We are half way through April, and New Balance SS16 has been dropping thick and fast, with a bunch of releases arriving in February, even more in March, and there’s already been some this month. It’s kind of hard to keep up, and a lot of shoes seem to be released without much noise surrounding them.

I mean, we all know New Balance like to keep things traditional, and slightly old fashioned (not a bad thing), but when a collection such as “Explore by Sea”, or even the “English Tender” pack drops with so many amazing pairs and it all goes a little under the radar, and there isn’t much noise about it, we find this a little annoying.

So let’s put it in numbers. Just last month, well over 20 pairs of New Balance have dropped, and the month previous was around the same amount, and when the majority of them are bangers, then it’s tough. I don’t know about you, but we don’t have a disposable income the size of a football club owning billionaire, so nearly all of the time, we are waiting until these products hit the sale before purchasing.

And unfortunately, it’s guaranteed that they will hit sale everywhere, that’s a fact.

Around the time when the 997 got reissued, most New Balance product was going on pre-order at various places, and it was selling out on pre-order, which would definitely not happen now. The first few 997’s became pretty hard to pick-up after the fact, unless you were willing to pre-order, but then either production, distribution, or both were upped, and they just started sitting, and everyone realised that there was no need to buy them straightaway and at full price.

We might sound like we’re moaning a lot, well, we are a little, but we just become stumped trying to keep up with all the shoes we want to buy, and in the end, after continually putting them off because of the next thing that comes out, we don’t buy them at all.

How to combat it we hear you ask?

I mean if these guys are going to go on and moan about it, then they must have thought about some solutions, right?

Don’t get us wrong, like so many others out there, we’re just a couple of guys who love New Balance, and we are in no position to comment on how a brand works, we just like to be opinionated and create some discussion. At the end of the day, we’d love to be able to buy every pair we really want, but it’s just impossible.

The main thing for us is launch dates so that’s all we’ll touch on for now. Rather than just new styles dropping whenever they reach a store, why not stagger the roll out, or use launch dates. New Balance release x amount of colourways outside of their “packs”, so why not let these intro each month, and then the packs have a launch date. The pack product usually tends to be the strongest (not always the case), so with this launching outside of the general release, then stores and the brand can build some hype in the run up to the product launching, and it gives a chance for the consumer to prepare for what’s upcoming. Just like with collaborations, or with brands like Nike and adidas who do it week in, week out.

Thankfully, New Balance are still very selective with their collaborations, and that’s great in more ways than one, mainly because every collab they do is a little more special than other brands, but also because it means we don’t have a collaboration or plural releasing every weekend and then have to try and figure out how we’re going to afford that.

So the moral of the story? New Balance release so many great pairs, in such a short space of time with no real launch dates, and we unfortunately just can’t keep up, and we also feel that so much amazing product goes relatively unnoticed, but is change necessary?