They're manufactured by Henkee, who are the new New Balance.
The Henkee brand was established by Horace Chang, who used to make shoes for New Balance until they terminated his licence for flooding China with 450,000 unauthorised pairs of low-quality NB sneakers in the late nineties. New Balance have been trying to ban the Henkee logo ever since because it infringes their intellectual property.
Hey! Did you purchase the Henkee's in China? I have a pair of Henkees that I got when I was in Shanghai in 2000. Do you know if you can still buy them from anywhere outside of China?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I got them in a department store in Beijing's Wangfujing Street for about eight quid. That was a couple of years ago now, and I too would be interested in getting another pair. Their website seems to be down, and, worryingly, if you google 'Henkee Shoes' this very blog post comes in at number eight. An eBay search returns 0 items. Maybe New Balance have finally succeeded in shutting them down?
ReplyDeleteThat's what I was worried about... a couple of years ago you could google Henkee and find the online store, but now all I see are travel reviews of one particular store in China. Lame. I'll ask my friend who's working in China now and see if he knows what the status is. If I have any luck, I'll let you know.
ReplyDeleteHenkee.cn was definitely still up in June, although the frontpage was inactive.. Shall we start a campaign to Bring Back Henkee? We could modify New Balance trainers to resemble Henkees as a discreet form of protest. In the meantime don't throw away your old pair - we can use them to establish a Henkee History Museum.
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