emailed ALIFE....

If I care enough about what a business or brand is doing, often times I'll email them with my two cents. Sometimes I reach out to simply drop a line or two of praise, sometimes it's constructive criticism (hopefully not just the latter) and sometimes it's to call attention to a serious technical issue(s). Why? These words from a good friend sum it up best, "If you see a problem, help fix it or get out of the way!" It was the same person that taught me that great brands have awesome marketing and ongoing evangelist ownership/customer inclusion.

Here's a quick list of the most recent brands/companies I've reached out to (not work related - I feel like I have to disclose this since I work at a dot com) in this month alone:

• ALIFE
• Crooks & Castles
• techsmith
• BuyYourFriendADrink.com
• The Hundreds

With the exception of ALIFE whose responsiveness is tbd since I emailed them just minutes ago, all of the above have gotten back to me and some have even gone as far as sending some schwag my way in return for my input - thanks again! But anyhow, I wanted to copy & paste the text from the email I sent vs posting it as a jpg because hopefully someone at ALIFE has a Google Alert setup and will see this...

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Hello ALIFE Team,

Nice job on the Elf Mpc pieces. I've been a fan since 2004-2005... it
was the "ALIFE RTFT Everybody Low" line that pulled me in.

I won't go on and on (happy to, but won't) about the brand-aesthetic
you captured with that line vs the stuff you guys have been putting
out over the past couple years because the brand is yours, I respect
that and the decision to take it in whatever direction you see fit is
your own, but since you put an "email alife" link in your email I will
drop my $0.02 and say...

Since then, I haven't seen the same level of quality and attention to
detail from your shoes. A huge number of brands have and still are
chasing the discriminating street-couture consumer. I think the RTFT
line was corner stone in establishing alife as a major player in this
arena on a national level (my perspective comes from the west coast,
I was not in NY to see alife bud from the ground up). But with that
line came a very clear message, ALIFE = Street Couture... now, it's
all street, where did the couture go?

If you made it to the end of this, thanks for reading and know that my opinion isn't solely based on a comparison between your old and current shoe lines but I decided to focus on this because I think the disparity in your old vs new brand integrity/positioning is most apparent in this regard. I can dig it though... do what you do.

peace,
joey

venice, ca

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