Tinker Hatfield On His Career at Nike and His New GOAT Jordans | WIRED25

(upbeat music)

It's great to be here.

We're gonna talk about so many topics,

but I think in order to understand

how you view the world, your perspective on design,

I think we have to go back to the beginning

and talk a little bit about

how you started as a designer.

You were an athlete and I think

if I want to back up this clip

because I think it's a really thoughtful approach

that you described in making Abstract.

So, let's watch this.

(seagulls squawking)

[Tinker] I probably think about feet a lot more

than the average person.

As a shoe designer I have to.

Our feet were made to walk and run,

and climb once in a while.

Bare feet can be great at all of that.

But what the modern athlete asks of their feet

is far beyond what they were originally designed to do.

My job is to think about how to make

these vary capable natural instruments perform even better.

You are an athlete and I think you bring

that perspective to your work.

How did that all start?

Well, I grew up in an athletic family,

in a community that had nothing going for it

other than sports.

So, it was sort of baked into the cake

from the very beginning.

My dad was a college athlete and,

I like to say that my dad was a coach, my mom was a coach,

and my brother became a coach

and my sister married a coach.

And I was just sort of you know,

kind of immersed in sports from the get-go.

So, I did not become a coach professionally

because I also saw how little money

any of them ever made, so. (chuckles)

But you, you actually trained under Bill Bowerman.

That's right, yes, yes.

I went to the University of Oregon,

which was really just 25 miles down the road from my house,

but I got recruited all over the country,

and every time I would go to a school on a recruiting visit

the question would always come up,

well, what do you wanna study?

And I really was not prepared for that question,

really hadn't thought a lot about it,

but architecture kept popping up into my head,

so I would just simply, in a naive way,

say, I wanna study architecture.

And in every instance, well, almost every instance,

the coach and the people who were interviewing me

about coming to their school

would simply say, No, you're not.

And I'm like, was curious of course,

why that wasn't gonna work, and they just would simply say

that no one's ever done a Division I sport here

at this school and been in architecture.

And, until I visited the University of Oregon,

which was the last recruiting visit,

the same question came up and the guy who invented,

I guess you could say jogging in America,

and was one of the more successful track and field coaches

in our entire history here as a country,

his name is Bill Bowerman,

and he also was the founder of Nike,

he asked that same question and I said,

with some trepidation, Architecture?

And he looked at me, he looked at me and he just,

he looked at me and he's like, That sounds petty tough.

And I mentioned that yeah, I've heard.

And he goes, I believe in you, though.

We want people here at the University of Oregon

that are well-rounded and go on to do amazing things

after they're finished with sports.

So he said I'm gonna give you your full ride

and I will help you get into the School of Architecture.

And I had no portfolio.

I had no business being in the School of Architecture.

But anyway I did, that's how I got started with design.

And you pursued track and field with Coach Bowerman.

He didn't like to be called coach.

He hated to be called coach

because he had a terrible coach when he was in college

and so he just didn't like the word,

he didn't like the reference,

so he said please call me Bill.

And, or, he had a more formal title,

which was, professor of competitive response.

(chuckles)

But Bill was easier to say.

I love that.

And your stories of him fitting you

with new designs on the fly are kind of amazing.

Yeah, yeah, I...

roughly partway through my second year

at the University of Oregon,

I had a traumatic injury while pole vaulting.

Basically, I had five surgeries and two years of rehab,

and as I came out of rehab,

I still had a couple of years of eligibility left

and he built me a special pair

of shoes that helped me get down the runway

without limping so much.

So, so I learned quite a bit about solving problems

and footwear design just by being an athlete

but also by being exposed to the tremendous,

innovative mind of Bill Baumerman

and what he was doing with athletes at the time.

Do you think, looking back at it now,

that the design bug bit you then,

is that connection with what Bill was doing and teaching you

in that active moment of training.

I think that's a fair, I think that's a fair,

Scott, I think that is a fair statement,

because even though I was in the school of architecture,

my very first professor in studio class

after a few weeks of being in the studio

came over to me and said, you know,

you should really think about,

I mean she knew I was on the track team,

she goes, you should really think about

just sticking with track.

(chuckling)

My very first studio class at the University of Oregon.

So clearly I was unprepared.

I didn't know too much about design to be honest,

but I did become one of Bill Bowerman's

favorite wear testers, partly because

I was a multi-sport athlete.

I wasn't just a pole vaulter,

I was a sprinter and a hurdler,

and when he would give me a pair of shoes to wear,

that were new and different and needed some testing,

I would go work out in that pair of shoes,

but I wouldn't just sort of turn them back in

and give him a little bit of a verbal response,

I drew pictures of the shoe,

and I drew other, some sort of thoughts,

sort of, I put my thoughts in a visual form

and actually helped maybe redesign it

a little bit, just naturally.

And he thought that was cool.

So I became one of his favorites.

You were good enough to let us in

to the Nike archives with you,

and I think we have a clip of that exact moment.

Oh yeah.

I had no idea how much work a discipline

like architecture would be.

The good news was that I found out that I could draw

and it was almost like accident,

that was a pretty big surprise.

This took a long time to draw, I'll tell you that.

Look at all that little,

that was with a rapidograph, those tiny marks.

During my college years in architecture school here,

I also was doing some work for Bill Bowerman.

We came across an actual drawing that I did

of an early design for one of

the very early Nike track spikes.

I just wouldn't just tell him what I thought.

I would also draw and write down

some of my, I guess you could say

interpretations of his design.

In this case, he asked me to try out some different

kinds of track spikes he was working with,

and they didn't work.

They actually unscrewed themselves

every time I would go and train in them.

Unbeknownst to all of us,

I was learning I guess how to design shoes

and solve problems for athletes right off the bat.

What was that like learning to draw

and express yourself and work out ideas

and solve problems on a piece of paper?

Well I think, it's a little bit

indicative there in that clip that I really wasn't,

I really wasn't focused on design or,

I mean I went through school and I got decent grades,

but I was really a jock, I was an athlete,

let's just face it, I played three sports

and I was expected to get a scholarship

in track and field in particular

I think they thought I would be an Olympian,

and so I was like, that was the big deal.

The injury in particular I think,

I think set in motion a different sort of train of thought

for me which was, well, looks like

I'm not going to be in the Olympics

because of this injury.

Looks like I'm not gonna be a pro anything,

and I better knuckle down.

And I had already shown

a little bit of promise in the design field.

So there was kind of an epiphany for me,

and I think it's tragic for a lot of athletes

who go through, and they think

they're gonna be professionals,

and they find out they're not quite good enough,

or they get injured.

And so...

It happened to me, right in the middle of college,

so I did knuckle down, and I found that

I actually enjoyed it, and I'll tell you,

in architecture school, I was way behind everybody,

there were young people from Hong Kong

and LA, and San Francisco, and New York City,

all in the architecture school there,

portfolios that thick, had already been working

for architects on the side,

and here I was, I mean I just didn't know anything.

So, anyway, the injury in some ways,

and then the relationship with Bill Bowerman,

watching him solve problems

and basically go through this innovation process.

His process was not quite so scientific.

It was kind of like, try an idea and test it out.

And see if it works.

So, that was cool, I learned a lot from that,

and it sort of inspired me to think more about

solving problems for athletes,

'cause I had my own problems as an athlete.

But then there were so many others in that same realm.

So, as I, I guess you could say,

stumbled through architecture school,

I got a little bit better, and by the time

I was finished, I don't know if I was

completely caught up, but pretty close.

And so, you get a job at Nike,

actually, as an architect.

Yeah, I was an architect.

I passed my exams, which are not that easy to do.

I passed, and I became a registered architect.

It takes about three years of interning,

if you've ever been in the field,

after school.

At that point, I got laid off in Eugene Oregon

and I practiced on my own.

I had my own practice and then it was

just tough to make ends meet.

There was a bit of a recession at the time.

And Nike called and thought

maybe I'd make a good corporate architect,

which sounds funny, for a company like Nike.

So, what being a corporate architect at Nike is,

designing stores, showrooms, office spaces,

and doing a lot of tenant improvements

but also some newer stuff out there in the real world.

So that's what happened.

I got hired for that.

How did you get tapped to make the leap into shoe design?

Well, you know, I was really,

all the people that I remember in the earlier years of Nike,

and we're talking about a company

that now has roughly 80,000 employees,

but at that particular time in 1980, and 1981,

locally in the Portland area,

there were about 200 employees.

And with maybe another couple of hundred

spread around the world.

I don't know, I guess Nike also was running into problems

because Reebok had come up with a new shoe for aerobics,

and Nike was cranking along, designing more

utilitarian kind of work for basketball,

running, and cleated sports,

and wasn't really paying attention

to the world beyond those hardcore sports.

So, Nike started to shrink, Reebok grew,

Adidas was sort of its own thing,

and they laid off 20% of the workforce,

and then started looking around

for better designers.

And I was asked to participate in a 24-hour design contest

at Nike, kind of in competition

with the other designers.

There were about 20 designers or so.

And I just worked all night,

came in with this giant presentation board.

What was the brief?

The brief was design an athletic shoe

that can also be used in every day life.

And I thought, well, that's kind of ambiguous.

You can just wear a running shoe in every day life.

So, I designed a shoe that you could run and walk in,

but also one that was specifically unique

to riding a motor scooter.

(laughing) As you do.

Anyway, and the reason I thought about that

was I was riding a motor scooter to work every day,

and I'd been to Europe, so I came in

with this unique perspective on it,

what would a shoe for motor scootering be,

but also would still work on the road

for running and walking?

Do you remember the solution?

Do you remember what it looked like?

I do remember what it looked like,

and it's in our archives.

The presentation board, I figured bigger was always better,

for some reason, and so it's about that size.

I had to bring it in about four pieces.

Put it all together and I was immediately hired

to be a shoe designer.

I was told I was no longer the corporate architect.

I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute,

am I gonna get paid more, or...

(chuckling) I remember the gentleman who was

giving me this news, he said, What are you making now?

and I said, I make like $1,200 a month.

And he's like, I think we can do a little better than that.

So, in many ways it was a very seamless transition.

The seamlessness really came

from all of that other experience,

you know, from University of Oregon,

and Bill Bowerman, and all of that.

So I was, again, wasn't quite realizing

that I was preloaded to go ahead

and be a good shoe designer.

So, my very next project, or actually,

my first project, was that shoe at the top of this drawing.

The visible air shoe, which was inspired by the building

on the left side of that drawing.

[Scott] I think we have a clip of that, actually.

[Tinker] Is there?

[Scott] There is.

Look at this. Ooh, sheesh.

This is high-tech.

One of my very first projects was the Air Max.

I'd felt like this was an opportunity

to think was differently.

Nike was encapsulating gas inside the urethane airpipe

for a cushioning component.

I thought, let's make the bag a little wider

and make sure it's stable,

but then let's go ahead and move

part of the midsole, so you actually see it.

I had gone to Paris, I'd seen a very controversial

and loved, or mostly hated building.

The Georges Pompidou center, designed by Renzo Piano.

It was a building with all of the inside mechanics

on the outside of the building.

They painted everything in primary colors

just to piss off people even more.

I was very much inspired by that building

and that's how I ended up

exposing these airbags in the Air Max.

After those sketches came out,

it was widely discussed that I had pushed it too far.

People were trying to get us fired,

they were screaming like there was no way in the world

that we could ever sell a shoe

with an exposed airbag that looked fragile,

like it could be punctured.

The Air Max I took off.

It was an amazing success story

for, not just Nike, but all footwear design.

Just going for, taking a risk, for a good reason,

which was to tell a story

and to also make a better product.

I think it's amazing you almost got fired for this design.

I'm sure some of you have almost been fired

for some of your best work. (chuckling)

You know I think, and I run into this problem

even today, after all these years

of, I guess you could say, some success in design,

that, and I was actually asked

by a group of designers, just a few months ago,

Well, how do you ever get to the point

where people in sales, and marketing,

and merchandising ever trust you as a designer?

and my response was immediate

and, I guess you could say, emphatic.

And that response was, they will never trust you.

And that's true, to me, at least, that's my experience.

Even though, you could say, a lot of shoes have been sold

based off of some of my ideas.

But they still don't trust me.

And I wouldn't either, quite frankly.

My wife doesn't trust me.

Anyway, the reality is when you're

in the disruptive, trying to do new,

and different, and better zone of creative work,

it makes people nervous.

It makes them frightened.

And this shoe almost didn't get made

because there were a number of people at Nike

that just simply felt like it wouldn't sell, first of all,

and if it did sell, people would puncture the bags,

and, I mean, there were five or six different reasons

why that project almost didn't happen.

The color was one of the, right?

Yeah, this is like, give me a break.

I wanted to do red, which, I'm like, what's wrong with red?

Well, at that point in time, this was roughly 1986,

most running shoes were white, and maybe

blue or white and gray, or white and black,

and bright colors just really weren't part of the scene.

Scandalous.

Scandalous.

I remember a shoe review company,

in Great Britain, that just went crazy

against this abomination,

that you would put this screaming red color

all over the shoe, and people are gonna freak out,

whatever, anyway, I chose the color red,

not because I just wanted to shake it up,

but I felt like the midsole,

which had the big visible airbag in it, needed a frame.

Like a painting, a frame.

And in this case, the frame was what we call a rand,

and it wraps all the way around the top of the midsole.

And I always felt like that was a good choice,

to sort of get a little bit of attention

from a distance, but it really was

to frame what was below it.

I love this design, because I find it a thing of beauty.

But the technology built-in,

and the decision to expose that airbag,

that was really about, just a bit F.U. moment,

sort of a Renzo Piano kind of move?

Well there was definitely some of that,

and I mean, that's part of my nature

is to push and be disruptive, but hopefully,

usually for a good reason.

And in this particular case,

my comment to all the other designers,

and all the marketing and merchandising people

at Nike at the time was that

we were actually doing air shoes,

but what the heck is an air shoe?

I mean, what is air?

I mean, air, we breathe air,

air is everywhere, and air is made up

of certain combination of gasses.

In the context of having air in a shoe,

it was no big deal, because it was not

describable or visible or anything.

So my contribution to this part of Nike's era,

the era of the first real big growth pattern for Nike,

was to just simply help tell the story.

So, we made the bag bigger, which was better,

because the cushioning was better,

and which pushed the bag out toward the edges of the shoe,

cut the hole, or molded the hole,

and it was really a difficult thing to do at the time,

but I think maybe this is what we do.

I think everybody in this room

is probably involved in storytelling.

And I often say, I'm not really a designer,

I'm a storyteller.

So, I was thinking through how the shoe

was gonna be a better shoe,

from a cushioning perspective,

but the fact that the airbag itself was exposed,

and therefore became part of the story,

and was more understandable,

and more recognizable, and of course,

in this case, it was innovative.

So, it seemed natural to me, to do stuff like that.

And then, about the same time, the same era there,

you're working with Michael Jordan,

and changing the entire paradigm of design,

around a basketball shoe.

That's true that I actually,

as I was working on this, I'm like,

why don't we go ahead and start to put

visible airbags on some other shoes?

So, not quite simultaneously,

but right after this one really got started,

and by the way, the developer on this shoe,

and also the original Air Trainer,

the very first cross-training shoe, which I designed,

and also the Air Revolution which is a basketball shoe,

the developer on those shoes

was none other than Mark Parker.

And if you know anything about Nike,

you know he's not just our CEO,

but he's chairman of the board,

and he came up, he's done alright for himself, I'd say.

The two of you guys, jeez.

What's going on here?

We were working on all these shoes,

and I was, again, the thought provoker

and the designer, and drew up all these pictures,

but really, it takes, as we all know,

it takes a lot of people to create

something new, and different, and better.

So, there were several shoes in this Air Pack.

The Air Trainer, the original Air Max,

the Air Revolution, there was a shoe called

the Air Safari, which we might talk about

a little bit later, I don't know,

but then there was an Air Sock,

which was a sock-like shoe, and then

while I was finishing that up,

the word was that Michael Jordan

wanted to leave Nike because he broke his foot

in a pair of Nikes, roughly at that time,

and wanted to leave.

He just had had it, and so, I was asked

kind of on the heels of working on that stuff

to start the original, the Air Jordan 3.

So, that's how I got thrown into

the world of basketball high-end, crazy stuff.

And MJ was initially a little bit skeptical

about this new process, and working with you.

Well, yeah.

He was skeptical, he's one of those people

that you really need to prove yourself

before he'd even hardly talk to you,

and so, I was given this project

with a very short lead time,

to get to finish the Air Jordan 3,

and so I jumped on a plane, I went to visit him.

The meeting went well, but, you know,

you could tell he was very reserved.

So, I met with him, came back,

worked on the shoe, we had people going back and forth

to Asia, to Korea, to prototype, in record-time.

But in the meanwhile, he had already

made the decision to leave Nike.

There was this big meeting, in Southern California,

it was in Orange County, basically Laguna,

at a hotel, Laguna Beach.

It was really a meeting with Phil Knight

and a couple of sports marketing people

and Michael Jordan's parents, and Michael Jordan.

Well, Michael Jordan didn't show up for four hours.

Phil Knight's in the room, too.

So, Phil Knight, I couldn't believe

he waited there for four hours.

He's the guy, he's like, head of the whole place.

He's, you know, for four hours, and he's nervous.

He thinks that Michael Jordan's gonna come in

and simply say, it's over, done,

and he thinks that's the end of Nike.

I mean, like, over. Lights out.

Lights out.

We have too much money, and we have too much time

invested in this guy, blah blah blah,

and he is super, super stressed out.

He's in that room for four hours.

I'm sitting there, twiddling my thumbs.

I'm not quite as nervous as him,

because I just was focused on...

If Michael showed up on the presentation

I was about to give.

So, unbeknownst to Phil Knight

and a few other people in the room,

I actually had this beautiful prototype

of the Air Jordan 3 underneath a black shroud,

or a tablecloth, basically.

And four hours later, Michael Jordan comes into the room.

And he was in a bad mood.

He had already told some people

that he was gonna join them, and leave Nike,

and he came in and he goes Show me what you got.

And he had been waiting there four hours.

He comes in, and he sits down,

and Phil Knight was the first one to speak.

And I thought Phil Knight was gonna give

this great speech about why he should stay at Nike.

This is exactly what he said.

This is Phil Knight speaking to Michael Jordan,

in front of Michael's parents,

and some other folks in the room.

Glad you finally made it, thank you.

Take it away, Tinker.

(everyone laughing)

He had nothing.

He was flummoxed.

And I'm like...

I was waiting for, you know,

a good five or 10 minutes of just really great...

I guess you could say, a positive and flowery speech

about how he should stay at Nike,

but no, he goes, Take it away.

And, so, I did.

I took it away.

I started reminding Michael of the meeting we had,

and I said, I'm gonna cut to the chase.

We think we've done a product

that's unlike any other basketball shoe ever before.

And, I unveiled it.

In 15 minutes, he was laughing.

He was holding the shoe, he's asking questions,

he's like, (gibberish)

and then the meeting's over, and obviously he stayed.

He stayed with us.

So, Phil Knight thinks I saved Nike that day.

And I'm cool with that.

(everyone laughing)

I'm cool with that.

(crowd applauding)

But...

But, I have to, in full disclosure,

tell you that a couple years later,

I asked Michael, I said So, you know that crazy meeting,

when you were ready to bolt,

and then you came in, and you saw the Air Jordan 3,

and you just got excited, and then

you re-signed, I said, Was it really the shoe?

And he goes, Well, the show was amazing,

I didn't realize you guys could do that,

that quickly, and blah blah blah,

and it was amazing.

And he said, what also happened that day,

after the meeting, was that,

as he left that conference room,

and he was out in the parking lot,

and his dad caught up with him.

And his dad's like, 5'11''

and, this, you could just imagine

Michael Jordan telling me this story.

So, he said, his dad caught up with him

and chewed him out.

And, you know, I can just envision it.

Son, don't you ever disrespect your mother

and Phil Knight like that again.

(everyone laughing)

And, you know, as an authority figure

that much shorter.

And, Michael said that, Well, Dad,

what should I do, then?

What should I do?

Do you think I should stay with Nike, or go...

And he goes, Son, you just saw what they can do.

Plus, it's guaranteed money.

If you go out with these other guys,

there are a lot of unknowns.

I think you should stay.

So, Michael Jordan telling me this story.

As soon as he finished, I said,

You know, if you and I just keep this part to ourselves,

that'd be so awesome.

So it wouldn't get back to Phil Knight.

But, anyway, those are moments that are hard to forget.

I mean, they're still sort of burned in.

Thank you for sharing.

That's an amazing story.

Yeah, it was pretty funny.

This weekend being the celebration

of 25 years of Wired, we have to give you thanks,

because you and Mark let us into

the process of creating this shoe.

I'm actually wearing some right now,

just tighten up my laces right there.

Like, oh.

[Tinker] Pretty snazzy.

Tell us about this.

This is the future.

Well, it is the future from a very important perspective,

which is, here we are, in the hotbed of innovation,

and futuristic thinking, here in the Bay Area.

So, there are a lot of amazing things going on

that you're either involved with,

or writing about, in some way involved.

So...

My sense about the future is that there are

a lot of great things going on

including the notion that products that recognize you

and adapt to who you are, and what you do,

and we've seen some examples of that

in other industries.

Well, from a footwear perspective,

if you think about people and traditional footwear,

kind of in the bigger scheme of things,

there will always be this cool, hand-made,

lace-up type shoes that are objects of desire,

because they're handcrafted, and they're maybe

interesting-looking and beautiful,

but there's this other side to the future of footwear

which really had a lot to do with problem-solving,

and a big problem for a surprisingly large

part of our population is finger dexterity.

So, I'm talking about people who have been injured,

people who have Parkinson's, diabetes,

really bad osteoarthritis...

There are actually a number of people,

especially as people get a little bit older,

but it's not just old people,

lots of young people, they cannot tie their shoes.

In fact, they struggle to get into shoes of any kind.

So, part of, if you think of that

from a designer's perspective,

that's a pretty good, big problem

to try and solve.

There's another part, though, to this

which is, athletes.

Athletes are taught to,

at least if you're in a sport

where you wear shoes all the time,

they're taught to snug up their shoes,

keep them tight, no slop, make sure you can move quick,

and you're not sliding around,

and you'll be a little quicker, a little faster,

and play better in your, whatever, sport.

And what that has, if you do any kind of

foot morphology research, and look at the feet

of athletes who have been playing sports

for a long time, their feet are,

after 10, 15 years, are ruined.

They wear their shoes too tight,

the blood never really flows to the right places,

their toes get misshapen.

It's a problem.

It's a problem, and people who have foot problems

don't perform as well,

and their careers are shortened.

So, another reason to do a product like this

is just, basically, to think about

adaptability from the point of view

that if you're in a sport, let's just choose basketball,

there's a certain amount of time

during a basketball game, when you're not doing anything.

You might be sitting on the bench,

you might be standing around,

during a free throw or a time-out,

or maybe...

There's the changing of the quarter, or half-time, whatever.

Well, nobody unlaces their shoes.

It's laborious and it takes time,

and they have a certain way their lace their shoes,

so for years, and years, and years,

people perform in products,

hockey players, their feet are ruined.

Their shoes are so tight,

and downhill skiers, same thing.

Basketball players, football players,

people in rugby and field hockey,

I mean, it's universal.

So, why wouldn't we design shoes

that automatically adapt to the shape of your foot,

via sensors, and a little motor

and some careful cabling,

so that when you put your foot in the shoe,

it automatically senses the shape of your foot

and becomes the right shape, according to your foot,

and according to the sport you're in?

But, what if, and then, what if the shoe

were to sense when you are not moving,

and then loosens back up again?

Allows the blood to flow back to your toes

and your feet, and the peripheral nerves

can be damaged by shoes that are too tight.

It's a big problem, really.

So, the future of shoes, on the one hand,

it's still gonna be about beautiful,

handmade, cool retros, and also Italian cool stuff,

whatever, that will still be a big deal.

But for really hardcore sports,

in my opinion, the adaptability

in smart shoes, I guess you could say,

will be a big effort on our part,

and we have, Nike...

In our planning,

we intend to make this a big deal.

So, sometime in the near future,

and I can't tell you exactly when,

[Scott] Please, Tinker.

But, or Sarah, who's a PR person here,

who's managing me, and she has a dart gun,

and if I say the wrong thing, (imitates dart gun)

right there, and I'm out.

But, sometime in the near future,

we're gonna see this adaptable technology

at the highest level of sports.

And basketball will be the first sport.

Well, I won't get you in trouble with Sarah,

but I have to ask what is going on here?

Because these are amazing.

This is a Jordan running shoe?

This is a Jordan running shoe.

And it's not out yet.

And I wore it...

Lucky you.

Because I know some folks.

(everyone laughing)

I have a few ins.

I designed this shoe, not that long ago,

but it's about ready to be commercialized,

it's been shown to the sales force,

it's been shown to retailers,

it's been on the internet, a little bit.

This is a running shoe for people who don't like to run.

(audience laughing)

Amen.

Here we go.

Now, I know there's some good runners in here,

people who love to go out and run,

and I think that's great, and by the way,

Nike will continue to design products

for all you running nerds.

No, I'm just joking about the running part.

(everyone laughing)

Uh, no, I kid, I kid.

The reality is that when you think about running,

and running shoes, there are people

that love to do that,

but most athletes play sports for fun,

they also play sports because they're trying to

maybe become pros, or just excel

at the highest level they can,

and they don't really like to run too much,

but they have to.

They have to run, to be aerobically fit

for their, whatever sport.

So, this shoe is designed for them.

And it has extra stability in this nylon frame,

which is kind of a latticework type frame.

It also, if you think about,

let's just use an american football player as an example.

They have to run, even if you way 240 pounds

and you're a linebacker, you still have to go out and run,

maybe some of your training.

You're not gonna run that fast,

'cause you're, you don't like it,

and you're just big and powerful,

and running is just a laborious thing.

So, this shoe has some fins that come out of the back

and the slower you run, the further back

you always land on your heel.

The faster you run, the more you land on your forefoot.

And then, there's a big range in between.

So this shoe is designed for those athletes

who don't really like to go out and run,

so they don't run that fast, but they get their mileage in

'cause they're supposed to,

but it actually works better as you run a little bit slower,

in terms of training.

Having said that, it's also a speed shoe

and has extra stability, so that you can train in it

and go do a cone drill, or as I like to put it,

if I'm running, and I'm running through a park,

and I'm in my neighborhood, and somebody sees me,

I might have a frisbee thrown my direction,

or a football, and my natural inclination

is to chase that sucker down.

I'm gonna get that frisbee.

And a lot of running shoes, they're not really

built for that, for that quick cutting,

and accelerating, and these shoes are.

So, we're just trying to think about

the way people really, a lot of people

the way they actually perform in certain products.

So, this shoe is actually a Jordan running shoe,

and I don't think it has an official name yet,

but I'm calling it the goat running shoe.

You know what that means?

Greatest of all time.

Greatest of all time, that would be Michael Jordan.

But, this is really meant to essentially

position the Jordan business in a,

kind of, get outside of just basketball,

and get more standard training

into a huge category, with a lot of people,

from a different perspective.

So, here's Nike on one side,

I see some Nike shoes here, and other

really nice running shoes from other companies.

And that message, the messaging is usually,

for Nike, there is no finish line.

I love to run, I get up in the morning,

and I run, I'm looking, my splits,

it's my thing, blah blah blah,

and so, Jordan, Jordan running,

is for runners who don't like it.

For runners who don't like to run.

That would be, again, people like me.

Well, I would argue there is another goat.

You're a great leader, and a great inspiration

to so many of us, thank you Tinker.

Of course.

This was amazing.

Thank you.

(crowd cheering)