This article tells how one young, reckless guy has changed the sports business.
Air Jordan, also called Jordans, is a name brand developed by the American company Nike in honor of the legendary basketball player Michael Jordan. The main focus of the brand is high-quality, expensive basketball shoes and apparel. The brand also produces shoes for boxers, professional wrestlers, and American soccer players.
With its many shoe models, including air jordans sneakers, Nike is a multibillion-dollar corporation that has completely conquered the market for sporting goods. However, over 30 years ago, things didn’t go as smoothly for the corporation as they do now. The competitors were constantly pressing, so the company’s management took the course to develop their brand.
The first thing that came to their mind was to sign contracts with young athletes with great potential to build a new Nike around their success. The Oregon brand executives accepted the plan, so the search began for the most interesting and promising athletes who could attract customers’ attention with their sports results. One of the first to be found was Michael Jordan, born in 1963, who was attending the University of North Carolina and was planning to enter the NBA draft.
Everyone liked Michael, but Nike had a small problem: Jordan knew he was one of the strongest players of his year, so he did not want to cooperate with Nike. The corporation was not as popular in the basketball segment as Adidas or Converse, and besides, Michael played in sneakers of those brands, so he wanted to sign a contract with them.
This fact did not stop Nike managers, and they began to push for meetings with Michael to tell him what they were willing to do for him. It even got to the point that Nike persuaded his parents to try to change the young star’s mind. That, and the rejection of Adidas and Converse, who considered the deal with Jordan unpromising and stupid, helped persuade him to fly to Nike’s office, which was in Oregon.
Nike executives were not stingy and wrote Michael a check for $2,500,000, which was an exorbitant sum even for top athletes at the time, and they gave this money to a young man who had not even played a single game in the NBA. On top of that, Jordan was getting a percentage of sales — in short, it was one of the most lucrative contracts at the time. Mass media exploded, which benefited Nike — free publicity is the best commerce engine. Thanks to this hype, the sneakers’ release was very successful, and those wishing to buy them began to line up.
After that, the NBA inadvertently helped Nike advertise the novelty. According to the league’s rules, basketball players couldn’t play in these sneakers because they — the sneakers — were not white, so every appearance of Michael on the floor in the new Air Jordan I was accompanied by a penalty of $ 5,000. That fine suited Nike, so they paid the fine and didn’t even try to contest it because all that noise only popularized Jordan’s sneakers.
Then, Nike’s creatives got the idea to create a commercial. Its basic idea was something to the effect that the NBA forbids Michael to wear these sneakers, but you can’t prevent people, including Michael, from wearing them. This commercial, combined with other promotions and Jordan’s great play, increased the firm’s revenue from $850,000,000 to $5,000,000,000 a year.
Everyone knew then or could guess that this was just the beginning of a long and successful partnership that would change everything in the sporting goods market.
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Eight Best Colors of Air Jordan I
Let’s take a look at some colors of Air Jordan I.
- Chiacgo The very first colorway of Michael’s sneakers that he thought was too diabolical.
- Bred. The classic colorway has become the brand’s calling card. These sneakers received a lot of penalties from the NBA, which helped the brand promote its new model.
- Carolina. This colorway is dedicated to Michael Jordan’s home college. It was the University of North Carolina that has made Michael a great player. Carolina matches the colors of the university’s basketball jerseys.
- Lainey. Michael hasn’t forgotten about his high school, Emsley Laney, and dedicated the colors specifically to it.
- SB. The model is made very interestingly — two sneakers painted in different colors, one red, the other blue, but both covered in white paint. Over time and as you wear them, the white paint wears off, and the underlying color becomes visible. When one wears sneakers for skateboarding, this happens faster. After buying this model, some sneakerheads purposely wipe the sneakers to achieve the desired effect. Previously, Martin Margiela and Converse used this technology.
- Broken Butt. On August 25, 1985, Michael Jordan was invited to an exhibition match held in Trieste. The match’s highlight was Michael Jordan’s dunk, after which the ring just shattered into pieces and the match was stopped. The sneakers have been designed and released in honor of this match.
- Old Love New Love Pack. One of the most interesting packs from Michael. Through it, he remembers his old love and shows the new one that has completely consumed him. The old love is basketball, and the model dedicated to basketball is done in a classic red and black combination. The new love is motorcycles. After graduating, Michael began buying many indoor bikes for his collection. Michael’s favorite motorcycle is painted yellow, so the sneakers were also made in yellow, but they didn’t forget the signature black accent either.
- Forbidden. This colorway reminds us of when the league fined Michael for the “wrong” sneakers. Instead of the classic Jumpman’s logo on the heel, crosses overlap the original Jordan Brand logo.
Conclusion
Michael Jordan is a basketball legend, and when you buy sneakers dedicated to him, you are buying a piece of history.
