Misplaced Priorities?
While visiting Plastic.com today, I came across an article from Slate which discusses why Nike just gave Lebron James a $90-million shoe contract:
The "marquee" basketball category--hoops shoes that sell for more than $100 at retail--is home to perhaps the sexiest battle in all of footwear. It brings massive margins, approaching 50 percent, as these cheaply made shoes fetch prices up to $140. (Nike tried to get $200 for a recent Air Jordan model, but kids balked at forking out that much.)
...
Marquee shoes are aimed at black, inner-city kids who are willing to spend huge amounts of money every time the new, hot shoe hits shelves. An Adidas exec once told me that "the day after payday" is the biggest sales day in this category (the way he said it, you could tell that exploitation was not really an issue for him).
I still remember being ridiculed in junior high because of my cheap Payless sneakers. Most of those kids who tormented me were black and wore really expensive Nike shoes as well as those LA Gear sneakers with blinking LED's, which seem so passe now. However, they didn't seem at all embarassed to be poor enough to qualify for free school lunch. I, on the other hand, found the prospect of swiping my free lunch card every day much more stigmatizing than wearing shitty shoes.
I also remember reading studies that show black Americans as a group spend a higher percentage of their income on entertainment, clothing, and even hairstyling than every other ethnic group in this country, which is unfathomable to me since the majority of welfare recipients are black. It's a free country and how they spend their hard-earned money is none of my business, but I still can't help but think that this misallocation of resources is unwise and wrong. Why waste so much money just to keep up appearances?
While visiting Plastic.com today, I came across an article from Slate which discusses why Nike just gave Lebron James a $90-million shoe contract:
The "marquee" basketball category--hoops shoes that sell for more than $100 at retail--is home to perhaps the sexiest battle in all of footwear. It brings massive margins, approaching 50 percent, as these cheaply made shoes fetch prices up to $140. (Nike tried to get $200 for a recent Air Jordan model, but kids balked at forking out that much.)
...
Marquee shoes are aimed at black, inner-city kids who are willing to spend huge amounts of money every time the new, hot shoe hits shelves. An Adidas exec once told me that "the day after payday" is the biggest sales day in this category (the way he said it, you could tell that exploitation was not really an issue for him).
I still remember being ridiculed in junior high because of my cheap Payless sneakers. Most of those kids who tormented me were black and wore really expensive Nike shoes as well as those LA Gear sneakers with blinking LED's, which seem so passe now. However, they didn't seem at all embarassed to be poor enough to qualify for free school lunch. I, on the other hand, found the prospect of swiping my free lunch card every day much more stigmatizing than wearing shitty shoes.
I also remember reading studies that show black Americans as a group spend a higher percentage of their income on entertainment, clothing, and even hairstyling than every other ethnic group in this country, which is unfathomable to me since the majority of welfare recipients are black. It's a free country and how they spend their hard-earned money is none of my business, but I still can't help but think that this misallocation of resources is unwise and wrong. Why waste so much money just to keep up appearances?
posted by Gary at
6:57 PM
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