Advertorial: born again adidas

So, adi­das thought up this idea, called born again adi­das, of get­ting peo­ple to trade-in their old sports shoes for a pair of new ones, and I was told that they’d have col­lec­tion points at var­i­ous adi­das retail­ers across the island, and I was curi­ous enough to agree to bring in one of my old shoes for them to throw away.

No, the sales staff at the shop at The Cathay didn’t want to inspect my old shoes, like they do when you bring in a mobile phone to trade-in, so they didn’t have to wear gloves or a face mask, because, you know, the nat­ural pong of old shoes can be quite sig­nif­i­cant, and you can’t pay sales staff enough to han­dle bio­haz­ards like that.

Instead, there was a large col­lec­tion bin with a hole on top, where you’re invited to throw your old shoes in. You have to tell the staff of your inten­tions first though, because you can’t just waltz in and any­howly chuck your shoes in and then claim to have done so when the staff aren’t look­ing. That’s just unfair, and silly.

The terms and con­di­tions that adi­das put down are, how­ever, just, fair, and for a good cause.

For every twenty pairs of shoes that are col­lected, the staff will draw lots to see which lucky staff mem­ber gets to han­dle the old shoes, and then the poor dude will put them all together and throw them away, and then, here’s the impor­tant part — adi­das will donate a new pair to char­ity — namely, Grace­haven Sal­va­tion Army and the Andrew and Grace Home.

But that, folks, is not all. For your pair of old/dirty/worn/broken sports shoes, adi­das will give you up to $50 dis­count on a new pair of adi­das*.

For mine, it was an eight year old pair of sports shoes whose soles have cracked, and cracked soles are no good, because they let air and water in, and if I had to name those shoes, they’d be called Air (and Water).

Now, I’m nor­mally ret­i­cent about attend­ing pub­lic events and such like, but the oppor­tu­nity to give new life to a pair of my old sports shoes was just a lit­tle bit too good to pass up on, and I didn’t mind bat­tling traf­fic and The Cathay’s hor­ren­dous labyrinth known as the car park (where they’ve needed to paint yel­low foot­prints on the floor so that peo­ple would know where the door to the shops were, because the fella that painted the direc­tional arrows on the walls didn’t do a good job but that’s another story…) to throw my shoes in the bin and get a new pair. Any old pair, you know? Not just adi­das.

When I was shown the Bin Of Old Shoes, I stuck my head in, and before I could fathom and artic­u­late why I did that, one of the nice folks at the adi­das shop said, “yah, it’s not that smelly, actu­ally”. So they must have been com­pelled to do what I did too. There are some things you just do, right? Like bub­ble wrap? No?

Never mind me then, but if you have an old pair of sports shoes you want to retire — bring them down to adi­das and give them new life!

*Terms & Con­di­tions: Now your filth­i­est, manki­est old sports shoes can get you $50 off a brand new pair of adi­das Bounce shoes and $30 off other adi­das sports shoes with a min­i­mum shoe value of $100. But your train­ers can only be reborn again when you choose reg­u­lar priced items. The Bounce Medals range, adi­das Orig­i­nals, Stella McCart­ney and golf shoes are not included in this offer. And remem­ber to bring your dirty, old train­ers by 7th Sep­tem­ber 2008 when the pro­mo­tion ends. So start dig­ging them out now.