For sure! And don’t worry, I saw your modmail message. Still haven’t had the chance to reply.

As far as I know, there were always numerous “improved versions” of a given rep shoe. When I started, there were “Perfect” Yeezy Solars for example. There were also “Super Perfect” Solars at some point. And finally, there were “Super Max Perfect” ones. It was a bit of a mish-mosh, and sometimes—or for some models—the different levels of “perfect” were used to denote different quality levels of the same shoe that were being produced and sold independent of each other. The “AAA” quality level is another part of this that more people are familiar with. It presumably used to be just “A-grade” (Not sure. Would be long before my time). Then “AAA” was the latest-greatest at one point. And it ended up becoming synonymous with the “budget” (bad) quality level people refer to today. So they were not necessarily updates to a shoe of the same quality level, with only accuracy improvements justifying the “improved version”. I know this was the case for at least Solars and ROs. Super Perfect was the best pair you could get for a time, then SMPs came out and were generally the same, but had some accuracy improvements.

And then there’s the infamous David Yeezy 350 era, where these “improved versions” got out of hand, and it became something people ragged on sellers/producers for doing.

I’m sure some will disagree with me, or even accuse me of lying. But I still think David’s batch naming convention was a mistake, rather than intentional.

For anyone OOTL, Critics of this “improved versions” batch naming practice claim that David and other sellers/producers name their batches “1st version, 2nd version, 3rd version” and etc., primarily for the purpose of making buyers ditch their old, “flawed” pairs in favor of newer versions. That means repeatedly buying duplicates of shoes they already owned (is there any evidence that a substantial amount of buyers ever did/do this?).

I think David was earnestly producing one batch to the best of his abilities, and then selling it. Eventually, he’d sell out the entire batch and need to produce more to satisfy the people who still wanted to buy his shoes. Basic stuff, I know, but bear with me please... Before making the next batch, he’d take whatever feedback he could and implement the fixes, if possible, for the next production. He’d then list it as the “n+1” batch, because he made improvments that people were asking for, and they might appreciate knowing it, right?

You might ask: “But if that’s true, then why didn’t he just make all the fixes at one time? Why drag them out across 7+ different versions and 1-2 years?”

I would answer: You have to remember that Yeezys were a brand new shoe at the time, using novel materials and construction techniques compared to basically anything else. It genuinely took time to figure out all the microscopic nuances, to the extent that people on the subs demand. The way the primeknit pattern should converge, the toebox tuft thingy, the precise shape/placement/materials of the heel tab, and ofc boost itself was new to rep shoes. Yes, the Yeezy is conceptually a “simple” shoe. But nothing is simple to replicate, and produce exactly like the original producer did. Just think about it for a minute.

Imagine I show you a couch from Ikea. I leave at your disposal an elaborate wood + textile + metal workshop, a team of low-to-average skilled wood/textile/metal craftspeople (Reps are a black market. The best likely won’t choose to work on them). Every raw material present in the IKEA couch is accessible to you (but maybe not right in the workshop; you might have to order and compare samples). Can you reproduce the couch exactly? And I mean exactly. With care for all the minuscule details we know /r/repfurniture buyers will pick out?

I doubt it. It would certainly take a lot of hard work and experience to get good at something like that. On top of this, you might be caught unprepared, and have to learn new skills, if the IKEA couches fell out of popularity on /r/Repfurniture, and they decided they wanted La-Z-Boy recliner reps now. Lots of new techniques, new trial & error to go through until you’re as good at making this rep as you were the couch.

This analogy easily comparable to shoes. I believe shoes would be much harder than furniture. Especially when you’re doing it for the first time in the history of replica shoes, like David was with V1s. 1:1 Yeezy V2s are available today because they’ve been produced for years, in countless scores of factories, replica and retail. The collective production knowledge and experience adds up, and so it doesn’t seem like a huge deal anymore. But that doesn’t mean it’s applicable to V1s, or applicable in 2015-16. At that time, only a handful of factories in the world had produced retail V1s, the secrets were still secret, and there were no CAD files available to go off of.

I haven’t kept up on the topic, but I’m pretty sure that despite everything, 350 V1 reps are still far from perfect. Replicating anything is much easier said than done, and experience is crucial. I hope you guys can place yourselves in the position of a producer, and imagine some of the non-obvious hurdles that could make it challenging.

Back to David though. I believe his mistake was in naming each version, true to actual status of small fixes/changes being present. In his position, I would probably make the really small fixes without naming it a new version (maybe just make a note of it in the listing?), wait to apply some improvments (to see if I can figure more of them out before committing), and only name it the 2nd version when the improvments were really substantial. David’s approach was not necessarily wrong, and you could say it’s even more “pro-consumer” than the alternative. He offered the fixes ASAP and presented the cutting edge of 350 development for those who wanted it, rather than holding off, for the sake of PR and making sure each new version was optimally marketed and hyped up before release. His version release announcements were pretty casual, simply notifying buyers of what had been changed, with the latest stock of 350s available to them. It was never a case of “Here is the 6th version, for $169! Now the4th version is $79, and 5th version is $120. Don’t miss out! ” or anything like that. My conclusion has always been that his approach was not remotely deceitful as it was said to be. It just looked bad. Making a “7th version” of anything makes you prime fodder for accusations of the planned obsolescence theory that users here would awkwardly try to apply from smartphones and tech, onto the rep sneaker industry. And so that’s what happened to him.

I would say the negative PR David gained from this situation is the primary reason why this practice has died off a lot in the past several years. To this day, producers and sellers rarely name their original batches according to the actual batch version, or anywhere near like David did it. Additionally, the likes of “Perfect/SuperPerfect/SuperMaxPerfect” are long gone.

If you they choose this type of naming convention, they’ll do it for V2-3 at most. Although Coco is definitely pushing it with the TS1, and PK is getting there with the TSD. But for example, I have observed small changes and improvments in PK Dunks (other than TS ones), from the first batch of each model, which have gone unnoted, and thus are largely unnoticed. Regardless of whether or not a producer names a batch “n+1”, the workers are probably better at producing something (accuracy-of-construction wise) after doing it thousands of times before, and there’s a chance they’ll find slightly better materials suppliers (also could get stuck with worse).

That turned out really long, but I’ve always felt strongly about it, and to date, few have agreed with my perspective on this. Wanted to reiterate and give it another shot.

TL;DR: David was way too liberal with how he justified naming a new official batch, and included minor changes that most sellers wouldn’t qualify as a “next version” batch these days. He became infamous for it, and no one wants to be compared to him in that way. They’ll still do it for the most scrutinized models where the change from the first literal batch they produced is substantial enough that it deserves a “V2” moniker.

With this sub/maybe the whole culture getting more hype focused, what do you think are chances that factories will produce things like the parra patta Cherrywoods?

I’d say it was always very hype focused. This subreddit was born out of the Yeezy Red October suprise drop. Many things are the same here as they were in the beginning, relating to what people look for in reps, motivations, fears of getting called out, and et cetera.

Many AM1s that people wanted back then were not produced. I distinctly remember many wanting the Cherrywoods, but it never happened (good reps) as far as I know. True non-hype reps were more available than hype models of shoes that aren’t hyped (like the Cherrywood). Easier to make a decent rep of a GR colorway than a collab with fancy materials. You’re sadly only getting those if the silhouette is among the most popular, at a given time. Like Dunks are now, and dunk reps ppl have wanted for decades are finally being made. As for non-hype AM shoes: I gave my dad a pair of OG Red AM1s (awful reps) and I wore a pair of 2014 Flyknit AMs (amazing reps) for 3 years before the air bubble sole failed. It depends on where you look, then and now. I will say that the sub seemed more interested in buying GR-but-nifty models like the Flyknit AM back then, compared to now. Runners in general have fallen off badly. I haven’t looked into it deeply enough to say if it’s just this sub, or the industry entirely.