“I’m not gonna lie, man,” said Brandon. “That was embarrassing. I could feel the sweat dripping down in my armpits. He really got us good.”
Leon laughed so hard his ribs started hurting.
Simba said, “He could have at least pulled us inside in the hallway instead of doing it out in front of all those people like that.”
“No, he wanted to embarrass us like that,” Leon said. “He made that big scene on purpose.”
As Brandon smiled and headed to the door, Leon asked him, “Where are you going, to call Natasha now in private?”
Brandon chuckled. “Yup.”
“Well, at least you’re honest about it now,” Simba said.
“Yeah, he’s gonna call her up to lick his wounds,” Leon joked. “Make sure she wears a nurse hat for you.”
Brandon shook his head and walked out into the hallway, where he could call Natasha in peace.
“Okay, so what happened?” she asked him immediately.
“The guy told us off, that’s all. There’s not much else to tell.”
“So, what are you gonna do now about the posters?”
Brandon paused. He didn’t know if he should tell her. Natasha knew about the NCAA rulebook too, and she had already told the guys to be careful about dealing with amateur athletes.
“Uh … he still wants to do it,” Brandon admitted.
“But you told him no, right?”
Brandon paused again.
“Don’t be hardheaded, Brandon,” Natasha barked. “Let this serve as a warning to you. You could ruin your whole future with the wrong moves—for all of you.”
SUMMER HUSTLE
DAVID TERRY SHOWED off his impressive basketball skills for the rest of the AAU Tournament in Memphis, just like he said he would. But his teammates still weren’t good enough to help him advance deep into it. “Man, we couldn’t even cheer him on with our Beast Team chants,” Leon lamented.
Brandon shrugged. “Only a couple more weeks now, and we can do whatever we want.”
He had broken down and told Natasha the truth about their plans. They would continue to build and market their Beast Team brand and not pay the amateur athletes that they promoted until they turned pro.
“Just like these colleges have a right to market and promote who they are and what they do, these athletes should have a right to market and promote themselves. But to follow the NCAA rules, we won’t give them any money until they go pro. And we’ll tell them that upfront to see if they want to do it or not,” Brandon had told her.
Natasha still didn’t like the idea. She had said, “Once you guys start that game with amateurs, who’s to say that someone else won’t decide to take advantage of these kids without having a relationship with them?”
“Then they can sue them for doing that,” Brandon had countered.
“But not sue you?” Natasha had argued.
“Well, would you allow just anyone to kiss you just because they wanted to, or would you smack them for it?”
The question had stumped Natasha. Every person had to choose who they wanted to deal with. She had smiled and said, “You think you’re smart, don’t you?”
Brandon had chuckled and said, “You’re smart too. We’re both smart. And smart people figure things out.”
>>>
When the guys arrived back home from Memphis, the Jay Stewart endorsement deal with Adidas had been executed, and their first checks would be in the mail in a couple of weeks.
“Perfect,” Brandon responded. “Now, we can get ready for a trip to New York.”
Paul was confused. “Why would you do that if you’re already going there for school at the end of the month?” He viewed the extra trip as a waste of good money.
Brandon said, “We want to find a place to rent out near campus for our own Beast Team sneaker convention in September. And we don’t want to wait until the last minute to find a good place. We wanna do it early.”
Paul thought about it and nodded. His nephew continued to impress him. Boy, he’s a lot better with his plans and money than I ever was. I wish I could have worked with him when I still had some money. He could have helped me to keep it and make more of it, he mused.
“So, are you guys gonna need me to go with you?”
“Yeah, we were thinking about that. I mean, how many people up there are gonna negotiate with freshmen? Or at least until they know us,” Brandon said.
Paul grinned. “Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s New York. So I’ll go with you guys this last time. But once school starts up, you’ll be out there on your own.”
Brandon nodded back. “Cool.”
As he began to run off with his busy plans for the day, Paul wasn’t finished with him yet. He called his nephew back as Brandon headed upstairs to his room.
“Hey, Brandon, let me speak to you for a minute.”
Brandon stopped at the steps. “Okay.”
Paul took a deep breath and sighed, embarrassed. “You know how much I hate to ask you for anything, so I’ve always left you alone about this kind of stuff. But I may need to borrow a few thousand dollars to pay a few bills before you head off for college.”
Brandon understood. He had given his uncle a few thousand dollars before.
“Okay, how much do you need?”
Paul exhaled. “About twelve thousand.”
Brandon’s eyebrows rose sharply. That meant his uncle needed him to dig into his college account. Along with Brandon’s sneaker money, the two of them had been able to put aside more than fifty thousand dollars for college.
Brandon eyed his uncle and said, “That’s a lot of money, especially right before school.”
“Brandon, I’m three months behind on my child support payments and both of my daughters’ mothers are threatening to take me back to court. Now, I’ve held them both off until I could scrape up the money to deal with it. And you know, I’ve been working out again to play ball overseas. In fact, I plan to go a lot harder with it now that you’re heading off to college.”
It all made sense to Brandon. He was aware that his uncle had been working out that summer to play ball professionally again. And with an empty house, it was the perfect timing for him to travel overseas. However, Brandon began to wonder how long his uncle would reject becoming an assistant coach on the high school or college level.
“Okay, but … you still don’t want to try coaching?” he asked.
Brandon knew his uncle was sensitive about retirement. But Paul’s daughters were still in grade school, which meant he had another dozen years to pay child support. And it was only a matter of time before he would be forced to lock himself in with a stable job.
“Yeah, Brandon, I think about that every day,” Paul said. “But I can still make more money playing ball overseas than coaching at this point. The other thing I could do is sell the house, but you know I don’t want to do that.”
“I’ll give you the money,” Brandon told him. “I’m just asking about, you know, your plans for the future.”
“I’ll work it out, okay? And I can see that you’re gonna be a lot better with money than I ever was. How much are you guys making off of the Jay Stewart deal?”
Brandon paused. “A lot less than what we hoped to make. That’s why we’re so eager to push The Beast Team brand in New York now.”
“Well, don’t get so eager that you guys forget about your schoolwork. That’s what you’re really there for,” his uncle argued weakly.
Brandon held his tongue. He had no idea how long he would even remain in school. Simba was right. It would depend on how fast Brandon’s marketing career advanced.
>>>
Brandon and his guys had a follow-up conference call with Raymond House that week, all about the NCAA rules for amateurs. They wanted to make sure they handled the David Terry situation correctly before calling Danielle Lyles and her family back in Florida.
“Everything you guys are planning to do with that is not to be connected to me. Not that it automatically m
akes it wrong, but I just don’t want anyone using our relationship to accuse any of us of wrongdoing in the future,” Raymond warned them. “Now, I agree with a lot of your argument; these kids should be able to market and promote themselves, like MaxiPreps, the scouting services and all these colleges and universities do. These guys are all making a living through marketing and promoting high-schoolers who can’t make a dime.
“Even the local and national newspapers are making money from promoting these kids,” Raymond continued. “Sports magazines too. But please leave my name out of everything unless we’re dealing with professionals. That’s all I ask you guys.”
Raymond House was being incredibly upfront and honest with them, so the guys made a pact to abide by his wishes. There would be no agent talk from them, unless it was legitimate business. Everything else would be word-of-mouth agreements only. “Are you guys ready to call Danielle now? She’s been begging to talk to us,” Brandon told his guys. They were all in his game room, which had become their business headquarters.
Simba shrugged. “Go ahead and call her.”
Brandon dialed and did his normal pacing while the guys sat and watched him as usual.
“Hey, Brandon, how are you? You finally called me. So, are you ready to talk to my dad now?” Danielle asked. She was a hundred miles an hour and ready to go. That made Brandon nervous again, but he had to do what he had to do. He exhaled before he answered. “All right, put him on the line.”
A big, strong voice boomed through the phone. “Hi, Brandon. I’ve heard a lot about you and looked you up online. You guys have built up quite a following. You must be early risers.”
“Yeah, I’ve never been able to sleep late,” Brandon said. “I’m always up with new ideas.”
“I like that. An early bird gets the worm,” her father replied. “Danielle’s an early bird herself. She has clear ideas about what she wants to do, even with joining you guys. But I never thought of modeling tennis shoes as something you could make a living off of. I’ve always viewed it as an add-on.”
“Not anymore. You have Mia Hamm, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach,” Brandon ran off from his women’s soccer research. “They can all sell shoes if they wanted to. They have an audience for it.”
“Of course they could. But that’s still only a few of them,” Danielle’s father argued, “whereas, if you look at basketball and football, or even skateboarding for that matter, there’s just more of these young guys to promote. And my family and I are convinced that it’s mainly a result of people discovering them at young ages.
“Take women’s tennis for example. Some of these young women become the cream of the crop, and it’s because you know them so early,” he continued. “They’re basically teenagers with international popularity. But that’s about the only sport where we do that with women—outside of Olympic gymnastics and ice skating. But you can’t count much on that. So, we love the fact that you guys are able to help promote Danielle right now, while she’s still sixteen. We really believe that’s the only way to maximize her marketing potential. We want her to be known, and not just by soccer girls but by everyone.”
Brandon looked over at his guys, speechless. He was basically being dictated to. It was a totally different conversation than those he had with the Stewart family. Danielle’s father had even told Brandon to simply call him Mr. Lyles.
“So, how do we work together, Brandon?” he finally asked.
“Well, first we can’t really pay her anything from our marketing if she plans to play soccer in college,” Brandon answered.
“We know that already. It’s all about the marketing for us. We want to be able to use Danielle’s higher profile to go after the much bigger money down the line,” Mr. Lyles said. “You don’t mess that up by taking the little money. You keep your eyes focused on the bigger prize. And if she becomes popular to the point where it’s more beneficial for her to start modeling professionally—while she’s still playing soccer—then we’ll have to sit down and make that decision. But I don’t see why she wouldn’t be able to model and play soccer at some point, even if she has to play professionally for club teams.”
Brandon didn’t have a response. Her father seemed to know his game plan already.
“Well, what we would do is take a bunch of her soccer pictures and make our Beast Team posters of her in action, like we did with our guys.”
“Negative. That approach would only attract the soccer girls that Danielle already has. What we would rather do is set up a photo shoot where she did both soccer poses and more ah, suggestive poses for the skateboard and basketball guys who already follow you. We want them to like her as well,” her father emphasized.
Brandon looked over at Leon and grinned.
“What?” Leon said.
Brandon held up his right index finger, signaling for his friend to wait.
“Okay, we can do that,” Brandon agreed.
“And we’ll only send you the pictures that we feel most comfortable with.”
“Well, while you’re at it, it’s all about the sneakers for us. So in each photo, as long as she wears a hot pair of sneakers, we’re good.”
“Oh, trust me; Danielle wouldn’t have it any other way. She has tons of different sneakers. We may even do some pictures where she has sneakers all over her instead of clothes,” her father joked. “That’s something that Lady Gaga would do, right?”
Brandon eye’s popped wide open as he stopped his pacing. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and from a military father at that. He said, “A sexy soccer sneakerhead, huh? That would be crazy.”
“Oh, I like that, a sexy soccer sneakerhead. I’m gonna need to write that down. And by the way, I raised both my daughters to be able to hold their own. So, Danielle has tough enough skin to be able to deal with any criticism. That’s what I really like about the Williams sisters in tennis. They don’t let anything stop them from winning. They just bull right ahead with their goals. We love that about them. A lot of tennis girls have that toughness.”
“They sure do,” Brandon agreed.
“Okay, now there’s one more thing,” Mr. Lyles said.
“What’s that?”
“I need to meet you guys in person to do an eye and handshake test. I know it’s old school, but that’s how I do all of my business. And we’ll fly out to you guys.”
Brandon paused and thought about it. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. We have to fly up to New York in a couple of weeks to look at places for a sneaker convention we want to do in September. We start school at NYU in late August. So, if we could meet you guys in New York, my uncle will be there with us.”
“Well, that’s perfect. That’s even better. My family would love an excuse to go to New York,” Mr. Lyles responded excitedly. “That’s a date. So, you tell us exactly when you’re going, and we’ll meet you in Manhattan.”
ATLANTA
BEFORE THEIR TRIP to New York, the guys did a final week of interning at an Adidas Southeast office in Atlanta, where they were given a tour. They met sneaker designers, salesmen and national marketing reps. They also got a sneak preview of some of the up-and-coming shoe designs, including D Roses, in a variety of colors.
“Can we all get a pair of those for the road?” Simba joked.
The shoe designers chuckled. “They haven’t even gone into production yet.”
The guys also found that Adidas had merged with Reebok years ago.
“Really? We didn’t know that,” Simba said.
“Well, both brands continue to go in their own directions artistically. So unless you read about it in the business pages, a lot of people don’t know,” Michael told them. “But yeah, it’s one big company now, trying to compete with Nike.”
Brandon took it all in, but he was thinking more about the company’s official offer to license their Beast Team apparel. Raymond was expecting an offer from Adidas that week.
“Why are you so quiet today, Brandon? What’s on your mind?” Michae
l asked.
“Oh, I’m just listening,” he commented as they toured the offices.
On their second day, as he sat with a group of interns in an Adidas sales workshop, he finally got word from Raymond on the official Adidas offer. Brandon felt his phone vibrate and saw the call. “Hello,” he answered out in the hallway.
“Yeah, they’re not believers yet,” Raymond informed him. “They offered fifteen thousand dollars for a limited license—the same amount as your quarterly checks from the Jay Stewart deal. So, once we decline their offer, you guys are free to promote, market and pitch The Beast Team to the highest bidder. You might even be able to talk to Marc EckÅ in New York. He might be looking to license something hot and new.”
Brandon paused. Fifteen thousand dollars was still more than nothing. “How much are we trying to shop it for?” he asked Raymond quietly.
“What, are you in the middle of a meeting? You could have called me back to talk later,” Raymond responded to Brandon’s tone.
“No, I wanted to get it over with. But did you know that Adidas and Reebok merged years ago?” Brandon asked.
“Yeah, but they still do business individually, so it doesn’t matter unless you’re an investor. But where are the rest of the guys?”
“They’re in a sales workshop. I’ll tell them everything later.”
Raymond paused a minute himself. “Do you guys split everything equally, or do you have some kind of percentages? Because I notice that you do most of the heavy lifting.”
“We all have our own accounts for when we sell our sneakers, but since we all help to sell The Beast Team T-shirts, TBT hats, and now posters, we share that money equally,” Brandon answered. “It’s the same way with the Jay Stewart money—we’ll all take five thousand each. And we use our Beast Team bank account to buy our stuff with.”
“Well, you guys may want to think about putting together a formal business agreement when the real money starts rolling in. I don’t know if I would trust everyone to be so free-flowing about it.”
“Well, we do have positions; we just think of them all equally. But I’ll talk to you later on then.”
The Sneaker Kings Page 18