Years after turning down a lucrative, multi-pronged partnership with Nike, sneaker designer Salehe Bembury has announced the launch of his own independent sneaker company, SPUNGE.
Bembury told The Wall Street Journal that years ago, Nike asked him to come over to its headquarters in Oregon, where the company offered a “multipronged partnership.” The proposal would have also given him the opportunity to work with both LeBron James and Converse but he declined the offer because he didn’t like the terms.
“It’s always an honor to work with brands, but I don’t necessarily get to bring to fruition exactly what I’d like,” Bembury told The Wall Street Journal.
Today, the New York native has his own shoe brand. “My own brand will be 100% my vision,” he said. “I will get to build the community that I want to build, and have the conversations that I want to have and tell the stories that I want to tell.”
SPUNGE launched via a raffle on October 13, according to HypeBeast. Its debut shoe, the Osmosis, has been unveiled in four colorways with assistance from Violet St, a company in LA.
“For 15 years, I’ve worked across every corner of the footwear industry; learning, observing, absorbing. Each chapter taught me something different, how shoes are made, how brands are built, and how culture moves,” Bembury wrote in a post on Instagram.
“SPUNGE is the result of it all. Everything I’ve taken in, finally expressed in my own language. This brand exists to create the kind of freedom I was always searching for. A space to explore, experiment, and evolve. A shoe to do stuff in.”
A Syracuse University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in industrial design, Bembury has been in the footwear industry for more than 10 years, starting as a footwear designer for Payless ShoeSource in 2009. He went on to work for Cole Haan as an innovation designer and held roles at Yeezy, Versace and Crocs, receiving massive attention in 2021 for the unique Crocs he designed.
His own brand, SPUNGE, is now prepared to compete with these same companies he once worked with.
