chat most of these days. And a lot of the visible sneaker community is male mm-hmm . So whenever you did see any other female, it was a bit of like a,
Brian Bosche: (04:35)
Ooh, my God.
Giulia Zecchini: (04:37)
there's another one. There's more than just me. Yeah. Even, even though so many women are into sneakers, I think we are just maybe less in the public eye, less willing to potentially go to some of these events. So we started noticing like a little group of us sort of formed, and we would always meet up for these Saturday events mm-hmm and we just had WhatsApp groups, Instagram groups, and then, um, the air Jordan won blue chills released. I wish I had been here to show you, but they're in the other room mm-hmm um, which was a women's only release. And so Austin did a big pickup day for women. And like hundreds of us came down for this pickup at their selfs store. And off the back of that, we all looked at each other and were like, what, what are we doing here?
Giulia Zecchini: (05:21)
Like, this is such a great opportunity to actually create a safe space for us and a way to inspire and be creative together and just collaborate, uh, especially cuz a lot of us have Instagram pages that we were trying to push and content that we wanted to put out. So we really wanted to create a, a group that could help each other out. And so four of us decided to do something then a bit more substantial with it. And luckily we all have quite different backgrounds. So as I said, I'm in commercial strategy. My co-founder Jay, uh, is in TV and video. Uh, Jules is our resident photographer and Chelsea is a stylist. So wow.
Brian Bosche: (06:00)
With these perfect yeah. Perfect fit.
Giulia Zecchini: (06:02)
Yeah. So with these four backgrounds, it kind of became the, the perfect group to actually create this community that could leverage on a number of different things and actually produce content and work with brands and help women on a number of different things. And so yeah, we started in 2019 just as an Instagram page, generally not setting any expectations. We were just like, we just want to showcase women. Mm-hmm we want to just create a page where we can post them and show how diverse we are and that you don't have to fit the mold that maybe the brands you're currently working with of the skinny blonde, white, athletic girl that is into sneakers. You know, you, you can be from any ethnic background, you can be any size, but you can partake in sneaker community and you deserve to be seen. Um, and then it's snowballed, and so it was clearly really needed and something that women were just craving because they weren't getting the space that they deserved from brands and from more mainstream pages like your complexes and your biases and stuff, unfortunately were still really tapping into the hot girl and sneaker yeah.
Giulia Zecchini: (07:13)
Vibe. Um, and, and so yeah, then, then it all kind of went from there. And it, we started a Facebook page where, um, was more of a discussion element to it. And we could talk more obviously with the pandemic we joined the clubhouse bandwagon. So
Brian Bosche: (07:28)
We were doing yes, nice
Giulia Zecchini: (07:29)
Talks on it's nice focus on clubhouse, which really helped us grow, especially out in the us. Like we have a big us
Brian Bosche: (07:35)
Audience, it's a global page. So it's kind of a, it's all around the world. It's not just, you know, UK.
Giulia Zecchini: (07:39)
Yeah. Yeah. So I'd say our main markets are UK and us are our two strong ones, but then we have big following from other European countries, France, Italy. Um, we actually have a lot of followers out in Asia, in the Philippines and Thailand as well. They're quite big to sneakers, so it's definitely global. Um, we always always get asked like, please, can you do like a tour of meetups please? Can you come to Chicago, Detroit LA? And we're like
Brian Bosche: (08:06)
Someone fund us, who's the brand. Yeah. Who's the brand partnership that will sponsor that.
Giulia Zecchini: (08:11)
Exactly. Like we're self-funded. So obviously everything that happens is primarily in London mm-hmm , but it's been really exciting to see grow. And whenever we do any initiative with a brand, so for example, we've done, uh, a couple of things with Nike, for example, for international women's day, the past couple of years, we involve our community from sorry, uh, from outside of just London in the UK as well because of the wonderful digital world, we were able to do that. So it's been a really exciting growth. We now have a discord channel where we do a lot more of discussion and debates. Uh, and then of course we do our in person meetups, which give the women an opportunity to get to know each other. Um, especially sometimes when you're new to our community and you see people that are always there, it might be a little scary to try and go and meet new people. So we try and make it as welcoming as possible. The co-founders were always willing to meet with people beforehand before they meet the big group
Brian Bosche: (09:09)
Big group.
Giulia Zecchini: (09:11)
Um, because we are allowed, are a loud, a loud group of people, uh, that now know each other quite well. So we always try and make it as easy as possible for new members to come in.
Brian Bosche: (09:22)
Yeah. So you started at a line in suffragist now, a global, global community. You have, I think over 14,000 followers on, on Instagram growing channels. That, it's a really interesting thing of like, what is a community? Where do you grow a community? You pick you've picked one channel, which was popular at the time. Love to hear that you've gone onto discord and building it more there. So it's kind of, it doesn't even matter what the tech platform is. The community kind of exists apart from all of those things, which brings the question, what is a community in your eyes? How do you define if you are, or aren't a part of, or maybe that's not even the right way to frame it, but what, how do you define what a community actually is in the sneaker sisterhood?
Giulia Zecchini: (10:00)
Um, yeah, that's, that's tricky, I guess for us it's slightly easier. Cause I think we are a sub community of a community that is already preexisting. So the sneaker community, which is obviously around people that love and enjoy the aspect of sneakers, whether it's for collection, whether it's for flexing, whatever your reason is to be into sneakers. But we obviously all have a love of sneakers for whatever reason. And then we are just a sub community of that that is obviously primarily centered around our gender. But I wouldn't even say that that is the main reason. I would say that the reason why we've become quite a tightknit community and the people that I see join our community, align more in the reasons as to why they are into sneakers. And that tends to be more of the, sorry, I need a drink.
Brian Bosche: (10:53)
No, it's okay. Going no worries.
Giulia Zecchini: (10:58)
We're more on the love of actual collection and storytelling. So our community has formed around those pillars that are more, um, and I, I don't wanna be, uh, a gatekeeper in how I say it, but pillars that I think are a little bit more deeply rooted in the true love of sneakers rather than in the sort of passing fashion that might currently be the case in that world. Yeah. And so I think that as a community, it just has slightly deeper roots and might be a little bit longer lasting because of the type of member that we have, um, attracted to
Brian Bosche: (11:37)
It. Well, it seems like with all of the co-founders backgrounds, the storytelling behind the design process, behind the releases, why they were designed a certain way, the colorways, like that's all an important part of your experiences with it, you on the brand partnership side. So if there's collabs with certain sneakers, that's really fascinating how that comes together. So that, that makes a lot of sense that it's, and it it's you're right. It is like a sub community sub communities within communities where it's like, all right, I like sneakers, what part of sneakers do I like? And you can kind of find yourself within that.
Giulia Zecchini: (12:05)
Yeah, exactly.
Brian Bosche: (12:07)
Yeah. And the use of different platforms is really interesting to me. Do you find that you use, you mentioned Facebook's for conversations. Instagram is for kind of the storytelling around it. Have you found that there are different kind of ways you use different channels for the community? Yes. What are their roles? What are like the best roles for those different platforms?
Giulia Zecchini: (12:26)
Yeah. So that's sort of like what we've been experimenting with and what we've been trying is because we realized that, um, we were always trying to start conversation on Instagram. So obviously you have your beautiful visual post you're showcasing what you need to showcase. And then in the, in the caption, you're trying to start a bit of conversation, but it was always falling a bit flat, like people at the end of the day, leave a comment, which is unless it's something really controversial and something that people really have opinions on. If it's just something a little bit more light around sneakers people aren't gonna engage in. Yeah. Hardcore conversation on an Instagram post over something as trivial as a pair of sneakers in a color way or whatever. Um, so we've been testing different grounds to see where we could go. Um, obviously clubhouse was really good for that voice interaction when we couldn't be meeting in person. And we saw a lot of people willing to participate. You know, we had rooms with like a hundred people coming in Chi in and testing sneakers, which was, was great for us to see that has fizzled out mainly we're trying to be outside
Brian Bosche: (13:30)
. Yeah, exactly.
Giulia Zecchini: (13:32)
We, we don't wanna be on our phones anymore as much. Uh, and so we've tried to replicate that voice model on other channels. Facebook was the first place where we went, um, it worked for a certain amount of time, but we thought it was just limiting in terms of functionality of the app. So mm-hmm, , we've moved away from that as well. And discord is now our primary discussion channel. Mm-hmm, , it's great because there's so many different things, you know, because you can give those hashtags and different channels to talk in. We have everything from just, uh, we have something called like local tribe where women can just say, where are they from? Is there anyone that lives close to them so they can meet up in person because obviously we're global, but we as co-founders are not there, we have one to buy and one to sell pages, we have general discussion and debates.
Giulia Zecchini: (14:20)
We have, um, like all sorts. So that's really helped us grow more of that community that is interested in the deeper talk rather than just the visual side of things. But Instagram obviously is still great for us because we have, I cannot tell you like thousands and thousands of women that tag us every day with all of our hashtags to be showcased, to tell their story. So we've started now new content strand to spotlight women and what they do or women in business or whatever else. So, yeah, we're, we're still trial and testing. We were looking at our stats the other day on Instagram. And uh, so we're like 75% female in terms of our audience. And the ages are 24 to 34. I think mm-hmm or 25 to 34 is the age bracket that we're most popular in. And obviously we're all in our thirties. So that makes sense. Cause we probably cater of people like us. Yeah. Now we're trying to think, oh, how do we get more to the gen Z side of things? And we're all discussing TikTok like, oh, should we push more on our TikTok? Cause we don't do anything on it.
Brian Bosche: (15:18)
Mm-hmm
Giulia Zecchini: (15:20)
But obviously, because this is our side hustle side business, I think TikTok a lot of the time takes a little bit more thought and development cause it's a video platform and you actually need to be doing something there, but we haven't quite figured out what could work with us on TikTok because we're just not too keen and just doing your viral sneaker content. We want to do something with a little bit more substance. So,
Brian Bosche: (15:43)
And it's, it's all big time investment
Giulia Zecchini: (15:45)
Getting,
Brian Bosche: (15:46)
I mean, it's just the content demands for TikTok are crazy.
Giulia Zecchini: (15:49)
Exactly. So, um, what we're, we're trying to do now as part of our community initiative is we tap into our community to actually support us on our platforms. Mm-hmm um, obviously it, it is unpaid labor. We do it for the love of sneakers. But for example, we have women that do certain content strands on our Instagram. Um, this girl called Monica, she does her sneaker Roundup every month and says, what releases are coming. We have NA idea that does like a plus size fashion Roundup mm-hmm . And so now I think we're gonna start tapping into our community to see if anybody, for example, wants to manage our discord, get some more conversation going on there. Potentially find someone that's quite keen to, to develop TikTok if they're looking to, to go into that strand of work so they can showcase it on sneaker sisterhood with a bigger following. So I think that's part of community as well. We're trying to actually utilize it and work with our community cause we have so many amazing creatives in it.
Brian Bosche: (16:43)
Yeah. So I it's it's interesting like the Instagram, the Facebook that's, the TikTok would, would be almost attracting people. It's kinda like the brand awareness for the community. And then to take it to the next level in, if you really wanna start to have those one-on-one interactions, it has to go to a discord cuz you're right. The Instagram comments are too hard. It's too hard to manage conversations to grow a community in Instagram comments alone. Uh, but for discord, I that's like the third podcast in row where someone said, we're building our communities on discord and you're also in gaming. So I I'm sure you see it all the time with your brand partnerships and with the different teams, uh, apart from kind of the, the hashtags, which slack has, has made really popular as well of having those different channels to talk in what makes discord so powerful for building these communities.
Giulia Zecchini: (17:29)
To be honest, I'm still like making my way through discord and really seeing how you can fully utilize the full power of it. But I think it's just obviously easily accessible. Um, I mean it is similar to slack. I think slack is just because it's taken on more of that business edge. Totally.
Brian Bosche: (17:51)
Yeah.
Giulia Zecchini: (17:52)
I think that's where disc board has also been able to succeed in a way that is more well further away from business. And it's more of that informal connection, but the fact that we can have voice channels, um, we can create like different groups for different people to interact. The way that admins can manage it is like very straightforward on discord and like really makes it easier for us to manage a community. Um, and I don't think slack has all of that functionality for example, but you know, we have all these different, um, levels of admin we can have. So again, we have our co-founders, but then we have a group now with 10 admins on our disc board that help us moderate moderate
Giulia Zecchini: (18:30)
Platform. And they really support us because we always have random people that join the disc scored and decide to post things that are inappropriate or rude or anything else. Yeah. So it's just been a great platform for us to be able to explore our global community and make sure that we are still creating this safe space for women to, to discuss sneakers fashion, but also personal issues. Like people talk about anything on the platform they've made friendships off the back of it. So it's important for us to be able to keep that and discord in the past, we haven't been on it long. I think it's been about six months mm-hmm um, has really been able to provide that.
Brian Bosche: (19:07)
So you've created a very personal community coming from four co-founders really real connections, authentic connections being made and you do work with brands. So how can brands really participate? I don't know how to phrase this, but what is a better way for brands to work with these communities where it's clearly a very authentic, very real thing. And you don't want to have just kind of brand sponsors thrown in and as a co-founder you don't want to dilute kind of that authenticity. So how do you think about best practices around brands working with these types of communities like yours?
Giulia Zecchini: (19:39)
I think in general, we're quite lucky because the way that we work with brands obviously is already centered around a specific product and it's not necessarily a sponsoring of the sneaker sisterhood, but it's getting sneaker sisterhood involved in initiatives. Mm-hmm so already that is a more authentic way to, to work with a brand. But I think overall authenticity is key. And a lot of the times when we have discussions with brands, they want to heavily push their agenda or their aesthetic or their way of working on us. And we're always pushing back because there there's a reason that people have gravitated towards our community and even ourselves as co-founders. And it's because we do things a certain way and we make sure that we are open and flexible and welcoming. And so we've had an example before and I, I won't name brands, but, um, we were involved in a campaign for sneaker launch. It was all about women empowerment, sisterhood. And we were asked, um, we often work with brands to provide talent because we have very diverse females in our community. We've now we're not a talent agency, but we are, we love you've
Brian Bosche: (20:51)
Got the talent.
Giulia Zecchini: (20:52)
Yeah, we, we have the talent. So we are, obviously we would never take a cut. We, we want our girls to succeed, but we want to be able to push forward diverse talent and give women a platform when they haven't received it in the past for whatever silly reason. And so we put forward talent, which was well shape, sizes, races, um, ages and age, big thing for sneaker brands. They don't like anyone above 25 years old. So we
Brian Bosche: (21:22)
Actually, they still, you still see them not wanting to branch into different demographics. There
Giulia Zecchini: (21:26)
A hundred percent. I think age is now probably the, the main one that nothing gets done about. So
Brian Bosche: (21:33)
Aged aged out now, are you kidding me? we're not in the target demographic anymore.
Giulia Zecchini: (21:38)
No, we are not. Oh my, because we put forward girls from, uh, 14 with parental consent because we have a lot of mothers in our group with daughters that now love sneakers, but obviously the mother
Brian Bosche: (21:50)
Influence and baby sneakers yeah. Are so adorable.
Giulia Zecchini: (21:53)
So we have, we put forward women from 14. Um, I think the oldest was maybe 50, 15 55, 0 50 50.
Brian Bosche: (22:02)
Okay. I was like, oh, thank God.
Giulia Zecchini: (22:03)
So like a range of women, because that is exactly what we're about. Like mm-hmm, just because a woman turns 43 doesn't mean she's suddenly not into sneakers when she's been collecting for the past 30. Like she's the one influencing the next generation. She's the one buying sneakers for her kids, male, female. Non-binary she, she is the one doing the influencing, but anyways, and the brand turned around and was like too old.
Brian Bosche: (22:29)
Whoa,
Giulia Zecchini: (22:30)
Too old. Not, not even, not even the 50 year old. They said that about the 40 year old and the 30 year olds. So we had to crazy, um, at that point at the, the deadlines were short, so we had to switch it up and then they ended up bringing their own talent in, um, a couple of girls that were in their early twenties. And, um, they weren't as they, they weren't part of, um, sneaker sisterhood and, uh, potentially maybe not as much into sneakers as some others of us. So then on the day of the shoot, it was slightly like us and them and didn't feel as natural and as authentic as it could have. So
Brian Bosche: (23:12)
They went against your entire premise, you know, if you're communities are out inclusivity and they're specifically denying that, but wanting to still bring you in. Yeah, that that's
Giulia Zecchini: (23:21)
Totally mismatch. So to me, that was disappointing because I I'd like to think that the reason why brands worked with us is because of this community that is inclusive, that we've created. So to then have brands turn around and be like, but actually we only like certain elements of your inclusivity or certain elements of what you do is just disheartening. Um, so now that we sort of learned that lesson last year with this, we are really being more vocal with brands when we work with them about what we want and we've become a little bit more grounded and firm in terms of the responses that we give when brands want to work with us, because we're not willing to actually be flexible on that anymore. Um, if brands want to work with us, they need to stick to what we know and to what is sneaker sisterhood. So, yeah. Authenticity and also brands in general of,
Brian Bosche: (24:12)
Or can you give an example of the, of, of a good, uh, brand collaboration you did? Do you have a, can you share any best practices there of one you've actually done?
Giulia Zecchini: (24:21)
Yeah. I mean, I, I don't wanna share any like specific brand names. Yeah. But, um,
Brian Bosche: (24:26)
Or events, different ways you've done it. Yeah. Anything.
Giulia Zecchini: (24:28)
Yeah. We work with, um, with a, a sneaker brand that's actually a little bit less mainstream. Um, and they're really trying to crack the London market and really crack the female market because they have a primarily male demographic. And the way, the reason why it works is because they give us full creative, uh, freedom mm-hmm and freedom of choice. So of course brands will have certain things that they need done. But I think when you go into a community, you need to rely on them as the experts of their field, their community, and who they're talking to. They let us write captions how we want to write captions. They don't force captions on us, which I think is the most awkward thing that brands do. Mm-hmm is make you write captions on Instagram in a certain way. Again, they give us the creative freedom.
Giulia Zecchini: (25:21)
They let us choose the talent that we want. They let us style the shoes, how we want, and they, they're not too strict with those creative briefs. And we've seen that actually, that just resonates a lot better with our audience. Um, and also in terms of the way that, like how we create that content in terms of static content, video content, again, they give us more freedom there. And they're also amazing because they offer wide product. So they offer product that can be seated to a number of different women. So then the women can also get created with that product. And we do a lot of more of that user generated content, which I think actually works quite well and can become a lot more exciting for a brand once lots of people in the same community are kind of riding that wave. Um, because especially on Instagram, because we're this microcosm of, of sneakers.
Brian Bosche: (26:12)
Yeah.
Giulia Zecchini: (26:13)
Um, if you're in it, you realize that sort of everybody follows everybody. And so if you suddenly have, you know, 20 women all posting about this, not new brand, but brand that is trying to push through.
Brian Bosche: (26:24)
Yeah. It spreads, everybody
Giulia Zecchini: (26:25)
Thinks taking notice and it becomes this digital word of mouth that works quite well. So, um, I I've enjoyed working with brands like that that are a little bit more flexible and understand that we, we get it. Like we know what we're doing in in three years, we've built a community of 15,000 women, um, you know, thousands on, on discord and Facebook that chat every day and we know what we want. Um, and also that has also then transferred to us, being able to consult on sneakers and development and apparel for women, which has also been exciting. I think when brands tap into the partnerships to a deeper level, that then goes to the product side, that's also amazing to see, because again, people at sneaker brands absolutely know what they're doing. They release incredible products every year, but the female market, a lot of the time is still complaining. We still get the shrink it and think it, uh, yeah. Vibe on sneakers. So listening to these communities of women that come, that have come into sneakers from all different backgrounds, whether it's fashion, sport, music, um, siblings, whatever, it might be brands that have taken notice, I think have made big, big leaps in the female market.
Brian Bosche: (27:46)
So OB obviously behind these brands, there's actually real people. Do you find those real people at the brands participating in your discord, getting to know you over time and then reaching out? Or is it just kind of the cold DMS through Instagram? How have you found like, do they get themselves in the community first and that works well, so they learn and then contact you.
Giulia Zecchini: (28:05)
It's been really interesting because we are clearly oblivious as to who follows us at times. Yeah. um, like the other day I saw the, um, director of, uh, product at, um, Ivy park. Beyonce's ADI LAN was following us and like interacting with us. And I was like, oh my God, whoa. Like how did we not know that she was following
Brian Bosche: (28:25)
Us? Yeah. You don't have a CRM set up in the background, polling all the new followers and putting them as leads. Yeah,
Giulia Zecchini: (28:31)
We definitely should though. I wish that we had more time for this community because there's so much that we could do. But what we noticed the most actually was during clubhouse that is when brand people were coming in and listening, that was a lot of you
Brian Bosche: (28:45)
See that profile. Oh yeah. Clubhouse is like, you're, you're listening, but you're also just clicking through everyone's profiles to see who they're
Giulia Zecchini: (28:51)
Behind. Yeah. So I was always the creep, like clicking on everyone. I was like, oh my God. Brand manager at Jordan brand. Yeah. Uh, director of marketing at Merrill, like all sorts. We had, um, a lot of people listening in and a lot of them definitely follow us on Instagram. So I think they see what we do. And like just the other day we got a message from, uh, a big sneaker retailer being like, I've been following you for, for ages. I love what you're doing. We'd love to talk to you guys about a potential collaboration and piece of work. So yeah, we definitely see brand people cause a lot of I'd a lot of people that work for these brands, they love sneakers themselves. Totally. Um, there's more and more women also involved in these brands. Thank God behind the scenes. So they also want to see us shine. Um, so yeah, we, we definitely see a lot of connections being formed that way. I wouldn't say that they part, they participate as much on the discord. Mm-hmm at least not the people on the let's call it commercial and marketing side, but we do have people from the product sides that get involved, which I always enjoy, like your, your colorists, your material designers and stuff, which is super fun because those are such technical roles that we don't know anything about.
Brian Bosche: (30:01)
Um, they're doing their homework, they're doing their customer research, product research. Yeah.
Giulia Zecchini: (30:05)
And you know, like they work on products like three years out, which totally to me is crazy how they could work on colorways and materials. Oh wow. Three ways and three years in advance. Uh, so it's always super fun to, to find out more from these people and get an insight on what they do.
Brian Bosche: (30:19)
Uh, so you mentioned kind of getting more into the design side, collaborating, actually having influence over the product. And I've seen collaborations. Like there was one that was really interesting to was cool Mac, do you know the photographer? Creative, cool Mac mm-hmm he did a co-lab and had his own sneaker line. You know, he had his own collaboration where the cool Mac, uh, sneakers. And I was like, whoa, like photographers can do that. Like the creative side can do that. So is that the eventual eventual kind of goal of sneaker sisterhood is to start to get more involved on the product side. What is kind of that, that end goal that you're going for as you build the community?
Giulia Zecchini: (30:54)
Yeah. We always have this discussion and I don't think we necessarily have an end goal because at the end of the day, we just want to be a place for positive conversation and a sense of belonging. Um, so we don't have this crazy, like doesn't
Brian Bosche: (31:10)
Need to be a commercial goal.
Giulia Zecchini: (31:11)
Yeah. In a community. We, we haven't, we haven't said ourselves an insane target. However, we would like for brands to at times, take us more seriously in terms of what we can offer. So we've had conversations here and there around sneakers and development and how that could work. And I don't know if you've heard of the basement.
Brian Bosche: (31:35)
Yeah. Oh
Giulia Zecchini: (31:36)
Yeah. Yeah. So the basement, um, good friend of my PLO, he started that community. It's an incredible community.
Brian Bosche: (31:41)
Oh wow. Yeah. They've done a bunch of events here. I went to their MLB Europe event, um, where they brought a bunch of people to kind of build the baseball community here, there at the NBA Hennessy event. And they had a team. So yeah, totally.
Giulia Zecchini: (31:53)
So they're an incredible community. Their Facebook group is so alive. Um, they, they really tap into, um, mental health and really supporting each other, especially that, that male support and males voicing some of their mental health issues, which I think is amazing because I think it's truly lacking. So I love that that has stemmed from a love of sneakers and streetwear into that. And I sort of, you know, you, you need to look up to someone and I really look up to what power is built because he's doing sneaker collabs with new balance and all sorts. And not only does he have an impactable sense of style. So it also makes sense why brands are working with him. He's he's had his basement shoes with Nike. He's done air maxes with them. Yeah. Um, but people that then feel like they belong to that community.
Giulia Zecchini: (32:40)
They want to have that sneaker on foot. Because again, it's that then visual sense of belonging. Like I'm part of the basement. I love what they're producing. I love what they do. So, um, I mean, yeah, huge shout out to what they do. Um, and I would love for us to be able to translate into that as well. We, we had a big rebrand at the start of this year. Um, thinking ahead to something like that, um, our old logo was a little bit more playful and maybe not really apt for certain things. So we've really tried to now develop a brand and some storytelling that can support us if we take it to that next level of working with brands or even developing our own line of apparel and so on, you know, for now we've just dabbled, but we want to work with more creatives and put out more physical stuff as well.
Brian Bosche: (33:30)
Great. Well, if you're listening brand sponsors and anyone that works at any sneaker companies throw a sponsorship out there, throw a collab out there, let's do it.
Giulia Zecchini: (33:40)
Let's make a cool sneaker for
Brian Bosche: (33:41)
Womens, make a cool sneaker.
Giulia Zecchini: (33:43)
They want
Brian Bosche: (33:44)
. Well, thank you so much for coming on anything to plug anything coming up, where can people find you?
Giulia Zecchini: (33:49)
Um, find us at sneaker sisterhood on Instagram. Same on discord. Same on Twitter.
Brian Bosche: (33:55)
Uh I got the name.
Giulia Zecchini: (33:57)
Uh,
Brian Bosche: (33:58)
You got your name amazing.
Giulia Zecchini: (34:00)
Uh, we actually have an event in if you're in and around London, let me get the date. I believe it's the on the 30th of July, uh, we're just doing a big community meetup, uh, outdoors. So if you check out our page, we've posted that and you can RSVP at the Lincoln bio, but in general, if you have any ideas, if you are a creative, if you wanna co-lab in any way, DMS or DME at Julia Z 12 on Instagram, we are always happy to chat. We are so willing to work with creatives from really old avenues. We just wanna do cool stuff together. So just reach out. We're very, open-minded
Brian Bosche: (34:40)
Amazing. Well, thanks for coming, Julia.
Giulia Zecchini: (34:42)
Thanks for having me.
