After hearing his nephew was getting bullied, Adidas Product Manager Tommy Lubinski wanted to create something positive to help children focus on friendship and teamwork rather than bullying. He arranged a meeting with Pixar, and the folks there mentioned they were celebrating the 25th anniversary of Toy Story.
Toy Story is the epitome of friendship. He instantly knew he could do something special with Pixar.
Lubinski flew back to Portland, Oregon, brainstormed with his team and flew back to California about four months later to present the concept to Pixar. “They just absolutely loved it,” Lubinski said. “We sent over rough sketches, mockups of what we wanted to do as starters, then we worked really closely with them to identify what styles we want to do and real key story elements we wanted to incorporate.”
Out of those sketches, a collaboration between Adidas and Pixar was born. Just in time for Bullying Prevention Awareness Month, the “Friendship Collection” was released on Oct. 1 -- exclusively in kid’s sizes.
“People have done Toy Story collaborations in the past,” Lubinski said. “We didn’t want it to be just another collaboration. We really wanted to make sure we got all those details right. So, this project probably took some years off my life, just based on how involved it was.”
One of the most challenging parts for Lubinski and his team was going back and forth between designs. Since Woody and Buzz Lightyear are household names, they had to make sure they got the specific colors and details. “If it’s not right, the consumer is going to call it out right away,” Lubinski said.
The Donovan Mitchell D.O.N. Issue #2 x Woody and NMD_R1 Toy Story shoes are inspired by Woody and Jessie’s signature country-western outfits. The cow-print accents represent the adored cowboy and cowgirl on these playful shoes.
The Dame 7 x Buzz Toy Story shoes look more like traditional athletic shoes, with a galactic kick to them. They follow the color scheme of your favorite space ranger’s spacesuit and glow in the dark to enhance the space vibes.
A heartwarming touch includes Andy’s name imprinted on the outsole, just like Buzz has it in the movie.
Basketball stars Damian Lillard and Donovan Mitchell were chosen to represent this collection because of their constant efforts in helping children.
“We knew we wanted to have people’s faces who believed in it, who were strong role models,” Lubinski said. “We wanted to make sure we picked strong athletes on our side that could really champion our message.”
Lillard has been an ambassador in his community, mentoring kids through his RESPECT program in Portland that teaches the youth how to show up, work hard and be kind.
In November 2019, Mitchell invited Luc Holdaway -- a kid that was getting bullied because of his race -- to sit courtside at a Jazz game. He spoke with him after and shared his phone number with Holdaway so he could contact him if he needed anything.
“Our goal was to obviously create something over the top and then how do we connect it to basketball? The reason we chose basketball as the sport is because it is the No. 1 participation sport among kids 8 to 12 years old. That’s amongst boys and girls,” Lubinski said.
Choosing which athletes and sport to represent the collection was simple -- but COVID-19 created some production issues for the collaboration.
Samples were delayed from the factory side once the factories shut down and even after they reopened.
Lubinski and his team created everything, then their development team sent it all to the factories.
The development team then worked with the factories to get it all exactly how they specified on a pad or drawing.
“Our materials come from a lot of different countries. It’s not like they’re just made in China,” Lubinski said.
Many countries were very strict with shipping, which delayed the process because products had to sit in warehouses for a couple weeks to make sure there was no virus on them.
“That made our process more challenging because we didn’t get samples as fast so we couldn’t review things as fast,” Lubinski said. “The pressure was once we got the product they were like ‘You’ve got to give us feedback’ and we’re like ‘We just got it, you were supposed to send it three weeks ago,’ but the team killed it.”
Between Adidas and Pixar, about 30 people worked on this collection. They began working on it two years ago. Lubinski worked on many projects simultaneously since the process takes about 18 months until a product is released.
“I manage probably close to 200 articles, or styles a season,” Lubinski said. “This collection was probably 30 total. So, I’m managing a ton of other products as well -- none that require more time than this because it is a high-profile collaboration.”
This collaboration had some adults wishing they could get these shoes in adult's sizes, but for now the collection is only available in kid's sizes.
“I’m just super happy with the perception around the collection so far,” Lubinski said. “It’s crazy because you never see this type of excitement for something that is kids. It’s just been overwhelming for all of us. We’re all super excited about it.”
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