BY Armin

When the Going Gets Taf, the Taf get Rebranded

While Foot Locker (despite its horribly crowded stores) and Champs are the most ubiquitous and “cool” sporting good stores across the nation, the lesser prominent The Athlete’s Foot has always felt, at least to me, like the ugly duckling of the industry. Never quite shiny, nor the music loud enough and, if I remember correctly, they had a dopey running track going around all their stores. In an effort to position itself better, The Athlete’s has been trying to implement “next generartion” stores that their franchises are encouraged to adopt. Coupled with a new retail presence is a new logo and a push to be known for the odd acronym of “TAF.”

I have always been a little yuck’d by their name, as when I hear athlete’s foot I think of stinky feet with nasty cuts and stuff, so the idea of buying footwear from a store named after a fungus has never been too enticing. Which is why I kind of understand the push to be colloquially known in a different way, but Taf (or taf, or TAF, or however they decide to spell it) just doesn’t sound cool enough to roll off the tongue like Champs or Foot Locker. But Taf it is.

The new logo is a direct evolution from the old one and, unfortunately, that is not completely a good thing. The old logo had clunky typography and that red stroke around the blue that just seemed more appropriate for your local, small town pharmacy. Keeping Hermes’ winged feet icon, the new logo is certainly bolder and tighter as a unit but all the elements feel completely different. The new winged foot is, in essence, a better drawing but the white stroke around it is too thin to make any difference when reduced and it’s uncomfortably positioned on top of the new Helvetica bold that just feels like it’s trying to escape. The good thing is that it now feels like a national, small pharmacy.

In another push to give Taf some more flair, they will be opening new kinds of stores called “tafUP”, where the UP stands for Urban Premium and will specialize in sports fashion and urban wear. As it stands now, I don’t think the logo can support that kind of positioning. The only redeeming thing I’ve seen so far in this new identity are the promotional images above, which feel refreshingly different from what Champs or Foot Locker are doing — and employ the super chunky Black Slabbath.

Thanks to Jon Selikoff and Jerry Kuyper for the tip.

\n\nWhile Foot Locker (despite its horribly crowded stores) and Champs are the most ubiquitous and \"cool\" sporting good stores across the nation, the lesser prominent The Athlete's Foot has always felt, at least to me, like the ugly duckling of the industry. Never quite shiny, nor the music loud enough and, if I remember correctly, they had a dopey running track going around all their stores. In an effort to position itself better, The Athlete's has been trying to implement \"next generartion\" stores that their franchises are encouraged to adopt. Coupled with a new retail presence is a new logo and a push to be known for the odd acronym of \"TAF.\"

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners