Stores expect lines (for LeBron James sneakers)

ESPN ^ | 12-18-2003 | AP

[the_devils_advocate_666]

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- In his school, LeBron James wore the signature shoe of his idol, Michael Jordan.

Now fans can wear James' shoe.

Nike launches the product endorsed by the Cleveland Cavaliers' rookie Saturday, and store managers nationwide are expecting teenagers to sleep outside, just as they did for debuts of the Air Jordan line.

James' shoe launches in 2,225 stores nationwide, starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, when New York City's Foot Action opens its doors.

"You could call it the Harry Potter of sneakers," said Jamelah Leddy, a sportswear analyst with McAdams Wright Ragen Inc. in Seattle.

The hype has spilled from TV talk shows into Web sites, including e-Bay, where 54 of the embargoed $110 pairs are selling and bids approachd $200. In November, when Portland's Niketown offered a limited edition of the shoe, the sneaker sold in 18 minutes, leaving a line of teens still waiting outside.

What's the appeal? "Obviously, it's LeBron," 15-year-old Peter Koehler explained. "People will buy Jordan even if they don't like the way it looks -- because it's Jordan."

It's an insight clear to those who labor behind the locked doors of Nike's "Innovation Kitchen" in Portland. In a room stuffed with easels, designers struggled to graft James' star appeal onto a sneaker.

"This is a watershed project," said Tinker Hatfield, Nike's chief designer, who created the Air Jordan prototype two decades ago. "We're taking everything we learned and applying it."

Under Hatfield's direction, each Air Jordan prototype shoe mirrored a different aspect of his personality. The panther he loved, the fighter jet he admired, even his Ferrari, all became design elements, translated into color schemes and lines.

First launched in 1984, Air Jordans became so popular that by 1998, Nike agreed to move launch dates to Saturdays so students wouldn't skip school to line up at stores.

When James signed a reported $90 million endorsement deal with Nike, it ended a bidding war that included Adidas and Reebok.

But Nike wasn't waiting for the deal to be signed to try to figure out how James' personality could be sewn into a shoe. At the time, James was driving a $50,000 Hummer, which he said was a birthday gift from his mother.

"The original Hummer is pure utilitarianism. Pure function. No luxury -- like his game," said 35-year-old Eric Avar, one of the two other designers.

The designers made more than 100 sketches, producing a design in which the Hummer appears as the metaphor throughout _ from the metallic lace holes, which mirror the shape of the vehicle's wheel, to the chevron sole, a reference to the Hummer's tire tread.

But after all that work and attention to detail, it really doesn't matter what the shoe looks like, analysts and basketball fans say.

"Everything that has to do with LeBron is popular -- it's not just the shoe," said Romain Rousseau, co-founder of Basket-ball.com. He says the player's name has been the most popular key word on his Web site since the NBA draft.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

I just don't get it...

[Phantom Lord]

How many of those lining up for these shoes do not have health insurance and demand that taxpayers buy it for them? Instead of wasting money on items such as these sneakers they should be purchasing things that are actually beneficial to them. Such as insurance, an IRA, a savings account, etc...

But no, that would require self discipline and putting off immediate gratification for future financial security.

[martin_fierro]

Modeled after a Hummer?

[Landru]

"I just don't get it..."

If that's not a "Quote of the Day" candidate I don't know what is.

Simple, concise, precise & as far as this article goes?

...says it all. {g}

[EggsAckley]

Years ago I accompanied my best friend and her 9 y.o. grandson on a mission to find him some new sneakers. Being on a tight budget, she certainly couldn't afford the pricey "endorsed" shoes, and we found a perfectly good pair, for a reasonable price. Her grandson found a pair with a 49ers logo on them, triple the price, and demanded that we buy THOSE. We felt so bad leaving the store with the less pricey shoes and him in tears.

I find it an abomination that children are utilized and abused by these 'endorsers.' I've never purchased anything with a sports logo on it, and I never will.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

And they're ugly, to boot (hey, that's kind of a pun)

[TheBigB]

And in other news, the Cavaliers themselves are 6-19.

[uncbob]

If this doesn't prove there ain't no recession I don't know what does

[FBD]

$90,000,000.00 friggin dollars to some already overpaid NBA knuckledragger, for an "endorsement"???

Now that, I *don't get*

Meanwhile, back at the sweatshop in Communist China:
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/10/8/213305

Another case of a capitolist willing to sell the rope to his hangman, 'eh Lan?

Communist China could drop this country without firing a shot. All it would have to do; is stop producing our shoes.
Now how d'ya spose the boyz in the hood would like that?

[cinFLA]

Ask Nike where their Kobe commercials are?

[FBD]

http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/10/8/213305
Some expenses in China:
• A quart of milk: $0.82 – over three hours’ wages
• A liter of orange juice: $1.45 – nearly six hours’ wages
• A "Big Mac" with fries and a Coke: $1.93 – nearly eight hours’ wages
• A movie: $1.81 – over seven hours’ wages
• A pair of Nike sneakers: $81.93 – nearly five and a half weeks’ wages
• Men’s new shoes: $24.10 – over 96 hours’ wages
• One man’s T-shirt: $2.41 – over nine hours’ wages
• A cheap, plain woman’s two-piece outfit: $12.05 – 48 hours’ wages

According to Business Week magazine, which investigated the Chun Si Enterprise handbag factory in Zhongshan in southern China, abuses included paying workers $22 a month while charging them $15 a month for food and shoddy lodging, locking their 900 workers in a walled factory compound except for the one hour a day they were allowed for meals, making them work 14-hour days without paying overtime, allowing guards to punch and hit workers for talking back to managers or even for walking too fast, and fining workers as much as $1 for offenses such as taking too long in the bathroom.

The factory also supplied workers with illegal documents that made it impossible for them to flee the factory, because if caught they would be jailed for not having the proper credentials – internal passports required in the communist state. Workers thus risked arrest if they ventured out of the factory’s neighborhood.

Workers also were forced to help pay for a phony factory setup to fool auditors hired by U.S. firms such as Wal-Mart and Payless Shoes to check on conditions at Chun Si, which made Kathy Lee Gifford handbags and Payless shoes.

Meanwhile, back at Beaverton;
$90,000,000 dollars, for an ENDORSEMENT...

[Landru]

"$90,000,000.00 friggin dollars to some already overpaid NBA knuckledragger, for an "endorsement"??? Now that, I *don't get*"

HA!!
I didn't think you would; hence, the ping.
So I gotta wonder, how many AC *systems* would have to be installed to equal the $90x10⁶ figure, hmmm?

"Meanwhile, back at the sweatshop in Communist China: http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/10/8/213305"

Yup, but in spite of this stuff not being reported on here on the Lamestream Nitwitworks?
Ponder this:

Imagine you are one the the "heads of state" presiding over a regime controlling the planet's last hard core communist totalitarian nation; and, you're faced with [literally] hordes of your citizens who're getting increasingly bold in their efforts demanding freedom and democracy?
Y'know the kind of "freedom(s)" they watch others enjoying in other nations around the globe on their *newly* acquired televisions via satellite??

In fact, these hordes are getting so unruly, they're taking their protests to national landmark sites like, Tiananman Square & the same satellite televison bringing the chinese people visions of freedom are now being used to carry images of *how* your regime enforces it's authority to quash these protests by your people & that's not good for your PR; so, this is serious business, these freedom movement(s).

Might you not devise a [clever] plan whereby you'd invite the planet's #1 free market nation's Capitalists to come over and set up their shops in your nation *just* to work your people [virtually] into the ground; and, while you took your humongous *cut*?
The people who were once causing you such a PITA & threat to your power would come to appreciate your vesion of Caitalists & the evil they represent?
How sweet would that be?

Think about it.

Can't be too much longer before the hordes who're staffing these overcrowded capitalist based chinese sweatshops will get sick of the filth & really develope a hatred for capitalism; &, more importantly, for those who'd embrace capitalism.
One thing's for certain, the chinese workers sure in the hell aren't gonna "unionize," are they?

I'd have to say person or persons clever enough to devise such a diabolical scheme using man's hunger for "freedom" as the carrot in such a horrible way possessed some mighty amazing insights into human nature, psychology, sociology & of course, political science.
In fact, coincidentally the exact same qualities possessed & employed by the modern day Democratic Party right here in The United States of America, eh?? :o)

American Liberal-Socialists would just love to "break" our capitalist system bad enough there'd be no need to trick us into accepting their socialism, we'd ask 'em for it.

"Another case of a capitoalist willing to sell the rope to his hangman, 'eh Lan?"

Yup.
You got it.

"Communist China could drop this country without firing a shot. All it would have to do; is stop producing our shoes."

HA!!
Yea, or keep a firm ironfisted control over their own country; so, it's not as if this mo is exactly "new" since it has been used by leftists for a very, long time.

"Now how d'ya spose the boyz in the hood would like that?"

I don't suppose they would.

...ummmm, think they'd riot? :o)

[xrp]

Ask Nike where their Kobe commercials are?

Why are you racist against Kobe?

[winodog]

That third pick looks like the shoes my mom use to polish for work everyday when she spent 40+ years as a RN.
I remember she had to have a spotless white uniform and a hat as well. Although the hat had a black band, but everything else was perfect, starched, crisp and white as snow.Of course the air force taught her how to be a nurse so that might have something to do with it.

[scholar]

How many of those lining up for these shoes do not have health insurance and demand that taxpayers buy it for them?

YES--in the healthcare facility where I work, the Medicaid recipients wear better clothes and shoes than I can afford. Isn't that interesting?

[scholar]

I am seriously pissed that no matter where I go or what I buy, it seems to be made in China. I just love supporting our enemies!

BTW, furface says Hi.

[FBD]

(re: Chinese labor camps making our goods)
Landru:

"Ponder this:

Imagine you are one the the "heads of state" presiding over a regime controlling the planet's last hard core communist totalitarian nation; and, you're faced with [literally] hordes of your citizens who're getting increasingly bold in their efforts demanding freedom and democracy?
Y'know the kind of "freedom(s)" they watch others enjoying in other nations around the globe on their *newly* acquired televisions via satellite??

In fact, these hordes are getting so unruly, they're taking their protests to national landmark sites like, Tiananman Square & the same satellite televison bringing the chinese people visions of freedom are now being used to carry images of *how* your regime enforces it's authority to quash these protests by your people & that's not good for your PR; so, this is serious business, these freedom movement(s).

Might you not devise a [clever] plan whereby you'd invite the planet's #1 free market nation's Capitalists to come over and set up their shops in your nation *just* to work your people [virtually] into the ground; and, while you took your humongous *cut*?
The people who were once causing you such a PITA & threat to your power would come to appreciate your vesion of Caitalists & the evil they represent?
How sweet would that be?

Think about it.

Can't be too much longer before the hordes who're staffing these overcrowded capitalist based chinese sweatshops will get sick of the filth & really develope a hatred for capitalism; &, more importantly, for those who'd embrace capitalism.
One thing's for certain, the chinese workers sure in the hell aren't gonna "unionize," are they?

I'd have to say person or persons clever enough to devise such a diabolical scheme using man's hunger for "freedom" as the carrot in such a horrible way possessed some mighty amazing insights into human nature, psychology, sociology & of course, political science.
In fact, coincidentally the exact same qualities possessed & employed by the modern day Democratic Party right here in The United States of America, eh?? :o)

American Liberal-Socialists would just love to "break" our capitalist system bad enough there'd be no need to trick us into accepting their socialism, we'd ask 'em for it."
.......................................................
Damn, Landru...It's diabolical to say the least...
You know Lan, I recall a conversation we had awhile back, about this subject. At the time, I didn't fully understand your position on all of this.
I guess I was just a little thick (as a brick) about it, but NOW, a little light just went off...
and now...*I get it!*

Ummmm, do I get a prize, or sumpin?

[Landru]

"Ummmm, do I get a prize, or sumpin?"

HA!!
Well you sure do.
How about a thorough understanding what the meaning of, "A capitalist would sell the rope to the hangman that he will be hanged with." in *action*?

...would that do? :o)

[cyborg]

Wow so next time I see people lining up for concert tickets, hockey tickets, and world series pix I should ask myself the same question. BUT I suppose in this case it's okay.

[cyborg]

People waste money on crap all the time. Someone buying Lebron sneakers is doing no worse than the guy who bought the Cubs baseball for $100,000 only to destroy it. I bought a $100 sneakers one year, and it lasted me almost seven years (when I worked on my feet 15 hrs day).

Most people are not thinking long term. I bet if you asked the average guy on the street what he/she has saved, it'd be nothing (credit card bills besides).