<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">By Darren Rovell ESPN.com BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Inside the Mia Hamm Building that stands amid so many other monuments to endorsement greatness on Nike's sprawling campus, the shoe giant's top designers are at work dreaming and scheming up plans behind doors that are never left unlocked. They call it the "Innovation Kitchen," a place where creativity is the culture, imagination is the job and access is limited to a few. Scraps of leather, rubber and mesh are strewn haphazardly onto the floor. Easels are crammed with sketches. The walls are littered with sources of inspiration, ranging from motivational signs to personal trinkets. It is here that Eric Avar, Aaron Cooper and Tinker Hatfield brainstormed on perhaps Nike's most important creation since the Air Jordan two decades ago. It is here that they gave birth to what has been dubbed the Air Zoom Generation, the first of Nike's shoes that it is paying LeBron James a king's ransom to wear for the next seven years. With $100 million committed before the costly process of research and development, let alone production and distribution, ever began, expectations are above the rim and the pressure for success is through the roof. Still, for the image-making machine that turned Michael into "Michael" and Bo into "Bo," turning LeBron into the next big-name sports icon is not such a daunting task. "As a designer for Nike, doing any basketball shoe at that price point with that type of athlete, of course I feel the pressure," said Cooper, Nike Basketball's creative director and the person who played a key role in helping beat out Reebok in the fight for James. "If you let yourself feel the pressure over a shoe like this, you can feel it, because you are solely responsible for that much business. But if you let it get to you that's when you can get distracted." It has been said that James is such a hot property that even a dismal product with his name attached to it would sell well. Indeed, after years of continually coming out on top, Nike officials' confidence that its designs will be popular in the marketplace borders on the arrogant. "This is about teen boys that play basketball and teen boys that don't (play) but want to look like they do," says Ralph Greene, Nike's director of global basketball. "That's the way it was in 1985, in 1995, and will be in 2005." The blue print for success was created long ago. Nike plans to follow the same sales strategy that it developed with the Air Jordan line: Sell enough to make economic sense, but always make sure the product sells out, leaving consumers and retailers wanting more. Nike officials never discuss production runs of their shoes, but the number crunchers have done the math. "With this type of athlete, if you make 1,000 pairs, of course you are going to sell out, but that's not a business success," says Greene. "So there is a threshold that we understand that will make this pay out. Is it an unnatural number for the marketplace? No. I think the market can absorb it without these ever showing up in discount outlets. We want them gone and I want them gone in a good way that leads to a return purchase the next time."</div> Full Story
