Collaborations are still killin’ it

This morning, on my walk to the subway, I noticed a line of about 100 late-teen, early twenty-something-year-old guys camped outside of the Supreme store in SoHo. (My terrible iPhone photo isn’t a good illustration of the scene, but the line trailed all the way down Lafayette to Prince Street…)

What were all these guys anxiously awaiting? One put it simply: a jacket. But not just any jacket, a limited-edition collaboration between Supreme and The North Face ($298 retail).

This proved to me that collaborations are not dead. If you want to have hundreds of customers standing outside of your store, all desperately waiting to buy something, then team up with a brand, designer, local artist or musician on an exclusive product and produce it in a limited run. It’s a sure-fire way to generate sales and create buzz.