About Us
Who we are
Sneakercrib SA registered South African company 2021/713468/07
Sneakercrib SA is one of the fastest growing online store in South Africa, offering top local and international fashion for men and women.
We inspires shoppers through fashion storytelling and style. We offer an easy-to-use, highly secure shopping experience on web. backed up by safe payment options, quick delivery and a convenient 14 – day free exchange policy.
B-Grade/Factory Variant, Unauthorized Authentic (UA)
A B-Grade sneaker is one considered to be produced by the rightful maker, but that didn’t make the cut. For most legitimate manufacturers that develop product in volume, quality control is part of the process to ensure a certain level of standards. For whatever reason, those that don’t make the cut are considered B-Grade by the company. Whether the tongue is too short or the stitching length is off or slightly crooked, these minor variations, but not limited to, are possible indicators of why a particular sneaker might have not made the cut.
The Factory Variant term isn’t completely clear to us and may have the same meaning as B-Grade to some, but to others it might also suggest a shoe that is an unauthorized variation of an existing style of shoe manufactured at an authorized or unauthorized factory. For the most part, we define it as the former.
And finally, in our eyes, quite possibly one of the more important terms for this think piece, the UA short for Unauthorized Authentic. UAs could loosely be defined as Authentic sneakers, but not having official permission by the brand to be released.
Quoting excerpts we found cited by @bryanbotakchin of @massesmy (google “unauthorized authentic massesmy” to find the cached link):
Major shoe companies do not stick to a set of factories to produce their shoes. They assign a certain number (i.e. 50,000) per model for each factory to produce. They will produce 20,000 to 30,000 extra pairs, some even 50,000 pairs. Reason being is that they need this [sic] extra pairs to replace the rejected pairs after they fail to pass quality inspection. But what gets left behind in the old factory is the 20,000-30,000 pairs of shoe [sic] that were rejected, or did not even get to see QC because the shoe company has already reached their quota. So that is how the term “UNAUTHORIZED AUTHENTIC” came about. All this [sic] extra pairs that are left over, are produced at the same factory, by the same workers, with the same material, just that they did not get licensed/authorized/quality checked by the shoe company OR [sic] rejected by the shoe company for not meeting their standards. The factory will then sell this [sic] left over shoes to sneaker resellers, sneaker dealers, and online stores.
(Although we’re not necessarily sure about the numbers expressed above, we agree with the general idea.)
Q: Are the shoes authentic?
A: Our shoes are UA shoes. “UA” stands for “Unauthorized Authentic”. UA shoes are very similar to retail Nike/Jordan Brand shoes but are never officially contracted with those companies to be made. UA shoes are usually made in the same factories, with the same materials, and the same workers that make the official retail pairs. They differ from replica sneakers because they are a much higher quality and many people cannot differ UA shoes from official products.