The Nike SB Dunk was created in 2002 by skateboarders for one purpose - skating. The shoes skyrocketed in popularity, kickstarting the modern sneaker craze.
Over time, the sneakers became so valuable, people started locking them away in boxes rather than skating them. As the original sneaker marketplace, eBay saw the 20th anniversary of SB as an opportunity to remind people what the shoes were designed to do.
So, eBay teamed up with Nike to celebrate “20 Years of SB Dunk on eBay”.
To start, we re-released the rarest dunk of all time – the eBay SB Dunk. Only one pair existed and was auctioned off on eBay in 2003 for $30K. To drive attention for the new eBay Dunk, we created the first sneaker box you can skate —taking the modern symbol of unworn kicks and turning it into a reminder to use the sneakers as intended. Ten boxes were auctioned off exclusively on eBay, raising more than $350,000 for the Bodecker Foundation—a charity founded by the late creator of Nike SB, Sandy Bodecker.
Next, we opened the Skate ‘Em Out Store in Portland, Oregon, the birthplace of Nike SB, stocking the store with the most coveted SB Dunks of the past 20 years. We offered every pair for $65, their original 2002 price, if shoppers laced them up and skated out of the store. Every surface in the store was skateable – from ramps to rails to a bowl for the most experienced skaters.
The partnership drove over 700 million earned impressions across sneaker, lifestyle, and sports media including Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Highsnobiety, Complex, Hypebeast. As a result of the campaign 68% of people said they were more likely to buy and sell sneakers on eBay in the future and searches for ‘SB Dunks’ on eBay shot up 40%.